MacBlank
2023
This caught my eye when it was announced, but I only thought to buy it 'cause it was highlighted by the Game Awards. Never say that the system doesn't work.
This is essentially a short visual novel exploring the experiences of a Tamil immigrant couple and their Canadian-born son, largely told vicariously through the context of family recipes. I'd picked it up with the hopes that I could take away a recipe or two, but while a lot of it is laid out, there's a fair amount of "yadda yadda yadda"ing for the sake of narrative flow (but the team is hoping to put out a cookbook, so maybe I'll look into that). So while you can mess up a recipe, the game's quick to let you try again until you succeed; Cooking Mama this ain't. But again, the focus is on the story, with the recipes being used as conversation points and narrative devices to guide the player along.
This game feels very authentic. Being a White American with distant German/Irish heritage, I have no real claim to authority in the overall cultural authenticity of this Tamil narrative, so I must take a lot as given. But there is a lot that resonates with even a know-nothing like me. I of course love the recipes and music; I'm afraid the significance of it changing genres over time is a nuance lost on me, but I very much love that it's paying that much attention to detail. How it represents the Tamil versus English languages is really fascinating - stuff like how Kavin's text boxes get muddier to Venba the more quickly he speaks English is more transparent, but I also like the detail of how Kavin's dialogue in Tamil appears more slowly than Venba's or Paavalan's. Also that bit where Kavin finds himself playing cultural ambassador for a well-meaning but ignorant White showrunner, and writes a whole block of text that he eventually walks back without sending - I think anyone who's been in a position to explain their heritage to people who don't know has felt that.
(also, like, the bit where Kris asks if Chicken Tikka Masala would be a good fit for his show's Tamil character - I'm not at all well-versed in different Indian regions, let alone regional cuisine, but even I could tell that was off. Sometimes all you need is context)
I think the narrative overall is very smartly-paced. I like how the devices used to justify the game's puzzles shift over time. That one chapter in the middle, where Venba doesn't have any commentary to offer the player and simply cooks, is a great understated beat of character development. The game gets away with a lot of its storytelling through subtext like this, like how Paavalan's worker ID has a completely incorrect name, or how Venba and Paavalan never once replace their beat-up bed over the course of 26 years.
And, like, I love the art. Do I even need to say that the art is good? Very fun, simple, expressive character models.
I don't think this game was made for me, in that way that a lot of stories about immigrant experiences and world cultures aren't made for me. Playing through this, I felt like I was listening in on a conversation actively being simplified so someone like me could understand it. I don't mean that as a negative, and I honestly think that sort of narrative treatment is perfectly fair. I don't know that I should necessarily be the target demographic for this type of story, and I think of the act of presenting it in a way I can understand and empathize is a courtesy more than an obligation. That such an effort was made is very much appreciated, and makes it an easy recommendation for me.
This is essentially a short visual novel exploring the experiences of a Tamil immigrant couple and their Canadian-born son, largely told vicariously through the context of family recipes. I'd picked it up with the hopes that I could take away a recipe or two, but while a lot of it is laid out, there's a fair amount of "yadda yadda yadda"ing for the sake of narrative flow (but the team is hoping to put out a cookbook, so maybe I'll look into that). So while you can mess up a recipe, the game's quick to let you try again until you succeed; Cooking Mama this ain't. But again, the focus is on the story, with the recipes being used as conversation points and narrative devices to guide the player along.
This game feels very authentic. Being a White American with distant German/Irish heritage, I have no real claim to authority in the overall cultural authenticity of this Tamil narrative, so I must take a lot as given. But there is a lot that resonates with even a know-nothing like me. I of course love the recipes and music; I'm afraid the significance of it changing genres over time is a nuance lost on me, but I very much love that it's paying that much attention to detail. How it represents the Tamil versus English languages is really fascinating - stuff like how Kavin's text boxes get muddier to Venba the more quickly he speaks English is more transparent, but I also like the detail of how Kavin's dialogue in Tamil appears more slowly than Venba's or Paavalan's. Also that bit where Kavin finds himself playing cultural ambassador for a well-meaning but ignorant White showrunner, and writes a whole block of text that he eventually walks back without sending - I think anyone who's been in a position to explain their heritage to people who don't know has felt that.
(also, like, the bit where Kris asks if Chicken Tikka Masala would be a good fit for his show's Tamil character - I'm not at all well-versed in different Indian regions, let alone regional cuisine, but even I could tell that was off. Sometimes all you need is context)
I think the narrative overall is very smartly-paced. I like how the devices used to justify the game's puzzles shift over time. That one chapter in the middle, where Venba doesn't have any commentary to offer the player and simply cooks, is a great understated beat of character development. The game gets away with a lot of its storytelling through subtext like this, like how Paavalan's worker ID has a completely incorrect name, or how Venba and Paavalan never once replace their beat-up bed over the course of 26 years.
And, like, I love the art. Do I even need to say that the art is good? Very fun, simple, expressive character models.
I don't think this game was made for me, in that way that a lot of stories about immigrant experiences and world cultures aren't made for me. Playing through this, I felt like I was listening in on a conversation actively being simplified so someone like me could understand it. I don't mean that as a negative, and I honestly think that sort of narrative treatment is perfectly fair. I don't know that I should necessarily be the target demographic for this type of story, and I think of the act of presenting it in a way I can understand and empathize is a courtesy more than an obligation. That such an effort was made is very much appreciated, and makes it an easy recommendation for me.
2005
One of the things I most loved about Homestarrunner.com was the "anything goes" vibe of following the site in its heyday (I found it fairly late into this period in mid-2006, but that still gave me a few years' worth of new content to follow). It's something that defies attempt to archive it, since an archive will necessarily organize things, losing that anarchical updating style that made it a fun surprise to follow in real-time. Like, you were usually there for Strong Bad responding to an email, but sometimes you'd tune in on Monday to find that you were apparently there for a G.I. Joe parody's Thanksgiving Episode, or a music video crossing a fictional Scandinavian heavy metal band with a double-fictional gangsta rapper, or a sloppily-drawn comic about a quartet of teen-aged girls trying to get several boys on Vamlumtimes Day and dying gory deaths in the process.
And sometimes you were there for video games. The Brothers Chaps put out a surprising amount of these, mostly exploring riffs or jokes from their cartoons. They were rough, buggy, often simple, and very silly, but darn if they didn't all have heart. There were a lot of different types of Flash Games they put together, but to my way of thinking, the two biggest were Peasant's Quest (Quest (Quest (Quest (Quest...)))), and this. A Mega Man parody based on a 70s anime parody (named after a throwaway line said by a dopey athelete in a fantasy sequence) of a masked luchador named after some characters from NES game Pro Wrestling.
Alright, despite the obvious Mega Man base for Stinkoman's sprite and abilities, the game is generally more straightforward as a platformer. A full level select, Robot Master setup is a bit too ambitious for this game's scope. But it is very much having fun being a silly idiosyncratic supposedly 80s game. There is no logical consistency to what makes up this world, with a character at one point walking across a screen transition from the planet's surface to the moon. Level concepts are played with either because it's the done thing ("Stratosfear!" and "Turbolence"), for maximum silliness ("Dumb Wall!" is a very basic level mechanically, but it's so stupid a high concept that it makes it all the more enjoyable), or a combination of the two ("Negatory!" is perhaps one of the few times I've seen a video game acknowledge stuff like the Minus World, and a great trip to boot). The game is so quick to pivot what it's doing that nothing has the time to grow stale; you can very much tell that the Brothers Chaps ran with whatever ideas amused them, between the level concepts and the writing that at times feels like a joke on a joke on a joke.
So they developed the first 9 levels over the course of 2005, and then it took them 15 years and the pending death of Flash as a platform to finally deliver the long-promised level 10. And they joke about it, but you can reeeeeally tell that the last level came out 15 years later. The jump from Level 9 to Level 10 is astounding in just about every way. Background sprites are suddenly ridiculously more sophisticated, physics feel a little better, level design is longer and more impactful, they got friggin' Toby Fox to compose the last couple stages' music. It's jarring, and in any more serious release would strike me as awkward. But for Stinkoman and Homestar Runner, accidentally hailing the end of an era? It feels perfect.
Flash being dead and Ruffle being an imperfect emulator, I'm not sure if this game has an audience anymore, though I know the Brothers Chaps are working to restore the game. But if you're able to, it's a cute, extremely-out-of-context snapshot into the energy of a lot of Homestar Runner, distilled through the lens of early anime and NES-era gaming.
And sometimes you were there for video games. The Brothers Chaps put out a surprising amount of these, mostly exploring riffs or jokes from their cartoons. They were rough, buggy, often simple, and very silly, but darn if they didn't all have heart. There were a lot of different types of Flash Games they put together, but to my way of thinking, the two biggest were Peasant's Quest (Quest (Quest (Quest (Quest...)))), and this. A Mega Man parody based on a 70s anime parody (named after a throwaway line said by a dopey athelete in a fantasy sequence) of a masked luchador named after some characters from NES game Pro Wrestling.
Alright, despite the obvious Mega Man base for Stinkoman's sprite and abilities, the game is generally more straightforward as a platformer. A full level select, Robot Master setup is a bit too ambitious for this game's scope. But it is very much having fun being a silly idiosyncratic supposedly 80s game. There is no logical consistency to what makes up this world, with a character at one point walking across a screen transition from the planet's surface to the moon. Level concepts are played with either because it's the done thing ("Stratosfear!" and "Turbolence"), for maximum silliness ("Dumb Wall!" is a very basic level mechanically, but it's so stupid a high concept that it makes it all the more enjoyable), or a combination of the two ("Negatory!" is perhaps one of the few times I've seen a video game acknowledge stuff like the Minus World, and a great trip to boot). The game is so quick to pivot what it's doing that nothing has the time to grow stale; you can very much tell that the Brothers Chaps ran with whatever ideas amused them, between the level concepts and the writing that at times feels like a joke on a joke on a joke.
So they developed the first 9 levels over the course of 2005, and then it took them 15 years and the pending death of Flash as a platform to finally deliver the long-promised level 10. And they joke about it, but you can reeeeeally tell that the last level came out 15 years later. The jump from Level 9 to Level 10 is astounding in just about every way. Background sprites are suddenly ridiculously more sophisticated, physics feel a little better, level design is longer and more impactful, they got friggin' Toby Fox to compose the last couple stages' music. It's jarring, and in any more serious release would strike me as awkward. But for Stinkoman and Homestar Runner, accidentally hailing the end of an era? It feels perfect.
Flash being dead and Ruffle being an imperfect emulator, I'm not sure if this game has an audience anymore, though I know the Brothers Chaps are working to restore the game. But if you're able to, it's a cute, extremely-out-of-context snapshot into the energy of a lot of Homestar Runner, distilled through the lens of early anime and NES-era gaming.
1997
Of Shinichi Shimomura's three directed Kirby titles, this is probably the one I think about least. It's not bad; far from it, it's a great, cozy little game. It's more that this one was less-readily available to me during my middle school years, when I got into Kirby. I eventually picked it up off Wii Virtual Console, but I'd already played Dream Land 2 and Kirby 64 ages before this one, and this consequently felt like half-and-half of what I liked from those games.
...in all but aesthetics, of course. Holy moly do I love how this game looks. That soft, colored pencil squigglevision is so unique to this game, and it seems to have come out of nowhere, too! Easily a contender for one of the best-looking games on the console, continuing Kirby's trend of releasing late and testing the system's graphical capabilities.
I'll also grant that this is the only of Shimomura's games to feature co-op. At the cost of one hit point, Gooey can split off from Kirby to function as a second player. Adapting Gooey into a second Kirby is a fun choice; I generally find him less interesting than the variety you get from Super Star's Helpers, but it's a fun expansion of a completely disposable character from the prequel, and the Helper system wouldn't really work with this game's limited movesets. And I mean, he's such a weird li'l goober, with his prehensile tongue and his being more explicitly a well-meaning cosmic horror.
The issue I have is imbalance in level design. The goal in each level is to earn a Heart Star, each piece of which is used to build up the Love Love Stick required for the Good Ending. To get each Heart Star, the player(s) must fulfill the "request" of a friendly NPC contextual to that level. The details are never specifically spelled out in-game, but they're usually easy to intuit - don't squish the flowers (or maybe do), clear the mini-game, bring a certain friend to the end of the stage, etc. I have some issues with these challenges themselves - some lack conveyance (you can sort-of step into the logic of MuchiMuchi wanting to be touched by ChuChu, but there's some assumptions that need to be made to get there), and some are just mean (I've played the game at least four times through, and I'm still always thrown by Chef Kawasaki's sound-based mini-game).
But the real problem with this design is that it's overly-centralizing. In the first level, for example, the challenge is to avoid squishing Tulips. That's straightforward enough, but the Tulips only show up in one of the level's four-five rooms. This makes the remaining rooms superfluous in the context of the challenge, and thus often feel like wasted space, depending on what the challenge is. If I botch Tamasan's mini-game, why should I continue playing out the level, knowing the outcome is a forgone conclusion? Not as significant if you're only interested in playing to credits, I suppose, but for completion, it's a little funny.
You can make a similar argument in Shimomura's other two Kirby games, but I don't really feel it as much there. Since there's only one Rainbow Drop per world in Dream Land 2, I don't feel like the world design must focus around it, more that it's an embedded secret that exists as a complement to that world's overall design. Kirby 64 has three Crystal Shards per level, so no one shard centralizes a given level's focus; besides, each level's theming is strong enough to suggest its own purpose independent of the overarching game's goals. When I'm playing Shiver Star Stage 2 in Kirby 64, the level is clearly about Kirby and friends traveling over a mountain through a cloudy passage; the placement of the Crystal Shards within it are irrelevant because the level's theming justifies it. When I'm playing Cloudy Park Stage 2 in Dream Land 3, the level is clearly about satisfying the chicken; the visual theming of the level is irrelevant, so long as I'm keeping an eye out for any chicken-related interactions.
I'm drilling into this a lot, but I should make it clear that I still think Dream Land 3 is a pretty solid game. Like I said, it's short and cozy enough that I've beaten it four times, more than most other games I've played. Heck, I superfluously bought it on Wii U when I already had it in my Wii's Virtual Console, just because. It's a good game! Not a special highlight of what I like about the series, but comfortably good and nice for a periodic revisit.
Plus, there are a bunch of shout-outs to everything from the Super Scope to Shin Onigashima, to say nothing about how bloody violent the final fights are. Lots to love here.
...in all but aesthetics, of course. Holy moly do I love how this game looks. That soft, colored pencil squigglevision is so unique to this game, and it seems to have come out of nowhere, too! Easily a contender for one of the best-looking games on the console, continuing Kirby's trend of releasing late and testing the system's graphical capabilities.
I'll also grant that this is the only of Shimomura's games to feature co-op. At the cost of one hit point, Gooey can split off from Kirby to function as a second player. Adapting Gooey into a second Kirby is a fun choice; I generally find him less interesting than the variety you get from Super Star's Helpers, but it's a fun expansion of a completely disposable character from the prequel, and the Helper system wouldn't really work with this game's limited movesets. And I mean, he's such a weird li'l goober, with his prehensile tongue and his being more explicitly a well-meaning cosmic horror.
The issue I have is imbalance in level design. The goal in each level is to earn a Heart Star, each piece of which is used to build up the Love Love Stick required for the Good Ending. To get each Heart Star, the player(s) must fulfill the "request" of a friendly NPC contextual to that level. The details are never specifically spelled out in-game, but they're usually easy to intuit - don't squish the flowers (or maybe do), clear the mini-game, bring a certain friend to the end of the stage, etc. I have some issues with these challenges themselves - some lack conveyance (you can sort-of step into the logic of MuchiMuchi wanting to be touched by ChuChu, but there's some assumptions that need to be made to get there), and some are just mean (I've played the game at least four times through, and I'm still always thrown by Chef Kawasaki's sound-based mini-game).
But the real problem with this design is that it's overly-centralizing. In the first level, for example, the challenge is to avoid squishing Tulips. That's straightforward enough, but the Tulips only show up in one of the level's four-five rooms. This makes the remaining rooms superfluous in the context of the challenge, and thus often feel like wasted space, depending on what the challenge is. If I botch Tamasan's mini-game, why should I continue playing out the level, knowing the outcome is a forgone conclusion? Not as significant if you're only interested in playing to credits, I suppose, but for completion, it's a little funny.
You can make a similar argument in Shimomura's other two Kirby games, but I don't really feel it as much there. Since there's only one Rainbow Drop per world in Dream Land 2, I don't feel like the world design must focus around it, more that it's an embedded secret that exists as a complement to that world's overall design. Kirby 64 has three Crystal Shards per level, so no one shard centralizes a given level's focus; besides, each level's theming is strong enough to suggest its own purpose independent of the overarching game's goals. When I'm playing Shiver Star Stage 2 in Kirby 64, the level is clearly about Kirby and friends traveling over a mountain through a cloudy passage; the placement of the Crystal Shards within it are irrelevant because the level's theming justifies it. When I'm playing Cloudy Park Stage 2 in Dream Land 3, the level is clearly about satisfying the chicken; the visual theming of the level is irrelevant, so long as I'm keeping an eye out for any chicken-related interactions.
I'm drilling into this a lot, but I should make it clear that I still think Dream Land 3 is a pretty solid game. Like I said, it's short and cozy enough that I've beaten it four times, more than most other games I've played. Heck, I superfluously bought it on Wii U when I already had it in my Wii's Virtual Console, just because. It's a good game! Not a special highlight of what I like about the series, but comfortably good and nice for a periodic revisit.
Plus, there are a bunch of shout-outs to everything from the Super Scope to Shin Onigashima, to say nothing about how bloody violent the final fights are. Lots to love here.
2002
Played for the Tarvould's Quest Mario Party League, viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNiBuIKkhNOcetedJo2kjJwenDNYqHsFt
This was actually my first Mario Party. Way early on, after my family got our GameCube, we borrowed this game for a weekend. Truthfully I no longer remember how we borrowed it; I seem to recall it being lent to my father by a coworker, but it just as easily could've been a Blockbuster rental. Anyway, I did a pretty decent amount of the game's single-player offerings during that weekend, but it didn't hold my interest enough for me to clear all the boards while we borrowed it. For years, I always wondered about it, as I'd see the game logo crop up every time I viewed my memory card saves on my GameCube. There it was, towards the top of the list. My family got a lot of mileage out of Mario Party 6, which we'd buy for ourselves a few months later. Would we have had as much fun with 4?
I mention all this because, now that I've had the time to play through and sit with 4, those years of wondering probably represent the most fun I had with Mario Party 4. Maybe I would've liked it okay if I'd played more of it as a kid, but as an adult? There's little for me to hold onto.
Hudson basically cranked out one Mario Party a year from the first to the eighth release, but they took two gaps, one with each console generation gap. I'm not sure how true this is, but part of me imagines that much of this delay was so the team could take the time to adjust to the new console by rebuilding character models, assets, etc. This would've marked the GameCube debut for a lot of these characters, so a LOT of the Mario series regulars would've needed to be redesigned for the console shift (and I know most of these guys appeared in Melee as Trophies or whathaveyou, but they used their N64 designs there; compare Daisy's skintones from Mario Party 3 to Melee to Mario Party 4, for an easy comparison). And I will say that for its era, a lot of this looked pretty good. There's a big focus on photorealism and modeling precise physics and graphics, with something like the mini-game "Makin' Waves" a visual showcase in a lot of the same ways Super Mario Sunshine was working towards.
Problem being that there's little soul to how these characters and these worlds look. There's such a focus on photorealistic, sterile environments that a lot of the game doesn't "feel" very Mario. Since I mentioned it, compare Super Mario Sunshine to Mario Party 4. Isle Delphino aesthetically makes sense in Mario's world, with the Piantas, the Nokis, and so on feeling like characters that could conceivably co-exist in a world with, say, Koopalings or Bob-Omb Buddies. Mario Party 4 would've been developed in tandem, so I don't think it's fair to expect Isle Dephino and its denizens to show up. Still, the island locations we see in some of the mini-games, and the worlds of the boards themselves, don't really feel like places that exist in or around the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario Parties 1-3 were generally great at inventing boards and settings jammed with Mario-like flavor. I think of Horror Land's playful take on an unfamiliar genre for Mario, with its giant ketchup spill, and party of ghosts wandering the highway and its hidden Mad Piano; or Wario's Battle Canyon leaning into lore established in Mario 64 and presenting a war conflict like a stage play; or Creepy Cavern having Dorrie, Swoopers, and those Whomps playing their own version of Mario Party (Matryoshka Party?). By contrast, the Mario Party 4 boards feel less like places that might come out of Mario's world and more like places from the real world that are full of Mario characters. There's a sense of sterility to it all, particularly in the play area being on elevated pathways rather than integrated into the environment. Everything uses sophisticated renders, but it doesn't "feel" right.
This is without even getting into the actual content of the game! Frankly, I think all the boards this time around are duds, save Bowser's Gnarly Party (but Bowser Boards are usually hard to screw up). Goomba's Greedy Gala is funny for how dickish it is, but after the initial joke there's little to hold onto. I can't tell if Thwomp's two Extra Boards are deliberately poorly-designed or what, but I'm not much a fan, short and inconsequential as they are. Everything else is just there to be a big fat waste of your time, ESPECIALLY Toad's Midway Madness, where the nature of the board guarantees that a player will periodically get screwed over in that initial teacup loop regardless of how they actually play.
This is in no small part a consequence of the game's MiniMega system, the first of the series' many forays into ill-conceived gimmicks. It's a decent high-concept, playing into series identity in a way that codifies the existing Mushroom items. In practice, it's pretty terrible. Mega's benefits are pretty straightforward (double dice, squish existing players), but Mini is where the problem lies. The logical offset to something like Mega would be a clear penalty, so naturally the game needs to introduce incentives to be Mini. The way they decide to do this is through Mini-Gates and Mini-Mini-Games, functions of the board you can only access when you're a little guy. A consequence of THIS is that large portions of the boards end up being inaccessible or seeing infrequent use. This combined with the quite uninspired board design makes a lot of the experience of the boards homogenized and going through motions.
I hate to say it, but if I'm having fun with Mario Party 4, it's in spite of rather than because of anything it's doing. That or I'm playing a mini-game, there are a few pretty strong mini-games this time around. But I find myself less drawn into Mario Party's mini-games than I am the high-level board play, and that's pretty frankly lacking in this game. Not hard to see why Hudson decided to switch things up for the next game...
This was actually my first Mario Party. Way early on, after my family got our GameCube, we borrowed this game for a weekend. Truthfully I no longer remember how we borrowed it; I seem to recall it being lent to my father by a coworker, but it just as easily could've been a Blockbuster rental. Anyway, I did a pretty decent amount of the game's single-player offerings during that weekend, but it didn't hold my interest enough for me to clear all the boards while we borrowed it. For years, I always wondered about it, as I'd see the game logo crop up every time I viewed my memory card saves on my GameCube. There it was, towards the top of the list. My family got a lot of mileage out of Mario Party 6, which we'd buy for ourselves a few months later. Would we have had as much fun with 4?
I mention all this because, now that I've had the time to play through and sit with 4, those years of wondering probably represent the most fun I had with Mario Party 4. Maybe I would've liked it okay if I'd played more of it as a kid, but as an adult? There's little for me to hold onto.
Hudson basically cranked out one Mario Party a year from the first to the eighth release, but they took two gaps, one with each console generation gap. I'm not sure how true this is, but part of me imagines that much of this delay was so the team could take the time to adjust to the new console by rebuilding character models, assets, etc. This would've marked the GameCube debut for a lot of these characters, so a LOT of the Mario series regulars would've needed to be redesigned for the console shift (and I know most of these guys appeared in Melee as Trophies or whathaveyou, but they used their N64 designs there; compare Daisy's skintones from Mario Party 3 to Melee to Mario Party 4, for an easy comparison). And I will say that for its era, a lot of this looked pretty good. There's a big focus on photorealism and modeling precise physics and graphics, with something like the mini-game "Makin' Waves" a visual showcase in a lot of the same ways Super Mario Sunshine was working towards.
Problem being that there's little soul to how these characters and these worlds look. There's such a focus on photorealistic, sterile environments that a lot of the game doesn't "feel" very Mario. Since I mentioned it, compare Super Mario Sunshine to Mario Party 4. Isle Delphino aesthetically makes sense in Mario's world, with the Piantas, the Nokis, and so on feeling like characters that could conceivably co-exist in a world with, say, Koopalings or Bob-Omb Buddies. Mario Party 4 would've been developed in tandem, so I don't think it's fair to expect Isle Dephino and its denizens to show up. Still, the island locations we see in some of the mini-games, and the worlds of the boards themselves, don't really feel like places that exist in or around the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario Parties 1-3 were generally great at inventing boards and settings jammed with Mario-like flavor. I think of Horror Land's playful take on an unfamiliar genre for Mario, with its giant ketchup spill, and party of ghosts wandering the highway and its hidden Mad Piano; or Wario's Battle Canyon leaning into lore established in Mario 64 and presenting a war conflict like a stage play; or Creepy Cavern having Dorrie, Swoopers, and those Whomps playing their own version of Mario Party (Matryoshka Party?). By contrast, the Mario Party 4 boards feel less like places that might come out of Mario's world and more like places from the real world that are full of Mario characters. There's a sense of sterility to it all, particularly in the play area being on elevated pathways rather than integrated into the environment. Everything uses sophisticated renders, but it doesn't "feel" right.
This is without even getting into the actual content of the game! Frankly, I think all the boards this time around are duds, save Bowser's Gnarly Party (but Bowser Boards are usually hard to screw up). Goomba's Greedy Gala is funny for how dickish it is, but after the initial joke there's little to hold onto. I can't tell if Thwomp's two Extra Boards are deliberately poorly-designed or what, but I'm not much a fan, short and inconsequential as they are. Everything else is just there to be a big fat waste of your time, ESPECIALLY Toad's Midway Madness, where the nature of the board guarantees that a player will periodically get screwed over in that initial teacup loop regardless of how they actually play.
This is in no small part a consequence of the game's MiniMega system, the first of the series' many forays into ill-conceived gimmicks. It's a decent high-concept, playing into series identity in a way that codifies the existing Mushroom items. In practice, it's pretty terrible. Mega's benefits are pretty straightforward (double dice, squish existing players), but Mini is where the problem lies. The logical offset to something like Mega would be a clear penalty, so naturally the game needs to introduce incentives to be Mini. The way they decide to do this is through Mini-Gates and Mini-Mini-Games, functions of the board you can only access when you're a little guy. A consequence of THIS is that large portions of the boards end up being inaccessible or seeing infrequent use. This combined with the quite uninspired board design makes a lot of the experience of the boards homogenized and going through motions.
I hate to say it, but if I'm having fun with Mario Party 4, it's in spite of rather than because of anything it's doing. That or I'm playing a mini-game, there are a few pretty strong mini-games this time around. But I find myself less drawn into Mario Party's mini-games than I am the high-level board play, and that's pretty frankly lacking in this game. Not hard to see why Hudson decided to switch things up for the next game...
What Banjo-Kazooie was to Super Mario 64, Grabbed by the Ghoulies was trying to be for Luigi's Mansion: Rare's (specifically the Mayles team's) spin and progression of Nintendo's launch title, exploring what was possible on next-gen hardware through a simple treatise on basic beat-'em up mechanics wrapped up in a silly, spooky narrative. The problem Ghoulies ran into, and the reason it's not-so-well-remembered, is that it was delivered out of context. The Mayles team developed it as a low-stakes cool-down project following Banjo-Tooie. It probably would've done fine on GameCube, maybe reading as an also-ran around whatever Donkey Kong and Sabre Wulf projects Rare was developing concurrently. But Microsoft acquired Rare, and the Luigi's Mansion-analogue became Rare's Xbox debut, when all eyes on it expected a Super Mario Sunshine- or maybe even Wind Waker-analogue. No cool-down project should have that type of pressure on it.
Ghoulies is a pretty great time, honestly! "Twin-stick beat-'em up" sounds like an odd high-concept to wrap your head around, but it's actually quite straightforward: Cooper's moveset is extremely unimportant, with all the different animations largely existing for flavor more than anything. The focus is instead placed on crowd control - something always present in beat-'em ups but usually more as a consequence of level progression and managing enemy spawns more than anything. The game actually gets a good deal of mileage out of it even before the gameplay modifiers, as you fall into a pretty good rhythm weaving around enemies, trying to manage different enemy classes' attacks and patterns. For a somewhat more contemporary analogue, I'd compare it to something like One Finger Death Punch or Kung Fury: Street Rage, just in 3 dimensions.
But those gameplay modifiers are the heart and soul of the experience, and what keeps it from getting too repetitive over its one-hundred rooms. How they're paced out is great fun, too. The fluctuating hit point total makes for a great tone-setter for each room (though, if the mad Baron can just mess with Cooper's HP like that, why doesn't he just leave him at 1 the whole game? Ah well, we wouldn't have a game otherwise). Sometimes you have a special weapon, and managing its heat gauge becomes part of the challenge. On top of all this, most rooms have additional modifiers too, like "Only defeat X type of enemy", "Don't take damage", "Don't damage the environment", etc. Always interesting to see what challenge the game will offer next, and try to figure out how you're expected to see it through.
Or... you can always fail the challenge, since losing the challenge doesn't mean starting it over. It just means that the Reaper has entered the playing field. Touching the Reaper means instant death, but maybe you can avoid him while you wrap up what you have to do? I always always love the extra challenge a game gets out of having a playable fail state, where you can salvage a botched run despite the odds being stacked against you. Tying it into the Grim Reaper, in the same way Persona 3 would do a couple years later, makes it all the sweeter to me.
Also, is the Reaper here a repudiation of Gregg the Grim Reaper from Conker, or is Gregg the Grim Reaper Chris Seavor taking the piss on Gregg Mayles for wanting to have a reaper in his next game? You decide.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies isn't a favorite game of mine, but it's one where I feel it easily could be. The more I sit on it, the more fondly I find myself thinking about it, and the more fun and clever I find its design decisions. I think the game's undergone a bit of a critical re-examination following Rare Replay, which I think it was due; I'm certainly grateful Rare Replay gave me the chance to play it in the first place!
Ghoulies is a pretty great time, honestly! "Twin-stick beat-'em up" sounds like an odd high-concept to wrap your head around, but it's actually quite straightforward: Cooper's moveset is extremely unimportant, with all the different animations largely existing for flavor more than anything. The focus is instead placed on crowd control - something always present in beat-'em ups but usually more as a consequence of level progression and managing enemy spawns more than anything. The game actually gets a good deal of mileage out of it even before the gameplay modifiers, as you fall into a pretty good rhythm weaving around enemies, trying to manage different enemy classes' attacks and patterns. For a somewhat more contemporary analogue, I'd compare it to something like One Finger Death Punch or Kung Fury: Street Rage, just in 3 dimensions.
But those gameplay modifiers are the heart and soul of the experience, and what keeps it from getting too repetitive over its one-hundred rooms. How they're paced out is great fun, too. The fluctuating hit point total makes for a great tone-setter for each room (though, if the mad Baron can just mess with Cooper's HP like that, why doesn't he just leave him at 1 the whole game? Ah well, we wouldn't have a game otherwise). Sometimes you have a special weapon, and managing its heat gauge becomes part of the challenge. On top of all this, most rooms have additional modifiers too, like "Only defeat X type of enemy", "Don't take damage", "Don't damage the environment", etc. Always interesting to see what challenge the game will offer next, and try to figure out how you're expected to see it through.
Or... you can always fail the challenge, since losing the challenge doesn't mean starting it over. It just means that the Reaper has entered the playing field. Touching the Reaper means instant death, but maybe you can avoid him while you wrap up what you have to do? I always always love the extra challenge a game gets out of having a playable fail state, where you can salvage a botched run despite the odds being stacked against you. Tying it into the Grim Reaper, in the same way Persona 3 would do a couple years later, makes it all the sweeter to me.
Also, is the Reaper here a repudiation of Gregg the Grim Reaper from Conker, or is Gregg the Grim Reaper Chris Seavor taking the piss on Gregg Mayles for wanting to have a reaper in his next game? You decide.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies isn't a favorite game of mine, but it's one where I feel it easily could be. The more I sit on it, the more fondly I find myself thinking about it, and the more fun and clever I find its design decisions. I think the game's undergone a bit of a critical re-examination following Rare Replay, which I think it was due; I'm certainly grateful Rare Replay gave me the chance to play it in the first place!
An absolute bare-bones budget title, but quite excellent given its scope. The team at Ludosity (for which I hold nothing but respect, largely since that's where one of my favorite developers, Daniel Remar, ended up) was clearly passionate for this project and did everything they could to make it the best they could be. At the risk of making assumptions, I feel like the nature of the project and its setbacks has been transparently laid bare. Nickelodeon approached Ludosity about developing a platform fighter; Ludosity accepted; Nickelodeon had them on a tight leash with respect to funding and brand requirements; the game was a critical disappointment but a commercial success; Nickelodeon started listening to feedback and eased restrictions; Ludosity applied lessons learned and their increased budget for the DLC and sequel.
That growth and progression is the main thing to hold onto, since if you look at the game as it came out of the box without due context, it's bound to be a disappointment. I can see why this game has its mixed reputation, between rough animation (Danny Phantom and Ren & Stimpy in particular are animated pretty poorly), its initial lack of voice acting (easily the heart and soul of many of these characters), and its dry suite of modes. I do think, given what Ludosity had to work with, they focused on precisely the right thing by creating razor-sharp gameplay core. Not that it's exactly a crowded field, but this is probably the closest someone's come outside the indie space to challenging Super Smash Bros.' claim to the throne.
And I know that developer Thaddeus Crews has said that the endless Smash Bros. comparisons have been more harmful than not for Nick All-Stars. I can respect that, but I really must must make the comparison here to emphasize two things. First, this game had the scope of the original Smash Bros. but is mechanically in-line with the far more technically-sophisticated Melee; this aspiration impresses me far more than a given indie or passion project with theoretically infinite dev time and resources to secure the mechanical tone it was going for. Second, Nick All-Stars did Smash Bros. better than Sony did Smash Bros.
One thing I appreciate in crossover rosters is when character picks are creative. Conventional wisdom dictates that you pick main characters all the time, but Nick All-Stars is content to buck that trend. Your Rugrats character pull is in-universe mascot Reptar rather than any of the literal baby leads (although there would've been something cathartic about putting Angelica Pickles in the arena). None of the Wild Thornberries cast are fighters by nature, but Nigel Thornberry is given a silly animal-based moveset to complement his memetic status. Arnold of Hey Arnold! is pacifistic by nature, so violent deuteragonist Helga Pataki carries the series. Oblina is there over Ickis, April O'Neil is there over Donatello and Raphael, Toph is there over other more-prominent Avatar characters, etc. I think it's easy to fall into the trap of being disappointed that a given lead isn't there, but I dunno, it's a little more special to see fan favorites or variety. Hugh Neutron making the DLC felt like K. Rool and Banjo-Kazooie making it to Smash Bros. all over again. Anyway, character picks aren't idle inclusions; you have lots of careful little expressions of source material, like how Helga's projectile draws in opponents (appropriate for the character who only knows to express her feelings for others through aggression), or... basically everything my friends said here about CatDog.
There really was something special to watching this game grow. With Smash Bros. (that comparison again; I know, I know), each new game felt like Christmas, particularly in following its pre- and post-release cycle. I've resolved myself to accepting that the next Smash Bros., whenever it happens, won't feel the same; it can't, after Ultimate did something amazing that can never be done again. But suddenly, this game came out of the woodwork. It was a different developer working with a different ensemble towards different project goals, but damn if it didn't feel like Christmas in July.
That growth and progression is the main thing to hold onto, since if you look at the game as it came out of the box without due context, it's bound to be a disappointment. I can see why this game has its mixed reputation, between rough animation (Danny Phantom and Ren & Stimpy in particular are animated pretty poorly), its initial lack of voice acting (easily the heart and soul of many of these characters), and its dry suite of modes. I do think, given what Ludosity had to work with, they focused on precisely the right thing by creating razor-sharp gameplay core. Not that it's exactly a crowded field, but this is probably the closest someone's come outside the indie space to challenging Super Smash Bros.' claim to the throne.
And I know that developer Thaddeus Crews has said that the endless Smash Bros. comparisons have been more harmful than not for Nick All-Stars. I can respect that, but I really must must make the comparison here to emphasize two things. First, this game had the scope of the original Smash Bros. but is mechanically in-line with the far more technically-sophisticated Melee; this aspiration impresses me far more than a given indie or passion project with theoretically infinite dev time and resources to secure the mechanical tone it was going for. Second, Nick All-Stars did Smash Bros. better than Sony did Smash Bros.
One thing I appreciate in crossover rosters is when character picks are creative. Conventional wisdom dictates that you pick main characters all the time, but Nick All-Stars is content to buck that trend. Your Rugrats character pull is in-universe mascot Reptar rather than any of the literal baby leads (although there would've been something cathartic about putting Angelica Pickles in the arena). None of the Wild Thornberries cast are fighters by nature, but Nigel Thornberry is given a silly animal-based moveset to complement his memetic status. Arnold of Hey Arnold! is pacifistic by nature, so violent deuteragonist Helga Pataki carries the series. Oblina is there over Ickis, April O'Neil is there over Donatello and Raphael, Toph is there over other more-prominent Avatar characters, etc. I think it's easy to fall into the trap of being disappointed that a given lead isn't there, but I dunno, it's a little more special to see fan favorites or variety. Hugh Neutron making the DLC felt like K. Rool and Banjo-Kazooie making it to Smash Bros. all over again. Anyway, character picks aren't idle inclusions; you have lots of careful little expressions of source material, like how Helga's projectile draws in opponents (appropriate for the character who only knows to express her feelings for others through aggression), or... basically everything my friends said here about CatDog.
There really was something special to watching this game grow. With Smash Bros. (that comparison again; I know, I know), each new game felt like Christmas, particularly in following its pre- and post-release cycle. I've resolved myself to accepting that the next Smash Bros., whenever it happens, won't feel the same; it can't, after Ultimate did something amazing that can never be done again. But suddenly, this game came out of the woodwork. It was a different developer working with a different ensemble towards different project goals, but damn if it didn't feel like Christmas in July.
Has to be one of the more convoluted video game titles I know. It's no Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, but for a Disney game (particularly a non-Kingdom Hearts one), it's quite the kludgy mouthful. Quick child, let us away to play us some Walt Disney World Registered Trademark Symbol Quest Colon Magical Racing Tour Unregistered Trademark Symbol.
The PC port of this was one of my first kart racers, preceded only by the first Nicktoons Racing. It's always been an odd thing to hold as a cornerstone of nostalgia, because it's almost completely unmoored from anything I would have had context for as a kid. I'd never been to Disney World, I'd never seen Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers, I'd never played any of the kart racers that served as obvious points of reference, I'd never played Gex 3 (from which some songs are sourced)... about the only through-lines I had were Pinocchio, classic Chip 'n' Dale shorts (which, to be honest, are far more relevant; I have no idea why the guys are in their Rescue Rangers outfits here), and the idea of what Disney World was, from VHS ad tapes and my sister boasting about getting to go. Even now, I've never been to Disney World, so I can't vouch for how they did adapting the different attractions.
But I have since played a buncha kart racers, so I finally had context for what they were going for this revisit. It's, curiously, a fairly direct clone of Crash Team Racing, with some cues taken from Diddy Kong Racing. The game was turned around pretty quickly, so while there IS an adventure mode with some bonus arena tracks, there isn't any hub area to explore (too bad, Disney would've make for a fun overworld), and tracks are divided into three sets of three (plus a couple bonuses) rather than the standard four sets of four. Items are also a very basic mix, limited to analogues for Mario Karts' Shells, Mushroom, Star, and Lightning Bolt, plus a creative alternative to the Banana Peel in the Tea Cup.
I'm actually not gonna come swinging right out the gate, as I do think this is a fairly competent racer. Crystal Dynamics did a generally serviceable job aping CTR's thing, not entirely getting the nuances that make CTR so brilliant but understanding it well enough to get by. The tracks are creative reinterpretations of the rides that expand upon their overall ideas by featuring a ton of split paths; Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean are all littered with alternate routes, and while I'm sure there is an optimal path that speedrunners lean into, it's neat seeing the variety of routes on casual runs. In the case of Pirates (one of the few rides whose tricks I know), this is how they were able to showcase all the different scenes in the context of a kart racer; I'm sure this is the case for a lot of the other rides-turned-tracks, too. There are lots of cute thematic moments here and there, too, like Space Mountain starting with a liftoff sequence with a bunch of speed pads, or the secret ski launch in Blizzard Beach.
On the flipside, DINOSAUR! kinda sucks (like its namesake movie!) Tomorrowland Speedway also feels like a Luigi Circuit, which, I don't think should have been a priority for this game. There's something really hollow about Splash Mountain, too, but maybe that's why it's a bonus track rather than one of the main picks. Definitely feels like Crystal Dynamics ran out of time making that one. Also, while it's cute that they licensed music like "A Pirate's Life for Me" and "Grim Grinning Ghosts", getting the songs out of context makes them sound so repetitive.
The drift system is mostly there. I'm not great at kart racers, so I can't say with authority how this stacks up, but it generally feels okay. The issue I run into is that it's a bit too easy to activate. Years of practice in Mario Kart and its peers has taught me that there's a second's delay between your drift hop before you start building up sparks, which can be useful for extremely precise maneuvers. That delay isn't present here, so you end up being able to build mini-turbos instantly. I actually quite appreciate this for certain sections, like the 90° turns in Haunted Mansion, but it does make the arena tracks (Epcot Test Track, Typhoon Lagoon, Hollywood Studios) more trouble to negotiate. I imagine "snaking" is ridiculously easy to pull off in this title, so if you're good, you can probably smoke the competition.
I mentioned items before, but to drill into them a bit more - they're surprisingly unbalanced for how simple they are. There is no Blue Shell analogue, and Frog Spell (the Lightning Bolt analogue) is a bit bugged, so there isn't a great way to slow down first place if they have an insane lead. There is also little defensive play, which is generally something I'm not worried about (Shells/Banana Peels do the job well enough in most Marios Kart) but you really really feel here. See, when a CPU opponent hits an item balloon, they don't have to roll the item - they instantly get their item, and they will instantly use it if it's advantageous. This is quite obnoxious if you're right in front of the pack going through balloons, as it isn't uncommon to suddenly have Red Acorns (Triple Red Shells) coming at you. Usually six of them in sequence, so even if you rolled Acorns (or are about to roll them; an odd quirk is that the item roll is just for show, and the game already acts as though you have gotten the item you're gonna get), your defensive shield is quickly chewed away, and then you get bodied by a conga line of homing missiles. And sometimes squished, if you are a frog. Really makes you appreciate the delay baked into other kart racers, so you don't immediately get ambushed by every opponent the moment you hit the item balloons.
I also have to say, there are few kart racer projectiles more pathetic than Green, non-homing Acorns. If you use them as anything besides a shield, you're a chump.
I think the idea of the cast - weird Disney World Gijinkas - is cute. Like, Jiminy/Chip/Dale are all there for marketing, but everyone else is just a pure aesthetics character. I also like that it's not just the rides, but the idea of princess/cast member fandom. Polly Roger is the best, but I wouldn't hold it against you if you liked Baron Karlott, or Bruno Biggs, or Tiara Damáge better. We may have words if you're an Oliver Chickly III die-hard.
So, like, this isn't really a lost gem or anything, but it's worth the quick playthrough if you're a big kart racer fan. Maybe don't go for all trophies, but getting all the machine parts and first-place flags needed to unlock Splash Mountain is a breezy enough time. You could do a lot worse for budget Disney-themed kart racers developed by major studios during the 5th console generation trying to imitate existing big-name counterparts.
The PC port of this was one of my first kart racers, preceded only by the first Nicktoons Racing. It's always been an odd thing to hold as a cornerstone of nostalgia, because it's almost completely unmoored from anything I would have had context for as a kid. I'd never been to Disney World, I'd never seen Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers, I'd never played any of the kart racers that served as obvious points of reference, I'd never played Gex 3 (from which some songs are sourced)... about the only through-lines I had were Pinocchio, classic Chip 'n' Dale shorts (which, to be honest, are far more relevant; I have no idea why the guys are in their Rescue Rangers outfits here), and the idea of what Disney World was, from VHS ad tapes and my sister boasting about getting to go. Even now, I've never been to Disney World, so I can't vouch for how they did adapting the different attractions.
But I have since played a buncha kart racers, so I finally had context for what they were going for this revisit. It's, curiously, a fairly direct clone of Crash Team Racing, with some cues taken from Diddy Kong Racing. The game was turned around pretty quickly, so while there IS an adventure mode with some bonus arena tracks, there isn't any hub area to explore (too bad, Disney would've make for a fun overworld), and tracks are divided into three sets of three (plus a couple bonuses) rather than the standard four sets of four. Items are also a very basic mix, limited to analogues for Mario Karts' Shells, Mushroom, Star, and Lightning Bolt, plus a creative alternative to the Banana Peel in the Tea Cup.
I'm actually not gonna come swinging right out the gate, as I do think this is a fairly competent racer. Crystal Dynamics did a generally serviceable job aping CTR's thing, not entirely getting the nuances that make CTR so brilliant but understanding it well enough to get by. The tracks are creative reinterpretations of the rides that expand upon their overall ideas by featuring a ton of split paths; Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean are all littered with alternate routes, and while I'm sure there is an optimal path that speedrunners lean into, it's neat seeing the variety of routes on casual runs. In the case of Pirates (one of the few rides whose tricks I know), this is how they were able to showcase all the different scenes in the context of a kart racer; I'm sure this is the case for a lot of the other rides-turned-tracks, too. There are lots of cute thematic moments here and there, too, like Space Mountain starting with a liftoff sequence with a bunch of speed pads, or the secret ski launch in Blizzard Beach.
On the flipside, DINOSAUR! kinda sucks (like its namesake movie!) Tomorrowland Speedway also feels like a Luigi Circuit, which, I don't think should have been a priority for this game. There's something really hollow about Splash Mountain, too, but maybe that's why it's a bonus track rather than one of the main picks. Definitely feels like Crystal Dynamics ran out of time making that one. Also, while it's cute that they licensed music like "A Pirate's Life for Me" and "Grim Grinning Ghosts", getting the songs out of context makes them sound so repetitive.
The drift system is mostly there. I'm not great at kart racers, so I can't say with authority how this stacks up, but it generally feels okay. The issue I run into is that it's a bit too easy to activate. Years of practice in Mario Kart and its peers has taught me that there's a second's delay between your drift hop before you start building up sparks, which can be useful for extremely precise maneuvers. That delay isn't present here, so you end up being able to build mini-turbos instantly. I actually quite appreciate this for certain sections, like the 90° turns in Haunted Mansion, but it does make the arena tracks (Epcot Test Track, Typhoon Lagoon, Hollywood Studios) more trouble to negotiate. I imagine "snaking" is ridiculously easy to pull off in this title, so if you're good, you can probably smoke the competition.
I mentioned items before, but to drill into them a bit more - they're surprisingly unbalanced for how simple they are. There is no Blue Shell analogue, and Frog Spell (the Lightning Bolt analogue) is a bit bugged, so there isn't a great way to slow down first place if they have an insane lead. There is also little defensive play, which is generally something I'm not worried about (Shells/Banana Peels do the job well enough in most Marios Kart) but you really really feel here. See, when a CPU opponent hits an item balloon, they don't have to roll the item - they instantly get their item, and they will instantly use it if it's advantageous. This is quite obnoxious if you're right in front of the pack going through balloons, as it isn't uncommon to suddenly have Red Acorns (Triple Red Shells) coming at you. Usually six of them in sequence, so even if you rolled Acorns (or are about to roll them; an odd quirk is that the item roll is just for show, and the game already acts as though you have gotten the item you're gonna get), your defensive shield is quickly chewed away, and then you get bodied by a conga line of homing missiles. And sometimes squished, if you are a frog. Really makes you appreciate the delay baked into other kart racers, so you don't immediately get ambushed by every opponent the moment you hit the item balloons.
I also have to say, there are few kart racer projectiles more pathetic than Green, non-homing Acorns. If you use them as anything besides a shield, you're a chump.
I think the idea of the cast - weird Disney World Gijinkas - is cute. Like, Jiminy/Chip/Dale are all there for marketing, but everyone else is just a pure aesthetics character. I also like that it's not just the rides, but the idea of princess/cast member fandom. Polly Roger is the best, but I wouldn't hold it against you if you liked Baron Karlott, or Bruno Biggs, or Tiara Damáge better. We may have words if you're an Oliver Chickly III die-hard.
So, like, this isn't really a lost gem or anything, but it's worth the quick playthrough if you're a big kart racer fan. Maybe don't go for all trophies, but getting all the machine parts and first-place flags needed to unlock Splash Mountain is a breezy enough time. You could do a lot worse for budget Disney-themed kart racers developed by major studios during the 5th console generation trying to imitate existing big-name counterparts.
I personally didn't end up having a good time, but it's not a bad game. It's actually a really creative exploration of tilt mechanics, quickly switching from one high-concept level to the next Donkey Kong Country-style without giving any one mechanic time to grow stale. Given how much of a novelty this type of game design was, such that the cartridge would have used a custom gyroscope, I have a lot of respect for what they were going for.
Where it fell apart for me was with the port to Switch. Ironically, it's because of how much technology has improved; the Switch port leverages the Joy Cons' built-in gyroscopes, which are worlds ahead of what Hal Labs was able to stuff into the GameBoy Color carts. Because it's so sensitive, you have to have much more precise control over your movements than you ever needed in the original. Plus, if you're playing the game docked (which I was, since I was streaming my playthrough), there's an additional degree of abstraction and separation from your play that just makes it that much harder to wrap your head around. This is absolutely not a fault of the game itself, and I have in fact played a good chunk of the Japanese cart on original hardware for comparison; the base game is hard, but not quite as hard as it is the way I played it. My recommendation to you is to absolutely play it in portable mode, if you're trying out the Switch port.
Still, I do think some of those levels are designed to be annoying time sucks, and I'm not keen on that. Several levels are "walls" that will halt your forward momentum until you can solve them. Some of these I think are okay - 3-1 is a huge time sink, but it's very forgiving and specifically designed so the player can recover and try again while they learn. But other levels are endurance runs, and those really wear on me. I hold particular distain for 3-4, 5-2, 7-3, 7-4, and 8-4. I'm generally not a fan of any sequence where you're waiting for something to happen, whether that's the dumb bridge-building robots, the dumb conveyor belts bringing you back to the room's entrance, or anytime you're bouncing off a single bumper and trying to turn all sparkly. I know these are just how the challenge is designed and represent normal difficulty progression and scaling; maybe it's be better to say that I didn't enjoy the process of getting good enough to master the particular challenge this game had to offer.
For that matter, while all the sub-games are cute, there's a persistent issue that you MUST leave a high score in order to gain 1ups from them. Not a big deal at first, but it's quite easy to screw yourself over in, say, Kirby's Chicken Race by scoring really well the first time, then being unable to surpass that as the game difficulty scales. And Do The Kirby is another example of the game wasting time to get to a certain point. I like Simon-type games well enough, but a 3up is not a strong enough incentive to spend ten minutes per attempt trying for a new high score.
This is one of the earliest games to give Kirby voice acting, after Super Smash Bros. and Kirby 64. This is Makiko Ohmoto, who would become his regular voice actress, but you can kinda tell that everyone was still figuring out what the little guy should sound like. There are all sorts of early bits of weirdness, like Kirby cheering "Yatta!" when he collects a red/blue star, or his horrifying anguished groan when he drowns. All things that would be ironed out, but funny to run into here.
This would be Kirby's very last 8-bit outing, notwithstanding throwbacks like NES Remix and 3D Classics Kirby's Adventure. The game almost feels like a back-to-basics title, trimming its ensemble most of the way back to its Dream Land cast (with some exceptions, like Mr. Frosty and Starman), taking out Copy Abilities, and reintroducing a Mint Leaf-equivalent. A consequence of all this is that the game feels a bit sentimental, like it's an accidental send-off to Classic Kirby. By coincidence, this would be the last title before Kirby's rough patch, where progress on a mainline GameCube title stalled out and Kirby mostly got by on its anime and handheld outings - not unilaterally bad things, but inconsequential enough in the broad gaming market that Kirby fell from its B-list status among Nintendo properties to C or D-list. On a personal level, this would have been the last Kirby game to come out before I got into the series with Nightmare in Dream Land - so finally getting to play it really felt like I was putting a bow on my full series playthrough.
I have pretty mixed thoughts on the game, as you can see, but I'm willing to accept that that's largely a me-problem. Still, do try to play it in handheld mode, if you're playing it on Switch.
Where it fell apart for me was with the port to Switch. Ironically, it's because of how much technology has improved; the Switch port leverages the Joy Cons' built-in gyroscopes, which are worlds ahead of what Hal Labs was able to stuff into the GameBoy Color carts. Because it's so sensitive, you have to have much more precise control over your movements than you ever needed in the original. Plus, if you're playing the game docked (which I was, since I was streaming my playthrough), there's an additional degree of abstraction and separation from your play that just makes it that much harder to wrap your head around. This is absolutely not a fault of the game itself, and I have in fact played a good chunk of the Japanese cart on original hardware for comparison; the base game is hard, but not quite as hard as it is the way I played it. My recommendation to you is to absolutely play it in portable mode, if you're trying out the Switch port.
Still, I do think some of those levels are designed to be annoying time sucks, and I'm not keen on that. Several levels are "walls" that will halt your forward momentum until you can solve them. Some of these I think are okay - 3-1 is a huge time sink, but it's very forgiving and specifically designed so the player can recover and try again while they learn. But other levels are endurance runs, and those really wear on me. I hold particular distain for 3-4, 5-2, 7-3, 7-4, and 8-4. I'm generally not a fan of any sequence where you're waiting for something to happen, whether that's the dumb bridge-building robots, the dumb conveyor belts bringing you back to the room's entrance, or anytime you're bouncing off a single bumper and trying to turn all sparkly. I know these are just how the challenge is designed and represent normal difficulty progression and scaling; maybe it's be better to say that I didn't enjoy the process of getting good enough to master the particular challenge this game had to offer.
For that matter, while all the sub-games are cute, there's a persistent issue that you MUST leave a high score in order to gain 1ups from them. Not a big deal at first, but it's quite easy to screw yourself over in, say, Kirby's Chicken Race by scoring really well the first time, then being unable to surpass that as the game difficulty scales. And Do The Kirby is another example of the game wasting time to get to a certain point. I like Simon-type games well enough, but a 3up is not a strong enough incentive to spend ten minutes per attempt trying for a new high score.
This is one of the earliest games to give Kirby voice acting, after Super Smash Bros. and Kirby 64. This is Makiko Ohmoto, who would become his regular voice actress, but you can kinda tell that everyone was still figuring out what the little guy should sound like. There are all sorts of early bits of weirdness, like Kirby cheering "Yatta!" when he collects a red/blue star, or his horrifying anguished groan when he drowns. All things that would be ironed out, but funny to run into here.
This would be Kirby's very last 8-bit outing, notwithstanding throwbacks like NES Remix and 3D Classics Kirby's Adventure. The game almost feels like a back-to-basics title, trimming its ensemble most of the way back to its Dream Land cast (with some exceptions, like Mr. Frosty and Starman), taking out Copy Abilities, and reintroducing a Mint Leaf-equivalent. A consequence of all this is that the game feels a bit sentimental, like it's an accidental send-off to Classic Kirby. By coincidence, this would be the last title before Kirby's rough patch, where progress on a mainline GameCube title stalled out and Kirby mostly got by on its anime and handheld outings - not unilaterally bad things, but inconsequential enough in the broad gaming market that Kirby fell from its B-list status among Nintendo properties to C or D-list. On a personal level, this would have been the last Kirby game to come out before I got into the series with Nightmare in Dream Land - so finally getting to play it really felt like I was putting a bow on my full series playthrough.
I have pretty mixed thoughts on the game, as you can see, but I'm willing to accept that that's largely a me-problem. Still, do try to play it in handheld mode, if you're playing it on Switch.
Cute! Wallace & Gromit is one of those things where I don't think about it a whole lot, but when I do, I remember just how much I like it. A video game hits a real sweet spot for me, then, particularly a tried-but-true 3D platformer.
The game definitely gets what it means to do Wallace & Gromit in the context of a video game. You play as Gromit and not Wallace; Wallace's contributions are in the inventions and weapons (all food-based, naturally) and in trying but largely failing to be part of the action pieces. There's very little dialogue, with most vocal lines delivered by an unsupportive narrator and Wallace monologuing to Gromit. Feathers McGraw - the penguin from "The Wrong Trousers" - is back, with the game's story acting as a sequel to his debut short. There are throwaway nods to the shorts scattered throughout, like the box of "Meatabix" (completely missed that pun as a kid). And as a cute legacy nod, animal designs are reused from "Creature Comforts" where applicable.
There's also a motif throughout of the game sneaking in nods to other video games. It's all on the sly, so don't expect any big parodic send-ups like you'd see out of Conker or Asterix. But if you're paying attention, you'll catch that the first room of the Panda enclosure is specifically homaging Metal Gear Solid, down to the sight gag involving Mei Ling's Codec number, and the Penguin enclosure boss fight being an Asteroids nod, down to the ice floes having the distinct wedge missing like the original Asteroids. It's my favorite type of reference humor, where they're made unobtrusively, and the game maintains its integrity even if you don't get it.
Like, they have a gorilla throwing barrels - the single most stock "I'm referencing a video game" joke you see in media. But it doesn't feel trite because the gorilla throwing the barrel isn't underlined by the text of the work; it's just part of the tapestry of the game world. It makes sense for the gorilla to throw barrels in the context of the narrative: Feathers has enslaved the other zoo animals to do his bidding and perform menial tasks; mindlessly chucking barrels as an ambiguous part of some machine is right in line with that. Does it matter if it's a reference? Nah, but that just makes it a cute shout-out.
I'll say the game's rarely interesting as a platformer. Platformers tend to be the safest genre you can develop in, and I don't think Project Zoo offers anything unique to the formula outside its theming. The weapons are cute but invite unfavorable comparisons with Ratchet & Clank. Gromit has a decently robust moveset, including an analogue to Mario's side somersault, but most of his moves feel stiff; Gromit definitely jumps more like an Ice Climber than a Plumber. That extended sequence in the Zebra Enclosure(?) is fun, though; running on an endless track through the belly of a great machine makes for a very Aardman set piece. But notice how it leans more on weapon-puzzles than platforming challenges?
Okay, but, like, speaking of that machine, you're spending the whole run trying to keep a cute baby polar bear with glasses from getting hurt. And if you fail, you have to watch the poor little guy get hurt and keel over! It's so heartbreaking!
Alright, alright. If you're looking for more Wallace & Gromit, this game will fit the bill nicely. If you're just looking for a 3D platformer, you could do better. But it ain't bad, and between its short length and solid variety of mechanics and set pieces, it shouldn't have trouble holding your interest.
The game definitely gets what it means to do Wallace & Gromit in the context of a video game. You play as Gromit and not Wallace; Wallace's contributions are in the inventions and weapons (all food-based, naturally) and in trying but largely failing to be part of the action pieces. There's very little dialogue, with most vocal lines delivered by an unsupportive narrator and Wallace monologuing to Gromit. Feathers McGraw - the penguin from "The Wrong Trousers" - is back, with the game's story acting as a sequel to his debut short. There are throwaway nods to the shorts scattered throughout, like the box of "Meatabix" (completely missed that pun as a kid). And as a cute legacy nod, animal designs are reused from "Creature Comforts" where applicable.
There's also a motif throughout of the game sneaking in nods to other video games. It's all on the sly, so don't expect any big parodic send-ups like you'd see out of Conker or Asterix. But if you're paying attention, you'll catch that the first room of the Panda enclosure is specifically homaging Metal Gear Solid, down to the sight gag involving Mei Ling's Codec number, and the Penguin enclosure boss fight being an Asteroids nod, down to the ice floes having the distinct wedge missing like the original Asteroids. It's my favorite type of reference humor, where they're made unobtrusively, and the game maintains its integrity even if you don't get it.
Like, they have a gorilla throwing barrels - the single most stock "I'm referencing a video game" joke you see in media. But it doesn't feel trite because the gorilla throwing the barrel isn't underlined by the text of the work; it's just part of the tapestry of the game world. It makes sense for the gorilla to throw barrels in the context of the narrative: Feathers has enslaved the other zoo animals to do his bidding and perform menial tasks; mindlessly chucking barrels as an ambiguous part of some machine is right in line with that. Does it matter if it's a reference? Nah, but that just makes it a cute shout-out.
I'll say the game's rarely interesting as a platformer. Platformers tend to be the safest genre you can develop in, and I don't think Project Zoo offers anything unique to the formula outside its theming. The weapons are cute but invite unfavorable comparisons with Ratchet & Clank. Gromit has a decently robust moveset, including an analogue to Mario's side somersault, but most of his moves feel stiff; Gromit definitely jumps more like an Ice Climber than a Plumber. That extended sequence in the Zebra Enclosure(?) is fun, though; running on an endless track through the belly of a great machine makes for a very Aardman set piece. But notice how it leans more on weapon-puzzles than platforming challenges?
Okay, but, like, speaking of that machine, you're spending the whole run trying to keep a cute baby polar bear with glasses from getting hurt. And if you fail, you have to watch the poor little guy get hurt and keel over! It's so heartbreaking!
Alright, alright. If you're looking for more Wallace & Gromit, this game will fit the bill nicely. If you're just looking for a 3D platformer, you could do better. But it ain't bad, and between its short length and solid variety of mechanics and set pieces, it shouldn't have trouble holding your interest.
The original Star Stacker is a bland falling blocks game, but this update adds some much-needed spice.
To be fair, the core conceit to Star Stacker was never bad, just very straightforward. It's really quite easy to sandwich stars or other blocks between Animal Friends, so you don't arrive at that same hook you get out of something like frantically searching the board for matches in Panel de Pon. It's the same sort of relative mindlessness and monotony you get out of something like Candy Crush Saga, only with fewer power-ups or aesthetic flourishes to disguise its simplicity. Star Stacker GB may have had some of Dedede's very best animations, plus those nifty splash images of Kirby and friends playing, but little else.
But Super Star Stacker overhauls the experience in a lot of little ways. Most obvious is the game's story mode and the consequential emphasis on competitive. Now you finally have that sense of urgency the original game was largely missing, trying to make combos quickly enough to fill your opponent's well with blocks. Obvious too is the gorgeous new art direction, clearly taking cues from Dream Land 3. And the story, while simple, is fun. I know most people these days are gonna play it in Japanese thanks to Nintendo Switch Online, but I'll be forever grateful I had the opportunity to play a fan translation, which explains Dedede's decision to shoot the little star guy out of the sky as a "brilliant prank".
Admittedly I still don't think much of Super Star Stacker - it's a pretty simple game with little iteration, and for as cute as the story is, it doesn't add much. But given the context of its original release - a download-exclusive title for the Super Famicom - it was all right.
Technically speaking, Gryll remains one of the few Kirby bosses I've never beaten. For a Dural-type boss, it's weirdly easy to get to her, so... maybe I'll beat her some day?
To be fair, the core conceit to Star Stacker was never bad, just very straightforward. It's really quite easy to sandwich stars or other blocks between Animal Friends, so you don't arrive at that same hook you get out of something like frantically searching the board for matches in Panel de Pon. It's the same sort of relative mindlessness and monotony you get out of something like Candy Crush Saga, only with fewer power-ups or aesthetic flourishes to disguise its simplicity. Star Stacker GB may have had some of Dedede's very best animations, plus those nifty splash images of Kirby and friends playing, but little else.
But Super Star Stacker overhauls the experience in a lot of little ways. Most obvious is the game's story mode and the consequential emphasis on competitive. Now you finally have that sense of urgency the original game was largely missing, trying to make combos quickly enough to fill your opponent's well with blocks. Obvious too is the gorgeous new art direction, clearly taking cues from Dream Land 3. And the story, while simple, is fun. I know most people these days are gonna play it in Japanese thanks to Nintendo Switch Online, but I'll be forever grateful I had the opportunity to play a fan translation, which explains Dedede's decision to shoot the little star guy out of the sky as a "brilliant prank".
Admittedly I still don't think much of Super Star Stacker - it's a pretty simple game with little iteration, and for as cute as the story is, it doesn't add much. But given the context of its original release - a download-exclusive title for the Super Famicom - it was all right.
Technically speaking, Gryll remains one of the few Kirby bosses I've never beaten. For a Dural-type boss, it's weirdly easy to get to her, so... maybe I'll beat her some day?
1999
I'm embarrassed by this story, but I have to tell it to explain where my affection for this game comes from. Bear with me, it's a roundabout road we have to take to get there.
For most of my life, my father worked IT for a regional bank chain. Occasionally, he'd need to spend a week or two setting up servers at a remote branch, and this being before the prevalence of software like Teamviewer, he needed to be on-site for that time. Every once in a while, when he had to do this over the summer, he'd bring the family along for an all-expenses paid vacation. Understand my family's idea of fancy was having access to a swimming pool and a breakfast buffet, so a hotel stay always made for a sweet treat. It must've been for that reason that my sister asked to go to a hotel for her birthday one year. While it always struck me as kinda funny to stay at a hotel not 20 minutes away from home, it was her birthday wish, and my family honored it.
This was 2001, which people my age will remember fondly as the year Shrek came out in theaters. I was single-digits at the time, young enough that everything was impressionable but old enough that I'd started to develop an understanding of how things worked. My family was very much a Disney household, and I'd seen darn near every major animated movie they'd put out at that time. I knew Disney's whole thing. So to get Shrek, a movie built on subverting expectations built by Disney over the course of decades, was a huge surprise that just kept surprising. I'd even read the book the movie's based on, and even that, Shrek was quick to subvert. For the most part, it was great, and I had fun watching it with my family.
But I was not expecting that bit where Fiona kills a songbird and steals its eggs for breakfast. And I have to admit, I cried in the theater. I know it's played for comedy, with the bird detonating on a sustained high note, but what can I say? I've always been a softie.
I was still a bit upset when the show ended, so while my mother, sister, and brother went swimming, my father and I went to our hotel room, and my father talked me through it. I'm not going to get into the specifics of the conversation, mostly because it has to do with my family's history as hunters, and I know that's not the sort of thing everyone wants to hear about. But it was what I needed to hear at the time, and it's something that's given me a lot of perspective over the years.
There was a problem, though. Because of this conversation, I was missing swimming. I looooooved to swim as a kid (still do). It was easily the thing I was most excited about for this trip, and I'd already missed a good chunk of our allotted swim time. So, as a way of making up for it, my father let me have a special treat - he'd let me play on the Nintendo 64 in the room.
This is an artifact of a bygone era, so allow me to explain for younger readers. In the 90s and 00s, some hotel chains had video game consoles in their rooms. They generally weren't your standard, out-of-the-box consoles, and they'd usually be specially-configured for rentals. The way it worked here was that you'd rent use of it for an hour at a time. There was a menu you could poke through to select a game (mostly first-party stuff), then you'd hop in and go from there. I'm not sure how standard this particular format was, since this was the only time I ever got to rent a video game at a hotel, but that's how it worked for this hotel chain.
There were quite a few options, but keep in mind that I generally did not have access to non-computer video games at the time. I knew about Mario from TV spots, and of course Pokémania had a firm grip on me, but that was about it. So while I'm sure there were a lot of heavy hitters or prominent also-rans, I knew basically none of 'em save the Pokémon titles. Naturally, I tried talking my father into Pokémon Stadium or Snap, which I knew from those kiosks they had at Blockbuster, but I couldn't explain the former well enough to hype it up, and a photo safari was a bit to slow to hold my father's interest.
Then we saw the boxart for Super Smash Bros. I'd never even heard of the game, but right on the front there was a picture of Mario fighting Pikachu - two characters that, as far as I knew, had nothing to do with one another. Curious, my father and I decided to take a gamble and give it a try. We selected Pikachu and decided we'd try to grind our way through 1P Game, alternating when we ran out of stocks.
We made it all the way up to Master Hand, and we were in the middle of a good run when our hour rental timed out. We were both crushed that we couldn't make it.
But what an hour that was leading up to it! I think, given what Smash Bros. has become in popular gaming discourse, it's easy to dismiss its merits as a fighting game and focus on it purely as an expression of crossover (it's certainly the most interesting thing to talk about). But the series does have a really solid core, where its ensemble cast is merely your in-road to making all sorts of other connections. In my case, I knew Pikachu, and I kinda knew Mario (and probably Donkey Kong and Luigi; Yoshi was just some technicolor velociraptor), but I had no idea who any of the other guys were. Doesn't matter; Pikachu was my lead-in to a gameplay style that, while we struggled to understand (I remember that party hat Pikachu on Stage 5 walled us but good), clearly had some sort of spark that kept us coming back, trying to claw our way through tooth and nail. I know these days that Sakurai's goal was to make a fighting game accessible to anyone, and he definitely succeeded; I don't think a theoretical Nintendo vs Capcom-type fighter would've held my father's and my attention half as well. The basics of what you need to know to play Smash Bros. is self-evident in its first game. Stay on the stage. Avoid hazards. Go for items. Projectiles can make a big difference. Go for the power hit (which, since we didn't know how to do Smash attacks, was mostly Thunder). There's something to be said for button-mashing in a Street Fighter, but there's more to be said for a game that naturally guides the player along with what it is and has little in the way of hidden mechanics.
The original Smash Bros. is charming to look at for how modest a release it is in retrospect. You can absolutely tell it's a budget title, with how simple character models are, how much the game leans on spritework to keep a stable framerate, and how simple it is in terms of scope. Contrast with Smash Remix, a mod that can run on original hardware (albeit with the Expansion Pak) but leans into its unlimited dev time and lack of budgetary restrictions to stuff the Smash 64 template full to bursting. I don't think Smash 64's modesty is anything bad; to the contrary, it gives the game a unique quality that lets it still have a place, even with so many bigger and more ambitious releases later down the line.
And, like, even with such a limited scope, Sakurai still got Ness in there. We're used to him now, but what a strange, funny inclusion that was for the time.
For most of my life, my father worked IT for a regional bank chain. Occasionally, he'd need to spend a week or two setting up servers at a remote branch, and this being before the prevalence of software like Teamviewer, he needed to be on-site for that time. Every once in a while, when he had to do this over the summer, he'd bring the family along for an all-expenses paid vacation. Understand my family's idea of fancy was having access to a swimming pool and a breakfast buffet, so a hotel stay always made for a sweet treat. It must've been for that reason that my sister asked to go to a hotel for her birthday one year. While it always struck me as kinda funny to stay at a hotel not 20 minutes away from home, it was her birthday wish, and my family honored it.
This was 2001, which people my age will remember fondly as the year Shrek came out in theaters. I was single-digits at the time, young enough that everything was impressionable but old enough that I'd started to develop an understanding of how things worked. My family was very much a Disney household, and I'd seen darn near every major animated movie they'd put out at that time. I knew Disney's whole thing. So to get Shrek, a movie built on subverting expectations built by Disney over the course of decades, was a huge surprise that just kept surprising. I'd even read the book the movie's based on, and even that, Shrek was quick to subvert. For the most part, it was great, and I had fun watching it with my family.
But I was not expecting that bit where Fiona kills a songbird and steals its eggs for breakfast. And I have to admit, I cried in the theater. I know it's played for comedy, with the bird detonating on a sustained high note, but what can I say? I've always been a softie.
I was still a bit upset when the show ended, so while my mother, sister, and brother went swimming, my father and I went to our hotel room, and my father talked me through it. I'm not going to get into the specifics of the conversation, mostly because it has to do with my family's history as hunters, and I know that's not the sort of thing everyone wants to hear about. But it was what I needed to hear at the time, and it's something that's given me a lot of perspective over the years.
There was a problem, though. Because of this conversation, I was missing swimming. I looooooved to swim as a kid (still do). It was easily the thing I was most excited about for this trip, and I'd already missed a good chunk of our allotted swim time. So, as a way of making up for it, my father let me have a special treat - he'd let me play on the Nintendo 64 in the room.
This is an artifact of a bygone era, so allow me to explain for younger readers. In the 90s and 00s, some hotel chains had video game consoles in their rooms. They generally weren't your standard, out-of-the-box consoles, and they'd usually be specially-configured for rentals. The way it worked here was that you'd rent use of it for an hour at a time. There was a menu you could poke through to select a game (mostly first-party stuff), then you'd hop in and go from there. I'm not sure how standard this particular format was, since this was the only time I ever got to rent a video game at a hotel, but that's how it worked for this hotel chain.
There were quite a few options, but keep in mind that I generally did not have access to non-computer video games at the time. I knew about Mario from TV spots, and of course Pokémania had a firm grip on me, but that was about it. So while I'm sure there were a lot of heavy hitters or prominent also-rans, I knew basically none of 'em save the Pokémon titles. Naturally, I tried talking my father into Pokémon Stadium or Snap, which I knew from those kiosks they had at Blockbuster, but I couldn't explain the former well enough to hype it up, and a photo safari was a bit to slow to hold my father's interest.
Then we saw the boxart for Super Smash Bros. I'd never even heard of the game, but right on the front there was a picture of Mario fighting Pikachu - two characters that, as far as I knew, had nothing to do with one another. Curious, my father and I decided to take a gamble and give it a try. We selected Pikachu and decided we'd try to grind our way through 1P Game, alternating when we ran out of stocks.
We made it all the way up to Master Hand, and we were in the middle of a good run when our hour rental timed out. We were both crushed that we couldn't make it.
But what an hour that was leading up to it! I think, given what Smash Bros. has become in popular gaming discourse, it's easy to dismiss its merits as a fighting game and focus on it purely as an expression of crossover (it's certainly the most interesting thing to talk about). But the series does have a really solid core, where its ensemble cast is merely your in-road to making all sorts of other connections. In my case, I knew Pikachu, and I kinda knew Mario (and probably Donkey Kong and Luigi; Yoshi was just some technicolor velociraptor), but I had no idea who any of the other guys were. Doesn't matter; Pikachu was my lead-in to a gameplay style that, while we struggled to understand (I remember that party hat Pikachu on Stage 5 walled us but good), clearly had some sort of spark that kept us coming back, trying to claw our way through tooth and nail. I know these days that Sakurai's goal was to make a fighting game accessible to anyone, and he definitely succeeded; I don't think a theoretical Nintendo vs Capcom-type fighter would've held my father's and my attention half as well. The basics of what you need to know to play Smash Bros. is self-evident in its first game. Stay on the stage. Avoid hazards. Go for items. Projectiles can make a big difference. Go for the power hit (which, since we didn't know how to do Smash attacks, was mostly Thunder). There's something to be said for button-mashing in a Street Fighter, but there's more to be said for a game that naturally guides the player along with what it is and has little in the way of hidden mechanics.
The original Smash Bros. is charming to look at for how modest a release it is in retrospect. You can absolutely tell it's a budget title, with how simple character models are, how much the game leans on spritework to keep a stable framerate, and how simple it is in terms of scope. Contrast with Smash Remix, a mod that can run on original hardware (albeit with the Expansion Pak) but leans into its unlimited dev time and lack of budgetary restrictions to stuff the Smash 64 template full to bursting. I don't think Smash 64's modesty is anything bad; to the contrary, it gives the game a unique quality that lets it still have a place, even with so many bigger and more ambitious releases later down the line.
And, like, even with such a limited scope, Sakurai still got Ness in there. We're used to him now, but what a strange, funny inclusion that was for the time.
1983
I'd played this years ago when I had to as part of Donkey Kong 64, but I definitely had more fun revisiting this as part of Rare Replay. Probably in part because I'm much older now and have more respect for gaming's roots (even if I know very little about the ZX Spectrum), and probably because Jetpac feels like a lot more of a non sequitur in the context of DK64 than Arcade Donkey Kong does, as cute as it is to juxtapose early Nintendo with early Rare.
My main point of comparison for this era of gaming is the Commodore 64 (which I'm also largely unfamiliar with), so I dunno how common a takeaway this is, but man - even early on, you could do some nice things graphically with the ZX Spectrum. Colors are pretty limited (the Stampers made it a space game because the background was guaranteed to be black, I'm sure), but man getting those yellows and purples and reds on the spritework is something to see. I love the entirely superfluous detail of a cloud of exhaust steaming up whenever you jet off the ground. And the effects of the lasers, eventually trailing into dots, is a pretty neat effect.
I like how the game feels, too. There's good variety to the stage loops - 8 enemies with largely different movement patters across 16 stages makes for a good sense of flow as you learn the game. And I like how Jetman controls. Like there's a good sense of momentum in midair, freeing compared to how slow he is on the ground. And sometimes you have to make that decision of if you're gonna run away from an alien on the ground, or if you're gonna risk hopping into the air to get out of the way since, while that brings you closer to the alien, it's a lot faster, and you juuuuust might be able to time it right. A lot of games from this time are very basic in their controls, so it's always neat to see something where the character feels good to control.
It's funny, I know Sabre Wulf is the game from this era that would have more of a legacy for Ultimate Play the Game, but there's something to be said for how strong of an opening act Jetpac was. Still very much worth revisiting today.
My main point of comparison for this era of gaming is the Commodore 64 (which I'm also largely unfamiliar with), so I dunno how common a takeaway this is, but man - even early on, you could do some nice things graphically with the ZX Spectrum. Colors are pretty limited (the Stampers made it a space game because the background was guaranteed to be black, I'm sure), but man getting those yellows and purples and reds on the spritework is something to see. I love the entirely superfluous detail of a cloud of exhaust steaming up whenever you jet off the ground. And the effects of the lasers, eventually trailing into dots, is a pretty neat effect.
I like how the game feels, too. There's good variety to the stage loops - 8 enemies with largely different movement patters across 16 stages makes for a good sense of flow as you learn the game. And I like how Jetman controls. Like there's a good sense of momentum in midair, freeing compared to how slow he is on the ground. And sometimes you have to make that decision of if you're gonna run away from an alien on the ground, or if you're gonna risk hopping into the air to get out of the way since, while that brings you closer to the alien, it's a lot faster, and you juuuuust might be able to time it right. A lot of games from this time are very basic in their controls, so it's always neat to see something where the character feels good to control.
It's funny, I know Sabre Wulf is the game from this era that would have more of a legacy for Ultimate Play the Game, but there's something to be said for how strong of an opening act Jetpac was. Still very much worth revisiting today.
2007
This one left more of an impact than the first one, but it more or less solidifies my thoughts on the first. I think I'd just forgotten a lot about the first over the last two years, since playing 2 reminded me that most of these problems exist in the first game.
So it's a decent high-level concept - an expansion/update to Genesis Sonic's Versus modes (I assume; admittedly I've never had a player 2 for Classic Sonic), slapped onto the hot new PlayStation Portable. But the general physics are only mostly there. Sonic is a series where its games are made or broken by its physics, and Rivals fails to stick the landing in a few key places. The Spin Dash is less practical as a momentum builder than you'd think, and it's usually just faster to keep running, despite that initial kick of speed and what curling up usually does in Sonic games. There are those hurdles where you hit X or O to either jump or dash over 'em, but you whip by 'em so quickly that it's easy to miss the QTE prompts even when you're expecting them. There's a decent amount of creativity with obstacle theming, but a lot of them mechanically come down to button mashing - that bit in Frontier Canyon with the minecarts is more similar to that bit in Sunset Forest when you're climbing the mesh vines, etc.
There's a general issue with consistency to the game. This is a problem in both directions. The game has 8 playable characters, each having their own storyline, but the game adheres to an absolutely rigid narrative structure cross each of them, where the same characters play the same stages in the same order (the only differences being win conditions, character dialogue, and your choice of opponent on the versus stage). At the same time, how well you do on a given stage is largely contingent on how the AI does, which isn't consistent. I had a few stages where I failed over and over and over again, only to win because I did generally the same thing, just the AI doofed up somewhere along the line. You especially feel that in the Act 2 stages, where sometimes you spend a million years chasing down the rival, and sometimes you're able to stunlock them for an easy victory.
And holy crap, it all comes together in a sucky way with the bosses. Like, you try to attack the boss when you're supposed to, and sometimes it just doesn't feel like taking damage. Egg Bull in particular was an infuriating, excruciating fight.
I think the most succinct way to communicate my thoughts on the game lie with its narrative. As mentioned, the game is split into eight stories. I played through Sonic's story, had a mediocre time, and was left with a bunch of unfulfilled plot threads, but Sonic had finished the storyline he'd set out to accomplish, so whatever. I played Rouge next because why not, variety's fun. I played the exact same levels in almost the exact same way, ended on the same final boss, and hit credits, with some things explained. I realized that there wasn't going to be any secret Last Story to unlock after beating the eight character stories, realized that four of the character stories are going to be almost entirely redundant, and decided I'd had my fill.
Loose scattered thoughts: including the Sandopolis Ghosts in Mystic Haunt Zone is a cute throwback, Eggman Nega does basically nothing for this game, and that character art of Shadow smiling (reused from the first game) looks very silly.
So it's a decent high-level concept - an expansion/update to Genesis Sonic's Versus modes (I assume; admittedly I've never had a player 2 for Classic Sonic), slapped onto the hot new PlayStation Portable. But the general physics are only mostly there. Sonic is a series where its games are made or broken by its physics, and Rivals fails to stick the landing in a few key places. The Spin Dash is less practical as a momentum builder than you'd think, and it's usually just faster to keep running, despite that initial kick of speed and what curling up usually does in Sonic games. There are those hurdles where you hit X or O to either jump or dash over 'em, but you whip by 'em so quickly that it's easy to miss the QTE prompts even when you're expecting them. There's a decent amount of creativity with obstacle theming, but a lot of them mechanically come down to button mashing - that bit in Frontier Canyon with the minecarts is more similar to that bit in Sunset Forest when you're climbing the mesh vines, etc.
There's a general issue with consistency to the game. This is a problem in both directions. The game has 8 playable characters, each having their own storyline, but the game adheres to an absolutely rigid narrative structure cross each of them, where the same characters play the same stages in the same order (the only differences being win conditions, character dialogue, and your choice of opponent on the versus stage). At the same time, how well you do on a given stage is largely contingent on how the AI does, which isn't consistent. I had a few stages where I failed over and over and over again, only to win because I did generally the same thing, just the AI doofed up somewhere along the line. You especially feel that in the Act 2 stages, where sometimes you spend a million years chasing down the rival, and sometimes you're able to stunlock them for an easy victory.
And holy crap, it all comes together in a sucky way with the bosses. Like, you try to attack the boss when you're supposed to, and sometimes it just doesn't feel like taking damage. Egg Bull in particular was an infuriating, excruciating fight.
I think the most succinct way to communicate my thoughts on the game lie with its narrative. As mentioned, the game is split into eight stories. I played through Sonic's story, had a mediocre time, and was left with a bunch of unfulfilled plot threads, but Sonic had finished the storyline he'd set out to accomplish, so whatever. I played Rouge next because why not, variety's fun. I played the exact same levels in almost the exact same way, ended on the same final boss, and hit credits, with some things explained. I realized that there wasn't going to be any secret Last Story to unlock after beating the eight character stories, realized that four of the character stories are going to be almost entirely redundant, and decided I'd had my fill.
Loose scattered thoughts: including the Sandopolis Ghosts in Mystic Haunt Zone is a cute throwback, Eggman Nega does basically nothing for this game, and that character art of Shadow smiling (reused from the first game) looks very silly.
The definitive version of the game. I can understand if you prefer the original as a portable game, and it being portable certainly helps its short length feel more natural. But if you don't have a preference, this is absolutely the one to seek out.
For more thoughts, see my review of the original game here
For more thoughts, see my review of the original game here
2012
The first Gravity Rush is a modest, basic little game carried entirely by two things: the strength of its player character, and the strength of its moveset.
To touch upon the latter first, Gravity Shifting is deceptively one of the most fun abilities a video game has ever offered a player. It doesn't seem like it at first, because it feels quite awkward. Jump into the air and hit the button to go Zero Gravity. Rotate your camera - either with the buttons or the Vita's build-in gyroscope - and hit the button again to shift gravity. You will now fall in the wrong direction. You may readjust if you'd like, but after a certain amount of time, you will start falling in the right direction.
It's weird and clumsy and will absolutely result in Kat zooming in weird directions or falling flat on her face. But eventually you realize, "Oh, wait! This is flight! It's purely physics-based flight!" And then you start to experiment with things like momentum and chaining Gravity Slides into Shifts, and you really start to see Hekseville as the playground it was designed to be. It helps also how forgiving the game is with missed targets and depleted meters, since it's usually pretty easy to loop back around and that meter recharges super quickly (in mid-air!), especially once you have a couple upgrades under your belt. Even if you happen to fall out of bounds, it's no big deal - Dusty will swoop in to bring Kat back into the game, no worse for wear.
I will say, Gravity Shifting definitely felt like it was missing something in this game. It gets a lot of mileage out of Shifting, Sliding, Kicking, and the Stasis Field, but there's a certain je ne sais quoi absent. This would be addressed in Gravity Rush 2, but here Kat's moveset is "only" great. Still one of those games where the mere act of moving around the world as the main character feels right.
Speaking of the main character, holy moly is Kat great. She's such an unabashedly wholesome and sweet (if a little self-centered) protagonist, something you don't expect on first blush with her character design. Her defining moment for me has always been "Home Sweet Home", an early mission where the amnesiac Kat decides her first order of business upon arriving in an unfamiliar city is to find a place to live. She ends up finding a disused sewage run-off pipe and is delighted, then flies around town finding garbage to decorate it. One montage later, the kid's actually set up a pretty sweet pad for herself, and you'll see her relaxing there every time you save or boot the game up.
Every story this game tells is filtered through the lens of this character, who doesn't seem to realize the gravity (heh) of most of the situations she ends up in. So while the plot goes in a lot of directions that, frankly, I can't keep up with, it's always told through the very grounded, simple-minded perspective of its main character. Helps make the whole thing more fun.
Like... she successfully convinces hardened gang members to stop being gang members by asking nicely. What more do you want from your lead?
I had the good fortune to play this game during the year I had free access to PlayStation Plus, and this ended up being one of my runaway favorites from that year. You're generally better off playing the PS4 port these days, but don't overlook this release, either.
To touch upon the latter first, Gravity Shifting is deceptively one of the most fun abilities a video game has ever offered a player. It doesn't seem like it at first, because it feels quite awkward. Jump into the air and hit the button to go Zero Gravity. Rotate your camera - either with the buttons or the Vita's build-in gyroscope - and hit the button again to shift gravity. You will now fall in the wrong direction. You may readjust if you'd like, but after a certain amount of time, you will start falling in the right direction.
It's weird and clumsy and will absolutely result in Kat zooming in weird directions or falling flat on her face. But eventually you realize, "Oh, wait! This is flight! It's purely physics-based flight!" And then you start to experiment with things like momentum and chaining Gravity Slides into Shifts, and you really start to see Hekseville as the playground it was designed to be. It helps also how forgiving the game is with missed targets and depleted meters, since it's usually pretty easy to loop back around and that meter recharges super quickly (in mid-air!), especially once you have a couple upgrades under your belt. Even if you happen to fall out of bounds, it's no big deal - Dusty will swoop in to bring Kat back into the game, no worse for wear.
I will say, Gravity Shifting definitely felt like it was missing something in this game. It gets a lot of mileage out of Shifting, Sliding, Kicking, and the Stasis Field, but there's a certain je ne sais quoi absent. This would be addressed in Gravity Rush 2, but here Kat's moveset is "only" great. Still one of those games where the mere act of moving around the world as the main character feels right.
Speaking of the main character, holy moly is Kat great. She's such an unabashedly wholesome and sweet (if a little self-centered) protagonist, something you don't expect on first blush with her character design. Her defining moment for me has always been "Home Sweet Home", an early mission where the amnesiac Kat decides her first order of business upon arriving in an unfamiliar city is to find a place to live. She ends up finding a disused sewage run-off pipe and is delighted, then flies around town finding garbage to decorate it. One montage later, the kid's actually set up a pretty sweet pad for herself, and you'll see her relaxing there every time you save or boot the game up.
Every story this game tells is filtered through the lens of this character, who doesn't seem to realize the gravity (heh) of most of the situations she ends up in. So while the plot goes in a lot of directions that, frankly, I can't keep up with, it's always told through the very grounded, simple-minded perspective of its main character. Helps make the whole thing more fun.
Like... she successfully convinces hardened gang members to stop being gang members by asking nicely. What more do you want from your lead?
I had the good fortune to play this game during the year I had free access to PlayStation Plus, and this ended up being one of my runaway favorites from that year. You're generally better off playing the PS4 port these days, but don't overlook this release, either.