Played for the Tarvould's Quest Mario Party League, viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNiBuIKkhNOcetedJo2kjJwenDNYqHsFt

While not my first Mario Party, this was the main one I played as a kid, and easily the one I've sunk the most time into. I'm sad to report that it's not as good as I remembered upon revisit. It's still generally solid, with the Day/Night system allowing for some interesting experimentation within the boards. The Capsule system from 5 has been cleaned up into the Orb system (though Sluggish Shroom is pretty blatantly unbalanced), and board design is strong enough that the Orbs aren't being used as a crutch (the fact that certain Orbs are limited to certain boards is testament to this).

Those boards themselves are something of a mixed bag. You have two standard designs in Towering Treetop and E. Gadd's Garage, though the latter sadly ends up feeling pretty uninteresting; it's a case where, on high-end play, the board quickly becomes a solved puzzle, and there's little room for political intrigue between players. But this game is also one of the first in the series to lean into pure gimmick boards, where the mechanics behind Star acquisition change up. You have Faire Square, which had a fixed Star location but variable cost and room to buy multiple Stars; Snowflake Lake, where Stars must be stolen from other players; Castaway Bay, the series' first linear board (depending on how you qualify the first game's Eternal Star); and Clockwork Castle, a back-and-forth chase where you track down DK for Stars during the day and flee from Bowser at night. Of these, Faire Square and Clockwork Castle are pretty solid experiments (though the former's prone to runaway victories), Castaway Bay is surprisingly excellent, and Snowflake Lake flat-out sucks. I have a memory of playing Snowflake Lake with my mother when I was a kid; we'd decided to do a 50-turn game, and we were about 38 turns in when my mother landed on a Piranha Plant space I'd set down and lost hundreds of coins she'd accumulated (since, given the nature of the board, there wasn't much to do with money besides amass it). Felt like an extremely hollow victory.

Since I've spent so much time with this game, I can speak to its Single Player offerings. ...Solo Mode's okay. Mostly an excuse to play a buncha mini-games and grind out Stars for the game's various unlockables (mostly Toadette and Clockwork Castle). For that purpose, it's not bad, but don't expect much more from it. Of the three boards, Thirsty Gulch is fine but short, Astro Avenue is dastardly and counter-intuitive for the purpose of grinding out Stars, and Infernal Tower is the only one you should be playing. Always try to hit that top Happening Space to keep play going indefinitely; given how easy Sluggish Shrooms are to farm, that shouldn't be a problem whatsoever.

Also, to briefly touch upon the GameCube Mic here - it's absolutely a gimmick inclusion, but it's kind of cute for a bit of variety. I definitely think its use here is better than in Mario Party 7, since 6 had 3 different mini-games instead of 1, and they have a low chance of unobtrusively replacing 1v3 mini-games instead of being their own space. If you happen to have a Mic, it's worth trying out for a little bit.

If you're looking for the best Mario Party of this era, I'd point to 7 these days. But 6 is a solid runner-up. Like I said, it wasn't as good as I remembered, but it's not bad, and worth exploring here and again. Probably your best bet for a "middle of the road" entry in the series.

Undoubtedly one of the best of Kirby's classic era. All three Kirby titles directed by Shinichi Shimomura's Kirby are strong tonal pieces one way or another, but this easily takes the cake. "Planet Popstar" has to be one of the most immediately welcoming stage 1 themes out there. Then there's the ensemble cast. They're all great, but Adeleine turned a fun high-concept fight from DL3 into one of the most understatedly-charming characters in the series, and I love this first hint at Dedede as someone with a good heart, even if he's a bully. I always hone in on the cool ability combos between playthroughs, so it's always a pleasant surprise to see just how often Waddle Dee, Adeleine, and King Dedede show up in standard gameplay. To say nothing about how this is the first time the series has started to hint at something sinister lurking beneath its surface, with the uncertain nature of what Shiver Star is.

But those ability combos are pretty dang cool. It's a fun compromise of Dream Land 2/3's animal buddy systems, where the appeal was to experiment with all the options made available to the player. I do miss the animal buddies here, though their cameo with Rock+Cutter is a nice compromise (even if Pitch is most blatantly the most fun to play as). While the game requires that just about each ability combo get used, there's no denying that some abilities are blatantly stronger than others - you're not gonna be cutting much of a path through bad guys with Ice+Spark or Fire+Ice. Still, that they all exist and that they're all so imaginative makes it fun to mix and match 'em.

It is a pretty short game, though. This is true of most Kirby games (even Modern Kirby has this issue, though it's disguised somewhat by the extended post-game modes), but for some reason I've always especially felt it with Kirby 64 and its six bite-sized worlds. The difficulty, such that it exists, comes from ability-derived lock-and-key puzzles - a stable of Kirby games, though the games are usually more creative about it than throwing in color-coded barriers that need to be destroyed. This is an issue each of Shimomura's Kirbies have, so nothing new here - but still definitely an issue. Game speed is also quite slow compared to other Kirbies, even of its era. It's not bad or anything, but since I'm generally used to the cadence of something like Nightmare in Dream Land, I always have to readjust when replaying this.

Before my series marathon a couple years ago, if you'd asked me what my favorite entry in the series was, I would've said... a toss-up between a couple different entries. But this would've placed towards the top for sure. I didn't have the fortune to grow up with this - I first played it in middle school - but I know for a lot of people, this is an extremely nostalgic, fondly-remembered title. I can think of fewer other Kirbies to make for as strong of a starting point.

A terrific tribute to classic Scooby-Doo, though the gameplay itself has some rough patches. Collisions and hit boxes are a bit fiddly with certain objects and attacks, something you really notice if you decide to go for all Scooby Snax. I can't tell you how many times I tried to jump into one at the top of Scooby's jump height, only to miss until I figured out how the game wanted me to get it. Usually the trick was that I needed an upgrade or to find some switch in the room to activate some lift or lower a chandelier, such that I'd have a slightly different approach vector on the Scooby Snack. I actually suspect the game is very carefully programmed such that you can only collect certain things in certain ways, which feels very arbitrary to me with the equivalent of Banjo-Kazooie's Notes. It's not even consistent about this - I'm still not sure how you're supposed to collect the Black Knight Costume, since I managed it by abusing collisions and jumping up visible ledges along the manor wall. This is very much a "play to the end, not to 100% completion" game for me; I ultimately gave up on all the Scooby Snax, contenting myself with the Monster Tokens.

I have a couple other minor complaints - music balance is a bit wonky so you can barely hear the boss music, the boss fights are staggered out weirdly so it takes forever to get to the first one, the game could've used a more precise means of tracking down where within an area missing Scooby Snax/Monster Tokens could be found, etc - but I have way more nice things to say about the game than not.

This is perhaps one of the nicest tributes I've seen a video game pull off for a licensed property. The game is a throwback to pre-movie runs of Scooby Doo, styling itself like a lost 70s episode, down to recycling production music, inexplicably featuring Don Knotts and Tim Curry as guest stars, giving every area a fake episode title for a name (my favorite is probably "Misbehavin'? Cause a Cave In!", though I'm also fond of "Doom and Gloom Down In the Tomb"), and even incorporating a laugh track into gameplay. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and The New Scooby-Doo Movies are the clear primary influences, but references are made to everything preceding Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island; even The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo get shout-outs (no Red Herring, sadly). Given the timing of this game's release - months before the live action movie and What's New, Scooby-Doo? - this reads like a send-off to that classic era, in some ways more faithful than the early revival run of movies (as excellent as Witch's Ghost and the others are).

That would have been good enough, but Heavy Iron Studios went the extra mile and made the inspired decision to turn the game into a Metroidvania. That's no exaggeration - there's a big focus on finding the friendly professor's inventions in different parts of the game world to expand Scooby's moveset and open up other parts of the world. It's not an overly-robust moveset, admittedly, but it certainly feels more inspired than something like The Mummy Demastered. Besides, the real fun is seeing how the silly inventions get incorporated into Scooby's model, like the banana-flavored galoshes or plunger boots that appear on his paws when he walks on certain terrain. Or my absolute favorite: the slippers and lampshade combo that let Scooby sneak past enemies. They're not terribly useful, but they're great fun to use.

This is definitely a game I'd recommend to Scooby-Doo fans over general gaming audiences. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing; it's just clear what this game's priorities were. Even so, it's a great example of how a game that exists to celebrate its brand can also be a greatly-inspired title in its own right. The difference between this and its immediate predecessor - the tie-in to Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase - is night and day.

Undoubtedly the best in the series, even if it's no longer my favorite. The goals Sakurai set for this game, and the fact that he was able to pull the grand majority of them off, is all nothing short of incredible. Remember that the original Smash Bros., while a fine game in its own right, was a budget title developed with shaky approval. To go from that to this megaton hit, backed by a full orchestra and all the moneys Nintendo and HAL had at their disposal, has to be one of gaming's biggest glow-up stories and greatest sophomore outings.

And I'm not talking about competitive! Truth be told, I've never had much interest in competitive Melee, beyond academic appreciation. I was always in the TIRES DON EXITS camp back in the day (I'm a Mewtwo main; it was a coping mechanism), and while I respect what it is now, I'd much rather watch competitive Smash 4 or Ultimate. No, I just think Melee is a damn solid and complete package.

Everything in Melee feels so... big. Just about everything from modest li'l Smash 64 is back (RIP Board the Platforms), but there's so much more of it now. What was 1-Player Mode in the first game is now a small fraction of this game's singleplayer content; now you have Adventure Mode, All-Star Mode, Home Run Contest, Event Matches, and Multi-Man Melee, plus twice as many Target Tests and an expanded Race to the Finish. Multiplayer gets a huge expansion with Special Melee, Item Toggles, and Tournament Mode. Those little character profiles got expanded in a huge way to the Trophy system. Gameplay is faster and much more technically complex, too. All of these would become standard for what Smash Bros. would be going forward, enough so that I wouldn't blame someone for seeing Smash 64 as a beta version of Melee.

Melee also feels like the last time the series was allowed to be more off-beat with its decisions. I largely mean this in the context of its roster and stage choices: we'd never again see a character pick like Dr. Mario, supposedly only there to justify the "Fever" cover; nor would we ever get a stage made like Poké Floats, which - let's be honest - is an obviously desperate inclusion once you know that the planned other Pokémon stage was Sprout Tower. But it applies elsewhere, too. Home Run Contest is a pretty strange high-concept mode to land upon, for as much as we've come to expect the mode in subsequent games. The entirety of F-ZERO X's "Big Blue" track was ported so that characters in this platform fighter could run a losing race on it. Sakurai made a point to generally limit music to stuff affiliated with major characters/universes (see Dr. Mario above), but then the Balloon Trip theme is there, and Mach Rider gets an orchestral medley. Items are pulled from GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, even if the references are obfuscated in certain territories.

And then there's the Trophies. I enjoy seeing them in every game, enough so that I miss their absence in Ultimate, but I'll be honest - I never cared about them nearly as much as I did the Melee set. This is largely because Melee is interested in paying tribute to Nintendo's history with only some N64 bias, while subsequent games lean almost entirely on model rips from contemporary titles. Like, people outside Japan care about Famicom Detective Club almost exclusively for that out-of-context trophy of Ayumi Tachibana that doesn't even accurately describe the events of the series. And notice how all of EarthBound's Chosen Four get trophies, clear updates and tributes to the MOTHER 2 clay models? How Rick the Hamster and Gooey get models, when they weren't part of Sakurai-directed Kirby titles? How Raccoon Mario gets a custom model at a time when Super Mario Bros. 3 was well and truly out of the series limelight?

But there's something as well to the writing. This is almost certainly my own nostalgia at plY, but there's a sort of strange, ponderous quality to how characters and events are described in the trophies. Marth isn't simply a prince, he is "[t]he betrayed prince of the kingdom of Altea", "forced into exile", and whose kingdom is later "annihilated". Roy is someone whose "destiny became inextricably linked with the fate of the entire continent." It's noted that King Dedede "performs no administrative functions[,] and the citizens of Dream Land continue to live as they always have." Andross's Star Fox 64 iteration is described as "so big as to be ridiculous." This is where the Hylian idiom about world leaders and shield-eaters is invented to explain away the untranslatable pun behind Like-Like's name. Regarding Yoshi's Island, the game posits that "[m]any experts speculate that Mario and Bowser have some sort of connection that can be traced back to their mutual births."

...I dunno what it is, exactly. The words themselves are verbose, almost overly-clinical, but having that in the context of silly little Nintendo games always made them sound so much bigger and more wondrous to me as a kid. There's a spark there that I just don't see in later games, which tend to use smaller and more colloquial rhetoric to communicate sillier points. Like I look at Smash 4, and it's definitely going for something entirely different, suggesting that the 1-Up Mushroom produced many different Marios to debate the nature of their own existence, or dedicating its Zapdos write-up entirely to what can only be personal nostalgia for Pokémon the Movie 2000. It's not bad, but it just doesn't get me thinking in the same way. But maybe that's just me...

I think Melee these days is one of those games where everyone feels like they have to feel a certain way about it, mostly as a consequence of competitive discourse in the years following Brawl's release. I get that, and I get why it's easy to gloss over Melee as something superannuated by subsequent entries. But there really is an intentionality to Melee's whole invented structure that just isn't there in subsequent titles. Like I said at the top, this is no longer my favorite Smash Bros., but there's no arguing with just how much time I sank into this during middle/high school, and there's no arguing with how easy it is for me to pick up and play, even all these years later.

...after letting it sit for 20 hours so I can unlock Mewtwo on fresh saves.

As a cultural phenomenon? This was a very fun one to watch bloom. I wasn't at ground zero or anything, but I was made aware of the orenronen LP around the end of Chapter 2, and I casually monitored it until around the end of Chapter 3, when I decided I'd want to go through it on my own someday. It was cool to see it bloom from a popular otaku hit unknown outside of Japan to an international phenomenon, seemingly based entirely around the SomethingAwful thread. I know that the official localization team did not cross-reference the thread for the first game, but I saw that "gently caress" hat tip in DR2.

As a visual novel? It's pretty accessible! Danganronpa is fast for a visual novel, constantly piling plot threads and character interactions one on top of the next. Characters are all super memorable and distinct, with lots of potential for favorites. Even the trials, when the dumb know-nothing high schoolers limp their way through solving a mystery and repeat the same facts over and over again, come across as speedy. The variety of the mini-games go a long way toward keeping the gameplay dynamic, something very few visual novels can boast. I especially love the summation at the end of each trial; yeah, it's just hashing out the facts again, but the comic book style, the narration, and the music make it super super hype.

As a mystery novel? ...well, did you fall for 11037?

The closest the first game comes to a decent mystery is probably Chapter 3 (fun gambit). Chapter 6 is an interesting setup, too, but it definitely breaks Knox's Decalogue (something the game itself acknowledges). I don't need the mysteries to be strong mysteries; clearly Danganronpa is happiest as a character and spectacle piece, and it does well enough at that. But if you do want some decent mysteries, you're better off with Ace Attorney.

Later entries in this series kinda run into the issue of characters looking pretty samey. To an extent, I know this is a deliberate choice, but I do miss more unique character designs like this game had with Yamada and especially Sakura.

I mean, you don't really need me to say anything, do you?

I was lucky enough to play UNDERTALE pretty early on. I hadn't heard about it during the Kickstarter phase or anything, but I remember it very suddenly exploding in popularity, and suddenly seeing sans everywhere. A buddy of mine gifted me the game and urged me to play through it, so I did, with the only real bit of knowledge towards it that you weren't supposed to fight people, and that this hoodie skeleton would be a fight at one point.

I think I had the same general experience a lot of people had out the gate: misunderstood what precisely I was supposed to do and hurt someone I didn't have to hurt, reloaded a save to do better, and got called out on it. The game had me from there.

I don't think there's a lot of new ground for me to cover, but one thing I want to say is that Toby Fox knew precisely what he had. I dunno if it's an artifact of his time with Homestuck and knowing what would trend, or just being a product of the internet, or what, but the sheer amount of shots he successfully called, with the exception of the scope of his fandom and just how impossibly high his career would launch, staggers the mind. You look at things like him leaving a polite request in the directory asking people not to upload stuff right away to Spriters Resource, or that specific scenario requiring so much careful engineering and understanding of player behavior to pull off. This is of course to say nothing of all the minute modular playthrough details that the game has to account for, and the sheer amount of commitment UNDERTALE has to its own themes, even to what would be a detriment in any other game in the case of its myriad endings.

I do bemoan how difficult it is to have a genuine experience of the game these days. Because UNDERTALE so thoroughly changed the world, I can understand how hard it must be to experience the game without doing so as some sort of commentary on some sort of level. I think a lot about Super Eyepatch Wolf's thesis statement in his study of UNDERTALE as a phenomenon, about the accidentally metatextual narrative of the line, "Despite everything, it's still you." I absolutely think that's the case. No matter what everyone makes of UNDERTALE, it is still the same incredible game it was on launch.

And, like... I also think a lot about that inscription in the song book, with Toby Fox commenting that he would play "Hopes and Dreams" every day on the piano, wondering if his game would become something, if anyone would ever get to hear it. I think every creative feels that.

I played this before I played Gone Home, but it's easy to see the influence (down to the theming!). This one sort of circumvented the issue I had with the house being ransacked even though it didn't really need to be, since the framing device has you flash back to the main characters' teen years, and, like, teenagers' rooms always look kinda rifled through. Sort of a nostalgic air to proceedings. Little game and story, but not bad.

Easy way to bum me out - kill a cat. Apparently, you only have to imply this.

I was introduced to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask around the same time, thanks to that GameCube "Collector's Edition" bundle (also, both NES Zeldas). As a consequence, while I'm old enough that Ocarina could have easily rocked my world the way it did for many people who started on N64, it never had the chance to do so since Majora was right there with a far more compelling tone and suite of characters and equipment. Plus, it's petty, but the bottles actually looked like bottles and not weird icicle daggers; this was pretty important to me as a kid.

So Ocarina has never been a runaway favorite for me, but it is comfort food, very much a game that I come back to every now and again for a cozy playthrough. I think most people focus on the incredible bombast of going on a grand adventure in a big 3D world, with stuff like Hyrule Field and the cover of the main Zelda theme and later Epona being the main images that people had with the game. Personally I always find myself thinking about the game's tonality and quiet sequences. Sheik of all characters ends up being a favorite during revisits, not something I'd expect since I basically have no opinion on Smash Bros. Sheik. He (he?) always gives some sort of melancholy gravity to sequences between his theme and his pondering monologue whenever you run into him. The game always seems to be reaching for things much bigger than what it's able to present, like that line in the Shadow Temple about "Hyrule's bloody history of greed and hatred", or the nature of the skull children. I think it's that sense of mystery as well to places like the Forest Temple and the Spirit Temple that draws me in.

I hold what I think are the usual criticisms for Ocarina, save one - I never had an issue with Water Temple (I don't love it, but I think it's more a meme than an actual issue). Otherwise, Gold Skulltulas are kinda BS in this game, Dodongo's Cavern is pretty nothing, Jabu Jabu's a fun idea but also tends to be a lot of nothing, Ganon's Tower is a bit short for all its build-up (certainly no NES Death Mountain), boot swapping is dumb...

...oh, right, this is supposed to be a review of Ocarina of Time 3D. Boot swapping is no longer dumb (and the bottles don't look like daggers).

OoT 3D is that rare example of a perfect remake, at least in my book. Grezzo cleaned up what they absolutely had to but largely left the original game untouched, warts and all. I imagine some people might prefer the grungier look you had as a result of the N64's more limited color palette, or the rougher earlier models, but I dunno. The colors here feel less like it's brightening up the world and more like it's highlighting the danger. Like, it's colorful the way a poison dart frog is, rather than the way flowers are. I think a good compromise has been struck, too, with how the models have been updated. The humanoid peoples have been cleaned up a bit, the monsters have largely been left untouched where possible to retain some of that uncanny valley effect. Including Master Quest was very polite, and boss rematches are very welcome additions, as are the Sheikah Stones as an unobtrusive Superguide.

(And I like Ganon's green blood, sue me. The censorship is more iconic to me than the original. Anyway, Ganon still gets stabbed in the brain, which is the far more important bit if violence to preserve)

Ocarina's still not a favorite, but if I ever got my hands on the 3DS version again, I'd enjoy the revisit. Certainly faired better than a lot of Zelda remakes, in my opinion.

Tangential anecdote, but when the hell else am I going to be able to say it - I named the main character "Lincoln" for this playthrough, since that's what "Link" is usually short for. I also happened to be summoned for jury duty in the middle of this playthrough. I very vividly remember pausing in the middle of the Water Temple in one of the courthouse waiting rooms to watch one of those training videos they make everyone in the jury pool watch to hype you up and get you ready to arbitrate some case. Between the video talking about performing civic duties over images of the American flag as well as Lincoln, the Hero of Time, I felt exceedingly patriotic that day.

What does it say about me that I was way more invested in learning about the dad's failed novelist career than the intended focal narrative about the kid sister's journey of self-discovery?

I know this game is considered a landmark in terms of environmental storytelling, slowly revealing the different plotlines through contextual clues. I'm willing to respect that, even though I wasn't entirely into the stories at play. I do think it's a bit convenient of a setup, how all the junk you're supposed to find is laid out in a roughly chronological order, and how none of the family members found each other's deeply-rooted secrets until Katie came along and found the house a wreck. Clearly things aren't really resolved by the end of the game, either, and there's gonna be a lot of unhappy campers in a day or two.

I guess it's all right, but I'm more interested in this game as a proof of concept than as its own narrative. Still, I know that this game means a lot to a lot of people, so I'm willing to acknowledge that this just wasn't for me.

This is one of those games that I really do like and respect, but it doesn't cross over into my favorites for one reason or another. I don't share the common complaint about Metal Blade being busted (mostly because I've always saved Robot Master weapons for bosses the couple of times I've played), but I do think Boobeam Trap is a terribly-designed boss, simply for how easy it is to throw away an entire run by a single misuse of Crash Bomber. Maybe that long, silent corridor at the start of Wily Stage 5 gets tedious on retries, but you can at least get Bubble Lead back up to full there if needs-be; why couldn't that be in place for Boobeam? I also have been spoiled by the pre-Wily stages of later Megas Man. This is a big part of why I always used to call 3 my favorite to the series. 9's proved that I don't need that, but some sort of interstitial sequence helps make these games feel more complete, even if the only buffer between Robot Masters and Wily is a cutscene.

But 2's a classic for a reason. My aforementioned grievances aside, the game's one of those that's immaculately designed. After all the experimentation of the first game to find what approaches did and didn't work, 2 steps confidently forward and hits home run after home run. Quick Man. Crash Man. Air Man. Wood Man. Metal Man. Bubble Man. Heat Man. Wily 1. Moment after moment of great level design set to great music followed by great boss fights. Such a variety of level archetypes, showing that even though the developers had settled on a general gameplay style, they were still keen on experimenting with themes and challenges within that style.

(I guess Flash Man and Guts Dozer are okay, too.)

I understand this was made in a hellish 8 month dev cycle, compounded by the fact that this was the first Mega Man to incorporate submissions for the Robot Master designs. Things wouldn't entirely improve from there - Mega Man 7 had four months in the oven - but I'm at least glad all the hard work paid off, and they really stuck the landing with this one.

I'm a pretty casual fan of Minecraft (I always die horribly in the Nether and put it on the backburner for a couple years), but I like the idea of adapting a plot into Minecraft. Something about taking a pure expression of creativity and putting a narrative to it intrigues me. The upshot to it is that there's no real risk of the narrative overshadowing the main entity; Emmet Brickowski isn't the main character of LEGO, nor are the Toa, Lloyd Garmadon, Pepper Roni, or Batman. Likewise, as much as Steve is the face of Minecraft, he'll never really be his own character outside of memes; at the same time, each of the Minecraft novels are full to bursting with characters who, good as they might be, will never be the face of all of what Minecraft is. Stories are only that - a story, of an experience within the creative medium. Why not have a go at another one presented in another fashion?

You can tell TellTale produced this season in two shifts. They clearly had an idea for a five-episode season, accidentally finished their planned plot in four episodes, went "well crap", then threw something together that ended up tacking on an extra three episodes. Joke's on them, though, the back half is way better. Yeah, there's more of an interesting hook to the front half, where Jesse and friends are chasing after the heroes who defeated the Ender Dragon - implicitly, the canonical player characters of Minecraft. But...

...look, I laughed at the end of Episode 4. Maybe it would've held actual pathos for me if I was more of a Minecraft tru fan, but, like... imagine what that looks like in a vacuum. Even worse when they call back to it in Ep 5. Yeesh.

Ep 5 is where it gets more interesting, as mentioned. The game unceremoniously drops its least-interesting characters (sorry Axel and Olivia, you were nice but kind of nothing) and goes all-in on the odd couple of Petra and Ivor, a.k.a. the loner cool girl and the villain who hasn't really reformed, played by the late great Paul Reubens hamming it up... plus player character Jesse and some nerd I guess. Starting there, the season more or less abandons its linear narrative and instead goes for a vignette structure. I really like the ideas at play, particularly Episode 6's murder mystery. It's not a terribly challenging mystery (you can metagame it by paying attention to the special guest stars), but I really appreciate the attempt all the same. Plus, like, I have to remind myself that Telltale's skewing for a younger audience this time around.

The game initially puts more focus on incorporating actual Minecraft mechanics of inventory management and crafting into the mix, but it abandons these after a while. You do still get acknowledgements of game mechanics, at least, but it would've been nice to see stronger (and less-dorky) implementation of it. Maybe they do that in Season 2?

A decent enough experiment, but like I said before - no risk of this becoming the definitive telling of Minecraft.

You can honestly do far, far worse. E.T.'s biggest issue is its lack of conveyance, something that was a potential issue with every video game of that era if you lost the manual. If you fall in a pit, hit left or right as soon as you switch screens. If you're struggling with the FBI Agents/Scientists, switch to Game 3 to get rid of them. Don't sweat the timer of doom.

E.T. is a bad game, of course, but it's not really the cause of the 1983 Video Game Crash. It's more emblematic of Atari's hubris at the time. Right before Atari went all-in on E.T.'s success, they produced 15 million copies of the 2600 port of Pac-Man when only 5 million Atari 2600s had been sold. To hope any single game would move ten million consoles was foolhardy; to put that hope into one of the all-time worst video game ports was just inviting disaster. E.T. needed to be an overwhelming success; to that end, they got the best possible talent they could in developer Howard Scott Warsaw, gave him five weeks, and set him at it. Warsaw did the best he could, but there was no escaping the hole Atari dug for themselves.

Man, Yars' Revenge is a weird game to remake. It is absolutely important enough to warrant it, but if I were asked to do so, I don't know how I'd do it. I suppose a rail shooter makes sense, SHMUPs are safe space-y sort of games. Turning the main character into an anime lady is... more of a curiosity. Personally I would've put more emphasis on literally chewing away some sort of barrier, like you do in the Atari game, but making Yar still some sort of four-armed bug alien is at least a compromise towards the original game's identity, as is retaining the Qotile's sprite.

I suppose I should be glad to see an attempt to make something of a classic Atari game besides an endless conga line of rereleases? This is a super creative spin on the original game. I don't find it particularly compelling as a rail shooter - it's short, levels are pretty basic, the main character firing four guns doesn't much change how you play the game. It's a budget title, as evidenced by the lack of voice acting or animation in the cutscenes, but its alien worlds and flight patterns manage a decent spectacle. I unfortunately didn't find the overall experience memorable, but I'm glad the game exists.

The video game I credit as my first, and still one of my all-time favorites. A lot of that is nostalgia, but I really do think this is a hidden gem of a title. Far and away the best video game to come out of Disney in my opinion, and I'll accept no substitutes (though I'll understand if you're a Kingdom Hearts die-hard).

Before we get into it, because there's potential for confusion - the main character of this game is technically Donald Duck, but he's not called that. He is an actor here, in-character for the entirety of this game as an anachronistic Magnum P.I. parody named "Maui Mallard". You can consider him an AU Donald if you want, since the manual makes a joke about Maui wanting to give up his private investigator thing and become a sailor. But he's called "Maui". At least until he transforms into a ninja. While he's a ninja, he takes on the alter ego of "Cold Shadow". Cold Shadow was originally an ancient master ninja (a Hawaiian ninja... just roll with it), but these days is little more than a spirit that lends its power to Maui. Maui becomes Cold Shadow, but he still retains Maui's identity. So Donald in Maui Mallard features Donald as Maui Mallard and Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow is Maui Mallard and not Cold Shadow but he is Cold Shadow and not Donald Duck in Donald in Cold Shadow.

Make sense? :P

Maui Mallard (the game) would have been one of the last 2D platformers to come out of the genre's golden age, right before Crash Bandicoot and Super Mario 64 (and Bubsy 3D) changed the world. Visually, the game has learned every lesson it can from this era and put together some of the strongest pixel art out there. You'd be understood for thinking it's done by Disney animators, the way Virgin Interactive's Disney games borrowed Disney animators, but I believe this is actually the same animation team behind Earthworm Jim. Combining Disney-grade model sheets with Earthworm Jim-grade animation timing is a real showcase for what could be done by the medium, both from a comedic standpoint (the smooth transition between the ninja's bō flourish and him dancing the hula. With a bō staff. How do you even) and - as the situation calls for - a horror standpoint (I love love love how the zombies decompose the more you shoot them until their flesh parts from their bones and they return to the earth - surprisingly graphic for a Disney game). Even deliberately undercooked animation contributes something - the mostly-nonexistent animation to the Giant Metal Spider or... whatever the magma skull guy is in (the Genesis/PC versions of) "Sacrifice of Maui" add to their creepiness factor. Especially with the latter, where the only thing moving is its spiting magma and its pulsating brain. Even the environments are richly detailed, too - I love the overgrown and crumbling ruins (depicting Carl Barksian scenes of ducks beating the stuffing out of each other) in "Ninja Training Grounds", the dripping flow of magma in "Sacrifice of Maui", the cascading waterfall in "Test of Duckhood", the bloodshot eye and drifting mists in "Realm of the Dead"...

And the music! I don't think there's a single track I dislike. The PC version is what I started with, so I'm fondest of that one's offerings. Helps that it's filled to bursting with CD-grade instrumentation and vocals. I love the varied percussion and the brass that comes to play as the soundtrack evolves. There's a sense of the soundtrack going for the vibe of the classic Disney shorts, with modernized instruments joining in the big band compositions. There was an effort to strike that tone in general - that's why Maui (1) packs heat and (2) is specifically wielding a 30s-style handgun - which helps give the game a timeless atmosphere. I'm less fond of the Genesis and SNES versions, though the PC version had the benefit of coming afterwards, specifically refining the Genesis's compositions. There's some good synth instrumentation on the SNES version, too.

Really quickly, since I mentioned vocals, I love the use of voice clips in the Genesis/PC versions. Maui making angry Donald noises when he gets damaged is great fun, as is the foley for so many other enemies - the masks hocking loogies, the zombies moaning as they chase after you, the weird fire spirits' belching, etc. The very best is those horrible, horrible, horrible squeaky shrieks and screams of the Muddrakes. Like, yes, they're easy stereotypes, but the childish voices in particular help make the whole thing read less like some sort of broad racial statement and more like these guys in particular are little brats. They're your clients, yet you have to earn their respect over and over. I love them so much.

Alright, so it's a solid spectacle piece, but how's it play? I love it myself, but I think this is going to be the main hurdle people run into if they're playing the game new these days. It's a technical spectacle platformer, something that was deceptively hard to pull off well this era. Something the player will need to adapt to is how big Maui's sprite is compared to the rest of the screen, given that a lot of platforming and acrobatic feats are required - timing those jewel swings and wall-climbs as the ninja can be tricky if you're not used to it. It's easy for a novice player to throw themselves at enemies and obstacles and burn through their health and lives.

But the game is very much aware of itself and what it's asking. The shift from Maui to the Ninja is a pretty sharp swerve, so the game lets the player ease into it with a whole training level where you can safely test out different moves. Every system to the game feels like it has that careful level of design, from how it challenges players to how it rewards their caution and exploration with pick-ups. The health system comes to mind - like Earthworm Jim, Maui starts with 100 hit pounds, and loses health at varying increments depending on what's damaging him (usually the range is between 5 and 15 damage). You have your usual suite of health recovery pick-ups, but there are also bags of Zombie Powder, which increases Maui's maximum hit points by 50. These are hidden around in most levels and are well worth your trouble to seek out, since (1) the game puts such an emphasis on combat that even a little extra health would go a long way, (2) some levels contain multiple bags, and (3) the Zombie Powder lasts until your next Continue, making Lives and Continues separately valuable commodities. It's on top of THIS level of design that the developers build their electronic playground, and boy do they have fun. Without giving anything away, there's a sequence where the game stuffs Maui full of Zombie Powder and throws him face-first into danger, and it's an easy highlight.

As I said at the start, I consider this game the first one I played. But it wasn't just me playing it - my father, sister, and brother all got in on it (my mother's never been much of a gamer, but she'd watch from time to time). Whenever one of us ended up on a good run, we'd all want to see it. In that way, even though there are only eight levels, each of them felt huge. I vividly remember the first time I beat level 4, "Sacrifice of Maui" - basically any run that got to that level was worth getting everyone's attention. You had a double-whammy in that level with both the stage boss (the aforementioned magma skull guy) and the volcano escape sequence, one of the best damn escape sequences in all of gaming no exaggeration. So many runs ended in the rising magma... but somehow, everything game together that run, and I got to see the end-of-level animation of Maui kicking back on a folding chair, to a round of cheers from my family. For the first time, we all got to see the lush green jungle backdrop of "Test of Duckhood".

I ran out of lives and opted not to continue out of some misplaced sense of honor. My father sent me to my room for being a dummy. Still a favorite memory.

But every level clear felt like a small victory. I remember proudly beating levels 5 and 6 on a family vacation, then discovering the game's SNES version years later and finally - in preparation for a class project in which I wanted to show it off - finally getting good enough to beat levels 7 and 8. And then, years later, I finally got the chance to play the PC port again after years of trying and failing to run it on modern computers. That was this playthrough; I was so proud to finally say I'd finally put a childhood game - as I knew it - back to bed.

Of this game's four versions, I like the PC version best, but Genesis is an acceptable alternative, and SNES is a fun case study for where it differs. I have not played the GameBoy version as of this writing, but from what I've seen, that one's safe to skip. For the others, though - if you have the chance to play Maui Mallard, by all means, I hope you do so.