It's just worse Battletoads, and I find that really embarrassing. Only half as many levels with a very poor selection that eliminates the rhythmic pacing of beatemup/platforming/gimmick sections the original game had. And most returning levels are worse and harder than they originally were. This game's equivalent of Clinger Winger is probably the worst level in a videogame I've ever played.

Just bad, totally awful, I know Rare isn't a developer to be trusted, but c'mon, what kind of sequel is this?

No irony, I love Battletoads. A wild juxtaposition between obscene difficulty and the derpiest animation alive. The kind of game that takes itself seriously through its situations and soundtrack, but then throws you a rubber duck with giant teeth or a boss with 1 frame of animation. It just wears its structural DNA on its sleeve, warts and all. Iconic.

Play this Genesis version if you can. It's kind of a rush job port (no ending or credits???!?), but the difficulty is so much more digestible. If it weren't for that last stretch of Rat Race/Clinger Winger/Revolution, I could see myself doing this on real hardware.

R-Type isn't my cup of tea but I always got huge respect for the first one, most shmups wouldn't be here today without it. It's the intricacy of the levels that really brings it all together, you weren't playing shmups before this where the areas feel sequentially connected and have unique biome-driven mechanics. Every level sticks out here - The cinematic intro where you raid the enemy ship from the outside, the slimy biodens in level 2 and 5 with insect-like creatures flying about, the awesome giant battleship of level 3, and the machine pass with the seemingly-indestructible cargo devices in level 6.

The Master System version is super impressive with how faithfully it recreates every element of the original - no cuts, and just as much firepower. The only hit is in performance and visibility - the high spritecounts with all the multi-jointed enemies and bullets bring a bunch of flicker, and the bullets have some Phalanx energy going on. I can't see these dark red shots. Difficulty felt a lot more approachable than the other versions too. It's not more recommendable than the others, but it's the most fun I've had with the game yet.

Of COURSE my first Ys game is the black sheep of the franchise. You all know the drill.

It's a substandard action game; these hitboxes are sparse and the enemy behavior is rudimentary. It also underdelivers on exploration and social aspects you'd expect from this era's top-down JRPGs, so I get why series fans would feel alienated. It's also-also overly-grindy - but, I actually liked it for that. I'm always a sucker for the drastic take on JRPG leveling, where enemies knock you out in one hit but then you level up and trample them like ants. I was essentially getting my Maten No Soumetsu fix from a 6-hour game instead of an 80-hour game with game over RNG.

It's a very pleasant and comfortable vibe, too - wonderful music, a homely town you revisit between dungeons, nice background art, and characters that were easy to get invested in despite being 16 pixels tall. Even the bordered screen grew on me - it's like peering into the storybook.

I don't know why they felt the need to drop you into The Big Seizure Dimension in the final boss. It wouldn't be that horrible of a fight if not for that (and the shaking ground beneath you that randomizes your jump starting point and makes it really easy to scrape your head against the boss when you try to attack it).

I'm curious to try out the rest of the Ys games now

Replayed this on a whim when C_F put out their Project Zero hack (you all gotta check that shit out), and then went back to re-replay the vanilla version

It's Mega Man X, it's designed perfect in almost every conceivable way and set an enormous precedent for maximalist character technique design, and reinvented the role of RPG-style powers in quasi-linear game design and storytelling. It's only flaw is the ubiquity of its innovations makes it tame to come back to, if just because games that succeeded it drive down such aesthetically divergent roads.

Really is a testament to the Mega Drive's persistence in PAL territories that a Mode 7 racer would get ported to it as a super-scaler game with all of its features intact - and damn, what a suite. Grand prixs, time attacks, replays, multitap, combat mechanics, even some goddamn Soccer.

The problem is that Street Racer sucks ass besides that, the party racer mechanics make no sense in the context of a scaler racer and the gamefeel is slimy. Everything is overly-smoothed, there's weird tweening to turning that makes you feel like you have constant ice physics. And just trying to catch up to CPU opponents feels impossible, your speed just can't overtake them and you'll sit 6 feet behind them for a whole lap like a babysitter.

I owe the SNES version a try someday so I can see if this weird Mario Kart/Sonic Drift/Road Rash mashup has redeeming value elsewhere. Maybe. Maybe not. Some of these character designs look pretty bigoted. I'm worried.