While Nintendo was never afraid of experimenting with Mario's identity, providing numerous detours in aesthetic and thematic imagery just by jumping from SMB1 to SMB3, Super Mario Land definitely earns its distinction of being "the weird one".

It interprets the plumber's magical landscape as one filled with ancient history and sci-fi cultural artifacts from our own planet that somehow feel more alien than what the Mushroom World has accustomed us to. There is definitely something very otherwordly and dreamlike about starting a level with the implication that Mario arrived on a UFO and that the enemies you will be facing are Easter Island face fellas, and the changes made to accomodate the limitations of the hardware, such as the exploding turtles and the bouncing ball power up, further elevate Super Mario Land's odd quirky vibe.

What I love the most about it though is its brevity. Low of difficulty and brisk paced, Super Mario Land is beatable under 30 minutes with little chance for game overs and with enough variety sprinkled inbetween that makes picking it up for a high score attempt highly leasurable and absolve it of the settling monotony that plagues the repeating assets and levels from SMB1. Add to that the beautifuly simplistic monochrome sprite line work and eternal earworm tunes that will never leave your head for all of your life and I'm very tempted to call it a perfect game, despite its lackluster platforming physics. A priveledged Mario that preceeds its own brand, that's pretty neat.

Try not to feel joy while listening to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f1I1i_t94E&ab_channel=GilvaSunner%3AArchive

In our modern age of remakes, reboots, and revivals, 9 times out of 10, we usually see certain properties coming back that one would typically expect, due to them either having a major fanbase that demands their return, or they have just remained relative enough in the gaming scene to where a developer thinks bringing them back would be a neat idea. But then, you get those revivals, ones that bring back some of the most obscure, dormant franchises seemingly out of nowhere, with a brand new remake or entry in their series just for the sake of it, and while one may question how these managed to be brought back at all, in my case, I am more then happen to see some of these long forgotten series get some more attention again, like with Truxton and Pocky & Rocky. Not only that, but it gives people the opportunity to try out these series for themselves, see if they were any good, and maybe even find some new favorite titles along the way, so I figured I would go ahead and do the same by checking out the original Snow Bros.

I had heard about Snow Bros. from time to time beforehand, but I myself never took the time to play it for myself, because I thought the game looked pretty generic, and I thought it would just be a cheap way to cash in on something like Mario or whatever. But, my curiosity for this title did grow overtime, and when I discovered that this series was being brought back with an all new title coming out sometime this year, I figured I would go ahead and give it a shot. So, I decided to play it, and I then learned that rather than being a straight copy of Mario, it is… a straight copy of Bubble Bobble. Literally, it is basically the exact same game, and I’m not sure how they managed to get away with this without Taito lighting them up with lawyers back in the day, but you know what? After playing through the whole thing, I actually had a pretty great time with it, and dare I say, I think it is even BETTER than the original Bubble Bobble. Yeah, it doesn’t really introduce anything too creative or different from that game, but it manages to improve on certain aspects that I would say was for the best, making for a very enjoyable time.

The story is about as generic as they get, where the princesses Puripuri and Puchipuchi are captured and taken away by a group of vicious monsters, so the princes Nick and Tom, now transformed into living snowmen, must go and rescue them, which isn’t creative at all for a setup, but then again, if you came here expecting some kind of big epic story about some snowmen guys, you have the wrong mindset to be playing this game. The graphics are pretty good, having plenty of colorful stages and fun-looking enemies and characters, while also completing itself with nightmare-inducing boss designs (for the most part), so that is cool, the music is pretty good, having good tunes to listen to throughout the game, but like with Bubble Bobble, there aren’t too many of them to enjoy throughout the game, the control is decent enough, having all of the actions and movement that you would expect from a game like this, although I wish you could jump higher, and the gameplay is also what you would expect from a Bubble Bobble clone, but it still manages to be fun and addicting regardless of what it copied from.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of either Nick or Tom, go through a set of 50 levels through five different worlds, take out every single enemy you see by turning them into snowballs and throwing them around the screen to defeat even more baddies, gather plenty of power-ups, food items, and money to either increase your score or give you a bigger advantage over the foes that you will face next, and face a handful of bosses that seem easy to deal with at first, but then get progressively tougher to where you will really need to watch what you’re doing at all times. Those who played Bubble Bobble will know exactly what they are getting to with this title, and it manages to copy the gameplay from that game almost perfectly, with it not only still being as fun and addicting to play as before, especially with a buddy to tag along with, but it also improves on some things I wasn’t quite a fan of in that original game.

In my opinion, the way that you take out enemies in this game, when compared to what came before this, is much more satisfying and rewarding to use. While it does require a lot less skill at times, it is great to just find an enemy, build them up into a snowball, and just launch them throughout the stage, taking out many different other enemies in the process, as they can do nothing about it but prepare for the inevitable. It does make things easier than other games, but not to the point where it stops being fun, and there are still plenty of challenges that you will face throughout your journey. Not only that, but they make getting through this game a lot less stressful and cryptic then in Bubble Bobble. There are 50 stages, which is a lot, but it doesn’t feel as tedious as points as that other game, there are bosses for every world, and they are very fun to take on, while being challenging enough to where you need to be careful with what you do, and there isn’t some hidden, cryptic item you need to get in order to truly beat the game, so thank god for that. And finally, there are the power-ups in this game, which in comparison to BB, are pretty fucking sweet. You get power-ups that increase your speed, ones that increase the range of your shot, one that makes your shots do more damage, and even one where you inflate like a balloon and can fly around all over the place, taking out whatever enemies lie before you. They aren’t exactly the most creative of power-ups, but they do make the experience that much more enjoyable if you manage to hold onto them, and discovering some of them, like the balloon one, did make me laugh pretty hard, so that is cool.

With all that being said though, if you are someone who didn’t really like games like Bubble Bobble, then you aren’t gonna be a big fan of this one, because again, it is mostly the same game. It has all the hiccups and problems you could find in that game, and while I wouldn’t say it hinders the experience at all for me, others may not agree with that sentiment. Not to mention, like I mentioned before, I do have a bit of a problem when it comes to your jump height, as I feel it is way too short. Sure, this doesn’t become much of a problem for most of the stages, but there would be some points where I would end up getting stuck in a level because I would end up in a spot I couldn’t get out of, and none of the enemies would come to me so I could build a snowball to use, making it so that I had no choice but to die and lose my power-ups. That shit is just annoying.

Overall, despite some annoyances here or there with the jump height and some annoying enemies and hazards, Snow Bros. was quite a surprise, being great not just as a clone game, but also as a game in general, providing plenty of fun for those who are willing to go through all of the levels, but not too much to the point where it gets tiring, and with a buddy to tag along, I’m sure anyone could have a great time with this. I would definitely recommend it for those who are fans of games like Bubble Bobble, as well as those who are just fans of arcade platformers in general, because while this isn’t one of the bigger, more noteworthy ones, it is still just as fun as all of the others, and that’s all that really matters at the end of the day. Although, I will say, we never do end up seeing Nick and Tom getting turned back into regular people, so I guess they will just stay as snowmen until they die………. that’s fucked up.

Game #533

At this point in time, Rare didn’t necessarily have the best track record when it came to their releases. Sure, they did have the Battletoads franchise, which mostly managed to have pretty solid games, and they had developed several other games that hold up relatively well, but most of the rest of the games that they have developed were either uninteresting, forgotten, or just straight up terrible. It was enough for them to stay in the business for as long as they had been, but not to the point where they could reach the same level of success and notoriety as other developers, like Capcom, Squaresoft, or Konami. That is, until they were approached by Nintendo who, after seeing what they could pull off with games on the SNES using pre-rendered graphics, decided to give them a shot at developing a brand new game in a similar style so they could compete with what games like Aladdin were doing on the Genesis. They were given the reigns to make a new game in the DK franchise, which, aside from the Game Boy game that had been released earlier in the year, hadn’t really seen any major attention in nearly a decade, and thus, Rare went on to not only make a new game to reintroduce DK to modern audiences, but to also completely re-invent the character and his world, changing both DK and Rare's reputation forever. This would result in what would become the start of one of the best sub-series that DK would ever be a part of, Donkey Kong Country.

I have had quite the history with the DKC series over the years, with my first proper introduction to the series being with DKC Returns back in 2010, when I was still a dumb kid, and I had no clue as to what a Super Nintendo or a Rareware was. Eventually, I would discover the wonders of what we refer to as “retro gaming”, and it would lead to me getting my hands on a SNES for myself, with this being one of the first games that I had ever gotten with the system. I don’t think I had ever heard of the game beforehand, so needless to say, I was excited to try it out, and naturally, I ended up loving it. So now that I am playing it again after all this time, I can say that it holds up extremely well, being pretty basic for a platformer, but having some of the best design, personality, and fun challenges from any platformer of this era, and it successfully managed to reinvent DK into what he would be to this day.

The story is pretty simple, where the villainous King K. Rool steals Donkey Kong’s banana hoard with the help of his Kremlings, which makes DK very sad, so he then sets out with his nephew Diddy Kong to go beat them up and get his bananas back, which is a very silly premise, but one that fits perfectly for this series, and I am all here for it. The graphics are pretty good, not only having a pretty unique style for a SNES game at that point, but also holding up extremely well, with all of the different models for the characters, enemies, and bosses looking very charming, and the environments look just as great right alongside them, the music is fantastic, with there being plenty of different tracks that I still love to listen to to this day, such as the final boss theme, the theme for the first level, and my favorite track in the whole game, the underwater level theme (if I drowned IRL while this music played, I would be going out happy), the control is pretty great, with both DK and Diddy having the proper weight to them, and each action they can perform feels just right on a SNES controller, and the gameplay itself is pretty basic for the genre it takes on, but it still manages to be a solid experience all the way through, and I would rather a game be simple yet solid rather than experimental yet flawed.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of either Donkey Kong or Diddy Kong, go through many different worlds, each one containing their own set of levels that will challenge you in plenty of different ways, defeat many different enemies and Kremlings along the way while gathering plenty of bananas, collectibles, and power-ups to assist you on your way, find many of the other members of the Kong family such as Funky Kong, the coolest motherfucker on the planet, Candy Kong, the Kong who made a lot of kids question themselves when they were younger, and Cranky Kong, the Kong who resembled everybody’s grandparents in one way or another, who will each help you out in their own way (except for Cranky, who just says you suck and makes you depressed), and take on plenty of bosses that will prove to be quite the “challenge” to overcome to get your precious bananas back. A lot of it is pretty standard for a platformer, and some who aren’t new to the genre may question why you would bother playing it with plenty of other options out there, but not only does the graphical and musical style help give this game its own unique identity that holds up extremely well to this day, but it also still manages to be a fun game all on its own, with many ways it changes up the formula and keep you going.

For every single level in the game that you go through, there is always something new and exciting waiting for you, even if the changes may not be as big as others. You start out going through a pretty typical platformer level, nothing too exciting for you to see or do, but then you get to levels where you will be going through ancient temples, fighting different foes, finding different animal buddies that can help you take out enemies and give you more momentum, and there are even extreme cases of changing up the gameplay, such as levels where you are riding minecarts, ones where you are grabbing fuel for a conveyor belt you are riding on, and ones where you are turning on the lights to keep the Satan crocodiles from waking up. While some of these gimmicks are definitely preferable over others, each one is very fun to go through and experience, all while the game makes you think more and more about what to do in each situation, even if the goal is obvious.

What also helps keep this game fun and fresh throughout the entire journey would be in terms of its difficulty. For those of you who have played this game, you know it isn’t easy in the slightest, and while I wouldn’t say it is as hard as other platformers out there like Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden, there are still plenty of the moments where the game will test your skills in pretty extreme ways, such as with precarious platforming in plenty of levels, adding gimmicks like wind and barrels you need to shoot out of, timing your jumps on minecart segments effectively, and so many more examples. However, despite how hard it can be, it never feels unfair. There is always a chance for you to figure out what to do, how to overcome these challenges, whether it be through simple trial and error, or just by taking your time, and even if you do manage to fuck up and get a game over, if you have been using save points properly, then you shouldn’t be sent too far back to where it discourages you from continuing forward. Not to mention, it feels immensely rewarding whenever you do conquer some of the challenges in this game, managing to make it to the next save point so that you can press on towards whatever challenge may lie ahead.

For those of you wanting a little more out of your platformers though, fear not, because this game isn’t just a simple “run to the end and you win” kinda deal… or at least, it doesn’t have to be, anyway. Throughout each of the level, there are plenty of different bonus areas that you can access, each one giving you some kind of bonus, whether it be with extra lives, or even by sending you to this bonus area where you can collect all of these golden tokens as one of your animal buddies for even more extra lives! Not only do they help you prepare for the journey ahead, but each one does add to your percentage total, and it can even change the ending that you get if you manage to find everything… which isn’t much different then the normal ending, but it will keep Cranky Kong from complaining too much, fucking old-ass prick. They are pretty fun to go for, not just for the sake of completion, but they can be pretty tricky to find to, making you really look around every corner to see what walls or floors are breakable, and where else you could look just in case you end up missing something along the way.

So yeah, most of this game is a blast from start to finish, but there are some gripes that I have with it that do keep it from being a perfect game in my eyes. For one thing, the boss fights FUCKING SUCK, not because they are too hard, but moreso because they are uncreative and boring. Most of them consist of just bigger versions of enemies that you fight in the regular levels, with some of these even being repeated as the game goes on, and while some of them try to mix things up a bit, it’s only methods of doing so is by either giving you a different weak spot to hit, or just by taking on an enemy gauntlet, which isn’t exactly fun to deal with. The only good boss in the entire game is the final one against K. Rool, because not only does the foe you fight actually put up a fight, but the ways in which he does and when you can hit him is pretty creative, and it keeps you on your toes.

Secondly, while most of the elements in this game are pretty fair, and you can get through a lot of the challenges easily, there are some things that were put into this game that I am just not a fan of. There’s one example of this that sticks out to me as clear as day, and that is with one of the bonus areas that you find in Oil Drum Alley. Whenever you go into one of the other bonus levels in the stage and clear it out, you have to take the barrel that you get and throw it ABOVE the wall that you would normally hit in order to clear it out, which will grant you access to another bonus area you need to go through. If you don’t know about this on your first go, and you end up missing it, you cannot go back and try getting it again, making it so that, if you are going for 101% completion, you are FUCKED. That’s not necessarily that bad for those who just wanna go through the game normally, and I myself have never had this happen to me, but the fact that it can happen at all is pretty shitty, and I’d imagine there is at least one person out there who didn’t know about it, figured out what they was missing, and had their day ruined because of it.

Overall, despite the terrible bosses and some secrets having strict punishments for not finding them, the original DKC is still a fantastic game after almost 30 years, having very fun platforming challenges, wonderful visuals and music, and plenty of things to do for those that wanna go the extra mile that you usually wouldn’t go for in a platformer like this. I would highly recommend it for those who are fans of Donkey Kong, as well as those who love 2D platformers in the first place, because while this certainly isn’t my favorite game in the series, it is still one of the best platformers you can play on the SNES, and one that would launch an equally fantastic series that would continue to get installments for years to come…………. at least, until 2014, that is. Seriously, Nintendo, bring back Donkey Kong in a brand new game already! And maybe also try to bring back the Kremlings while you’re at it, too. That would be nice.

Game #532

On one hand, this game has one of the most hilariously bad translations of all time. On the other, the fact that nobody at Nintendo was checking means that they got to put blood and religion in this sucker in 1994 and it kicks ass, so who can say if it's bad or not. The fact that they let it stand as-written for the GBA release is harder to defend, but it is extremely funny to crack open this script, remove a single swear and one (1) reference to Othello, and then call it a day.

But you know what? The script isn't actually mistranslated the vast majority of the time. You can get the intended emotional beats and gameplay instruction. The fact that this sucker remains a very solid game despite it stands in testament to the strengths of the game.

The first Breath of Fire endeared itself to me with nothing more than its experimental spirit, with all sorts of silly ideas for mechanics and area gimmicks thrown into the mix to keep you on your toes. The sequel is a bit less goofy, and focuses on refining some of those ideas, or at least remixing them. For example, the character fusion idea got turned into the shaman fusion system, which applies more equally to all characters, has more depth, and deactivates if a character goes below a certain health threshold so it's no longer just objectively correct to have it on all the time. I even found it factoring into my party composition, my god.

That's not to say there's nothing new: the town building aspect of the game was more novel back in 1994, and while it is an absolutely baffling mix of mutually exclusive choices that you don't know you're making, it's at least a fun idea. Honestly, making you choose things permanently (you can't give this poor beggar a house without sacrificing that slot for someone who can actually help you mechanically) isn't a bad idea, but everything is so arbitrary so as to be nonsense. I suspect future games will bring this back and remove the friction entirely so I'm glad we have this entry at least trying something.

I think it's ultimately the story and presentation that shine, here: you have a variety of party members again, and their battle sprites just ooze personality. Capcom absolutely the best to ever do it these are some fuckin great furries dude. Bosch Doggy walked so that Vanillaware could put a cunty owl sorceress in Unicorn Overlord. The actual plot has an actual focus and development now unlike in the first game, and while everything that happens is very broad, archetypical melodrama, it's well executed enough that-- again, even through the butchered script-- I could lose myself and say 'hell yeah' at it. Sometimes you just want the mysterious goofball in your party revealing his tragic backstory dude! Sometimes you have a duel with your old friend on a bridge during your unexpected and bittersweet homecoming! What the hell else do you want this is the good stuff!!

Holding the game back is the fact that the combat is the most workhorse stuff possible. Even though every character has unique abilities, very few are even slightly interesting. Offensive magic is extremely spotty in terms of effectiveness so most fighting is just mashing attack and healing when you need it, and only towards the end were a few more interesting bosses thrown at me. Levels are really important here, but benched characters do not gain XP and this is a pain in the ass.

In fact, it's pretty interesting to come to this after playing some old JRPGs that famously "aged poorly" or "are grindy" or whatever and be able to conclude that like, Dragon Quest 1 is way more mechanically interesting in the combat. The random battles in BOF2 are insanely frequent, uninteresting, and largely cannot be mitigated. The enemy sprites look absolutely sick as hell though. I think Capcom still being new to the genre shows here, as this is kinda what people who played these games as kids and haven't touched them since think NES JRPGs are like.

Overall, Firey Breath The Second gets a heck yeah from me. I am stoked to see what sorts of shenanigans they were able to get up to on the Playstation.

The template laid down by Dragon Quest remains undefeated in the genre of Japanese RPGs. There is a remarkable level of care that has gone into making sure that there is an appropriate level of friction between the adventure of the player and the objective of the game.

The game is fairly small and "spherical". By that I mean that there is a centerpoint that is Radatome Castle, and then there is the rest of the map that is equally long in both directions, east and west. This allows the game to justify (a poor word to choose considering they had legitimate technical limitations, but it gets the point across) making saving exclusive in Radatome Castle, at King Lars's. No distance then is great enough to be too tedious to traverse. Planning your travels is easy as well, considering you can purchase Wings of the Chimera early in the game to teleport back to Radatome Castle, and later on you can access the Return spell to use in place of the Wings. It also bears reminding that death doesn't bring any particular penalty other than interrupting your exploration and bringing you back to the centerpoint, which is farily forgiving given what was said for distances. The game is also crystal clear. The combination of the game box manual along with the initial indications from King Lars give all the tools you need to understand and clear the game. People in towns rarely gives you cryptic messages.

Ultimately, the game is lenient and fair with its player. And this lenient structure allows the game maker to be more thoughtful of the points where is wants to increase friction, rather than just make the game all friction. There are of course parts of the experience that suffer because of this. Battles become a matter of simple attacking arithmetic with no further complexity involved whatsoever, besides the Sleep spell that can come in handy in certain parts of the game where the dps race does not particularly work in the player's favour. This already highlights how random battles have been a particular point of strain in the genre since the beginning, which few have ever really dealt with correctly. Moreover the inherent small size of the world makes for a short experience, alothough for sure not unpleasant (I think it is fair to remember I have played the SNES remake which has some quality of life improvements that might have shaved off almost an hour of game time). And in particular the endgame feels a little anti-climactic, mostly because of its lack of active narrative and letting the player decide for themself the moment of ending the game.

In the end, this game embodies a level of playfulness that is perfectly encapsulated by Akira Toriyama's artistic design for the series at this particular moment in the author's artistic development. Simple, rotund, clear, uncomplicated.

Sometimes in life, when you strive to achieve something, but you keep failing at reaching that goal, you just gotta take a step back and realize… you will never reach that goal, and you should stop trying. Kind of a depressing reality, I know, but that was the reality I had to face when I tried to beat the original Puyo Puyo. It was a very simple puzzle game, one that many of us know and love, and one that I was able to get a handle of for a good couple of matches or so, until the game grabbed me by the wrist, threw me against the wall, and proceeded to crush all of my hopes and dreams while I could do nothing but watch and feel bad. It was somewhat discouraging, but hey, at the end of the day, I still managed to have a good time, and that’s all that matters. It just goes to show that, even if I do suck at something, I can still manage to have fun doing it (like reviewing things), so I figured I may as well go ahead and give the series another chance with Puyo Puyo 2- oh, wait, shit, fuck, bitch, tit, I’M SORRY… I meant Puyo Puyo Tsu… because Japan.

The idea of giving this game a proper review wasn’t something that I thought wouldn’t be necessary, and for those who aren’t familiar with it, upon first glance, you could see why. When you compare the two, this seems like it's just an update to the original and nothing more, not just in terms of graphics and style, but also in terms of gameplay, with very little changes made to the formula to make it seem like a proper evolution of the series. However, I then went ahead and did a little digging, and after playing it a bit more, I realized that there was more going on here then I realized. So, with these changes in mind, while I wouldn’t say this is a massive step-up in quality from the original, I would say that this is definitely the superior game of the two, and one that does manage to change up just enough to where it can be enjoyed by more due to the original’s limitations.

In many ways, it is practically identical to that of the original, having the same graphics and graphical style, having the same type of music, same control, same gameplay, basically if you have played Puyo Puyo 1, you have played Puyo Puyo 2 without even knowing it. The only real change is with the story, but even then, it is barely even noticeably different, as not only is it very similar to the original game’s plot, but it is a puzzle game, so nobody gives a shit about the plot! You are still just dropping goo guys down, matching them up, clearing them out when you match four of them at a time, and you can chain combos together to send loads of garbage over to your opponent and prove that you are the true ruler of this game. Any fan of Puyo Puyo can jump in and have a great time with it, as it still is pretty fun to play, and whenever you overcome a strong challenge, it does feel pretty good to pull off.

All of that is well and good, yes, but again, if you are unfamiliar with the game, you may just think it is Puyo Puyo 1 again, so why would you bother playing it over the original? Well, that would be because, for this game, several changes were made to the gameplay and the mechanics, which would not only become staple parts of the series, but would propel the series further into that spotlight where it comfortably sits now. The first of these new mechanics, known as “Offsetting”, makes it so that, whenever you clear out a set of Puyo, and you create clear Puyo to throw down onto your opponents screen, it can clear out any clear Puyo that your opponent had sent over to your side of the screen at that time. That way, you can prevent them from dumping tons of clear Puyo onto your side, and if you are fast enough, you can then send plenty of your own clear Puyo onto their side to screw them over. This, while not sounding like too much of a big change, is an incredible change to the formula, as it gives you the chance to keep yourself from being completely fucked over by opponents, while also not letting the gameplay get too easy to the point where it becomes boring… at least, for me anyway.

The second of these mechanics, known as “margin time”, makes it so that, as the match keeps going, the amount of clear Puyo that one can send to their opponent at a time increases, meaning that, if luck is in your favor, you can turn the tides on a match quickly and keep yourself in a calm, controllable state, while your opponent will be panicking, trying to figure out what to do to come back from what you did. Once again, this change isn’t anything too major, but it does help from keeping matches from going on forever, and again, when you are able to take proper advantage of these changes as the game goes along, it does feel pretty rewarding to do so. And finally, for certain versions of this game, there were several other modes that were made available to play on, such as a practice mode, and one that even allowed up to four player battles. While I myself don’t ever see myself ever trying to seek out these modes in this game, it is cool that that option does exist for those who are fans of the game.

Aside from all that though, there isn’t much I can say about this game that I haven’t already said back when I reviewed the original. It really is mostly just another Puyo Puyo game, and while there are brand new rules in place that make the matches in the game a little more bearable, it doesn’t really give much of an incentive for fans of the original to jump headfirst into it. But then again, from what I could gather, there really won’t be any major changes to the formula until Puyo Puyo 4, so really, I shouldn’t expect too much from these games anyway. They are still pretty fun regardless in the right circumstances, and I am glad that I still decided to give it a shot, even if I still completely suck at it.

Overall, despite a lack of major changes when compared to the original, Puyo Puyo 2 is pretty much a superior version of the original game, keeping the core fundamentals the same, while still being fun as ever, and adding just enough tiny changes to make the experience more preferable over the original any day of the week. I would recommend it for those who are huge Puyo Puyo fans, as well as those who are big puzzle game fans in general, but for everyone else, I would probably just stick to later titles in the series over this one. Although, even then, I’m not even sure I can say that this one is genuinely better then the original, because it never got its own version with Kirby in it. Any true fan of the series would know that that was where it peaked, and it has been downhill ever since.

Game #529

I was ten years old when I played Half-Life 2 for the first time. I got stuck in Ravenholm and had to get my dad to do the cemetery escape with Grigori. I was terrified of Nova Prospekt's dingy lighting and ruined corridors. I couldn't aim to save my life because I had never played a shooter on PC that wasn't Halo on Easy.

114 hours and seventeen years later, Half-Life 2 is one of my favourite games ever made. It is timeless in how simple it is to pick up and play, how immersive and rich yet charmingly simple its environments are, how brilliant the sound design, music and voice acting are as well. Mods for Half-Life 2 are still being produced 20 years later, like Entropy Zero, which should by rights have been a full priced game in itself considering how fantastic it was.

Half-Life 2's setting is a marked departure from the concrete, steel and desert that characterised Black Mesa. Now in City 17, an anonymous Eastern European hellscape following the end of the world, noted mute and crowbar enthusiast Dr Gordon Freeman must flee a bloodthirsty gestapo, break machinery whenever he touches it, solve simple physics puzzles, visit the cleanest town in Eastern Europe, stage a prison break with giant insects, and spark a full scale uprising before going back to sleep for about thirty minutes.

It has one of the best shotguns in a game, one of the best gimmick weapons ever produced in the form of the Gravity Gun, some incredible setpieces and a replayability that you don't really get with modern FPS games anymore. Wonder if they'll ever make a third one?

Half-Life 2 deserves every praise it gets, and I hope that 2024 sees a 20th anniversary update the way its predecessor got for its 25th.

Out of all of the games that was released in the 80s to early 90s that featured Mickey Mouse as the star character, The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse was arguably the best game of the bunch that we would get. It wasn’t anything particularly new or exciting, just being a pretty basic platformer made for kids, but it was still solid enough, had great music, several different outfits to try out and mess around with, and that good ol’ 16-bit Capcom charm that oozes out of every game that they made back for the SNES. Not to mention, since this was Mickey Mouse that we’re talking about, it was pretty successful, selling over a million copies, so naturally, because Disney is all about making that good ol’ mouse money, they had Capcom working on a sequel pretty soon afterwards. Eventually, this sequel would be released to the public, and it would exhaustingly be known as The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey & Minnie.

Before playing this game for myself, this was the Magical Quest game that I had known the most about, as I had previously seen it in an unfinished video playthrough on YouTube, and at the time, I thought it looked decent enough. It didn’t look bad, but it looked like an average licensed platformer of that era, and now that I have played the first Magical Quest game, I could also make the assumption that this one wasn’t going to be that much more different or grand compared to the previous entry. I went ahead and played it anyway though, and all in all, I would consider this to be an improvement over the original game, and a pretty good game all on its own. It doesn’t change things up too drastically from the original game, and it is as simple as you would expect, but hey, I will take a licensed game that is simple yet sweet over one that is complex yet rotten, if you catch my drift.

The story is just as simple as the previous game, where Mickey and Minnie Mouse are on their way to meet up with their friends at the circus, when they meet up with a Goofy that wants to end it all, saying that everybody at the circus has randomly disappeared, and Donald Duck and Pluto are nowhere to be found, so it is up to Mickey and Minnie to not only find their friends, but find out what happened to all the circus performers, which is a… very boring plot, to be frank, but it is a Mickey Mouse game, so I’m not sure what else I was expecting. The graphics are… the exact same as the original game, but to be fair, it still does look pretty good, and all the sprites for the enemies, bosses, and Mickey & co. look pretty good, the music is very enjoyable again, still giving off that Capcom vibe, and having plenty of cheery to dreadful tunes to hear throughout, and the gameplay/control is almost identical to that of the original game, but with a few new additions added to make it that little bit more fun.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of either Mickey or Minnie Mouse, go through a set of six stages across plenty of different generic settings, run and jump all around while defeating enemies and collecting various items to help you out throughout your journey, either by giving you currency for shops or giving you more health, acquire several outfits that you can switch between at any time to help you either progress through the levels or give you an advantage against the foes in the game, and take on plenty of colorful and cartoony bosses, being easy enough to take on, while not too easy to the point of being boring. Those who have played the original Magical Quest game will know exactly what they are getting into with this game, and in many ways, it stands on the same level as the original game in terms of quality, but it still manages to be fun, while also incorporating previously said new elements to help make it more enjoyable.

If you somehow haven’t already picked up on it already, in this game, you now have the option to play as Minnie Mouse rather then Mickey, and she is… basically the exact same as Mickey in terms of everything, but hey, at least we have the option to play as her at all, so that is pretty nice to see. Not only that, but the game now features simultaneous co-op, where one person plays as Mickey and the other plays as Minnie, which is definitely the best way one could play this game, and while I didn’t play it in co-op, it does look like a good amount of fun to try out. In addition to this, some of the outfits from the last game are gone, but in their place, we now have all new outfits to help us out on our journey, such as the sweeper outfit, which allows you to vacuum up enemies to gain coins from them, and the cowboy outfit, which allows you to bounce around on a wooden horse, jump higher, and shoot a toy pistol to break blocks and take out enemies. While the sweeper outfit is very situational, and I didn’t really use it a whole bunch, I did really like using the cowboy outfit, especially for certain bosses and to help get through tricky spots.

If none of that sounds exciting to you though, then what you are left with is pretty much yet another Magical Quest game through and through. Not only are the graphics identical to the original game, but so is the gameplay, with it playing identically to the original for the most part, and not having that many new or exciting changes to be seen. It still manages to be fun, but again, if you weren’t really sold on the last game, then this one may not be able to convince you either. Not to mention, like the last game, there is also a boss rush, but it is also just as miniscule of a nuisance as the previous game’s boss rush. I would rather there not be a boss rush at all, but hey, a tiny boss rush is better than a regular one any day of the week.

Overall, despite very little change from its predecessor, The Great Circus Mystery does manage to be not only an enjoyable sequel, but still a pretty good game all on its own for the SNES era, providing the same amount of fun and whimsy as before, while also allowing the option for a pal to join alongside you to witness every bit of that same fun and whimsy. I would recommend it for those who were big fans of the original game, as well as those who just like Mickey Mouse and his pals in general, because even if it is a retread of old territory, that old territory is still fun to go back to to this day. Although, with all that being said, we never do end up finding out what happened to those circus performers in the game. Yeah, we defeat the big bad evil guy, and it is assumed that everything is all well and good now, but they never outright say everything went back to normal! So, if you think about it…………. those circus performers are probably dead.

Game #527

Hideo Kojima's career is fascinating, and it's not something you can hope to find out about from "The Official Version". You kind of have to dig into old interviews, and have first-hand memories of long-delisted websites and discarded promotional material. GW has erased the ugly details, but I can't say goodbye to yesterday, my friend. Kojima thrived on the sidelines. He was originally hired as a project planner on Konami's MSX team, in the offices that the management didn't pay much attention to. The high-stakes positions were all working on Famicom and arcade games, and Kojima spent the first decade of his career in the shadows, catering to a small, enthusiast market with Japanese home computer releases and text-heavy adventure games. It's easy to over-romanticise this era. It wasn't easy. There was a lot of mismanagement and the expectation for relentless crunch, with many members of staff spending days on end in the office without leaving, but the games that came from those teams were pretty special. They were purposefully constructed, delivering a clear worldview and commenting on the ethical dangers of scientific developments in a politically unstable world. Then MGS1 was a huge international success, and all eyes were on Kojima.

From the early days, it was clear that Kojima had a unique confidence and self-belief. Some may call it ego or even narcissism, but it's what gave him the drive and ambition to attempt blending dense, socially relevant stories with traditional videogame action. When the bulk of the Japanese games industry was still hiding behind publisher-insisted pen names, Kojima opened Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake with an introductory credits sequence, naming each member of staff, saving himself for the biggest credit. It made sense. MSX2 owners who'd played Metal Gear and Snatcher knew that there was a rare quality to Hideo Kojima's games, and Metal Gear 2 was the promise of the Kojimiest game yet. Policenauts would similarly promote itself on the name of its director, delving into the production process with behind the scenes books and bonus discs that were fairly uncommon forms of game merchandise in the mid-90s. Before MGS1 had made the west aware of him, Kojima was putting his face on soundtrack CDs. He wanted the spotlight, but he didn't know how demanding it would be of him.

Metal Gear Solid 2 was announced, and was propped up as the game for the new millennium. The one thing that would chrysalise the medium into a new form. In tandem with the growing interest in the internet, the significance of home computer ownership was really taking hold. DVD players and digital TV services were selling themselves on "Interactive" features, reportedly blurring the line between audience and participant (we didn't know at the time that the peak of this technology would be Beehive Bedlam). Sony were convinced that Windows PCs were too technical and business-focused for mainstream adoption. There would be no overlap between the computer and the living room. The word at the time was that the PlayStation 2 was going to be the thing to take people into this new, interconnected era, and traditional forms of entertainment would become a memory of the 20th Century. The promise of the "interactive movie" that had been dangled towards early adopters of CD-ROM, finally coming to fruition. From Final Fantasy X to Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, and perhaps most ridiculously of all, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, many new titles were selling themselves on the promise to bridge the gap between these mediums, but for many, MGS2 seemed like the best bet to accomplish it. That's a lot of pressure for a game where you navigate boxy rooms, avoiding blue vision cones.

Metal Gear Solid 2 trailers were bold. Not only were they promising a game with unforeseen levels of interactivity, but wild narrative swings. We were told Solid Snake was dead. We were told he was the leader of the terrorist organisation putting the world at ransom. We'd anticipated a game that would radically shift our perception of the prior one. When we eventually bought the game, we swallowed the bitter truth when a mysterious Navy SEAL popped up with David Hayter's voice, taking fire at a horny vampire.

Reading pre-release interviews with Kojima, it's clear that he was as convinced by the potential as anyone else. He talks about character movement being impacted by changing wind direction, the integration of voice-recognition and online support. The end results are so compromised that you might not even notice them in the game. The network support got nipped and tucked at so much that in the end, it became an online competition for the opportunity to have your name appear on an in-game dog tag, and a browser-only leaderboard system where you could post your completion stats after you finished. The voice support, adding user-expression to the long, dense CODEC calls? That's the ability to press R2 to have your character audibly think a weird retort. "WHATEVER!" These are the limitations of not only the PlayStation 2 in 2001, but the ability of a Japanese development studio to deliver an action game on new hardware in a three-year project.

MGS2 couldn't live up to those initial ambitions. It didn't fully satisfy those dreaming of something new and transcendent. It was MGS1 again with extra buttons. But oh, what buttons!

MGS2 has so many cool little stealth moves to play around with. You get a real sense of your own ingenuity as you figure your way through each section. VR Missions was everything that MGS1 gameplay could offer. The developers knocked their heads against the walls, spinning its systems off down every conceivable avenue. The frustration of these limitations directly inspired the techniques players could make use of in Sons of Liberty. Players would be able to interact with guards much more intricately, threatening them at gunpoint, disabling walkie-talkies, injuring specific limbs, and shaking them down for extra supplies. Snake and Raiden could roll (or cartwheel), hang from railings, and pop out of cover, ready to fire. Most crucially, you could now aim from a first-person perspective, allowing for much more deliberate action in shoot-outs, or just fuck about with the set dressing to see how many clips KCEJ recorded for the sound of shooting a frying pan with different guns. Shenmue had set a new precedent for how interactive a 3D world could be in a game, and MGS2 picked up the baton to explore how that degree of tangibility could benefit Metal Gear. Hardcore fans who had bought Zone of the Enders solely for the opportunity to play a small section of this game would become intimately familiar with all the quirks and potential of its gameplay, hungry to see how they would be explored in the full campaign. I'm not convinced the Big Shell was the best possible pay-off for these hopes.

It isn't just the fact that players got to spend more time with their favourite muscle man that makes the Tanker section so beloved. It's very purposefully designed to explore MGS2's mechanics, and refreshingly, it borrows little from the structure of the MSX games. Metal Gear had already spent multiple generations reworking and refining the same, familiar setup, and it was exciting to see the series do something different. There's no hostages, no NIKITA puzzle, no underwater facility entrance. It was doing new things, taking out security cameras, shaking down guards for supplies, and sneaking past an audience of a hundred soldiers during a speech. It was exciting. But those old tropes were waiting for us, just around the corner. Justifying themselves via a metatextual reflection upon the previous game.

MGS2 is discussed in hushed, reverential tones these days. If something seemed weird or stupid, you obviously didn't get it. It had been relatively easy to understand a story about genetic inheritance, but memetic inheritance seemed far more abstract. Snake was a son of genetic inheritance, being a clone of the world's most prized soldier, and Raiden, the son of ideological inheritance, with Solidus killing his parents and fostering him as his own brainwashed soldier. Every action he takes is accompanied by a question of how he's being manipulated, and by whom. There's an awkward balance in the game being both radically incisive and incredibly schlocky videogame trash. Whenever it did something too absurd or outright crap, we took faith in the notion that nothing was quite what it seemed. Like there was a hidden truth that would make it all cohesive and brilliant. It was up to us to find it, and if we couldn't figure it out, we could always just pester Kojima and Konami to produce a much more pandering sequel. Full of retcons, underwhelming reveals, and relentless goalpost shifting. Was there ever value in MGS2's outlandish paranormal activity? Did Kojima ever have an answer before his arm was twisted enough to yell "nanomachines" in response to every question? Are we ashamed of our words and deeds for ever thinking the whole of Shell 2 was agonisingly tedious?

Discussing MGS2's story is a sticking your hand in a can of worms and finding a worm-filled rabbit hole at the bottom. A dense, purposefully confusing, and often prescient script. It also has roots in Kojima's 80s action game design, where storybeats are mainly included to intrigue its audience enough to continue playing. Kojima's handwritten script is filled with footnotes, explicitly referencing the Hollywood blockbusters he ripped each idea from. MGS2 was the point where much of Kojima's games became dictated by the promises he'd made in press interviews and pre-release trailers. MGS4 staff have talked about spending months solely working on moments to include in trailers, and then retroactively having to build the game around those moments. That approach started here. Shallow instances of mindblowing spectacle, engineered to shift product with little concern for the long-term impact. Ocelot's arm, Vamp's superhuman abilities, basically everything to do with Dead Cell - they're weird twists, and typically just for the sake of having a weird twist. Vamp's gay relationship with US Marine Corp commander, Scott Dolph, appears to be entirely a sophomoric in-joke targetted at Kojima's then-personal interpreter. MGS2 is simultaneously an earnest musing on the nature of propaganda in the digital age, and a very stupid videogame with absurd arcade game bosses. I don't want to make out like all the silliness is purely problematic or mishandled. There's moments of fun and whimsy I enjoy. Slipping on birdshit and the guard taking a leak off the side of the Strut L. Fatman. It's not the focus, but the old frivolous MSX personality is still here. Just muffled by all the pretension surrounding it. On your first playthrough, you don't know whether you can just enjoy something as a daft joke, or if it's hiding some deeper layer of significance. MGS1 had one foot in gaming's history and another in its future, and MGS2 attempts the same, with messier results in either respect.

The game's English writer, Agness Kaku, has discussed the thankless job of attempting to make MGS2's weird, convoluted script sound engaging through its translation. A lack of reference material, character limits, and heavy rewrites from Konami resulted in the game we have today. It's also clear that she doesn't have much regard for Kojima's script, and attempted to inject it with a richer sense of character and more entertaining dialogue. Many gamers would feel take strong objection to someone, particularly a woman, tinkering with the script from a visionary of Kojima's status, but the bulk of MGS2's most beloved English lines are embellishments on Kaku's part, and her political and literary knowledge lined her up well for the subject matter. However, Konami's insistence on literal translations of certain lines, paired with her personal distaste for Kojima's writing, made the final script fairly patchy and inconsistent. As talented a voice director as Kris Zimmerman is, there are lines of dialogue that are delivered in very odd ways, suggesting the cast didn't really understand the intention behind them. By contrast, Kaku's work on Katamari Damacy presents quite an interesting dynamic. That was a similarly text-rich game, but one with a much more playful tone, and a less demanding writer. She was allowed to completely rewrite the game with very little direction, and the final result was a delight. Katamari writer/director, Keita Takahashi has gone on to learn English at a high level and now lives in San Francisco, where he's expected to speak it as his main language. I wonder if he's ever gone back to look at the English version of his PS2 game.

Metatextually, MGS2 benefits from a constant feeling of distrust. To know whether or not you're seeing the real version. There's an additional distrust of censorship thanks to the game's Q4 2001 release date, the story of terrorists causing destruction and political instability off the coast of New York City, and public sensitivity to the subject matter at the time. Following September 2001, there had been late-stage edits to the game, and as an audience, we can't be sure how compromised the final release is, but even without the real-world parallels, the game is filled with themes of how lies spread and ideas take hold. From the once-tortured child soldier, Raiden, to Peter Stillman's faked disability, to Otacon's disturbing family history, every character in the game has an uneasy relationship with the truth, denying their personal trauma to the world. By the Big Shell portion of the game, there's a question over whether they're real at all, or merely a projection of an elaborate AI construct. Sections of the game that are teased - boss fights with Fortune and Ocelot, as well as the bulk of Shell 2 - go unfulfilled. Raiden breaks through enemy security by lying about his identity, pretending to be one of them, adopting their uniform, and manipulating their body to trick a retinal scanner. Raiden's first quest in the game - disabling a series of explosives - turns out to be an elaborate decoy, while Snake discovers the real bomb off-screen. Snake is playing the real game, and Raiden is still in the VR replica. The Solid Snake game that had been heavily promoted at trade shows and plastered on magazine covers for years beforehand didn't exist. It was all just part of the simulation. This is the dynamic of MGS1 and 2.

The truth of the situation only comes through in the ending.
"It doesn't matter if they were real or not, that's never the point."
"Don't obsess over words so much."
"Everything you felt, thought about during this mission is yours. And what you decide to do with them is your choice..."
Kojima couldn't make something that transcended the medium of videogames. The Emotion Engine was merely a new CPU, comprised of silicon soldered to a circuit board, and shipped to millions of homes within SCE's new electronic toy. When the PS2 became something people could touch and own, the best it could do was play rushed versions of TimeSplitters and SSX that would soon be rendered obsolete by their immediate sequels. The dream was over. The boundaries were brought into stark focus. Metal Gear Solid 2 would be little more than The New Metal Gear Solid, despite the discussion, obsession, interpretation and reinterpretation it would provoke. With the constant focus from fans, it became more than it was. Value was seen in it, and thus, it was there.

Metal Gear Solid 2 changed my relationship with videogames, and not in ways that either its developers, or I, may have hoped. It made me aware of the inherent limitations. Before it, the future of videogames seemed like a boundless, infinite expanse. They could be anything. They could transcend physical limits. They were another dimension. A world of pure imagination. Afterwards, I became aware of just how tethered they were to reality. They were the result of project plans, processing speeds, staff sizes, managerial oversight, limited talent and budgets. They became infinitely smaller. Less significant. Cute. They didn't reflect the limitations of their creators' imaginations, but their ability to deliver a project with realistic expectations. It levelled the playing field. Now, MMOs, which promised entirely new worlds for players to live in, were dragged back to the same context as Pong. It made me realise what a game was. I came to the other side of that, and still loved it. To call it a disappointment is denying the growth that we needed to take. As fans, creators, and an industry. We're currently living through the investor class catching up with PS2 gamers, getting hyped for Final Fantasy XI, kidding on like we're going to spend all our free time in the fucking Metaverse. We all need to accept reality, and learn how to live in it. To appraise videogames with maturity. Let's all calm down and see how big a score we can get on Dig Dug today.

WE HAVE ACQUIRED TECHNOLOGY!

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

-- Ursula K. Le Guin, Datalinks