This is a game I've heard quite positively talked about for a good while, and it being a Zelda-like game, it's absolutely in one of my favorite retro genres, so it was always one I've planned to get around to. I was excited ages ago when I heard it was coming to Switch Online, and then I promptly forgot about it as I always do X3. Then yesterday I accidentally rediscovered that it'd been added to the service! I launched it up and started playing, and before I knew it I'd just wound up finishing the game outright I'd been having so much fun x3. It took me about 6.5 hours to finish the game in English via the Switch Online Genesis service, and I never actually needed to save or anything (managed to not die a single time ^w^), so I never actually ended up using save states or rewinds or anything.

Crusader of Centy follows a young boy (whose canon name is amusingly enough, Corona) who is given a sword and shield on his 14th birthday as is the custom in the kingdom of Soliel. He sets out on an adventure to save the kingdom from the resurgent monster threat! It's an interesting enough premise, and while it does have some major twists in the narrative, I don't think it succeeds exceptionally hard in what it's going for. It falls into the pitfalls that a lot of pro-tolerance/pro-peace games do where the anti-violence message/goal is still, nonetheless, achieved through the power of bravery and violence (not to mention the bigger takeaway messaging of what actually happens in the conclusion is truly quite ghastly if you try and apply it to real world analogues in any way ^^;). The story really isn't the big reason to play the game, granted, but it made me do a "wait a minute, what the fuck???" double take hard enough that I couldn't omit mentioning it here x3

The real meat and potatoes of this game is the gameplay, and as mentioned before, it's a top-down action adventure game very much in the mold of The Legend of Zelda. The big gimmick here is your sword. While the sword itself may have kinda abysmal hit detection, that's not so much of a problem at the end of the day (and not just because the actual combat difficulty isn't terribly high). You very quickly gain the ability to throw your sword like a boomerang, and slingshotting your sword around towards and back through enemies makes for a quite satisfying combat experience despite the bad hit detection. Additionally, while this game doesn't have sub weapons or proper items, it has animal companions you can befriend along the way. You can equip up to two at a time, and while some of them have active effects, most of them just augment your movement speed or sword abilities in some way. Some animals even give special effects when the two of them are equipped at the same time~. They're both neat systems that make for a fun and satisfying adventure that's also just different enough from stuff like Zelda to help set it apart.

The overall dungeon and combat design is, as mentioned before, not terribly difficult. It's not an especially easy game, mind you, but if you're a veteran of the genre, you'll likely end up dying only once or twice if ever. The biggest places you'll likely die at are the jumping puzzles, however. Most of the bosses aren't terribly difficult, but the true place the game will shave away health is with all of the bottomless pits. The dungeon and gameplay design overall has a quite heavy puzzle focus compared to most Zelda games (which gave it an almost Alundra-like feel at times), and while the puzzles were challenging but solvable enough that I enjoyed them while never having to look anything up, platforming is still unfortunately a meaningful part of these puzzles. Now mercifully, the platforming isn't nearly as unforgiving or dire as a game like Beyond Oasis's is, but there are still more than a handful of really mean pixel-perfect jumps that I was really not a fan of. The dungeon and boss design is overall quite good, but those bad platforming bits really take away from some of it. Like with the bad hit detection on the sword, this is another small but important misstep that takes what could've been a great game feel only just good enough instead.

The presentation is by and large very good. Coming out in 1994 and published by Sega, they clearly had the resources to make a game that looked and sounded very pretty, and they did it. The graphics are very nice and colorful, and while there are perhaps a bit too many luxury animations here and there on things like your turning circle, it never felt like it was getting in the way of the gameplay at least. The music is also very good, and it has a very Sonic-y feel to it (and not just because Sonic has a cameo in the game x3). Honestly it feels like Sega gave them a lot of sound samples that the Sonic games use, because there were even quite a few sound effects that even a relative Sonic non-fan like myself could recognize from the Genesis Sonic games x3. Again, not a complaint, really, but something fun to point out.

The only real presentation criticism I have is for Atlus's localization. It's honestly a pretty solid localization for the time, but there are some very sloppy mistakes here and there like text boxes that cut words in half or words that are just outright misspelled to begin with. It thankfully never makes any puzzles unsolvable or confuses the narrative or anything, but it's still a bummer to see such glaring localization mistakes in a product at least in part from Sega themselves. At the very least they're quite funny mistakes when they happen, which is a bonus of sorts~ x3

Verdict: Recommended. While the weird hit detection and difficulty of the platforming will definitely turn off some, if you're a fan of 2D Zelda games or just 2D action adventure games in general, I think you'll probably really enjoy your time with Crusader of Centy. It's not perfect, but it's got a good difficulty balance and just hard enough to be challenging but not frustrating puzzle design in a way that'll add a good adventure to your weekend or afternoon~.

Maybe silly to admit, but the start of COVID saw me shotgun a bunch of extremely disposable licensed games that had nevertheless been on my to-do list for years. I realized that I was gonna be home a lot, and I decided that I was gonna need a lot of light entertainment to buck me up. Do keep in mind that I was playing a lot of these around re-listening to Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International (a favorite comfort series), so you sorta have to imagine me playing these while listening to ultra-violent urban fantasy to get the full effect of my early pandemic experience. I suspect a lot of folks have similarly weird tonal clashes like this in the media they consumed around that time, for one reason or another (see also: all those memes about Isabelle and Doomguy being best friends).

Anyway, Land Before Time. This was sort of a weird one to play, because while I watched the first like six or so as a kid, I haven't directly revisited any of the movies in decades. Also, because this game is kind of nothing, and I don't think I would've gotten much out of it even when I was a kid. There's something kind of hollow and lifeless to a game that is just a footrace. No modifiers, few obstacles, no significant strategy - just pick a character and go. At least in something like Sonic R, you have the fun soundtrack and the novelty of what the game is exactly. Great Valley Racing Adventure just feels like a small set of Crash Bandicoot levels without the crates to crash into. An inoffensive but perfectly bland experience, in other words.

I dunno, is there something else I can randomly bring up to pad out this write-up? There's genuinely so little to this game that there isn't much to say.

Crystalis is an Action RPG / Action Adventure game that initially released on April 13, 1990 in Japan for the NES. It was re-released for the Game Boy Color 10 years later and it's celebrated by many for being an "underappreciated NES gem".

The NES version is the one I played, and there are major differences in both versions in case you want to try it yourself. The Game Boy Color version has an almost completely new soundtrack that is worse in my opinion (1), from what I've seen it plays less fluidly and has lower resolution (2), a story sequence was altered (3) but most importantly, the Game Boy Color version is actually way more helpful in guiding the player and actually explains to you what the story is about (4).

STORYTELLING
So what do I mean by that last sentence? Well the issue I had with the NES version was that apart from a very brief introduction to the world in the menu screen, there was just about no explanation as to who you are or why you are fighting all these monsters and doing what these people told you to do. Every hour or two you'd get a line or so of information on what this game is about, but nothing substantial up until the end of the game, where all info would be dropped at once.

In the GBC version, there is a much longer intro sequence explaining why you were summoned and what the lore behind all those items and people is that you find and meet. Every time you find a useful item, one of the characters also would show up to tell you what it can do. Plus, characters also tell you a bit more about what to do next and there are much more intermissions filled with monologues on this world and its lore. Due to the other differences I listed which I actually dislike compared to the NES version, I still am glad I stuck with the NES version I guess.

So what's the story about? You play a hero that you name and that has been frozen in time for 100 years after a war in 1997 nearly meant the end of civilization. The survivors decided to abandon the ways and technology that led to this war and created a floating Tower, where they would live, gain power to control the world (to make sure no harm was done anymore) and to study the ways of magic. You and a companion of yours, Mesia, are now awakened 100 years after the war because an evil magician called Dragonia used his abilities to grow in power and fill the land with Monsters, to ultimately enter the Tower and control everything that is left of the planet.

Four magicians that will become your helpful companions in this world used their abilities to create four Swords of different elements. They used these to attack Dragonia, but he was able to take the Swords from them and scatter them throughout the land. With no additional way of defending themselves through magic, a safety put into place 100 years ago for a worst case scenario triggers and awakens both you and your companion Mesia. What you have to do now is find all four swords, which form the ultimate sword called "Crystalis", and use it to kill Dragonia and end his reign of power.

Throughout your journey, you meet these magicians and can use a skill called "Telepathy" to request hints from them. There are other characters as well that aid you in your quest, like the fisher that lets you use his boat if you find an item of his. There is also a guy called Kensu, who does help you out a lot but loves to play hide and seek and must be found many times to finally give you what you need.

In the NES version, you speak the absolute minimum with all of these characters, but in the GBC version, there is a lot more dialogue and detail to the lore. Since I played the NES version and won't play through the GBC version, I'm going to rate the NES version, which has none to little storytelling for most of the game, and not finding out the true reason for what you are doing for a long time isn't that motivating. It kinda pays off in the end though. There aren't that many twists and turns in this game, there is little environmental storytelling and overall, the package present here is average.

GAMEPLAY
As per usual for the time, gameplay interruptions are rare, so the action is pretty much constant. You start the game by gaining the Sword of Stone and you play the game by attacking the many different monsters with a thrust attack. Most of the enemies don't attack back but rather either walk in a pre-determined direction or into you, which damages you. Unfortunately, the enemies usually have a pretty tight hit box, so you have to do some positioning beforehand before you attack. It's not rare for you to do a 360 spin to try and position yourself in a way that opens up an attack for you without exposing you for damage by the enemies. Your hitbox sadly is much larger than it should be, so even if your character isn't actually touched, you will still take damage. This can become frustrating over the first couple hours as you try to figure out where the game wants you to attack from, but once you figure it out, it works most of the time as you want it to.

There are four swords of different elements to find in the game, and as a result, monsters with resistances and weaknesses to specific elements. While this is a good thing as it brings variety to the fold, it happens often that a room has two enemies with different resistances. Since there are no hotkeys, I would find myself equpping the Sword of Fire, killing an enemy, equipping the Sword of Water, killing an enemy and so on. This would not only throw me out of the action but also quickly become tiresome.

In addition, some enemies cannot be harmed at all until you reach a certain level. Worse even, bosses have the same effect. How does level 11 make you able to attack a character when level 10 means they are invincible? I don't know. But imagine my frustration when I tried my luck at a boss for 20 minutes, only to fail with each element because of a level difference. "Kill it with fire", a guide online said, which I used lavishly, though not only due to combat questions. When fire didn't work as well, I looked it up further. Turns out, I really had to be level 11 to hurt the boss, but my save state was right at the boss fight, so I couldn't back out. Luckily, I had a back up state from 30 minutes before, because otherwise that would have probably been the end of my run.

Leveling becomes harder and harder because the XP requirements grow exponentially, whilst I found that the XP you get by later enemies wouldn't increase quite as fast. This meant I had to grind for 30-60 minutes at multiple points to progress further, which even the most skilled walkthroughs incorporate online. Grinding has seemingly become a core feature of JRPGs since, and it's no more fun here than it is in Final Fantasy games for example, though at least here you don't have to load in and out of battles.

Dying in this game is very easy and checkpoints do not exist, so you have to save often to be able to actually beat this game. By now I'm used to it having played a bunch of other games from 1990 with similar requirements, but it's worth pointing out.

The game has a lot of different environments to explore, but often it requires you to do the same thing, just with a different element. There is however a snow area for which you will need Rabbit Shoes to be able to jump up a hill and most notably, there is a poison swamp, for which you will need to find a Gas Mask to not take damage from the poison.

Unfortunately, when I say "explore", I mean that you usually try to find a way forward and battle enemies. You do have to find "lost items" here and there, bring it back to someone and get something in return that enables further progress, however it's not like these items are shown anywhere on the map. A pendant for example is in a random spot in a cave and you find it by accident when walking over that exact pixel. There are some non-essential items to find, like healing herbs or teleportation boots, and secret locations to find those in.

Overall, gameplay is repetitive and exploration opportunities are limited, but it's enjoyable enough due to enough enemy variety and the core combat being fine once you figure out how to not take unfair hits all the time.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
There is no voice acting. The sound design is good, but nothing special. You hear the same sounds in dozens of other RPGs or Action Adventures from that time.

The music is really good, but this compliment is only for the NES version. The overworld theme simply sounds fun, cheerful and catchy. My favorite track has got to be on the "sea" level. An above average soundtrack that can definitely be listened to outside of the game.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN:
The game has solid graphics for the time and makes good use of color, but doesn't stand out beyond that at a time filled with games that look similar. There is a good variety in locations and especially the poison swamp is worth pointing out here again, but the majority of the game does take places in same-looking dungeons that simply use a different color based on the pre-dominant element.

ATMOSPHERE
The game mostly has a cheerful atmosphere in line with a lot of upbeat music, but it sometimes contrasts with the events in the game, like when a group of people are kidnapped and you wander to their desolate town with the same cheerful music as per usual. Even during the moments leading to the game's final battle it still felt too cheerful and sort of out of place due to the stake's involved per the game's storytelling. That said if you're looking for something to play that may have raised stakes but a more lax soundtrack, you'll be happy with Crystalis.

CONTENT
The game does take 10+ hours if you use guides here and there and are a first time player, but a few of those hours are spent grinding and you do hold the "attack" button for most of it. If you enjoy that, you'll probably enjoy your time with this game, which even with that playing time is much shorter than the RPGs of its time and therefore may be worth a try at least.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The game plays rather linearly even though you can visit multiple locations at once. If you do visit those locations, you usually can't hurt the enemies, so there is no point to deviate from the main road. That main road involves doing the same thing usually and often walking through the same-looking corridors that simple have a different coat of paint. There is variety in locations here and there and the sea level offers a unique battleground at least. The final few locations are also much more unique in design, but the way the final chapter is designed is not necessarily my cup of tea, as it's boss fight after boss fight after boss fight until you meet the final boss, but wait, it's not the final boss, here he is, the end.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Most of what this game does has been done before this game came out and not all it does ages well. It's a good game for mixing these elements together and making this an enjoyable adventure overall, but I wouldn't say it set a new benchmark or brought anything new to the table, though its graphics were praised at the time along with the "depth", as in how much there is to do. As mentioned previously, some of the depth is stuffed with repetitive filler and therefore not simply a positive, unless you really are enamored with all core concepts here and don't want the game to end.

REPLAYABILITY
After a first playthrough, there isn't much that you can really do differently.

PLAYABILITY
The game works perfectly fine at all times and plays pretty fluidly.

OVERALL
This is a solid Action RPG / Action Adventure with very catchy music, varied environments and mostly enjoyable, though flawed combat. It's definitely worth taking a look at if you've enjoyed similar games like Zelda games or Final Fantasy, but it lacks depth and logic to its storytelling even when it does get going late into the game, key items are placed in arbitrary locations making progress very difficult and tedious without a guide and there is a lot of mandatory grinding required.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Martin Alessi for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 13 (Aug 90): "A post-apocalyptic storyline with cinema displays mixes with one of the best search, solve and save the world games in recent memory."
- Chris Bieniek for VG&CE, Issue 20 (Sep 90): "the main thing that sets this title apart from most other [RPGs] is its tremendous depth. I've never seen a game with so many places to explore"

GOTY 2018 - NUMBER FIVE
Video version

Right, this is something of a technicality. The qualifier for getting on one of these lists is that a game couldn’t have been released in Europe before the year it’s contending for. Remasters are the same game, and proper remakes are new games. I know full well that the original Katamari Damacy had never come out in Europe before the Switch “Reroll” release. I read the previews, watched the gameplay videos and begged for it to come over before eventually buying a Japanese copy. The ability to finally honour the game with an entry on a GOTY list feels massively cathartic.

Katamari Damacy is the zenith of what made the PS2’s library so fantastic. It was a time when Japanese publishers just weren’t paying attention. The era of games like Under the Skin, Gregory Horror Show and Kuma Uta. Katamari Damacy is the king of those games (ironically, not Ribbit King). It isn’t just a stupid skin on a well-worn concept; it’s daft to its core. But on top of that is a game idea that’s entirely unique.

If there’s one person in the industry who always has my back, it’s Keita Takahashi. This is a guy who thinks the vast majority of videogames are boring. He likes Balloon Fight and ICO, but pretty much everything else is tired, nasty or not worth paying attention to. Somewhat paradoxically though, he’s the self-titled “video game romantic”. He thinks everything can be a game, and should be a game. One of my favourite periods of his career was when he wasn’t making videogames at all, and instead musing on how pavements could be more fun or how playparks should have special slides for dogs and employees who would ride down them afterwards, dressed in bristly outfits to clean the slides. He’s an oddball artist and inventor who’s only making videogames because he wants to make fun stuff that people all over the world can enjoy. He expects nothing of his audience, but if you’re susceptible to his thinking, you’ll find your way to his stuff.

I’ve loved all his stuff, but Katamari Damacy is the closest thing he’s made to a proper videogame. It’s the only one with clear goals, and is designed in a way that rewards practice and skill. You’re rolling a big ball through open levels, trying to pick up as many objects as you can. As your katamari rolls, it picks up everything smaller it touches, slowly growing with all the clutter. Do that a few dozen times with different goals and time limits and that’s your game. It’s everything it needs to be.

Katamari Damacy’s levels are covered with beautiful, stupid clutter. Statues, wrestlers, islands, stacks of matchboxes, anything. Everything has been modelled and textured to keep in the game’s weird boxy style, contrasting with the big round alien ball that’s crashing into it all. It’s not a game that benefits massively from an HD upscaling, but the additional effort to remaster this game without touching the source assets is greatly appreciated.

The controls are unique, and almost comparable to some of the more eccentric stuff Treasure have came up with, except much more relatable and easy to get your head around. Each analogue stick mimics how The Prince rolls either side of the ball. Two sticks forward to move forward, two stick back to roll back, and variations of back and forth on either stick to turn around. It’s an easy concept to grasp, but there’s great freedom to develop techniques for turning corners of different degrees, or moving at specific speeds. Unfortunately, this is one aspect of the game that doesn’t translate perfectly to the Switch. Ideally, the analogue sticks should be symmetrical on the controller to get a balanced feel for rolling, and that’s something Nintendo’s controllers don’t offer. I know you can get 8bitdo controllers with symmetrical sticks, but I haven’t had the opportunity to try them with the game. It shouldn’t put you off, as the game’s still quite playable as is, but if you’re looking for the definitive release of Katamari Damacy, this is a factor.

I also have to mention the music. I might have to think a little harder before hitting out with this stuff, but Katamari Damacy might be my favourite video game soundtrack. On first listen, it sounds weird and funny, but underneath lies a deep exploration of the game’s core concept and setting. Some of it is frantic and bizarre, but it also presents romantic ideas of being rolled up in a big ball with everything and explores the underlying eroticism of such a surreal concept. It could play as a joke, but it comes across as sincere and celebratory. It’s little wonder to me that Keita Takahashi ended up marrying one of the game’s composers. The music believes in his ideas even more than he does. It’s one of the loveliest things in video games.

For most, Reroll is just about the ability to play a Katamari game on a modern platform. For dedicated European fans of the series, it’s about getting to play the original title that they were once denied.

That’s why I feel duty-bound to celebrate this release. In this modern era of regionless consoles, we’ve kind of forgotten how things were back in the PS2 days, when it took a minor miracle or a first-party publisher to release something as weird as this in our continent. We didn’t even start getting anime licences until the terrible PS1 Dragon Ball games came out around 2000. In my eyes, Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum ‘n’ Fun and Katamari Damacy Reroll have put the last nail in the coffin of that awful era. And they’re both Bandai Namco games. So is Dragon Ball FighterZ; another game that’s made it onto this list, and another that may have skipped a PAL release a few console generations ago. I’ve got to tip my hat to them, this year. Without wanting to spoil anything, they’ve got more games on this list than Nintendo. How the fuck do you do that?

I don’t think Katamari Damacy is quite as varied or slick as its PS2 sequel, but I still think it might be the most charming entry in the series. If you’re into this stuff and you live in this continent, I think you really owe it to yourself to pick it up.

The 4th game in my DK marathon and it’s the first one that actually feels like an actual video game

Donkey Kong Country is a short but ultimately super satisfying platformer, I love the gameplay itself, DK has so much weight to him and it adds a sense of realism to this game that other platformers lack, it also helps that this game just looks incredible, the use of silicon graphics here is superb, it gives the game this unique style and couple that with how expressive every enemy and character is, it just really makes it feel alive.
The bosses admittedly are very ok, most of them are just bigger versions of regular enemies, the big death barrel boss was kinda funny but nothing much beyond that, however despite that, the final boss against King K Rool is great, he does more than just one attack in the fight, it’s the one arena that isn’t just a giant banana pile, his animations are really well done, it’s all around just a great final fight, and a nice way to end the game.
The big thing that really elevates this game above a lot of platformers is the atmosphere and the soundtrack, holy fucking shit, the atmosphere is insane for an SNES game, I thought nothing could rival Super Metroid but I mean, here we are, and the soundtrack god damn, the soundtrack is the nice as hell icing on the cake, the one thing that fully rounds out the levels in the game, and makes this game a near masterpiece, it is legitimately one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard in a video game, and I got multiple games with a similar soundtrack to get through, hell yeah.


Overall DKC is an absolute classic, and I loved it dearly.
Now onto DKC 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest