Good god, that has to be the most 90s title for not just a video game, but any THING ever, isn’t it? I mean, seriously, what’s the sequel gonna be called? Way Past Cool? Totally Tubular? Absolutely Righteous? Fucking Tits? Wait, no, my bad, they never said that last one back in the 90s… or at least, I don’t think they did. But anyway, not only does Totally Rad carry the most 90s title I have ever heard for a video game, but it also carries the most 90s setup for a video game at the time as well, being your typical NES platformer made by Aicom, the same developers as Vice: Project Doom, and being published by Jaleco Entertainment. Truth be told, I have been very hesitant to check out any product that has Jaleco’s dirty logo slapped onto it, due to me trying out some of their games on the NSO service, and finding out that they are not all that good. But then again, with a title like that, how could I not try it out at some point in my life? And now that I have played it, I can say for certain that it is a pretty good game. It doesn’t have too many unique features compared to other NES games, but there is plenty to love here, both ironically and unironically.

The story is your average “save girl” plot for half of it, and the other half involves stopping an evil society from taking over, which is as generic and 90s as you can get for an NES game, the graphics are very simple for an NES game, but they do look pretty appealing, with a lot of good designs for the characters and enemies, as well as horrifying designs for the bosses that will keep me up at night, the music is alright, with the tracks being good from what I could recall, but as I sit here right now, I can barely remember that many of them, so that must mean something, the control is what you would expect for this game, and while it works well for the most part, the shooting, particularly for when you try to charge a shot, feels pretty awkward to pull off, and the gameplay is what you would expect from a game from this era, but there are several additions that make it more enjoyable and unique from others.

The game is your good ol’ regular 2D platformer, where you take control of everybody’s favorite character of all time… Jake, go through a large set of levels in plenty of different locations (even if some of them do blend in together), take down all the enemies that stand in your way using the power of the energy balls that you shoot out of your hands, use plenty of magic spells to give you an advantage against your foes along the way, and take on plenty of definitely unique, yet simple enough bosses that will provide you a good challenge. For the most part, it is all your pretty standard stuff, but as proven by Vice: Project Doom, Aicom knows how to incorporate more into their games then just the checklist features, and thankfully with this game, there are two things that make it stand out: the magic spells, and the cutscenes.

As mentioned previously, the magic spells do help you out throughout the game, and there are plenty of them to choose from, giving you plenty of different ways to help you take on the challenges presented before you… which I only found out when I was very late into the game. For most of my time, I just used the default spell, which heals you completely, and trust me, that was plenty of help for most of the game, but then I discovered several other useful abilities that you gain throughout the game, such as an ability that allows you to freeze time momentarily to get more shots in, or even different suits like one that allows you to fly around in the air. Yeah, they may not be the most creative magic spells for a game like this, but they do lend a great amount of help in taking on the challenges that this game throws at you, especially towards the end. As for the cutscenes, they are, for the most part, your typical NES cutscenes, but the dialogue for these cutscenes contain some of the most forced 90s surfer lingo that I have ever seen, to the point where it is honestly great. It may be pretty cringe-inducing, but it also paints a clear picture as to what developers thought people in that era wanted, as well as what people actually could have talked like back then (I wasn’t around in the 90s, if that wasn’t obvious enough), so it is a joy to read in plenty of instances.

With that being said, it isn’t perfect by any means, or even that great. Like a lot of NES games at the time, the environments, enemies, and attacks, as a whole, are pretty generic, so if you were to just look at screenshots for the game that don’t show off any of the boss designs or terrible dialogue, you would assume that it is just another shovelware platformer for the system, and for the most part, you would be right. It is still fun for a good amount of it, but it isn’t gonna win over anyone who isn’t typically a fan of these kinds of games. Not to mention, there are plenty of points I found in the game where the level design can get kiiiiiiiiiiiiinda bad. It isn’t anything too atrocious, nothing on the same level as the first NES TMNT game, but there were points platforming could be pretty frustrating due to it, leading to some unwanted damage or deaths.

Overall, despite the generic look of the game and the poor level design in places, I guess you could say that this game is totally rad! (please unfollow me right now)....... but no, forreal, it is good for what it is, and while it doesn’t have too much going for it when compared to other similar games on the system, it was something that I was glad to check out after knowing about it for a long time. I would recommend it for those who are big fans of old-school platformers like me, but for everyone else, there are definitely plenty of much better titles you can choose from on the same system. Besides, Totally Rad is a stupid name anyway…………. but not as stupid as its original name, Magic John, which is way too close to being a game about Magic Johnson, which I’m sure we can all agree that NOBODY wants to exist. We already got Shaq Fu twice, we don’t need anymore shit like that from another basketball player.

Game #347

It's an absolute mind trip fever dream that mixes ancient Japan nature sights with gory, uncanny cyberpunk that never feels quite real. Characters' faces distort and change, challenging puzzles merge with mini-games merge with action sequences merge with point-and-click adventure sections, and the adult content also feels like it's coming from a nightmare. I've never quite played anything else like it. Burned into my mind and never leaving, "Geisha" is a type of game that will never be made again.

If you at one point in your life ever decided to play a Gradius game, but you just didn’t think that there was enough Japan in the game to please your needs, then Parodius may be able to satiate your cravings, while making you break your hands in the process of trying to beat it for yourself. This was close to the experience I had when checking out the original game, which was basically your typical Gradius game that came with all the sweet powerups and the insane difficulty that you would expect, but right alongside that was a whole bunch of charming oddities, which range from the enemies and the music, all the way up to the bosses, which made me have a good time with the game as a whole, even if the gameplay was nothing to write home about. Nevertheless, I assume that that original game was pretty successful back when it first came out, because it would then spawn its own series of games that would be released right alongside Gradius, starting with the sequel to the game, Parodius! From Myth to Laughter.

Out of all of the games in the series, this was the one I was most familiar with before going into it, not because I had played it before, but I had seen a good chunk of the game in a video I made a long time ago, and while I hadn’t seen the full thing in action, I pretty much knew what I was getting into. You know, aside from the fact that this was just another Gradius game, so it was probably gonna play just like all the others, and WHADDYA KNOW, that is exactly what we get here. However, once again, the insanity of the visuals and designs of the stages, enemies, and bosses present make the game wonderful to play, and aside from one or two issues that I have with the game as a whole (which you could probably guess), it was a really good time from start to finish.

The story is fairly simple, yet weird for a shmup like this, where the Great Octopus threatens to destroy Earth and all of the inhabitants that live on it, so it is up to Tako, the octopus from the last game, to set out to stop this from happening, right alongside his pals, Vic Viper, TwinBee, and Pentarou, which is pretty much exactly what I expected from the premise of one of these games, and I wouldn’t change it any other way. The graphics are wonderful, not only being very vibrant and colorful for most of the stages, but also having plenty of detailed, goofy, and insane designs for many of the enemies and bosses, which are quite bewildering to see in the best way possible, the music is just as weird as the visuals, with most of the songs either being remixes of classic Gradius tunes (I will never get tired of this track, no matter what game it appears in), but also zany remixes of classical music as well, which is oddly fitting for this game, and I ended up loving a lot of the tracks, and the gameplay/control has basically been imprinted into your brain to where you will automatically know what to do right from the get go, but you can play as a penguin flying in space that can get other penguins following him to shoot projectiles, which automatically makes this game a masterpiece.

The game is a horizontally scrolling shmup, where you take control of one of the weird and wonderful characters I mentioned earlier, each with their own unique movesets and configurations for the weapons, go through plenty of different stages through many varied and odd environments, shoot down every single living thing that you see on screen, because more than likely, that thing will try to kill you in one way or another, gather plenty of different power ups that you can equip and upgrade whenever you need to, or find bells that you can shoot to get different kinds of power ups that will give you plenty of different, temporary advantages, and take on plenty of silly and absurd, yet challenging bosses that will keep you on your toes, unless you have the laser ability with four options following you, in which case you can just blaze right through them in most instances. If you have experience with any other Gradius game released before this and since, you will know what to expect from this game, but if you love this style of gameplay like me, and you don’t mind a dash of weirdness sprinkled in there, then you will feel right at home when you play this title.

Like with the previous game, the main thing that makes this game stand out from all of the others is the odd selection of… things that you will be seeing throughout your journey, which a newcomer like me would look at and wonder what drug he took before he started playing this, while others may be used to this type of imagery and be completely fine with it. Most of the enemies you encounter will consist of penguins, along with plenty of other random animals like fish, crabs, hornets, and whatever else the game decides to pull out of its ass, like clowns that will shoot at you and lips that will shoot their own teeth at you. That’s not even getting into the bosses either, which are without a doubt both the most horrifying and wonderful aspects of this game, where you will encounter such creatures as a flying pirate ship with a cat head on the front, and eagle dressed like Uncle Sam, a puffer fish that will inflate to cover almost the entire screen while you shoot at it, a random sumo wrestler, and a giant naked woman covering herself with a sheet while deploying babies in bubbles to kill you. I can only imagine that this is all relatively tame compared to what other games in the series probably throw at the player, and I would question why the hell any of this is here, but at this point, I have just decided to accept the madness and ride along with it, and I end up having a lot of fun with that mindset.

Obviously, one of the things that holds this game back is that it is a Gradius game, so it does practically nothing to change up the gameplay or innovate on the genre as a whole, but that doesn’t matter so much to me in this case, given how fun the gameplay can still be, and how satisfying it us to fully upgrade yourself to where you can start to decimate everything around you. However, that in itself is a little hard to do, due to this game’s difficulty, because HOLY FUCK, they aren’t pulling punches this time around. I know, I know, I always say these games are hard, and that is never gonna change anytime soon, but I swear, this might just be the hardest Gradius game I have played so far. You need to have the reflexes of a god or the ability to slow down time in order to avoid some of the shit this game throws at you, and while you can get pretty lucky at some points, it almost never tones the difficulty down whatsoever, making it so that I died hundreds of times before I was able to finish it off. I have never seen so many dead penguins in one place before, and now that I have, I can say with great certainty that I don’t feel bad about killing that giant space octopus whatsoever.

Overall, despite a lack of change and the difficulty still managing to surprise me with just how unforgiving it can be, this is still yet another solid entry in this sub-series and franchise as a whole, providing the same fun and addicting experience that fans have come to love with this series, while also still providing enough weird and insane elements to where you wanna see it all out just to know what else the game will pull out of its ass by the end. I would definitely recommend it for fans of the Gradius series as a whole, as well as those who are big fans of other shmups or cute ‘em ups, because while this may not be as crazy or weird as others out there, it still managed to make me laugh and smile for most of the journey, and I’m sure the same can apply to many others as well. Now, if you excuse me, I need to go stare at the ceiling for like a good hour or so, just so that I can get all of the insanity out of my mind. Gotta be well-rested and prepared for the next time I try to play one of these games, y’know.

Game #551

Pirates! is an aimless, repetitive, mini-game-ridden mess that should not work. And yet, it is one of the most loved and enduring computer games of all-time, with dozens of ports and remakes released over the span of nearly two decades. Why? Because it is all so expertly held together by a way-deeper-than-it-has-to-be meta-game that manages to give meaning to the way its gameplay elements come together. The back-and-forth between the wide variety of the player's possible actions and playstyles on one hand and the crunchy reactiveness of its living open world and its well-researched historical background on the other allows the imagination to go wild, resulting in a very personal emergent swashbuckling story full of action, drama, adventure and romance. (Or you could just, you know, trade sugar and stuff, if that's your thing.)