126 reviews liked by Starbeam


The gradual warping of doom's levels is genuinely cool and unnerving. If this came out in 2014 it would be called "Cursed Doom" and it's most viewed let's play would be a vinesauce video and all would be right in the world. Instead it's about dementia. Dementia is the 2020's version of dead wives.

Gameplay- With a unique take on the conventional platformer design, Super Princess Peach offers players a relaxing experience through eight worlds. The toad-rescuing component of the game adds an appealing level of strategy, requiring players to explore every corner of each level if they want to reach higher levels. A shop where players can buy upgrades using coins adds an element of depth to the action, allowing users to customise Peach's powers and enhancing replay value. With Perry, the Parasol joining Peach as an ally, an additional gameplay element becomes available, which requires players to utilise their powers to defeat enemies and overcome obstacles. Super Princess Peach stands out further due to the vibe powers and emotion meter that give players a unique and easy technique for communicating with the game's environment.

Super Princess Peach departs from traditional Mario platformers, however its gameplay ideas are creative and well-done. The inclusion of the vibe powers and emotion metre to the gameplay not only improves its complexity but also ties in with the narrative of the game, as Peach utilises her emotions to overcome difficulties, like Inside Out if it was a video game. The way Perry's skills grow throughout the game ensures sure that the battle never becomes less engaging and dynamic, with new strategies and techniques appearing throughout of the time. Super Princess Peach is a unique and endearing addition to the Mario Universe overall, and I'm not sure Showtime can top what Super Princess Peach was.

Story- In "Super Princess Peach (2005)," the story occurs on Vibe Island, an unknown location rumoured to be home to the powerful Vibe Sceptre. Eager to use its abilities, Bowser creates his vacation home on the island and, once his minion discovers the sceptre, assumes control of it. Bowser utilises his strength to transport Toads throughout the island to capture Mario, Luigi, and various other characters. Princess Peach, armed only with a sentient parasol named Perry which Toadsworth handed her, starts on a solo rescue journey upon hearing of the chaos triggered by Bowser's actions.

Peach encounters many kinds of challenges as she goes through the island's different parts, each imbued with the remaining emotional energy unleashed by the Vibe Sceptre. While the role-reversal plot—a princess saving the plumbers—is well-known, the game includes new systems where Peach's emotions influence her abilities. Peach fights Bowser's troops with Perry, resulting in an argument at Bowser's Villa. Super Princess Peach's plot was acceptable but nothing new, in my opinion, as role-reversal plots are frequently used in media. The friendship theme in the game itself reminds me quite a bit of Kirby Star Allies if that particular game wasn't so mediocre

[Summary]
Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 9
Story: 6
Characters: 7
Music: 8
Difficulty: Easy
Audience: 3+
Perk: Collector

Final Score: 8/10

Super Princess Peach despite it not being that difficult of a game, was a fun game to play. It’s great that this game had experimented with new characters for the Mario universe, which I’m hoping Bowser gets his own spin off game at some point since he still doesn’t have one. I doubt that Princess Peach Showtime would top this game but even though it’s too easy

This review contains spoilers

"It looks like things will work out here, but what about your world? Will it be alright?

"Hey other world! Be good to Josh"

I have been a massive fan of Earthbound for half of my life. I was first exposed to the game when I first played smash Bros and really liked using the characters Ness and Lucas. I had never heard of them and used my computer to look up who they were. I discovered that they were from a rpg series named Mother, a trilogy that only saw one game release in the west called Earthbound. I searched for ways to play the game and managed to get it on my dad's old laptop. It ran horribly and the games mechanics didn't really click with me and yet I saw it through to the end and fell in love with how the game ended its story. I left Earthbound with a relatively positive feeling about the game but with the opinion that it wasn't anything special. Yet, for a game that was "nothing special" it would constantly call back to me... I would play through it over and over again throughout the years as it released on different hardware and fall more and more in love with it each time. Now, as I sit here on it's 30th anniversary it stands as one of my absolute favourite games of all time, just as special to me as foundational childhood favourites like A Link to the Past, Super Mario World and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of sky and taking up the same space I have in my heart for games that are precious to me beyond words like Dragon Quest 5. Earthbound is special to me, it's one of my favourite things ever... but this isn't an Earthbound review... it's a Mother 3 one.

I have thought about playing Mother 3 many times throughout the years but relatively early on I clung to a stubborn belief that if I was patient enough it would be localized and I could play it for the first time in some legit capacity. This year and what has happened with Mother 3 on switch was finally the straw that broke the camel's back. I would deny myself this experience no longer, if Nintendo didn't want me to experience the game in my native language than I would finally take up the work of fans much more pationate than I and experience it that way. I bought a cheap copy of the game I found online, threw it into my gba sp and got playing.

As I crushed through each chapter I could tell I was enjoying the game but something was off. It had the same charm and heart of Earthbound but the story seemed so much more strange for lack of a better word. The whiplash between heart wrenching scenes of sadness and despair were juxtaposed with scenes of baffling humor and downright otherworldly absurdity. Earthbound had these moments of craziness that often resulted in the games best moments but the darker moments of Earthbound were so much less personal than Mother 3. Sure there are cults and alien abductions and ither zany happenings but those things were happening to the world around you. It impacts you as a member of the world rather than as a character directly, the stakes are personal to you as a resident who is destined to die unless they take up a call to action and fight. Mother 3 on the other hand is nothing but personal. The Pig army had taken over your town, corrupted your friends, ruined nature, destroyed utopia, killed your mother, taken your brother and broken your unbreakable father. You are left with nothing (well, you still got Boney so not NOTHING nothing) and it is in that moment where you set out to make things right. You've seen what's happening and even though Lucas is a cry baby they have decided enough is enough. Sure, you discover later that you are one of two beings capable of waking a sleeping dragon that has the power to re-write the world itself, but that is not what drives you initially or emotionally. Your call to action is much more personal, your reasons for saving the world are much more personal and the final climax is much more personal.

The ending is what changed my opinion of the game as a whole. Up until that point I had decided that I loved the look of the game, the rhythm based battle system coupled with Earthbound's scrolling health bar was way to much fun and that the characters were endearing and charming... but the game lacked the wow factor Earthbound did. After experiencing the ending however my opinion has completly shifted. The way in which the ending tied the whole game together for me was an absolute master class. Never before has the ending of a game altered my perception of the entire experience so much since the very first time I played Earthbound.

I included the text at the begining of this review because that moment really stuck out to me. The game's story at the end (in my interpretation anyway) was one about grief. When the worst of the worst happenes how do you respond? Do you hide yourself away, never allowing anyone to come close to you or hurt you again? Do you find the emotions to harmful to the point where you escape them through erasing everything that made you you? Do you use those emotions to spur yourself on, allowing yourself to feel it all and grow from it? I have been in a place where my heart was empty... I have tried to run to a place where no one could ever hurt me again. That attempt failed and when it did I was forced to face the feelings that drove me to emptiness. It was a turning point- would I grow and evolve or would I stay empty and die. I chose to live, I chose to grow... I chose to feel. Mother 3 presents you with these differing viewpoints and methods of dealing with grief, presents a senario where a character manages to use grief in order to grow and then in the end asks you, the player, "hey are you good?" "You've taken the time to see our story through to the end and now it's time to continue living yours... we hope you are okay!" The story of Lucas and Mother 3 is one of tragedy and loss and how one weak, timid boy was forced to grow up. From that grief he came out with strength unrivaled. It wasn't the end for him but a new begining. Armed with that knowledge the game then asks you the player "what say you?" "The world will throw everything its got at you and in those moments when you are faced with grief how will you respond?" "Please take care and grow just like Lucas!"

So yea, the ending of Mother 3 really spoke to me. I was expecting for the sad story and endearing characters to be the thing that sold me on it but was blown away when it instead offered me insight into life as a whole. It was a conclusion I had reached without ever playing the game but having it reinforced at a time in my life where I could feel myself slipping into old habits resulted in a reaffirmation of my resolve. I don't need years to know that this game is special to me... it just is already. I need more time to think it over in my brain, more time to experience it again from start to finish once more but I can say with certainty that Mother 3, like Earthbound before it, is more than just a game to me. It too takes a special place in my heart now as a game that speaks to me unlike anything that has come before it.

A truly beautiful experience that I will carry forever. The most no brainer 5/5 for me of all time.

Exactly my kind of batshit insane: deploy your Robo vassal to protect your hikkikomori lifestyle from aggressive members of society, and as your guard dog Rubber Ducky attempts to solo the back entrance you bug your game out by farming resources from your neighbors house outside of designated post-wave downtime. I hope Nito keeps fixing the bugs but never fixes the infinite double jump or the fact that the house literally has no roof.

chill game. no evil ass subtexts this time around.

I had the authentic Superman 64 experience as a kid, but I was new enough to video games that I blamed most of its faults on myself. I thought I just wasn't good enough to get the rings. I wanted so badly to play this game that over and over, while the time limit for the rings ticked down, I would fly down, pick up a car, and throw it, desperate to squeeze out some enjoyment before Lex Luthor laughed at my dumb ass again. Perhaps the most abusive relationship I've had with a piece of software

A technical marvel that is completely fucking miserable to play.

I'll get this out of the way, first: Gimmick might be the most impressive game I have ever seen running on a Famicom. I legitimately do not know nor could I begin to understand how a game that's only a few hundred kilobytes managed to pack visuals this pretty, sounds this pleasing, and an actual fucking physics engine onto a cart that ran on a console manufactured in the year 1983. By rights, this should not exist. People everywhere seem to constantly express surprise that Gimmick isn't actually another one of those retro throwback indie games, and they're right to be shocked. This might be the game that sells me on how drastic of an upgrade the Famicom was to the consoles that came before it. The Atari 2600 isn't shit compared to this. I digress. The point to make is that Gimmick really ought to be celebrated as a feat of engineering in video games.

Regrettably, though, video games need to be played.

Looking at Gimmick is significantly more fun than actually interacting with Gimmick. Yumetaro slides around like he's wearing ice skates long before you get to the actual ice level. Emulating rudimentary physics on the Famicom is undoubtedly an impressive feat, but it's handled in way that only manages to frustrate: downward slopes have almost zero friction, so you slide down them too quickly; it takes an obscene amount of time for Yumetaro to stop moving after you stop holding the button; enemies can turn on a dime, with none of them under any obligation to bother observing something as petty as the fundamental forces of the universe.

I was tempted to write about how I'm done giving the time of day to "cruel games", but I think that's prescribing a design intent when that's not necessarily what's here. What I'm ultimately and actually annoyed with is the fact that it's impossible to intuit certain enemy patterns or placements, which is where that feeling of cruelty stems from. The archers in Stage 4 are probably the most obvious and most unfair example, where the only shot you have at dodging their arrows is if you have prior knowledge as to where they actually are; they love shooting you from off-screen, with one placed specifically to catch you at the arc of your jump as you come out from the top of a previous screen, and another waiting at the end of a hallway to snipe you with a projectile that is literally a single pixel thick and roughly the same shade as the background. It's trivial to deal with if you know that it's coming, but that's if you know that it's coming.

This is a pattern that continues consistently throughout the game, but reaches an apotheosis at the end of Stage 5. The stage boss here is a little orb guy in a cart that moves horizontally along the top of the screen, shooting lasers down at you. To hit him, you have to bounce your star off of the top of the conveyor belt on the left, or fling it from the top of the conveyor belt down and hope that it bounces up the way that you want it to. The star, following the laws of physics, cannot bounce higher than its initial, highest bounce; essentially, you have one chance to hit the boss with a conveyor belt ricochet every time he comes near, and if you whiff, you have to wait for him to go all the way to the right and then all the way back to the left again. After he takes three hits, he fires his lasers even faster. The lasers also explode when they hit the ground, so your only option is to weave between them in mid-air. After he takes the fourth hit, he shoots the lasers so quickly that it is literally impossible to weave through them. If he takes the fourth hit too close to the left side of the screen, you won't be able to charge up your star fast enough to throw it, guaranteeing that you take damage. The fifth hit takes him out, at which point a second boss walks out from stage right to fire homing missiles and Contra spread shots at you. There is an unspeakable darkness within whoever designed this fight. A joyous mind cannot conjure these tortures.

The only part of the game harder than this is getting the Stage 4 secret item that lets you fight the true final boss, where you have one chance to jump off of your star (it has collision) and into an above alcove. If you miss it, you drop down onto a checkpoint, and you can't go back to try again. You can game over and continue to restart the entire level, but using a continue clears the remaining three secret items from the prior three stages out of your collection. You need six secret items in total — one from each level — to go to the true final stage. You either make that jump on your first attempt, or you have to start the entire game over from scratch. Again, I want to call this cruel. I don't know what word would better apply.

It's disappointing, because this is a game that I really would have liked to love. I think Yumetaro's design is so ridiculously over-the-top cute that it loops back around to being funny, and that endears me to him. I think the fact that Sunsoft were able to make all of these pieces fit together on hardware as rudimentary as the Famicom is admirable. I just wish the act of playing it didn't feel like pulling teeth.

Can I fuck 🥺

This game is nothing short of Spectacular. Even for this games shortcomings like the combat which doesn't pickup until maybe half way through the game. This immediately gets offset by the world's haunting and beautiful atmosphere while also being backed by the excellent soundtrack made by Alexander Brendon, Michiel van de Bos (Unreal Composer) and Dan Gardopee.
This is a masterclass example of developing a grounded and believable world.