Is it wrong to say that this is my favorite Jak and Daxter game? This feels like the first time where Naughty Dog, post tone and storytelling shift, actually nailed the writing in this world that they've created. The stakes are high but not to the ridiculous "we're using time travel and other dimensions and whatever else we throw at the wall" degree that the previous games had. Instead Jak is fighting against seedy underground mafia shit after being poisoned from beyond the grave by someone he killed in Jak 2 and it rules. This is how I like my Jak and Daxter!

That being said, I do remember being oddly jealous of this game when it came out because I kinda wish we got a Ratchet and Clank racing game too. Yes I know there's racing minigames in the first two games, they're not the same, damnit!

This expansion has three of the most profoundly terrifying moments in WoW history:
The moment where you're questing as a wee little level 20 alt - maybe you're killing a deer, maybe you're mining for ore, maybe you're picking flowers - until the sky turns red and some massive city-sized dragon shows up out of nowhere and obliterates you instantly.
The Whale Shark in Vash'jir. All the fun of the Fel Reaver, now with some Thalassophobia thrown in there for a little extra spice.
*Questing in the Thousand Needles and seeing the Thousand Needles Whale Shark respawn and go through its death animation while you're doing the ice cream questline. Thanks for the mini heart attack, Blizz.

While this collection is definitely the best (or, at the very least, the most easily accessible) way to play these games, keep some things in mind before you buy:

1. They're the Dragon's Lair games, and I hope you know what you're getting into before you make this purchase because this collection probably won't change anyone's mind on the Dragon's Lair style of trial-and-error gameplay.
2. All three of these games take about an hour to beat. Yes, this means you'll be paying 20 dollars for a three hour game. Luckily, this collection goes on sale pretty frequently, unless you're buying the Wii version for over 50 USD, but why the hell would you do that.
3. The presentation of the menus can be best described as "early 2000's DVD" and it comes off as really unpolished. There's choppy music samples that loop, ugly button layouts, the full nine yards. I assume the Wii release of the game looked like this and they didn't really edit it much when porting to modern consoles.
4. There's not much in the way of bonus features. There's an interview and one deleted scene for Time Warp. Not a deal-breaker, but a major disappointment.
5. There's no way to pause or go frame-by-frame on the gorgeous 2D animation. Again, not a deal-breaker, but a disappointment.

But, despite that, if you are looking to play the Dragon's Lair games, this isn't a bad way to do it. The collection could've been better but hey, I'm glad these games are readily available. The 2D animation is charming and these games contain some of Don Bluth's best work. You just have to navigate some ugly menus before you play.

At the risk of making this review sound like a flex, playing this game with the 60 FPS patch on a PS5 honestly makes you forget the fact that the story is a disjointed, Frankenstein's Monster of a narrative cobbled together with shots from a mediocre video game movie. Story sucks, sure, but man, this game hits all the sweet notes of shooty shooty colorful blowy uppy that my brain enjoys. There were times where there were no enemies and all I was doing was just looking around and absorbing the environment art in this game. Game still looks great!

If you don't compare it to the 2002 game (which, to be honest, I didn't, and kept forgetting it was a remake at times despite many levels having their layouts cribbed from the PS2 game) and instead treat it as its own separate thing in its own separate universe, then it's perfectly enjoyable in its own right. Now that Rift Apart is out, this game is instead this weird little experiment that obviously didn't work, and it's fascinating just from that perspective.

The following is a true story that's also going to make me sound really goddamn old. The first time I played this game was at a friend's house because they had a Sega Channel subscription. So this game occupies a funny space in my brain as the One Thing I played on the now mythical Sega Channel service. Not Wily Wars, not Pulseman, not the Garfield Lost Levels. I played Mega Bomberman.
Do I regret this decision? ...yyyeah a little.

Back then, before I realized I was squandering the chance of a lifetime, I liked this game well enough, and had fun with this neighborhood kid since there was a multiplayer mode and we could Blow Shit Up while riding giant bunnies that were definitely Bargain Bin Yoshis, but now that I'm older and actually played this game through to the end, I know of things like "this is a downgraded version of Bomberman '94 with worse graphics and music" and "this game has a hilarious amount of lag in the later levels, lag that gets so bad that it becomes an actual joke".

At this point in time, if you have access to Mega Bomberman, you probably also have access to Bomberman '94. Just play that. And don't play it on the Sega Channel back in 1996 when you could be playing Wily Wars.

P. S. - the final boss is nowhere near as hard as that vampire bat boss that shows up after Stage 4. Fuck that vampire bat boss.

Sega, in 1990, accidentally created the best Mickey Mouse design. Mickey is ever-so-slightly off-model in this game with more rounded features and smaller proportions and it's honestly the friendliest he's ever looked. I can trust this Mickey Mouse. A+, would purchase product from this corporate brand.

As for the rest of the game, it's alright. I can definitely see why it's still remembered today but I'm also not really wowed by it either. I imagine I'd be more impressed with this game if I actually grew up with it, but unfortunately my childhood game was World of Illusion, the sequel, and therefore my overall takeaway from this game is "wow this game is neat but I remember when World of Illusion did it better".

I did, however, appreciate the fact that the Castle-themed portion of the game has a clock tower level where Mickey Mouse platforms across some gears while traveling vertically and dodging bats. Mickeyvania.

I will never forgive this game for tricking me into thinking it was going to be good. The first level of game gives off real potent 90's point-and-click adventure vibes with Belle walking around in town and interacting with the townsfolk with all these fun dialogue trees as Belle solves the mystery of the town's sudden drought (which, by the way, is actually a fun departure from the film to have Belle be the town hero that solves problems), and then the game progresses past that and you just get these really boring levels where Belle slowly walks around in a maze and keeps getting hit in the face with bats because she has no means of defending herself beyond a slow duck.

To this game's credit, at least it's funny bad rather than bad bad and the spritework is actually nice to look at when you're not marveling at the fact that Belle has a short platforming section where she vaults over turtles in a river or wondering why the Be Our Guest segment of this game is Belle dodging murderous forks and knives flying in her direction. The game is so short (there's only four levels and none of them last very long) that I actually kind of low-key recommend this for people looking to comb the Sega Genesis library for hidden gems, if only for the hilarious West Wing section of the game where Belle has to parkour on castle balconies in high heels while every bat in the forest tries to end her life.

Also, if I owned this game as a kid, I would've just kept playing that book collecting minigame over and over rather than playing past the town level. That's where the real action is.

I both admire this game for being a technological marvel on the Sega Genesis (Look at those 3D graphics! Listen to the main menu and credits music going full Amiga on the Genesis sound chip! Admire the cutscene stills that seemingly destroy the color limitations of the hardware!) and hate it for being an absolute brutal monster of a game to play difficulty-wise. There is literally no reason for a game based off a Disney/Pixar property to be this stingy with the lives and health pick-ups but this game just expects you to do all of these levels pixel perfect with your wonky giant hitbox and your weird grabbing radius because you also start out with zero continues! Castlevania had continues!