i be havin the best time, then BAM, a fish spawns on top of me randomly and i die

basically the first rage game? outside of maybe Top Banana it's the 90s game that's reminded me most of ArmorGames-tier flash platformers: bizarre aesthetics in a platformer based around one central gimmick that's often brutally hard. however, unlike all of those games (and top banana, which is basically just similar on aesthetics), this game's rock solid in how it implements its fishing hook mechanics, with umihara being an absolute blast to control through the cleverly designed levels, i'd def have finished it in one sitting if playing on legitimate nintendo hardware didnt hurt the fuck out of my thumb. would be a solid contender for my favorite platformer if it wasn't for how fucking annoying the enemies are. the stationary ones that are always there are fine, but when a fuckin salmon or whatever randomly decides to spawn next to me and knock me into spikes that shit aint good. also, the bosses are fucking terrible!

My love for NES action-platformers is no secret, and anyone who has followed me for really any length of time should already have me pegged as a Ninja Gaiden fan. It may then be a bit surprising that I only played it for the first time just a few years ago, sitting on it for years after the Castlevania series turned me on to the genre.

Platforming is as precise as I like it, with controls that are so tightly designed every input feels like a full body commitment to the outcome. Power-ups have specific use cases, and finding the balance of when to use one and when to abstain feels every bit as good as developing mastery over the subweapons in Castlevania. Repeat playthroughs feel more and more rewarding as you build your skill and familiarity with the game. It's a game made just for me, so much so that I wound up playing all three NES Ninja Gaidens back-to-back, completely forgetting to feed myself in the process. Having to drag your ass to a McDonalds at 3am because you were too caught up playing video games is just a sign that you're having a good time (or that you're possibly negligent about your personal health and well being. Either or!)

It's not a perfect game, however. Much like other games of its ilk the difficulty spikes harshly, though in this case it occurs in the last third of the game, and bosses become so frustrating that I wouldn't blame you for falling back on save states. The wall jumping gimmick is also a little hit-or-miss. Definitely ironed out in the sequels, but somewhat janky here. There's some sloppy enemy placements as well, and the level design is overall a bit less intentioned than Castlevania.

It's a surprisingly cinematic game, too. This was very much an era where a game's narrative was relegated to the first few pages of the manual and almost entirely superfluous to the actual software, but Ninja Gaiden takes pride in its story. It's campy as all hell, blending elements of espionage thrillers and Tokusatsu. Ninjas fighting against ancient magic, other worldly demonic entities, and the CIA... It's dumb as hell and shockingly complex for what it is, and I love it. It helps that the cutscenes look as impressive as they do, with the shot of Ryu looking out towards Jaquio's temple being a particular stand out.

Ninja Gaiden and its two NES sequels were remade and packed together on one cart for the SNES, so if you want to give this game a shot on better hardware, it might be worth checking that out. Either way, Ninja Gaiden definitely earns its legacy and should not be slept on by any fan of the genre.

+pleasing, cartoony graphics that make a good showcase of the PSX's middle era of games
+I personally think the tank controls are pretty solid, about as good as I could expect for this era. it helps that you can move laterally during jumps, and that there's a quickturn as well
+there's a remarkable amount of extra content through bonus levels, multiple types of collectables, secret stages (a whole secret island!), and unlockable rooms in each level
+around the middle there really is a difficulty sweet spot where the challenges feel traversable within the bounds of the game's controls... brief but it's there
+lifting the "lose your coins" health system from sonic keeps the boss battles in particular from getting frustrating

-analog controls are godawful. I personally stuck to keeping digital mode on and using the stick
-during the first half of the game the levels are trivially easy, and very short without getting all of the extra goodies
-second half of the game is the exact opposite, with uncomfortably precise platforming, deaths from off-screen projectiles, framerate dips in tricky sections, and levels that can reach up to 10 minutes long
-to compound the above, the game uses a life system that forces you to restart the entire level when you lose all lives. it's frustrating to replay the beginning sections of levels in a relatively slow game over and over, especially since continuing at the game over screen gives you a measly 2 lives to work with
-the hit detection with croc's swipe move is really rough, partially because the move itself has no weight. boss battles especially suffer from this, since you can often collide with their hurtbox while you're edging close enough to hit them
-some of the design in the final world goes off the rails, with poor explanations for some of the puzzles, or stage designs that feel unfinished

as a document of early 3d platformer design, I think this holds up better than some other titles from the era, especially as this was originally in pre-production as a Super FX-enhanced SNES game. however, actually playing it is more a chore than anything, indicating that this evolutionary branch of 3d design was doomed to end here.

RE2 is really fun game just like RE1 both making for some amazing games and I absolutely adore the style of these games.

First things first, The police building. It is such a joy to explore and an upgrade to the mansion from RE1. I absolutely love the atmosphere of the building and some of the tragic stories you learn while exploring every nook and cranny of this building, for example Leon's desk filled with party hats and decorations and notes welcoming Leon to the team but instead of smiles around you it's just the zombified remains of your coworkers all of them out to kill you. I liked stuff like that even if they are kind of scarce.
While the police building was amazing and really fun to explore, I do feel like the game did drop in quality after leaving the police building to escape but that part was still fun nonetheless, albeit not on the same level as that feeling of exploring the police building for the first time.

Next up, it's the combat, which has also gone up a bit by filling the rooms with more zombies and more difficult variants to deal with but at the same time hitting that perfect balance where you're getting swarmed by zombies while also having a chance to fight back if you have the means (which you probably will since this game has ammo everywhere lmao).
Mr. X for Claire's campaign was also scary and a real threat the first few times but he just stops being a threat after the 3rd time he appears because you can just find ways to avoid him by that point while also being loaded with bullets and such which just gets rid of any panic and fear he made you feel at the start which was kind of disappointing.

The voice acting also got an upgrade and by that I mean instead of sounding like a parody, everyone now sounds like a Spiderman 2 NPC.

This game was honestly a fun ride from start to finish and this game is a must play for anyone who enjoyed RE1 no doubt about it.

I can understand why a lot of people think this shmup is antiquated. It's the kind of game that actively hates the player - if you die at all in most parts of the game you can probably kiss your run goodbye because of the brutal checkpoint system that feels out of place given that Gaiares is a Thunder Force style shmup. The shot absorption mechanic, which I can best describe as "shmup kirby", is a really neat concept but feels underutilised because most of the weapons are unviable, you'll want to be getting the V. Laser from the stage 2 midboss and then doing your best to keep that for the rest of the game.

But I dunno, I just think it's neat. The stages are fun on their own, the boss designs are kinda jank but very unique and the devs were "nice" enough to include a boss rush in stage 7. Also one of the best early Mega Drive soundtracks imo with a lot of simple but catchy tunes.

On another note, you should check the North American advertising that happened for Gaiares. It's peak early 90s cheese that's just adorable in retrospect lol

Comix Zone is one of those late era Genesis games that came packed inside a cardboard box (the bane of any CIB Genesis collector) and relied more upon its uniqueness than it did the quality of its gameplay. It occupies that same space in my mind that Vectorman does - all style but very little substance, though Comix Zone takes things a bit further with some odd gameplay choices and jankiness.

You play as Sketch Turner, a comic book artist with the most on-the-nose name a character like him could possibly have. One night he gets sucked into the comic he's drawing and has to find a way out, because this is a mid-90s underground comic and that means it's a total nightmare world. Each level sees Sketch bouncing between panels (this game's way of segmenting areas of gameplay as screens) and pages, solving very rudimentary puzzles and getting into fist fights with enemies. Visually it's great. Animations looks terrific for the Genesis, and the game perfectly captures the "tude" of 1995 comic books. Dialog appears, appropriately, in speech bubbles, and striking enemies and obstacles makes sound effects pop up on screen. STI really leaned into the comic book aesthetic here and it's easily the game's strongest suit.

That's because the gameplay is at its best moments unremarkable and at its worst downright messy. I play video games to relax, to escape from the real world and get out of my own head for a little while. After a long day of punching walls and grating and utterly destroying my hands, the last thing I want to do is play a game where I take damage by wailing on doors. I don't like to bring my work home with me, Sega!

I always struggled to get very far in Comix Zone as a kid due to how bad Sketch's jump feels and the level of precision that's sometimes involved with needing to platform your way through a screen. He just has a certain weightiness to him that makes everything feel kinda bad. Combat, jumping, picking up items... Nothing feels as good as it ought to. The game is also incredibly short, and while it's somewhat non-linear, it won't take you very long at all to see everything Comix Zone has to offer. At least if you want to revisit it today you don't have to commit to its poor overall feel for very long.

It's that short play time and its overall uniqueness that I think make it worth playing today. Late era Genesis games tried to be attention grabbers, for better or worse. It meant you had a lot of games that tried to push the boundaries of what the system could do visually, but too often that ambition came at the cost of making these games fun. While Comix Zone is pretty illustrative of this, there isn't anything else out there attempting to be what it is, and I think that alone gives it some worth.

Worth a look for the crazy art direction, reminiscent of H.R. Giger, not so much worth a play. You collect a few spells as you progress, and the first level as a result is really dull with your starting attack and not an ideal first impression. When you have all the spells around stages 4 and 5 it's pretty solid for a while, then it gets way too difficult afterwards. The final boss in particular takes a fucking obscene number of hits, even if you save up all your lightning spells (which work like shmup bombs) up to that point. Basically, did not get much fun out of playing it, but moreso out of looking at it.

I had a lot of hope for Tyler Model 005 as the game looks very nice graphically and has an above average soundtrack considering that this is Reversed Interactives first game. This game was published by Maximum Games, which is a name I knew, but didn't really remember from where. If you are currently facing the same situation or haven't heard of them before, Maximum Games have also published a game called Troll and I, which would've been a red flag and turned me away from buying this game, but obviously this didn't happen.

As I already mentioned, I do not have any problems with this games graphics or soundtrack. My real problems lay in the controls and mechanics.
At it's core Tyler Model 005 is a 3D action platformer with RPG elements. Unfortunately none of these elements are implemented in any sensical way.
I'm pretty sure Tylers jumps aren't physics based, meaning that they just move you up and forward by a bit. Tyler also has the ability to move objects with the left bumper. As I already mentioned there isn't really a physics engine, meaning that objects won't fall down whatever is beneath them as long as they touch that other object. I should also mention that this ability is only needed to be used during the tutorial.
Tyler has two abilities when holding the A button. The first one is an auto jump to a ledge, which is fairly well implemented and whose only problem lays in it needing the same input as another ability, leading to a misinput.
The second ability situated on holding the A button is a wall-run. This only works in theory as it sometimes just decides to stop working. Another problem with it is that you can use it against sloped objects. This builds up infinite speed and creates a backwards long jump situation where you are able to clip through floors, which allowed me to skip a whole section of the game.

This game also just happens to be home to one of the worst combat systems I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Tyler has a knife which can be used by first pressing Y to actually equip the thing and then the right trigger to use it. Now you can also not use the knife, but due to doing way less damage without it, this is never practical. Now my problem with this stems from Tyler sometimes just randomly unequipping the knife for no reason. But even when you hit an enemy, there is no indicator, that you have actually hit them. Combat is also, with one exception, entirely optional.

The only reason why you might want to attack an enemy is them dropping experience points, leading to Tyler leveling up.

Most of the abilities you can get by leveling up either make the game even worse or are almost useless, but there is just one ability, that only attempts to make the game a bit less insufferable, which is increasing Tylers battery life, which gets me to talk about the main gimmick of the game.
Tylers battery will continuously drain, when he isn't in close proximity to a light source. Not only does this mechanic not add to the game, but it rather gets worse because of it. For example, I died around 5 seconds after starting the game while reading the tutorial, because it starts you off in a dark area. This mechanic frankly is nothing more than an annoyance and has no reason to exist. As I already mentioned, you can upgrade Tylers battery life to last up to 40% longer which does fix this problem for the most part, but leads to a whole new problem, as it lead to me forgetting about the mechanic a few times and then randomly dieing when I put my controller down due to getting bored of this game.

While this game is graphically impressive for such a small game studio, the actual environments look very boring. You basically move around rooms of a run down house during the 1950s and later the 1970s. The rooms themselves look mostly the same. The enemies and other models also tend to look like Unity stock assets and after looking up the developer Reversed Interactive online I found out that they are mostly known for creating and selling said assets, which is not at all surprising.

This games story is unsurprisingly mediocre. To summarize it a bit, Tyler basically wants to find out what happened to his creator. This is an alright basis, but they didn't really do anything with it. After meeting a second robot called Conrad you basically only do what he says and things just happen around you for no reason. About halfway through the story shifts to suddenly be about time travel and I don't have to tell you that they didn't manage to create and subsequently follow a ruleset for this.
The game ends with one last filler mission where you have to find four switches, two of which require to be powered (so you have to find out how to do that too), which are hidden randomly around the house. Finding these switches was anything but fun.

Overall Tyler Model 005 was one of the greatest wastes of money and time I've had to endure in my life. I basically only beat it because it being only about 4 hours long. I would not advice you to ever consume this game in any significant way. Please stay away from it.
I only didn't give this game half a star because of it's small length. The rush of positive emotions I experienced when the credits rolled are yet to be matched by anything else.

YOU DON'T GET TO THE TOP BY CRYING

The buildup I experienced going into Yakuza 0 was intense for a multitude of reasons. Not only did my decision to go in release order (LAD notwithstanding) lead to me going through several games before reaching this one, not only did I have to endure trials to play this on PC, which ultimately ended in failure, but because this was built up as the best game in the series and one of the best games ever made. While I don’t think it lives up to THAT high of a standard, it’s still a fantastic game with some of the highest highs the series has ever seen.

To start with the gameplay, it has a pretty interesting innovation with its combat. This game introduces the style system, where you can switch between three different fighting styles for each character, with a fourth one based on their original movesets being unlocked after the Real Estate and Cabaret side games. I really like this system, it adds a good amount of variety to combat while also being really, for lack of a better term, stylish. Also, the more the gap between Yakuza and Devil May Cry is bridged, the better.

I’ll briefly go over each of the main fighting styles, starting with Kiryu’s. Brawler style is cool as a sort of early version of Kiryu’s normal fighting style. I noticed quite a few parallels between it and the Legend style he unlocks later, but with Brawler being quite a bit more scrappy, which is fitting for Kiryu’s place in the story. Rush was my personal favorite to use, especially for 1 on 1 fights. I really like the mobility it offers, and the bobbing and weaving you can do with some moves and the guard almost made me feel like I was playing God Hand at times. I wasn’t a fan of Beast style at first, I didn’t see much utility in the guarding mechanic it had, but once I unlocked more abilities, including some attacks that come out of the guarding stance, I realized that Beast style is completely broken. It was an easy go-to for tearing apart crowds.

Moving onto Majima’s, I feel like Thug is a similar type of early adoption of Majima’s fighting style that Brawler was for Kiryu, though I think Thug’s focus on movement and evasion is a bit more interesting. It feels like a closer equivalent to Rush than Brawler at times. The Slugger style rivals Beast in how meathead-y it can be, even with just the bat by itself. I think it ties in with how Majima has a much emphasis on different weapons between the two. The last one I want to go over is Breaker, which is my favorite in terms of choreography. Incorporating breakdancing into combat is really cool to see, and this is one of my favorite examples of it in a game. Really like the freeze poses too, those are dope. Overall I’m a big fan of the style system, I’m excited to see how the system is expanded on in the Judgment games.

A really cool piece of how it incorporates its mechanics into the story is the role of money. The most brought up example is the progression system, but it’s a recurring thread through every facet of the game. Most of the key facets of the plot are about making money and buying properties, it forms a handful of the villains’ ideologies, and a good chunk of the substories focus on money. It’s really cool that the focus on money, as symbolism of Japan’s bubble economy at the time, has a really large presence.

But the most notable one is its skill trees, which has a lot going for it. I think its structure is the best middle ground the series has had between the freeform skill orb system in 4 and the more linear progression of the other games in the series. I still think 4 has my favorite leveling system for how much freedom you have with spending orbs, but I see a lot of value in the skill tree. Speaking of value, I do like the idea of making money the indicator of your progress. Like I said, money is a large aspect of 0’s story and time period, so tying that into your growth for both characters is really neat. I also like how this means progression isn’t just tied to combat or substories. You can get tons of money from selling items, gambling in the Fate Extra catfighting ring, or engaging in each of the characters’ main side stories. Going through them as you move forward makes the feeling of progression satisfying in a pretty unique way for the series.

So there's all sorts of systems that help you make money and support this system really well. However, there's one teensy-weensy but ever so crucial tiny, little detail. None of them matter. For the purposes of gaining money, every single one of these methods is completely irrelevant. And that's all because of one man. Or rather, because of four men…

I like Mr Shakedown in theory, having a superboss walk down the street with steep consequences for losing, while resulting in a massive payout if you beat him. They even have funny little stories as you fight them. In execution, his presence completely ruins the progression of the game. It doesn’t take long for the fights to become incredibly easy to exploit, completely eliminating the risk element of the risk-reward system and making for a painfully easy way to get billions of yen in no time flat. It makes it so that any money management from the side games is nonexistent, making the possibility of doing them all in one go rather than doing them over the course of the game much easier, and, more importantly, you can max out skill trees incredibly fast. I feel like the team was slightly aware of this, so they had to balance the skill tree around him by making sharp price hikes in abilities, especially for Kiryu. But then the result of that is feeling the need to grind out Mr Shakedown to get anywhere close to getting more skills. Being able to max yourself out this easily, alongside the side modes for each character (which are much easier to do all in one go than people would have you believe), leads to the bosses feeling like complete jokes until the very last chapter of the game. This is by far the most exploitable progression system in the series, to the point that it was incredibly hard to ignore. I feel like the game would be better off without that system in place.

But let’s put all of that aside because, as much as I really like it, the gameplay isn’t really the main appeal of the series, the story is. I was originally going to start this by hardening my stance on its role as a starting point, (To summarize, I think starting with the originals is the best way to go about it, but if you start with 0 or LAD like I did, I won’t hold it against you) but I think focusing on that will distract from how it being the 6th title impacted the way I perceive the story. I think the game’s structure is the best execution of having multiple protagonists that they’ve done in the series. Frequently switching back and forth between Kiryu and Majima does wonders for holding my interest in both of them, especially with the TV serial style they’re going for with this. Kiryu’s side of the story is pretty awesome. It’s interesting to see Kiryu in a state where he’s still learning and not anywhere close to the level of dominance that he has in the other titles. It’s cool seeing the way he’s influenced by the people closest to him, and those that challenge him throughout the game. However, I felt that Majima’s side was much stronger in this regard. It might be a stretch to say, but this almost feels more like Majima’s story than Kiryu’s at points. My main intrigue for this was due to seeing him before the events of this game in Yakuza 4, and I’m glad to see they really capitalized on that. Seeing Majima start to cut loose due to his personal stake in the events of the story is the coolest thing. All of Majima’s dialogue in the final chapter had me absolutely giddy.

The villain lineup was also pretty good, I’ll go through each of them briefly. Kuze is great, easily my favorite of the three lieutenants. I love how persistent he is, he’s like a rival character in an action game that’s constantly testing Kiryu. He also happens to have the best boss theme in the game, but that’s besides the point. Shibusawa is pretty neat too, though I feel like he could’ve had a closer dynamic with Kiryu before the very end, like what Kiryu had with Kuze. Kuze and Shibusawa sort of remind me of Saix and Xemnas from Kingdom Hearts II, where the latter has a more imposing role in the narrative, but the former feels more like the main antagonist through his relationship with the MC. The third lieutenant, Awano was a bit of a letdown tbh. His speech to Kiryu was fantastic, but it feels like they didn’t know what to do with him after that point and kind of forced him into a boss fight. The last one I want to mention, Sagawa, is my favorite villain of the entire game. In each scene he’s in, he exudes so much pressure from his calm expressions and the way he talks. Every exchange he has with Majima feels like he’s seeing right through him and has him completely under his thumb. It makes it all the more interesting to see the kind of impact he has on Majima as a character. And that’s the key part of Yakuza 0, we get to see how the people that Kiryu and Majima meet and the actions they take influence them, and form the way they understand the world and themselves. But as satisfying as their growth is, all of it has a tinge of sadness to it, with the knowledge of what’s to come.

I think the most important part of having the context of the whole series as I played, was the way it unmasked the tale’s true nature. All the way through to the credits, Yakuza 0 is a tragedy. When I saw those very scenes of their growth, like any scene with Kiryu and Nishikiyama, or the epilogues of both protags’ stories, I found myself constantly thinking of what they would become in the future, how their decisions to follow these paths would lead to them being thrown into a world that will tear them apart, one that they can’t escape from no matter how many times they pull through. The dark undercurrents of every event, no matter how lighthearted or exhilarating a moment could be, really stung in so many moments. Even if you played 0 first, I urge you to go through it one more time after 5 just to feel the impact of this.

But beyond all the great writing, fun combat or tragic undertones, this game reminded me of my deep love for a series that, relatively speaking, I’ve only recently been acquainted with. I know it sounds superficial, but all of the the small moments of noticing references to past games, like certain music tracks or appearances of characters, and recognizing how the people that Kiryu, Majima and the others met over the course of these twin journeys made them into the people that are so close to my heart, it all really got to me. No amount of critiques I have, even the most damning ones, are going to change that for me. This and Like A Dragon make me really excited for the future of the franchise, and all of the twists and turns that come with it. I’m really happy that I got a chance to go through this series. RGG studios, for whatever your future has in store, I’ll receive you, cause you always brighten my life.

Full disclosure: a few years ago I was exactly the person who’d blasted through this on freeplay, then dutifully nodded to myself, “this is the best shmup ever made,” and then proceeded to never play anything else in the genre.

I don’t know if getting a 9CC admonishes me of that, but it’s certainly forced me to see the game in ways I never had before. And I totally get why it grates on people: it’s setpiece-heavy, memorization-intensive, and each of the five stages pulls in wildly different directions- sometimes an intense bullet-hell, sometimes an infuriatingly slow crawl through the box factory.

And the scoring system! Every screen ends up being this order of operations puzzle to chain every trio of colors as quickly and precisely as possible- miss a few and you’ll lock yourself out of the chance to spawn extra groups of enemies. All this is to say, it can be maddening for the first few hours as you get a feel for the rhythm of the game, trying to keep in step with the rigid dance of the whole thing.

The feature that made me really start to love the game was the way you can play levels without firing a shot, what the game calls “Dot Eater.” While it’s cool on its own that you can play entirely as pacifist (and a daunting challenge in its own right), it’s the way this feature intersects with standard play that I’ve found really helpful; if you happen to miss one of your targets when trying to complete a combo- you can wait a bit, survive, and then re-enter the fray when you’ve regained your composure. It’s definitely made replaying the levels more enjoyable- of course going for the S++ rank requires near-perfection, but you’re given a little more flexibility as you strive for mastery, stretches where you neatly chain through everything on screen, take a moment to take a breather, and then pick the chain back up.

The bosses themselves also really open up thanks to being scored by time instead of chaining, your strategy evolving as you try to shave off just a few more seconds with each attempt. I thought the first boss, Eboshidori, was a complete slog initially, but go for the best possible time and suddenly the fight is transformed, frantically switching between polarities to get some extra energy and maximize your damage, weaving between attacks that originally seemed so harmless.

I also want to take a second to acknowledge that, with a bit more context, this is probably one of the nichest shmups I’ve played. Credit-feed through something like Dodonpachi and you’ll have a good time blasting through hordes of enemies, and likely leave with a decent sense of what the experience is like. In contrast, so much of enjoying Ikaruga only comes with time; that first playthrough shuffles you right along, no chance to prolong your survival with any sort of i-frame granting bombs or hyper-mode, missing big portions of the game as the bullet patterns reset each time you die, meaning you don’t really have a chance of getting into any sort of flow state. And as mentioned before, this is a very setpiece heavy, memorization intensive game- hard to intuit what parts of the screen are just instant-death or when some boss will materialize behind you on a first playthrough.

But maybe that’s okay, and it’s more a indication of how stellar the aesthetic and thematic qualities are that even those fumbling initial attempts end up feeling so epic- thrown into the climax of a spectacular battle that you know is vital, even if you can’t quite articulate why. Even now, the game’s focus on perseverance in the face of adversity has been strangely reinvigorating for me, a reminder to fight for the good in the world, even if reality itself seems to be pitted against you.

"Is this what we wished for?
Don't worry, we will understand each other some day.
And the life is succeeded into to the distant future."

Maybe I wasn’t totally off when I first played it.

played as:
sheena (missile ending)
ray (big magnum ending)

Probably the apex of the Contra series. Sweeps the floor with the (already good) previous installments, and a part of me doubts they topped this one since. There's four different characters to play as, all with different weapons, and there are multiple paths with different bosses and endings to come across, allowing for a lot of replay value. I did the two routes that interested me the most first, and will be coming back for the others some day as well.

Difficulty wise, it's the hardest in the series up to this point. You know how hard the final boss in Contra III is? Imagine that for like, a decent half of the game. I plow my way through these older games with savestates, so it didn't hinder me too much of course, but it's very noticeable and I'd imagine doing it normally would be a hell of a task, albeit not as bad as some other nonsense I've played thus far. Luckily there's the Japanese version, which both adds continues and a life bar (new to the series!).

I see this compared to Gunstar Heroes a lot in here, and for good reason. They're very similar AND very close in quality. It could absolutley be coincidental, but keeping in mind Treasure was founded by former Konami employees who broke off after the latter rejected Gunstar Heroes, my guess is this game must have been an attempt to counter that one when it turned out successful. Who knows, though? They both kick ass and you should give them both a go. If I had to choose, however, Gunstar Heroes wins me over just a little due to easier difficulty and aesthetics.