Almost equal parts improvement and regression when compared to Mega Man 9. It feels better to control and the levels are less rotten with spikes. Deaths feel more earned, which was probably my biggest issue with 9. At the same time, the game just doesn't leave much of a lasting impact. Mega Man 9's robot masters are all pretty memorable, and their weapons generally feel pretty good to use. If you asked me to name any of the bosses or weapons in this game I'm pretty sure I'd just stammer a bunch of nonsense like I'm having a stroke.

But by the end of the day, it's more 8-bit Mega Man, and I like those. Even the ones that aren't that good. I really wish they took one more shot at these instead of releasing 11 the way they did. I think 10 and 9 are both more pleasing to look at by a mile. Pushing more in this direction but experimenting with the gameplay limitations of 8-bit Mega Man and pushing beyond them would've been interesting, but I think reception to 10 was more lukewarm than Capcom was expecting. Couple this with... other things, and well, no more 8-bit Mega Mans. Bummer.

In the end, I think Mega Man 10 is a perfectly fine game that falls shy of being the swan song the 8-bit games deserved. Not the best in the series but not the worst either. It's inoffensive and worth a casual play if you can find it for cheap.

Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate TaleSpin for the Sega Genesis since I began to live.

As nostalgic as I am for the games of my youth, I will concede that in terms of overall quality, gaming is currently at its peak. Budgets have ballooned to astronomical heights, and studios simply aren't willing to take a risk anymore. While this means there's very little innovation happening from the major studios today, you can at least expect a new title to be good enough that the publisher will recoup their investment. Another way of putting this is that they don't make games like TaleSpin anymore, because it would result in the immediate closure of a studio and the construction of gallows outside their hollowed out offices.

Bad games today are simply boring. Bad games in the 90s were a feast for the senses, so offensive in their mere existence that it was hard not to have a real visceral reaction to them. And in the 90s, it really didn't matter if you put out a stinker. You could recover from that, then pinch out ten more like it's nothing. Oh sure, you might see old photographs of Toys R' Us shelves packed with all the classics, the big names that will make you wistful for times long past, but the reality was that you were walking a minefield every time you went to buy or rent a new game. For every Mario World there was 15 TaleSpins waiting in the wings ready to fan the flames of violence in your adolescent heart.

And that's how it was for me. I'd go with my mom to Wal-Mart one month and pick up Sonic 2 and I'd be the happiest boy alive. I'd go in there the next month and BOOM, my leg is blown off and sitting next to a copy of this piece of trash.

You take control of Baloo or Kit Cloudkicker. It doesn't matter who you pick, they both control like garbage. You'll slip and slide around levels with really tight platforming, never quite feeling in control of your character. There's a few levels that are confusing to navigate, but all of them lack any sort of forethought to their design and are completely unenjoyable to explore. Every now and then you're given a respite in the form of an aerial combat stage, and these are maybe the least offensive part of the game, but still squirrely and bad. The lowest point the game sinks to are its boss battles. The feedback on hits is really poor and the bosses are complete sponges. They also just go completely ham on you, and with the controls being as bad as they are, I found it very difficult to dodge their projectiles.

TaleSpin is up there with Flying Edge's Addam's Family in the pantheon of terrible Sega Genesis games. Both beat me as a kid, so ruthlessly and with such emotional shock that my very brain chemistry was altered. I have a compulsion now to beat every game I own, no matter how much I might dislike some of them. I can't let the game win, you see. Over time, these two titles twisted in my mind, becoming tumors that I had to excise. Well, I did it. Was it worth it? Hell no. But the deed is done, and there is perhaps some comfort in knowing I have absolutely no reason to ever touch TaleSpin ever again.

this game is 35 dollars on ebay

The reveal trailer did little to get me excited for Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. It seemed like the game was trying too hard to ape James Gunn's comedic stylings, and frankly I couldn't be less interested in anything Marvel related with Square's branding slapped on it. But after hearing positive things (and finding the game for dirt cheap, as it usually is) I caved and picked it up, only to be pleasantly surprised by what I played.

Or, rather, I was surprised by how much the story pulled me in. It deals heavily with themes of death, loss, and moving on, and it's all handled with a level of sincerity that I wasn't really expecting. Unfortunately, the gameplay feels pretty half-baked. The main loop is this: Go to a new world and walk around with the rest of the Guardians, using their abilities to solve dull, repetitive puzzles and clear obstacles blocking your path. This is done by selecting a Guardian on the character wheel and pointing them at a corresponding object that move, cut, crawl through, or otherwise "solve" in order to proceed. Towards the end of the game you no longer have to direct the Guardians to do this, signifying the strength of the bond they've formed with Peter by the end of the game. That's cute, I guess, but doesn't really make up for hours of tedious exploration.

Combat doesn't fare much better. You control Peter and have indirect control of the rest of the Guardians. They will sometimes join you for finishers or melee combos, and otherwise can be instructed to use one of their special moves by pulling up the character wheel during an encounter. New moves can be purchased using ability points, but you'll very likely have everything unlocked halfway through. It's not very hard. Peter also gets an assortment of elemental guns. These can be used both in and out of combat, but don't expect a lot of depth here either. They're mostly there to clear yet more obstacles or knock down enemy shields.

The one highlight of combat for me was the team huddle mechanic. When you've built enough meter you can pull in the other Guardians for a huddle, and by selecting the right dialog option you'll gain a bonus in combat. Pass or fail, you'll also trigger one of the games many, many, MANY needle drops. Thankfully the selection of music is pretty good, and honestly I find it hard to hate any mechanic that will reward failure by playing Everybody Wang Chung Tonight.

However, much like every other part of Guardians' gameplay, the huddle gets played out by the halfway point. There's maybe a couple dozen pieces of huddle dialog, and the right answer is so painfully obvious that I'm not sure why there's even a fail state. I only picked incorrectly twice and it was because I was totally zoned out.

Again, the story is really good. I don't want to spoil it, but if you like The Guardians of the Galaxy, you'll probably get a real kick out of it. I don't particularly have any affinity for the property and even I had a lot of fun. I just wish more thought was put into the gameplay, but it really doesn't seem like it was a priority.

An incredibly impressive looking Sega Genesis game that is perhaps better remembered for its crushing difficulty. It's actually a bit surprising how hard this game is considering the film it's based on is geared towards children. The driving levels often draw the most ire (mostly because they control like crap), but the Inside the Claw Machine level is hideous in its design, and accounted for the vast majority of my game overs. Even if you do manage to get past it and the entirely too eerie first person level that follows, you'll end up face-to-face with one of the most finicky bosses in 16-bit gaming. Beating the claw always feels like a roll of the dice to me.

I never actually saw the end of this game until a few years ago, and I'll cop to using save states to get there. It's every bit as hard today as it was back in 95, but it's also every bit the technical marvel. Traveler's Tales was doing some wild stuff in the 90s, and Toy Story is another showcase for their wizardry. It's just a shame that TT rarely balanced their technical ambition with good gameplay, and Toy Story is unfortunately another example of that trend.

Every unkind thing I said about TaleSpin is applicable here, only you should consider my vitriol doubled for this piece of crap. Aero the Acro-Bat is truly undeserving of even a modicum of recognition, and if I could give it zero stars I would.

Aero is a slippery unwieldy mascot platformer borne from a desperate attempt to emulate the success of Sonic and Mario. That is to say, it's just one in a slew of mediocre-to-bad platformers that the generation was rotten with. There is, however, nothing particularly remarkable about it as a game to earn it any sort of staying power the way something like Awesome Possum or Bubsy has, though I do recall it being heavily marketed in gaming magazines at the time. Perhaps that's why there's still people today who remember Aero the Acro-Bat. It's certainly why I sat down to play it, my memory of the game itself (which I rented a few times back in the day) being far more vague than those of the adverts, which featured Aero bursting through the pages, or chomping down on large letters spelling out BITE ME.

It wasn't worth the effort, and I should have known better. Some of the worst games of the 16-bit era had good spreads, after all. Aero's levels are massive and every inch of them is agonizing. The controls are horrible, and missing a jump and losing progress as a result is rage inducing. It doesn't help that your senses are assaulted with one of the most screeching, grating, eardrum bursting soundtracks ever to "grace" the Genesis' sound chip. Imagine blasting off in a canon up to some tight ropes and needing to make a very careful jump while "EEEEEEEEEEE DUHN DUHN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUHN" blasts through your speakers. They found a way to package misery in a clam shell case and sell it to children, and something about that just seems like it should be illegal to me, I don't know!

EGM awarded Aero the Acro-Bat the title of 1993's Best New Character. The press is the enemy of the people.

Shin Megami Tensei V is a strange beast, one I equally recommend and advise against playing. It's certainly the most approachable of the mainline games, making an excellent jumping in point for those who have been curious about the series, whether they have familiarity with the larger franchise or not. However, SMTV also lacks a certain amount of depth and atmosphere that prior games have in droves, potentially making for a lackluster experience for those already initiated and a poor representation of what SMT is for those that aren't.

Gameplay is, in a word, broken. Broken in the player's favor, mind you. It's the easiest mainline game, and quite possibly one of the easier titles in the broader franchise. Early on the in the game you'll learn about Magatsuhi skills, which are essentially special abilities unique between classes of demons which you can pop off once a meter fills (the conditions for which vary and can be amplified to make the process faster.) However, you'll never lean on a magatsuhi skill quite as much as the Omagatoki: Critical skill, which you get quite early. This skill makes all attacks, magical or physical, strike as a critical hit. In addition to dealing improved damage, critical hits buy you an additional action in battle, potentially taking your 4 standard actions and maxing them out at 8. Now, just dump skill points into the physical stat, invest in moves that scale with HP (at least until later in the game) and bring in some demons that can pump your HP over its limit while buffing your attack and you'll start clearing bosses in a minute or two. At times I had to play poorly just to get any sort of a challenge out of SMTV, and anyone who has been told simply to not do something trivializing in a game can attest to how hard it is to not use the tools given to you.

This is in stark contrast to SMTIV, where the early game has the habit of crushing new players, making for a very discouraging experience. I can't pretend to know what the development of these games has been like, but between the PS2 era - the proverbial Golden Age of SMT - and now, it seems like Atlus can't quite get the balancing right with the mainline games. Odd considering it feels great in Persona.

Speaking of, Persona fans might thumb their noses at the story in SMTV. Not that there's much of it. For some that might be a problem, but I prefer the fairly bereft storytelling of Nocturne, so it's fine by me. Unfortunately, the narrative itself is kind of dull and the characters never really land. Picking a faction is a key aspect of all mainline SMT games, and the success of these branching storylines hinges on the strength of their ideological arguments and respective representatives. SMTV, however, doesn't hit you with meaningful choices or consequences until the very end of the game, and by then you'll only get to know one particular rep, Dazai, really well. Even then, he's written as a pathetic mewling simp who only at the 11th hour grows a backbone in a heel turn that's hilarious for all the wrong reasons. There's so much wasted potential, and it's unfortunate to see V falter where the previous four games have been so consistently strong.

There's also a distinct lack of dungeons, which I'll admit I am bothered by. This might be a weird sticking point as SMT and even Persona haven't been well regarded for dungeon design until Persona 5. However, SMTV's main four maps are all just city streets with varying amounts of sand and a different color pallet. It gets boring very quickly. There's so much that could be done with interior locations to break up the monotony, like exploring a hospital, a subway system, a government building... Yeah, they've been done before in other games, but the few glimpses we get in this particular aesthetic are great, and it's a shame they didn't explore them more fully. That's not to say there aren't any dungeons at all, of course. There's a few, but they're all pretty boring and regressive in their design, so maybe it's a good thing Atlus didn't put in even more. I don't know. All-in-all, I suppose I just didn't find Da'at to be particularly interesting.

Ryota Kozuka is a fantastic composer but I do not think SMTV is their best work. There's a few great stand out tracks, the bulk of which being in the rather large assortment of battle themes, but many of the other tracks failed to illicit any kind of response from me. They're just kinda there, filling up the space.

The SMT fanboy in me wants to at least say this game is decent, and I do think that others might get a lot more out of it than I did, but I really can't help but feel letdown by SMTV. Perhaps I set my expectations too high and some of my disappointment is undue, but I feel disappointed all the same, and it's really hard to shake that feeling that V could've been so much better. It's still a far cry from IV, which is possibly my least favorite in the mainline series for reasons I will inevitably get into once I finish my current playthrough, so at least it has that going for it!

Streets of Rage 4 effortlessly sells itself as a direct sequel to the Genesis trilogy, for better and for worse.

Gameplay is the typical brawler fair, and the game is unencumbered by any sort of leveling mechanic or grind. Beat up dudes from point A to point B, that's all there is to it, and that's all I really want out of this kind of game. Streets 4 keeps things interesting over its long 12 level march with a host of new and returning characters (if you bought the DLC then you'll have no shortage of options), though the new additions felt a lot better to me than Axel or Blaze. Cherry might just be my favorite, her combos send her flying all over the place, jumping onto enemies to bash their heads in before flipping off to crash down onto more goons. Inbetween levels you can change characters, which is welcome, and I found everyone to be enjoyable to play as.

There is, however, a disparity between the old and new characters. Axel and Blaze cannot sprint for whatever reason, which means the same slow lumbering movement from the previous three games is all you have to work with. Given the speed at which your attack and how frenzied combos can become, it feels a bit weird to lock them in to a slow walk.

My other grievances also have a lot to do with baggage that the Streets series would do better to let go of. The difficulty takes a harsh turn 2/3 into the game, and the last level is absolutely brutal, and far too long. I was only able to beat it by inviting in a random online player. Unfortunately, playing online is pretty rough, and the game constantly locks up to resync the connection. I also had a lot of issues with lining up my character with enemies. Sometimes I felt I should be hitting them but my attacks would just whiff, yet on the same axis they would be able to damage me. This was a problem I had with the original three games and it's unfortunate that it's still a problem. I'm also not a fan of how often enemies jump in from off screen mid-attack, as this has a habit of knocking you out of a combo and ruining your score multiplier. It just feels a bit too cheap.

But I still had a lot of fun with this. It looks gorgeous, the soundtrack is top tier, and chaining combos never gets old. This is easily the best brawler of the last decade, though it's not like there's been much competition.

You need to understand that Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne is my favorite game of all time. There's precious few games I can say are as masterfully executed, especially in the JRPG genre, and indeed even within its own series. As a consequence, my expectations for Shin Megami Tensei IV were probably unreasonable from the start, but even after a repeat playthrough I find myself walking away with the same basic assessment I had on release: SMTIV simply lacks the edge and polish of its predecessor, and frequently feels torn between two schools of thought on what Megaten can and should be.

This is made apparent as soon as the player enters Naraku, the games "tutorial" dungeon. It's a trial by fire, where it's far too easy to get ambushed and decimated by overly aggressive enemies that seek to train the player through punishment. SMT has a reputation for being "difficult," but I would argue that they're actually quite fair, you just can't skate by with your brain shut off like you would in some other JRPGs. And yet, even coming back to it with many more Megaten games under my belt, Naraku still feels... off. This dungeon culminates in two boss battles: Minotaur and Medusa, both of which sport absurd health pools and dish out insane amounts of damage. Fusion is your friend, and you'll need to spend some time working out a team tailor made for these encounters, and even then you'll feel like you get by on the skin of your teeth. Nocturne has Matador, sure, but by contrast he exists to affirm the importance of press turns and affinities, whereas a sizeable amount of the Minotaur fight feels like dumb luck.

You'll likely game over a lot here, and quickly be introduced to a new mechanic where you can pay to resume the game at the point you died. This is handy if you haven't saved in a while, but considering you can save whenever you want, it's really quite pointless (unless you're going Fiend hunting, but that's not really worth getting into here.) Sitting through the game over screen just to load a save is interminable, and it's much faster to just close the game and start it again. However, after you claw your way through Naraku and descend into Tokyo proper, you probably won't need to worry about it as much, because the game suddenly, on a dime, becomes a cakewalk.

It really does feel like someone somewhere messed up some numbers. The boss encounters following Minotaur and Medusa have, like, a third of their health. You also get a lot more options for what demons you can recruit and consequentially fuse, which makes it much easier to turn the tables and start steamrolling the game. Your victories post-Naraku don't feel earned, and this in turn only validates any notion you had of the early game being unfair. SMTIV never finds its middle ground, and as such lacks the finely balanced challenge of prior games. It is both discouraging for new players with its horrendous opening, and borderline dull for returning fans.

This lack of balance is present in the games visuals as well. Demon designs were sourced out to several different artists, but there doesn't appear to have been any effort made to keep designs cohesive. This results in a lot of decidedly un-SMT designs which are wonderfully grotesque but at odds with returning art from Nocturne. And then there's just a ton of low quality art that is blurry as hell. The main cast of characters, conversely, feel like they should occupy the same space as one another, and while not all of their designs land with me personality it is at least something to latch onto when the game is otherwise giving me aesthetic whiplash.

The player is given a slew of side quests to fulfill as they explore Tokyo and Mikado, the game's primary locations. Navigation between the two is handled entirely differently. Mikado can be explored by simply selecting where you want to go from a menu, whereas Tokyo serves as a proper overworld map. Between the two, I favor picking from a menu. Not because I think it's inherently better, but because Tokyo is just a pain to navigate. There's very few open areas, movement is mostly restricted to roads that are laid out like a maze. Anytime I got a quest that asked me to find like, five piece of a demon or something, I could feel my body physically rejecting the thought of fulfilling it. When you're in dungeons, enemies appear in the world like they do in Persona or SMTV. I have nothing against this, though I do think it's a little odd that demons who are drastically underleveled still chase you down.

On both playthroughs I got the neutral route, the first time intentionally and the second time entirely by accident. Without getting too deep into spoilers, the protagonist awakens after a brief absence to find the world isn't quite how he left it, and the forces of chaos and light are in the final stages of preparing their armies for an all out assault that will forever change Tokyo and Mikado. The tension is palpable, but before you round up your crew and put an end to the old gods and their eternal war, you need to do a bunch of boring fetch quests! Hooray!

The pacing dies on the spot, and frankly I could not be bothered by that point to see my second playthrough to the end. Just a big "no thanks" from me. I evidently forgot about this after my first playthrough, totally blocked it from my memory. I'm sure six years from now I will repeat this process all over again. This is my curse.

The story is fine, at least! I like the characters well enough. Walter is a good lad, though I do think his immediate adoption of "might makes right" is a bit silly, they don't build up to it well. But it's fine... it's fine! It was the only part of the game I found myself getting invested in. It's fine!

The music is also incredible. The boss and mid-boss themes sound appropriately strange and vicious, and the rest of the soundtrack does an equally good job of setting its own identity from other SMT soundtracks. It really hits its stride when you get to Tokyo, and the tracks used for the end bosses do a good job conveying how much is on the line.

SMTIV is the one mainline SMT that I outright dislike. Most of my playthrough was spent questioning the games balance, art direction, and wondering what development was actually like. I'm sure there's a story there, because this definitely feels like a step down in quality for Atlus, and a game that I liked no more on my second playthrough than the first. If anything, I liked it less.

Mr.X Nightmare is interesting in concept. Essentially a horde mode where the player selects their character, fights through waves of enemies on different stages with their own unique obstacles, and stacks buffs and bonuses at the end of each round to keep in competition with the climbing difficulties of each subsequent horde. It's alright. A perfectly fine Saturday morning distraction. Get a cup of coffee, turn on your favorite podcast, and shut your brain off for an hour or two.

But I also would caution against expecting anything more than that. There's not a ton of depth here. What you see is what you get, and outside of timed challenges (which appear to be set waves and bonuses rather than the procedural base mode), there's not a whole lot to it.

The real bonus to Mr.X Nightmare is the additional characters that unlock for Streets of Rage 4's story mode. Each one is fantastic and it really adds a lot to the game. I found the lineup of DLC characters to generally be more enjoyable than the main cast (outside of Cherry, who I really like playing as), and they're worth the price of admission alone. Which isn't that much, either. You can find the physical edition of Streets 4 with Mr.X Nightmare included for about three bucks more than the base game, on average, and at that point there's really no reason not to splurge for it. Definitely pick up this version if you've had your eyes on Streets of Rage 4.

I've been putting this review off for a week. I don't much want to think about Aero the Acro-Bat let alone write about him, but I played the game and now I have to do a review. If I don't, the people that put me up to this will shoot me in the back of the head and I'll be found dead in a ditch the next morning.

I suppose the nicest thing I can say about this game is that I don't remember much of it. Levels have greater variety and are more intelligently designed, and in general the game looks and sounds better, but Aero still controls like he's covered in grease. It takes what should otherwise be a passable if mediocre platformer and makes it torturous to play. Every minute I was playing this game was spent wishing it would just end.

There's cutscenes between levels, which are hideously rendered. They really wanted to build the lore of Aero the Acro-Bat. Newcomer Batasha is basically a proto-Rouge the Bat and she looks horrifying. Whoever designed her has got to have a Fur Affinity account filled to the brim with the most disturbed artwork you've ever seen in your life.

This game gets two stars if only because the soundtrack is less abrasive, but I'm deducting one for Batasha awakening a level of fear in me that I never knew I could experience.

I have a very fond memory of playing this game at a friend's house and sharing a very crispy thin crust pepperoni pizza topped with tobasco. I don't think we ever beat the second level, but it's hard not to reflect on that and appreciate how simple a time it was. A few years ago I put together a list of 250 retro games which I committed to completing, and Altered Beast was one of the first ones I added to it. When it finally came time to sit down and fire it up again, I made sure I wasn't without another thin crust and a bottle of tobasco, just to make the experience complete.

Well, the pizza was good. The game freakin sucks, man.

It's a very early Genesis title, and as I've written about before, games of this era share a certain cheapness to them. Audio is tinny because composers were still getting the hang of the Genesis' sound, controls feel wonky, and the graphics lack color depth and detail. But where games like Streets of Rage and Revenge of Shinobi found some success in bringing the feel of arcade games into the home, Altered Beast completely flounders.

The gameplay loop is as bare bones simple as it gets: Walk to the right (and only the right, you can't go back), punch bad guys, collect orb, and turn into a sort of... beast? It's like a man beast. A beast that has been altered, perhaps. Each level ends in a boss that will probably give you a frustrating amount of crap to deal with despite levels being so devoid of challenge that you don't even need a brain your body to play them. The reason my friend and I never got past the second level wasn't because the second level was hard, it's because the boss was an asshole.

Bosses, beasts, enemies, and even level graphics repeat so frequently that it feels like they had about two levels worth of content that they stretched out. I'm being a bit hyperbolic, sure, but it is nonetheless remarkable to me how lacking the game is even when considering the unique moment in time it released. The most it has going for it is a few fun garbled sound bites and an iconic transformation sequence, but god knows you've probably seen both enough times that you've absorbed everything you need of Altered Beast through osmosis.

'Rise from your grave'? Uh, heh, how about no?? I'd rather be dead than play this game again.

I am not good at shoot-em-ups. Horizontal, vertical, it doesn't matter... I lack the level of coordination needed to weave between hails of bullets while simultaneously clearing enemies and obstacles. But god am I ever drawn in by them. One particular favorite sub-genre is the goof-em-up (as I've come to call them), which I think Keio Flying Squadron slots perfectly into, sitting comfortably next to series like Parodius and Cho Aniki.

As a goof-em-up, Keio Flying Squadron is great. Level tropes are absurd, with a particular favorite pitting Keio against a fleet of Russian navy ships. The story never takes itself too seriously either, and the cutscenes done by Studio Pierrot are fantastic. Gameplay, on the other hand, is a bit lacking. Keio doesn't really do anything unique mechanically, but is perfectly fine for what it is. I just wouldn't pick it up expecting the game to turn the genre on its head or anything.

If there's anything Keio is well known for today, it's the insane price it fetches on the used game market. Obviously you shouldn't take out a loan from the bank just to get your hands on a disc or anything, it's not THAT good, and it emulates fine. But if you are a fan of shoot-em-ups and haven't sat down to give Keio Flying Squadron a chance (as I suspect few people have), then you owe it to yourself to correct that. Just... maybe wait until a copy falls off the back of a truck or something.

I've had to tattoo a bunch of crap to my body Memento style to keep these games straight. But, if memory serves me correctly, this is the first Rocket Knight game on the Genesis out of two, and isn't to be confused with Sparkster on the SNES, which is a totally different thing that doesn't take place in the same continuity but features the same characters. They didn't need to do it like this. They didn't need to do this to my brain.

Complicating this is that I'm pretty sure I did not play these in the correct order, and generally I find them to be similar enough that it's easy to assume a certain level is from one game when it's in fact from another. I gave myself a little refresher since it's been a couple years since I last beat this game, and I've taken all my dementia pills, so when I say this is my favorite one to play I hope you can just take me at my word.

Rocket Knight Adventures puts you in control of the titular marsupial. Armed with a sword and a jetpack, you are unleashed upon a world of pigs with orders to terminate indiscriminately. Challenging platforming sections act as buffers between some amazing boss encounters, which for me is the real draw of Rocket Knight. You might be able to call this game a boss rush, though I think that's stretching things a bit, and perhaps underselling how good some of the platforming is. There's also sections where you're flying through levels laying waste to anything that dares to impede your path of destruction, which gameplay-wise are less autoscrollers and more ridiculous showpieces.

The benefit of there being multiple games spread between both consoles is you have a direct point of comparison for music and sound quality. Personally, I like the soundtrack in this game the best, I think it's a lot punchier coming through the Genesis. I feel similarly about the graphics, though I do think the Genesis follow up is more vibrant and a fair bit more expressive. That's not to say any of these games look or sound bad.

If you're looking for a good 16-bit platformer to kill an afternoon with, you can't go wrong with Rocket Knight Adventures. Or Sparkster. or the other Sparkster.

Well known today for its brutal difficulty and being the originator of the Belmont Strut, Castlevania is one of the rare classics that lives up to its legacy. In fact, I never touched a single Castlevania game until just a few years ago, and rather than going straight for Symphony of the Night (arguably the series most popular title), I figured I was better off starting from the very beginning and working my way through for as long as I could tolerate it. This game has aged like wine and has become something of an annual replay for me along with a few other games in the series, usually around October because... Draculas.

The controls in this game are very deliberate. The jump is stiff, heavy, and cannot be broken out of, making each leap something you must commit to completely. The pace at which Simon moves is steady, both fast enough to avert danger yet lacking in just enough mobility to only narrowly avert disaster. The whips speed and hitbox are well defined, making each boss encounter a calculation of how many strikes you can land before pulling back. Subweapons not only make a palpable impact in terms of raw damage output, but have clear advantages and disadvantages in how they augment the trajectory of your attacks. It all feels clunky the first time you pick it up, but subsequent playthroughs feel like slipping into a warm bath. It's perfect.

I am now going to invoke one of the most tired tropes in game criticism and compare this to Dark Souls, only in reverse, because Dark Souls is the Castlevania of action RPGs.

Castlevania teaches the player through trial and error, with repeat jogs through levels becoming a bit easier each time as you start to learn the rhythm of it. You get a better feel for what subweapons you might need, or how much health you should have before a specific obstacle or encounter. Finding hidden money bags to build towards lives right when you need them, or carefully metering out the hits you can take before that next wall chicken start to shift control from the game to the player. It's one of the few games I think plays better every time I sit down with it. This is, essentially, the same way I view the Souls series. You learn whatever stretch of the level you're stuck on and when you get a handle on it and make that perfect run through, it feels amazing. It's a compelling loop that encourages you to keep trying rather than pushing you away.

I know, I know, comparing a game to Dark Souls is, well... heinous, and I should be punished for my crimes. Just be thankful I'm not reviewing Castlevania 2, or you might have to put up with me insisting those games are equally as obtuse.

There's precious few things I can really fault Castlevania for. Some instances of slowdown cause really interfere with your ability to avoid hazards, and a few stretches between checkpoints are needlessly grueling. The level with the fleamen is a bit dull once you realize all you need to do is hold right, as it's otherwise a straight line that you have to start all the way back at if you screw up. Really, these are all minor complaints. Castlevania is so tightly designed that I really need to stretch for something bad.

I've given a few other versions of this game a shot as well, and in particular I really like the X68000 and Chronicles versions. Of course the original is easily accessible through the Castlevania Collection today, which I think is well worth picking up for this alone.