The first Ace Attorney game does a lot right from the very beginning to get players interested and invested in its world, its characters, and its mode of puzzle-solving. There's a reason people who play this game remember it so fondly and vividly - it is funny and witty, over-the-top but still grounded enough to tell a serious story. It helps that Phoenix is a deceptively well-designed protagonist. He's not a simple self-insert, but rather a character with his own personality, history, and character relationships.

Having played some older murder mystery games, I think Ace Attorney's biggest improvement is giving the player more instances where they get to actually figure things out for themselves and show what they found. The nature of the alternating investigation and courtroom segments means that, rather than just look for clues over and over, you'll frequently be asked to press witnesses and call out problems in testimony. When combined with the campy presentation, it gives the player a very satisfying aha-moment and feeling that they are personally engaged in the process of solving the case. It doesn't always work totally perfectly, but it works very well most of the time.

I would give this game a perfect score, but there are a couple points of pacing problems in cases 3 and 5 that bring it down ever so slightly.

Slay the Spire is a very good game that I have some very specific gripes with. For the most part, it is an interesting deckbuilding roguelike with a lot of smart design in terms of how its systems interact. I like that each of the four playable characters have not just different cards they have access to, but multiple, wholly separate playstyles that they can focus on within their class-based cards. A lot of the cards and relics lend themselves to really fun combinations that feel very satisfying to pull off, when it works.

I say "when it works" because... what I don't like is how often the game seemingly expects you to have all the stars align to get a deck you can actually work with. Want a small deck you can quickly loop through? Too bad, you simply won't have the openings to get the junk out in time. Need a specific card on your next draw? You'll probably eat a lot of damage if you don't get it because of bad RNG. And of course, sometimes you just get a random boss battle that hard counters your deck, well past the point where you could pivot it into something else.

And I know, I know. Roguelike! You're supposed to just start another run and try again. But I do think it would be nice to have a bit more wiggle room on most things, because there's a lot of fun design here. I think it'd be even more fun if I felt like I had enough of a safety net to be free to experiment without endangering my whole run. It's something where I feel like FTL does it a bit better.

Dr. Mario is a solid but kind of one-note puzzle game. Mechanically, I think the gameplay holds up, and the presentation is decent too, especially when it comes to the music. It's a bit more of a patient game than something like Tetris, which gives it a distinct feel. The issue is that where other puzzle games will have multiple characters to play as or against, or at least switch out the colors, every round of Dr. Mario feels basically the same. It's a fun game, but after a few rounds you'll wish there was even a bit more variety to it.

At least you'll occasionally get weird little intermission cutscenes. The UFO design is neat.

At its core, the main game of Super Mario Advance 4 is just Super Mario Bros. 3 again, by way of Super Mario All-Stars. And it's good! But I have an opening here to talk about World-e, and I'm going to.

When I got this game as a kid, it came with an e-Reader card for an additional level. Since I, like most people, didn't own an e-Reader, I looked at this card over and over wondering about this level, but never being able to play it. Well, nowadays, via Virtual Console and NSO, Advance 4 has been re-released with all of the e-Reader levels made accessible, of which there are 38. So now that I can finally satisfy my childhood curiosity, what are these levels like?

The e-Reader levels are full of new gameplay elements - primarily, gameplay elements from the other Mario Advance games that have been spliced into the SMB3 gameplay. There are a few completely original elements, but a lot of things are repurposed from Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario World, and Yoshi's Island - enemies, objects, and even powerups like the Cape. It's fun to see the games' elements mixed-and-matched like this, although this ends up being mostly a novelty thing.

The actual level design of the e-Reader levels is... fine? It's kind of hard to compare, because these are levels with new-to-SMB3 elements grafted onto a re-re-release, years and years after the fact. The levels aren't must-play new content, but they are decent Mario levels. Honestly, when you factor in the mixed-and-matched game elements, they kind of feel like romhack or Mario Maker levels, in a sense. Not amazing ones, but still good ones.

With a solid base game in SMB3 and the most new content of the Mario Advance quartet, I'd say Advance 4 is the most worth playing of the four. I think the e-Reader levels make for a fascinating little time capsule of Nintendo experimenting with new 2D Mario level designs at a time between the '90s and the New Super Mario Bros. era.

It's a passable first attempt at Punch-Out, but I definitely agree with a lot of the other reviews here that the incessant punch-by-punch narration is excessive. I think it would've felt more exciting for the player if the narration voice clips kicked in after having done a certain amount of damage, or landing the meter-based super punches. When every single punch cues the announcer to talk, it makes you start tuning it out, which seems like the opposite of the intended effect.

Anyway, did you ever think about the fact that Glass Joe predates Bowser? Makes you think.