The depth of the Mario Universe was never truly interesting until this game came out. It added so much stuff to his world to make it seem more three dimensional; Which is ironic considering everything is flat. The visual style is just so nice and charming, it really does feel like playing through a storybook. Speaking of story, maybe compared to subsequent games in the Paper Mario franchise like The Thousand Year Door, or Super Paper Mario, this game may not seem that impressive. Although it still promises a nice time with loveable partner characters and goofy enemies. The combat system is also iconic, every RPG needs to have a parry/defense system. I definitely think Paper Mario is worth going back to, even after all these years.

Super Mario 64 is one of my favorite Mario games ever. It's one of those games you can come back to and still have a great time despite its age. With that being said, what if I told you I didn't grow up with Super Mario 64, and never got to officially play it until years later? Yes, my introduction to the game came through this remake made 8 years after the original game came out, Super Mario 64 for Nintendo DS. This game boasts new stars, updated graphics, and 3 brand new playable characters. With all those quirks, this game should be great! Should.

For the most part, the game is unchanged. There's still the castle, you still collect power stars to unlock new areas and there are the same 15 courses you know and love. Although, things immediately start off different. First of all, you don't start the game as Mario, you start it as Yoshi. In an admittedly fun cutscene, Mario hops out of the pipe akin to the original opening following Peach's invitation for cake at the castle. Luigi and Wario also hop out of pipes adjacent to his, racing him to the castle to get to him first, all while Yoshi sleeps on top of the castle, referencing his appearance at the end of the game in the original Mario 64. Lakitu wakes up Yoshi saying Mario and co. have been in the castle for a while and haven't left yet, so it's up to him Yoshi to see what's going on. You unlock the other 3 characters by fighting specific bosses, but of course you need Mario to access most of the game normally.
So now, let me bring forth the biggest problem with this game: The controls. The original SM64 controls near perfectly, how did they mess it up? Simple, a run button. That might not sound like much but it definitely screws up the flow of gameplay more than you'd expect. You have to constantly be holding down the run button if you want to get anywhere, and you're going to be holding the run button when you jump. So what if you want to dive jump or jump kick too? That's 3 buttons you have to hold down, and it is not comfortable. Not to mention since this is on a DS there's no control stick, but a D-Pad. Yeah, play a 3D Platformer with a D-Pad. I'm playing this game on a 3DS admittedly, and the Circle Pad does help a tiny bit but it'll still have you wishing you had a regular controller. You can also use the Touch Pad for movement, which they REALLY want you to use for some reason. On the topic of control, let's talk about each character individually.
First is Yoshi I suppose, since you play as him first. Honestly, though? He controls great. He flicks his tongue out in classic Yoshi fashion, flutter jumps, he can eat enemies and spit them back out, and even lay an egg for a temporary projectile. It's clear he wasn't made for this game very much though, as they give the option of playing the game with the cap of a character from the get-go after unlocking one of them, starting the level in a transformed state as Mario/Luigi/Wario. Isn't it weird this is the only game where you control just Yoshi in 3D? If he were to get his own 3D Platformer they definitely need to use this control scheme as the basis.
Mario is mostly unchanged, he has pretty much all the moves you know. One thing I like is his wall kick is updated into a wall jump. One thing I hate though, and I guess they do this to give him a sense of uniqueness from the other characters, he's the ONLY one that can wall jump.
Luigi is lighter than Mario, and sports a mini flutter jump of his own. His backwards somersault also has a float descent, which can come in handy.
Wario is probably the worst out of the 4, he's the slowest and his jump is the weakest. He is, however, the strongest, and he's the only one that can break the special black bricks.
In addition to every character having their own playstyle tweaks, they have their own unique power up ability. Remember in the original game where Mario had to unlock a new cap and it would show up in the level where he needed to use it? Here, things are a little bit different. Each ability is locked to a specific character, Mario has the Wing Cap, Luigi vanishes, and Wario becomes metal. This means for specific Power Stars you have to switch to that character if you want to collect it. It's a novel idea in making each character important, but it's a lot more tedious than it sounds. Plus, the character caps I mentioned earlier? You can find them in levels to do what you need to do, but there's no way to remove the caps without taking damage, which is also annoying.
The style is fine. All the characters and enemies are upgraded to their current designs. Some look better like Skeeters and Bullies, but rest in peace to the original bug-eyed, psychedelic patterned Scuttlebug. In another interesting change, MIPS does not appear in this version, but instead regular rabbits. In the beginning of the game you have to collect a rabbit with Yoshi to unlock the castle key. Which, just seems like padding, but it's to introduce the new concept of catching rabbits to unlock minigames. Some of them are actually pretty fun, admittedly, but to unlock new ones you have to catch rabbits as each character which is more trouble than its worth.
The ideas this remake present aren't bad on a base level, but you'll be begging to play the original Mario 64. It's just more freeing and less restrictive to play, and there aren't too many improvements in this version over the original.

As someone who's very averse to horror games (sic: pussy), I don't really seek too many out of my own volition. This one caught my eye, however. It being multiplayer eases alot of the initial tensions I have, as well as the heavy teamwork aspect. I actually really like the gameplay loop as well: Get inside, get as much as you can, get the fuck out before anything tries to kill you. There's so many different enemy types and locations to keep you on your toes, with more presumably to come. Definitely a really fun one to play with friends.

Shinichi Shimomura is a man who directed 3 Kirby games (technically 4 but Nightmare in Dreamland is a remake so I digress), Dreamland 2, Dreamlan 3, and this one here. He introduced concepts such as Animal Helpers, Broom Kirby, Gooey, Adeleine, and of course Dark Matter/Zero. This is what led to his 3 games being referred to in the fanbase as the Dark Matter Trilogy. This final game in the Dark Matter Trilogy is one I highly recommend. Combining copy abilities is such an interesting and fun mechanic I'm legitimately shocked they haven't tried to do it to this capacity again. It adds so much to combat and puzzle solving, and it's just interesting to see what kind of weird concoctions you can make. The music is great, but it's a Kirby game of course the music is going to slap. For Kirby's first leap into 3D the game has aged insanely gracefully visually. I believe Shimomura is also to accredit to the beginning of intense lore within Kirby games, without spoiling too much. The story is simplistic but still interesting and engaging. The only flaw I have with the game is collecting all the Crystal Shards is more trouble than it's worth (The game is called Kirby 64 and yet they have 74 shards???). Other than that, I think this game definitely deserves more praise and attention as one of the most creative and interesting Kirby games, and we have Shimomura to thank. Oddly enough, Shimomura disappeared without a trace in 2002. No pictures of the man exist online, and no official obituary was released leading to believe that he couldn't have died. HAL and Nintendo stopped using all of Shimomura's creations in Kirby games after his disappearance, most likely out of respect for him. Gone were the Animal Helpers, Gooey, Adeleine, and of course Dark Matter/Zero. This of course was changed in 2018 when Kirby Star Allies was released, featuring some of these characters. So who knows? Maybe they'll revisit these concepts in a future game sometime.

The influence from games like Gunstar Heroes, Alien Soldier and other Treasure games is clearly present and admirable, but it lacks a lot of what makes those games fun and interesting from both a gameplay and thematic level. In terms of gameplay, it's just your standard run-n-gun. I heavily dislike the Heat mechanic as I don't feel it really adds anything but frustration. How is holding the button down any different than mashing it? The stamina bar makes more sense with limiting your dashes, but I don't believe they needed to be linked to multiple jumps as well. The level design ranges from decent to atrocious. The screen will be littered with enemies and projectiles with no real means of dodging any of it, and more often than not amidst bottomless pits. The bosses aren't anything to write home about, as most of them are homages to other Treasure bosses but, again, nowhere near as fun. There are sporadic vehicular segments that, may seem fun and interesting at first, but quickly dive into another annoyance once you realize they limit your movement in ways to make it harder to defend yourself by rendeding any option built upon stamina completely useless. It's hard to tell what's more frustrating though, the gameplay or the writing. Even though some of the better Genesis games opt for pure visual storytelling, Spectacular Sparky decides to switch things up by including incredibly cringeworthy dialogue that wouldn't feel out of place from the "Epic Bacon" era of the mid 2010s internet. Not only is the dialogue unfunny, not only is it heavily frequent, breaking up the flow of bosses, the game is fully voice acted, and the vocal direction isn't doing the writing any favors. Visually it's decent, the main character has a charming design as do some others, and the backgrounds are impressive. The soundtrack is also very good, and does a great job at capturing the upbeat energy of a Genesis game.
Other than that, I unfortunately don't have a lot of great things to say about Spectacular Sparky. It took me around 4 hours and if it wasn't gifted to be I definitely would have refunded it. Anything you're interested in here you can get out of a Treasure game, Metal Slug, Cuphead, etc., and I can't reccomend those games over this one enough.

Sonic Adventure was definitely the start of a new era, for better or for worse. Sparing the obvious "rough transition" joke everyone has come to know and hate, this game is still a fun time. It definitely shows its age, the camera can be uncooperative, level terrain might have you clipping out, the hub world can often be confusing to navigate, and animations are often ugly to look at. That being said, Sonic's gameplay is actually pretty nice. I'm not sure his movement being as loose as it is was an intentional decision but it's appreciated. Using the Spindash feels great and jumping after using it to get a huge aerial boost is all the more satisfying. The light speed dash can be less than responsive and very context-sensitive though. To this DAY I still want an answer as to why they thought to give you the Light Speed Dash upgrade, followed by an upgrade to make the Light Speed Dash take less time to load, when they could have just made it take less time to load from the get-go.
The art style and graphics are sort of hard to delve into. I played the Steam version of this game, working off of the DX: Directors Cut port of the original 03 PC version. As the name implies, it is a port of Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, which had many visual changes, much to fans of the original's dismay. So, I will be judging the graphics on this specific version of the game. That being said, I still have mixed feelings on the look of the game. On one hand, yes, it does look pretty ugly. The weird plasticine look of the characters isn't doing them any favors coupled with their insanely awkward lip synch. Textures mostly don't look great, plus the lighting can make things look worse. Though, on the other hand, sometimes the game can look nice. The look of the water is good in stages like Emerald Coast, and Speed Highway looks great at both night and daytime. The animesque look of the human models has its charm too, and the ending cards for the characters look delightful.
Now for anyone's favorite part of a Sonic game: the music. Nothing but absolute staples of Sonic's history to this day. Open Your Heart is one of the best lyrical themes in the franchise. Not to mention people still debate if this game's version of Sonic's personal theme, It Doesn't Matter, is better than the one featured in this games sequel, Sonic Adventure 2. They opt for so many different genres in this game, jazz, techno, rock, rap, and it all comes together for a great experience. Personal favorite tracks of mine are Red Hot Skull, Egg Carrier, Theme of E-102, General Offensive and of course Emerald Coast.
The story. This is the first Sonic game with fully voice acted cutscenes, and as a result we get a bigger emphasis on story. The voice acting is...not good. It is hilarious, however. I believe the game was voice directed by Japanese people who didn't speak English, and as a result you get very off-deliveries and Japanese terminology in some places too. Bad acting can definitely affect story in a negative way, even a good one. That begs the question though: Is the story good? I'd say it's okay, actually. It's ambitious they wanted to tell one big story but from the perspective of 6 different characters, some of which give a lot more context to events than others. I think the base story is great. A peaceful creature mutated into a monster by the negative energy of the Master Emerald (a powerful crystal with magic abilities), is suddenly released and dubbed "Chaos", and Dr Eggman wants to harness its power to destroy the city and rebuild it in his image. All the while the spirit of the guardian of said peaceful creature flies about, helping the characters you play as and even sending them back in time, relaying events as to what led up to Chaos's anger. I think it works better for some characters more than others, specifically Sonic, and especially Knuckles. It stops having its effect when characters are taken back in time witnessing insane goings on and afterwards go "That was weird, anyway back to what I was doing." That being said, 6 different characters does mean you have to play the game 6 times. Honestly going back to it now is less of a slog than you'd think. Everyone has a different playstyle and even different levels they go through, making some campaigns shorter than others. I think I'll just take the time now to quickly give my thoughts on each campaign individually, gameplay and story.

Sonic - Already went into it earlier but, definitely the most fun gameplay wise out of all of them. Story wise, it's the standard "Stop Eggman from doing whatever he's doing." Not much else to say there.

Tails - Tails controls pretty well in 3D here. His flight is incredibly useful and the Tail attack is great for keeping the flow of movement. His gameplay is similar to Sonic's, though you have to race an opponent, whether it's Sonic or Eggman. The story is pretty much the same as Sonic's, too but with a bit more focus on Tails as a character. He looks up to Sonic and struggles on keeping up with him but then he slowly realizes Sonic can't save him at any given situation and he has to learn to be his own hero. It's very nice and coupled with him being voiced by an actual child, it adds a little bit more to him I believe is lost in modern games.

Knuckles - The Master Emerald is broken, and you have to find all the pieces. It's really fun here. Knuckles' climbing and gliding is integrated well, and the Emerald Sonar is super responsive. (Check the SA2 review for my thought on this to change.) Story wise, I feel like it could have been done better. Tikal being a peaceful Echidna from the past who fought for what she believed in and Knuckles now being the last of the Echidnas adds a layer to his character that isn't totally utilized here.

Amy - Probably my least favorite gameplay wise, and story wise. Adventure is the start of Amy's personality developing into being very obsessive over Sonic and hotheaded. It's lost its charm for me over the years in this particular era for her character. The best contribution she has to her story is being a major link to Gamma's story. Gameplay wise she also isn't much better. She sports a giant hammer, which is cool, and gaining a hi jump from it when you're at top speed is equally cool, but she's pretty significantly slower than Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. Also the whole time you're going through levels you're being chased by an indestructible robot who you can only stun, and is generally a bigger nuisance than it is a threat.

Big - Big the Cat. I have no idea why they thought to make this character. In terms of story, he contributes the least. He only shows up in 2 characters campaigns, Sonic and Tails, so if you play these stories in order I feel like by the time you get to this one you'd forget he was even here. They incorporate him as follows: Big's pet frog, Froggy (yeah), swallows a piece of Chaos that's absorbed a Chaos Emerald and grows a tail as a result. He runs away, and Big has to find him. Big has been the subject of ridicule for the longest time in the fanbase, calling him the worst character and his campaign the worst in Adventure. Although, playing it now? It's not that bad. I think Big, though bumbling and sporting a less than pleasant voice, is an endearing character. There's something charming about his complete removal from the story and lack of understanding of anything going on you just can't help but like him. He wants his frog back, he gets his frog back, he goes home. Now, what about the gameplay? How does Big get Froggy back? He's way too heavy and slow for platforming so they opt for a different approach. Fishing. I still couldn't tell you why they thought to put in fishing in a platforming game as mandatory for completing the story, but I don't entirely hate its execution here. I think it's heavily flawed though, and doesn't do a great job explaining its mechanics. As it stands though, once you actually know what to do, this campaign can be finished insanely quickly, as you only need to catch Froggy to progress to the next stage. I'm the type of person who loves fishing in video games, and I think if they had tweaked this it could have been a lot more fun than it ended up being.

E -102 Gamma - You already know I have to say it: This is the best story in the game. Gamma is such an interesting case because this story honestly has not that much bearing in the grander sense of the final campaign, but it still represents the themes of the overall story very well. The melancholy tale of a robot being forced to confront its fate and [lack of] mortality has an insanely bittersweet ending. The gameplay I don't dislike either. Being a big metal robot he's a lot faster than you'd think, and aiming multiple enemies with a reticle is a plus.

Overall, I definitely had my fun with this one. A lot of people are quick to say this game is bad or that people who like it are blinded by nostalgia, but I think despite its glaring flaws there's something special in this game and a good time to be had.

I may be spoiled, this game having been my first Donkey Kong platformer. I think the original games are good but it's something about these physics I prefer more. DK has a lot more weight to him which I like better. The levels can be a little too long for their own good sometimes, but the level of sheer spectacle makes up for it. The art style is so amazing, and the music absolutely BUSSING. It's a little strange going from Kremlings as enemies to these Tiki things, and it is frustrating the Kremlings are brought back for the sequel, but I think these enemies are fun and cute. This game really make you feel like a gorilla