If the original Metroid was a coarse prototype of Super Metroid, Zero Mission is a functional reiteration of the formula, the next best thing when it comes to sequence-breakable 2D Metroid (nor do I think it reaches the heights of Fusion, but that's beside the point) and a nifty game at that. The ever so memorable Zero Suit section spices things up and lends the game an additional sense of identity, the framework it was working with already being fairly sound.

This game hit all the right notes. It successfully iterated and improved on many of the fortes of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon formula up to that point, and as such was bound to delight me. And delight me it did. That being said, Phanpy must be one of the worst Pokémon to turn into in terms of gameplay.

This was the second game my brother owned, the first being a copy of Pokémon Diamond he lost at school. For his sixth birthday, he got a DS all of his own and a game of his choice. He went with this game instead of New Super Mario Bros, for which he was really hyped at the time, on a whim. We've spent countless train rides playing Bomberman and its minigames together on DS Download Play, so I count this as one of his best decisions.

I played this game for hours on end, I wouldn't grow tired of it as a whole, completely absorbed in my town. I will never forget the day I stayed up late and came across a scarab beetle for the first time. I mistakenly said I was a girl at the start of the game.

Kill la Kill got me acting unwise enough to drop 90€ on this

Meme (so screenshot and musical video of caricatured friends and acquaintances) smorgasbord. "¿Sabías que... las vacas marrones dan leche con chocolate?"

This game tries to give the Zero Mission treatment to the least Metroidvania 2D Metroid, consequently falling flat at both remaking Metroid II and transforming it into an actual Metroidvania. No better proof of this failure than the implementation of the teleport stations, brazenly forcing the issue, and I'm not even going into detail as to how bad they fucked up the original's atmosphere.

I dumped 900 hours into Ultimate when this game existed

My Inkay 4-0d my friend's team in a randbat using our boxed mons as the available pool and became part of my main team from there on #CALAMARDI

Expedition is the name of the game. Monolith Soft had already developed a more expansive open world game than Breath of the Wild 2 years prior to the latter's release. Even though I'm only about halfway through the game (just got my first Skell a chapter ago) and the scattered main quest appears to be very arbitrarily detached from the natural flow of gameplay, when it comes to unadulterated reconnaissance of a vast 3D world not a single game I've played beats it to the punch.

This is the quintessential classic Pokémon game for my money. You get the Gen 2 narrative arc with all the added perks of being a Gen 4 game, and then some. I personally enjoy the unconventionally broken level curve, even if it can prove to be inconvenient at times. As someone who tends to keep their team members evenly levelled, this was a welcome change of approach for me. Meganium.

From what little I've played, it seems to merge the gameplay of Metroid, The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros surprisingly seamlessly, it feels like a love letter to the blockbusters of its console

I was almost as invested in my brother's playthrough of this game as I was in my concurrent (at least until he started outpacing me) playthrough of SoulSilver. On an unrelated note, there's an unfinished Machos Veniese save file of HeartGold out there.

This game literally began building the house from the roof, no foundations whatsoever

The customisation options this game promotes result in fundamentally different gameplay to that of other Fire Emblem games. I was very fond of the characterisation of most characters and despised the maps, so I resorted to only playing 99 turn battles with rusted weapons so as to maximise support. After a measly 240 hours, having not even reached timeskip, I realised I had just been wasting my time. Golden Deer.