Mario Kart 64!! As someone who have played hours and hours of MK8 it was really cool to see how this game laid the foundation for future 3D MK titles to come. It also has the dubious honour of being the only non-first person view game to make me motion sick? Haha. I don't know if it was the blend of 2D-sprites in a 3D environment or the super floaty controls or what, but I was just about ready to throw up after the last cup. But i DID play through all cups so that's gotta count for something.

This is a cool game and it would probably get a higher rating if it didn't make me feel physically ill. And from what I've understood MK64 truly shines in multiplayer, and with the battle mode which i didn't try! I can see how this game would be loved by a lot of people, but i'll stick with MK8 :^) Well, at least until they make MK9 about 600 years from now.

Colourful and fun!! The movement is especially great and the pixel art beautiful, and the soundtrack is jamming as well. Sometimes it gets a bit too fanservicey for me but it's not the end of the world. I really liked Shantae as a protagonist! She's funny :)

Also the final level platform difficulty really came out of NOWHERE. Reminded me of the White Palace, minus buzzsaws... but this game was released before HK, of course.

Anyway I'm really glad I was talked into buying this game way back when it was new for the 3DS and not now when it's unreasonably expensive... a mistake I usually do with other games (one day I will own a copy of you, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon. One day.)

LOVE Link's Awakening so much... it's so weird in a way that I wish more LoZ games were. The Animal Village! The strange bosses! The guy introducing himself to Link by saying that he'll be lost in the mountains later and that Link should look for him!! Just the idea of an island with a gigantic pink-spotted egg on top of its mountain!!! It really feels like a dream and I love it so much.

Unfortunately this version of the game is pretty clunky... since it was limited to the Game Boy's extremely few buttons you have to constantly go to the menu to switch items (why do i have to equip the bracelet to lift objects?) and just touching certain objects prompts annoying textboxes you can't skip if you don't have the proper items for them ("OH? WHAT A WEIRD OBJECT" etc.) . There's a few things I like more in this version of the game, like the forest soundtrack! And the fact that the remake doesn't have the photograph sections is a CRIME. But on the whole, I'd definitely recommend the switch remake for all its quality of life changes while keeping the spirit of the original game. But if you don't mind the jank this version too is a strange & wonderful experience! My favourite Zelda story, right after Majora's Mask. I guess I just like when LoZ stories Get Weird.

watching cutscenes: 2 hours
fighting battles: 20 hours
exploring dungeons & shelters: 25 hours
agonizing over which demons to fuse in the cathedral of shadows: 30000 hours
running around completely lost not knowing where to go to continue the story: 560000 hours
doing sidequests: 20 hours

total playtime: 590067 hours

someone who is good at video games please help me budget this

i do like me some vaguely ps1-like fishes and musical numbers

also this game made me feel ill. not at all because of the gorey fish stuff, it was something about the camera that made me motion sick, which usually only happens when i play first person view-games. but for some reason this and mario kart 64 invokes that motion sickness in me as well.
anyway i liked when you get to roll around in a popcorn in the expansion

real winners go UP

I haven't played this for such a long time now that i think i will just have to give it a rating now and come back to it in like 2 years or something. Sorry.

This isn't actually a 2½ game!! It's technically a good & enjoyable & beautiful game. But for me it was pretty disappointing, which is why it gets a lower score. The starting area didn't vibe with me! It took forever to get the paraglider so i could explore properly! The sky islands were such a small part of the game! The main map was just botw's map with some differences! Building vehicles and devices didn't interest me! The story didn't really grab me either. I hate being one of those "lol totk is just botw dlc" people, but...... i mean........

All I'm saying is that the other direct Sequels i like in the series (Majora's Mask, A Link Between Worlds) had such huge differences from their predecessors that they really felt like new experiences. What I would have liked for totk would be like, either to move the main gameplay to a whole new area (the sky would be my first choice, but another region of the world would be cool as well) or, if they wanted to keep the same main map, put it in a whole other time period with new characters (like albw!), so you don't have to be constrained by "botw's landscape looked like this, so we can't change it TOO much". In my opinion (and yes this is subjective of course!), totk is just too much like botw for me to be able to enjoy it on its own merits. And what i liked in botw was the freedom and excitement in exploring this completely new, giant map, and the minimal story worked great for that.
Maybe it's no coincidence that what i liked most in totk was exploring the completely new wells (my beloved wells) and running around ignoring the story & being a nature photographer (which also has its limits with how little photos you can hold. Throw me a bone here nintendo)

I really wanted to love totk! I felt like i was living in some sort of bizarro dimension when comparing my feelings to everyone and everything who claimed that this was the best game ever created. And I'm sure that's true for those people! But for me it was just a bit disappointing.

Now that I've written out my ambivalent feelings on totk, watch me replay this in 2 years and giving it five stars for some reason i do not yet know of