Kind of exactly what you'd expect from a modern Spongebob platformer: Nice 8th Gen spick span and flow, but sorely toothless in the sauce. Just does everything generally worse than BfBB because it's so scared of being even slightly challenging. The shift away from collectathon structure also makes most of the levels extremely repetitive and forgettable. The PS2 movie game still made linear work by way of Goober Tokens and the objectives tied to them. But like, once you beat the main path of each level, there's basically nothing else to do, and said paths are usually hour-long hikes with the same enemies and platform gimmicks.

Wish the humor was up to par, too, 90% of spongebob's dialouge is him making puns out of random shit and patrick obsfucating that wordplay into some dumb lolrandom dredge. Nick still has the same O.G. voice crew working on this, and I respect it, but I think a lot of these guys are ready to retire from this shindig. You can feel Tom Kenny getting seized by coughing fits from straining his voice so high.

And look man, I wouldn't say BfBB has a 'listenable' soundtrack, but it being VG music in the style of Spongebob's stock music fit like a glove. This mobile game orchestral sludge is ass, and throwing in a Sweet Victory or Jellyfish Jam here and there doesn't fix it.

There was basically nothing for me here but I guess it has a nice comfort food flow to it?

“You take the blue pill... the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill... you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
-Morpheus, The Matrix, 1999
…
Chapter 1: The History of Glover

Near the turn of the century, in 1998, a game was released. Published by Hasbro, it was entitled Glover. It’s a 3D platformer where you take control of a Glove. Of course, like all great art, it was more than that, but we will discuss this later. For brevity’s sake, let’s say that it’s a by-the-books 3D platformer. At the time, the genre was popular, so Glover naturally achieved a level of success, selling over a million units across all platforms (I), but the sequel, which was almost complete, was cancelled. You see, while the game was a success, Hasbro ordered too many cartridges, which retailers didn’t want to stock. This ended up costing the company a significant amount, and the sequel was the scapegoat for this loss. This is all according to a blog post from Hasbro employee James Steele. I would link it in the references, but the main source has been lost when the website it was posted on went down.

However, this cloud had a silver lining. While this overabundance of cartridges was detrimental to Hasbro’s bottom line, it meant the game was far more accessible in the retro market years later. It had high supply, and, unfortunately, low demand. Therefore, copies of this game were affordable on any platform (II).

I think to some extent, I was destined to play Glover. My favorite genre of videogames is the 3D Platformer, and I had recently obtained a Nintendo 64 around 2021 or so. I also was starting college (Studying for a Mathematics Degree), so I wanted to play games without spending a significant amount of money. Of course, now I know even cheaper ways to obtain retro video games, but I wasn’t wise in such ways even just around 2 years ago. I likely heard about the game, likely from someone on YouTube, and I ended up buying the game for only $15. This was a fairly low price for a N64 game, and I ask that you keep that price in mind for later. Anyway, I ended up playing the game not too long after on August 27th, 2021, a day I will never forget. That day was the day my life changed forever.
…
Chapter 2: The Literal Review of Glover

Before I analyze the themes and metacommentary of this game, I’ll do a surface level review. Keep in mind, I played the N64 version, which is superior for several reasons. I may bring up some negative points here, but I’ll explain why they’re actually integral to the game in Chapter 3 of this analysis. The game begins with the Wizard, who has two sentient gloves with which he brews potions in his palace. He seemingly makes a mistake while brewing the potion, which turns him into stone. One Glove falls into a potion, and the other falls out of the palace. The potion turns the former glove (Cross Stitch) evil and the latter glove (Glover) has to stop him, gathering gems that were turned to gems along the way. This is a general summary of the plot.

Now, I think the most transparently good thing about this game is the movement. This game came out in 1998, and still has one of the best and most unique movesets of a 3D platformer. Initially it seems pretty tame, just a jump, double jump, ground pound, and completely useless cartwheel. However, when one takes the ball into account, the moveset is expanded significantly. Glover can dribble the ball to achieve greater height, throw and slap the ball to hit enemies and switches or get the ball to a higher area, run on the ball to float over water, or even ground pound on the ball to do a super high jump. You can also transform the ball into different forms, such as a ball bearing, bowling ball, and its original gem form. It’s an extremely creative moveset in an era when developers struggled to make basic ones.

When it comes to platformers, I think most would agree that good movement is only half of the game. The second half is good level design. This is where many would say Glover falters. In my opinion, the best level design in this game revolves mostly around using Glover’s abilities in clever ways. On my recent playthrough, I got to a level in the first world where these ball guys try and knock away your ball. They’re really good at it. I lost quite a few lives trying to get away from them, as every time they touched the ball it went flying and I lost a life. However, I eventually realized that if I turn the ball into a cannon ball this section becomes doable. I wouldn’t say that this every level has an encounter like this, but pretty much every level does require a mix of normal platforming and puzzle solving, with very little precision platforming thrown in, which I do think is for the best. When you’re holding the ball, the controls are very slippery and loose. The ball will roll down slopes and often bounces a little after landing. Like I said, I think this is fine when the game doesn’t demand precision, but its last few levels do demand quite a bit more, which sucks.

One thing I enjoyed here was collecting the garibs, which are just collectible cards that, while not integral to progressing the game like notes in Banjo-Kazooie or something, do grant points which contribute to extra lives. I like two specific mechanics that contribute to points. One, collecting a lot of garibs in quick succession grants more points, and two, collecting them while the ball is in gem form doubles points. This introduces not only an incentive for speed, but also a risk-reward system that I think is cool.

In terms of the presentation, Glover has a significant amount of style and substance. I’ll mostly talk about the substance in the next chapter, but for now let’s discuss the style and general technical details. For the console, this game looks really good. Everything’s well animated, especially the ball, which seems to be an actual 3D model. However, the draw distance is really short. This is common for the system, but this game in particular has a really short draw distance, which is probably a result of the high poly count. The game also runs at 20fps, which isn’t unheard of at the time, but it kinda stings when combined with the draw distance. Anyway, the music is actually really good. Many tracks have a sort of swing style, although you clearly don’t get the full range of such a song with the midi songs used. I would be remised if I didn’t mention the seagull song (III), which might just be the best song in any videogame ever.

I suppose I should talk about the PS1 version. It’s generally worse. They tweaked a few things with the physics without changing the level design, so the game isn’t as well designed overall. This is a good video (IV)If you want a comprehensive look at all the version differences, sans the recent Steam release.

So overall, on the surface level, Glover is a ambitious but flawed 3D Platformer. Good movement, inconsistent level design, doesn’t perform incredibly well, but good music. I would’ve given it a 6/10, but I couldn’t help but try and look below the surface for this game.

And then, everything changed.
…
Chapter 3: Why Glover is a Masterpiece of Sociopolitical Commentary

I understand the perceived absurdity of the title of this chapter. “How can this videogame where you play as a glove be in any way an intelligent sociopolitical commentary? However, one should remember that many of the most beloved works of art have surface level abstraction and absurdity which hides a deeper meaning. Katamari Damacy and its sequel immediately come to mind, but there are many others. Absurdism has always been combined with profundity to create works of art, and Glover is no different.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that before the villain was named Cross-Stitch, his name was Glovel. Clearly, this is a nod to the Wizard’s left hand, while Glover is a reference to his right hand. This is a clever nod, but the actual meaning behind these names goes deeper. I’m sure many of you know where this is going: Glover represents the political right, while Glovel represents the political left. I’m sure many of you are thinking now, as I did when I initially made this realization, “Ah, I see. This game’s story is merely a shallow political statement. That’s unfortunate.” However, I couldn’t help but think that there was a deeper layer to this, so I didn’t write Glover off just yet.

The true breakthrough here came around October of last year. I was in Physics Class, studying very hard, and we had recently started talking about Torque. My professor was talking about Right-Hand Rule, and how it’s a subtle yet clear remnant of mass overt discrimination against left-handed people. I had heard about this discrimination before (IV), but I had not devoted significant thought to it since I played Glover, so only then did I have a realization. Glovel himself is a left hand and meant to represent victims of discrimination. Glovel’s transformation into Cross-Stitch isn’t a bad faith statement, it’s a commentary on how bigotry leads to perceived extremism from oppressed groups. Glovel was oppressed, but when he gained power, he started a revolution. The character designs of Glover and Cross-Stitch represent their differences. See how Cross-Stitch has a mouth. He shall be silenced no more, he will proclaim loudly his desire for equality. Glover, however, has no mouth in most artwork. You can view the box art on this very website to see that. He simply follows his orders unthinkingly, never vocalizing his own thoughts. Yes, now everything falls into place. Maybe Glover could try to compromise or at least listen to Cross-Stitch, but he can only see what’s immediately in front of him, not seeing the greater picture when it comes to Cross-Stitch’s actions. Of course! That’s why the draw distance is so low, to represent this character flaw! It was not a flaw of the game, but a flaw of the character! The same can be said of the more precision-platforming focus as the game continues. As the game goes on, Glover tries to stay on the straight and narrow; unflinching not only physically, but morally. Do you see why this game is such a masterpiece? This game has created one of the most sophisticated sociopolitical narratives in history with no dialogue. There’s such a subtle unity between the narrative and gameplay that one could cry. I have cried. I’ve cried many times, thinking of the tragic story of Cross-Stitch and his pursuit of justice.

But still, we’re missing something here. The Wizard. He is the key to this story, the linchpin. After all, Glover and Glovel were merely his tools, in a way. Is this meant to represent a covert organization that is in true control? I would say so. I’m sure anyone who’s had even a minor interest in politics has heard the proclamation that bipartisan politics are influenced by large corporations, or even a secret society. Many say that these people often practice rituals of sorts. This is not unlike the actions of a conventional wizard, so it’s clear that the Wizard is the true villain of Glover. He has no values, and controls both sides of a bipartisan system, only seeking ‘justice’ when one party is no longer in his control.

It's clear that Glover is a tragedy. Two gloves were manipulated by an evil wizard, but one of them gains power and can actually fight for what he believes in. He even recruits his friends, one of which is another misunderstood being, Frankenstein. Glover, believing that he needs to keep order in the world, destroys his friend. It’s an incredible tale that says so much about life and our world. Maybe one could argue that this game isn’t perfect. That’s true, I don’t believe that perfection can be achieved by humanity, but maybe we can achieve something else: Originality. When I consider many of my favorite works of art, Wario Land 4, Hypnospace Outlaw, Watchmen, Baki Hanma, American Psycho, Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, and so on, I don’t just love them for their lack of flaws, but because they showed my something new.

I can already see it. Several millions of years from now, when humanity has perished or fled the Earth, somehow a new species will arrive, whether it be from the ground or the skies. In the ruins of the world, Glover will survive because of the excess of cartridges. Somehow, these creatures will find a way to play it. They may not understand the sociopolitical commentary, they wouldn’t know what gloves are, let alone hands. But they will learn of those things. Isn’t that the best thing art can do? Is that not the essence of life, to learn? I learned so much from this game. It taught me the beauty of life. In the end, I gotta love the Glove.

There’s just one issue.
…
Chapter 4: How Piko Interactive is Corrupting this Seminal Masterpiece

If you only wanted to hear my thoughts on Glover, you can leave. Certainly, I’ve kept you for long enough already. These next sections are talking about the current state of Glover.

To talk about Glover in the modern day, I must introduce Piko Interactive. Piko Interactive is known for buying the rights to old games and reselling them. I’m not going to say they’re pure evil. They’ve done some cool stuff, such as releasing 40 Winks for the N64, which is an entirely different story, but then they bought Glover. Now, if I haven’t made it clear, I like Glover so I’d hope that the rights holders would treat the property with respect. Unfortunately, Piko made their intentions clear when they started taking down ROMs of Glover.

Now, Piko had announced a re-release of Glover at this point, but it wasn’t actually available to buy. Therefore, aside from roms, you had one option to play Glover: Buy the game for one of its original platforms, preferably Nintendo 64. This decision benefits no one. At this point, Piko was not selling Glover, so any emulation wouldn’t take away from potential sales. Trying to cope with how poorly this masterpiece was being handled, I lied to myself. “Delta, you must calm down. Surely you know, Piko is simply trying to make good on an investment. They will release a great port of Glover to Steam and other storefronts, and the emulation won’t even be necessary.” My lie failed to account for many points, but I wanted to believe Piko cared about Glover, and so I did. However, I couldn’t continue lying to myself when the game was actually released.

If you recall earlier, I stated that I bought my first copy of Glover for only about $15 USD. That’s a good deal for a physical N64 game, but most games from that console generation go for a maximum of $10 on digital storefronts nowadays. The best example is Nintendo’s Virtual Console on the Wii and Wii U, which sold N64 games for only $10, and that was several years ago. Let’s look at other examples of games from that generation on digital stores. We’ll only look at ports/emulation. Quake 1 and 2 are $10, and Quake 3 rides the line at $15. Doom 64 is only $5. Final Fantasy VII is $12. Certainly, it makes sense that a digital rerelease of a game from the past would cost less than a physical version of pretty much any game from that generation.

How about Glover? How much did its re-release cost?

$20.

Yes, the game was released for more money than it cost me to get a physical copy in 2021. I can’t think of many games that were released pre 7th Generation where a re-release costed more than just buying a physical copy. You may say, “But Delta, surely you understand that game prices have gone up since 2021. Don’t rely on outdated data.”

I say, “That is true. However, dear reader, I bought ANOTHER copy of Glover only four months ago. It was only $16.”

You may say, “Delta, you said earlier that you were studying Mathematics, and by extension, at least some level of statistics. Surely you know that only two samples is not reliable data for a population mean. You will need a far greater sample space. I will only accept a population mean value range around or below $20 if the confidence interval is with 95% certainty minimum.”
…
I WENT ON EBAY, SELECTED 50 RANDOM USED COPIES OF GLOVER FOR NINTENDO 64, TOOK THEIR PRICE AND FOUND THAT WITH 95% CONFIDENCE, THE POPULATION MEAN WAS BETWEEN $18.18 AND $21.65. THE MEAN OF THE SAMPLE WAS $19.92, SEVEN CENTS LESS THAN BUYING GLOVER ON STEAM. I WIN, PIKO INTERACTIVE!!! I WIN!!!

(I very well could’ve made a mistake, so if you want to check my work, add me on Discord at ‘cesargarlandouroboros’, and I’ll send you my work. Also, anything I say about Piko is satire.)

But I’m willing to cut Piko a break. They included both the N64 and PSX versions of the game. Yes, the PSX version is far inferior, but you are still technically getting two games. Also, I’m sure at least one of those copies of Glover is a dud. At least, when you buy the Steam port, you know it will work as intended.
.
.
.
…Not really though, because the Steam Port kinda sucks.

How? How did they mess this up? Even Nintendo, who is rightly criticized when it comes to their retro re-releases, usually deliver a fine level of quality when they do re-release a game. For some reason though, this port is a mess! To give Piko credit, they fixed an infamous bug that would delete saves and upped the draw distance (As we’ve gone over the draw distance is important, but I understand why Piko would think it’s an issue and appreciate the effort). However, there’s plenty of issues as well! The game still only runs at 20fps! When it first released, you couldn’t even exit the game without control f-4. When someone complained about this, Piko made fun of the person! There’s tons of other issues that I’m not going to get into, some of which have been fixed, but I think you get the point (If you want a look at some issues at launch, this is a good video) (VI). Piko released a sub-par version of a game for more money than it costs to get physically and removed ROMs of the game meaning that most people wanting to play Glover will buy their middling port and not see it for the masterpiece it truly is. This is quite possibly one of the worst things that could happen to Glover.

Piko Interactive has done a few other things with Glover, such as extremely expensive physical re-releases, but I’m not too concerned about that. Sure, $60 is a lot for a cartridge you can likely get for $18.18 – $21.65, but they do infamously cost a lot to produce, and I guess it is a collector’s item at the end of the day.

However, just like the previous time company interference ruined Glover, there is a silver lining here.
…
Chapter 5: Glover 2

Do you remember when I mentioned 40 Winks, the unreleased N64 game Piko gave an official release? Well, Piko has expressed interest in finishing Glover 2 and releasing it. Now, Piko already kind of goofed with a game that’s already finished, so I’m sure they could do way more damage when it comes to finishing a game, but we’ll see. It would still be really cool if they did it. But please, Piko, if you do end up finishing Glover 2, don’t remove the beta version available right now.
…
Chapter 6: Afterword

If you read the entire review, thanks. I don’t plan to make many reviews in this style, but I thought it would be interesting to do at least one, and maybe I’ll do something else like this one day.

Ever since I played Glover I had an inexplicable adoration for it. Even on this website, you can likely find many examples of me proclaiming my love. When I started this review, I planned to say “Yeah, my love is ironic, the game is mid.” However, as I wrote this review, I began to realize that I do really love this game. There’s no other game I’d go to such efforts to make a review of. Even replaying for this review, while the game does have some obvious rough patches, I still had a lot of fun with it. As such, I decided it was time to put Glover on the throne of my favorites list. Truly, I have lost all credibility.

Anyway, check out Glover. I’m sure you can find a ROM of the N64 version somewhere.
…
References:
(I): https://www.vgchartz.com/game/864/glover/?region=All

(II): https://www.pricecharting.com/game/nintendo-64/glover

(III): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OQzAMDQjGA
Game has three composers (Rob Lord, Paul Weir, Mark Bandola) and I couldn’t find out who composed this specific track :( .

(IV): https://historydaily.org/why-does-left-mean-wrong/8

(V): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EsdyYg8RT0 ‘XP: Glover (N64 Vs. PC Vs. PS1) |
Is It Any Good?’ ExoParadigmGamer. June 28, 2019.

(VI): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYVj3fMuoGY
‘Glover’s PC Port in 2022’. ThumbsUpMaster. May 2, 2022.

I have no idea what people have against this game, but every time the GBA Castlevania games are talked about, this one seems to stand out as the black sheep. Personally, I think it's a great, focused, and well executed bite-sized search-action game with some pretty fun movement and boss battles. I like the card system. I like collecting them, I like using them, I like experimenting with the cards I have. I'll admit they could have taken another pass at it, tweaked it in a few ways and made it feel better to use, but I still prefer it over the systems present in the following two games.

I'd go a step further and say Circle of the Moon is vastly underrated and the best Castlevania on the Game Boy Advance. I know this might be viewed as a very contrarian opinion, but I don't need to prove to anyone how much I enjoy this game or any other. There's dozens of us out there who like Circle of the Moon! You might even know a few of us without even realizing it. Maybe think about that the next time you decide to drag this game.

I've tied my entire personality to Circle of the Moon. Everything is going extremely well in my life

This is an incredibly written game – and I mostly mean in quantity rather than quality. Not that the writing is bad even a little bit, it's just So Written. At times it seemed a little too impressed with itself, a little too proud of just how much it had written and just how thoroughly it had considered everything about its world. The deluge of these instances made it difficult for me to resonate with the more rare moments that were clearly supposed to be emotionally impactful. Heaps and piles of world-building featuring places we'll never see and people we'll never know. Does it set the scene? Yes – does it establish the game's bleak tone? Yes – but it is constant and it is incredibly dry. Sometimes I'd go a full hour or so without encountering any moments like this, and suddenly getting caught in the current of yet more world-building would make me realize how much I was enjoying all the dialogue and narration up to this point (by contrast of how much I wasn't enjoying myself anymore). And this was with the full-game voice acting off, I can't imagine playing the whole game with it on. I kept voices on the "Classic" setting, and sometimes even that proved to be too much. The voice actors are great but their performances are absolutely not (save for Kim, of course). I found myself speeding through text faster than normal when they appeared so they would stop sooner. Which is a shame, because the tone and quality of their voices are great reference points to understand their characters better, but unnatural emphases and inflections regularly distracted from the meaning of the sentences rather than adding to it. Disco Elysium is an incredibly smart game but failed to make me feel much of anything, and I'm not afraid to say I value one of those things a lot more than the other.

Song Accompaniment

I've only done one cycle using as many continues as I needed, but I'm already convinced this is one of the best titles of the year so far.

A bold stance, so how can I possibly back it up? Well let's start from the difficulty structuring. A lot of SHMUP fans make a big deal about how finishing a game with 0 continues is proof of 'mastery' of the shmup at the bare minimum. That's when you can then properly speak about the mechanics from the standpoint of effective design or not so of course I'm not there. However I do find myself rolling my eyes at this stance because it's an opinion that reifies away the blunt reason for this to exist the way it does in the first place.

See, in the logic of most SHMUPs be it the Cave games or the Touhou franchise, the principle design approach is that you run in with a set number of lives and learn the patterns, die in the process and generally improve. This is all fine and well, with how short SHMUPs are there's a point to be made that it's in fact the main appeal. However, just taking this fact on its face reads as deeply unserious to me: The genuine reason SHMUPs have a 'continue' design in the first place is absolutely to crunch quarters. The genre is heralded for their difficulty on the idea of continuing through failure so you can master it in the reset, but if you step back for a moment it becomes obvious that the reason it's like this at all is because of a desire to play into arcade nostalgia and life design with a certain commercial process. For whatever reason the genre never adapted to early home console life systems, thereby going through a modular difficulty through the accessibility process from there. It never 'tested' out of itself. The translation to how it plays now is fundamentally awkward. As much as I like most of the Touhou games for instance, I hate the raw feeling of play being halted by a continue moment, that 'halt' is literally there for the player to pull a quarter out of their pocket. In a post-arcade era this has been translated to relaxing and finding resolve but since that resolve is usually on the timer there's generally a sense of panic. This is where Magic Vigilante intervenes, offering a slew of difficulties alterations: a modular life system health system that doubles the starting health, stage select, and most crucially a checkpoint based continue system.

On top of all this the designer even openly notes on the Itchio page that "Default value is 4. If you are not particular, I think the maximum value is fine.) Please use it because it recovers to this value when you clear the stage." Thereby openly encouraging the player to play on easy mode and then scale up from there.

For instance it's clear to me how the trajectory of difficulty scaling would work from here, you would play on 9 health until you get good enough to do a no CC run. Then on 8, etc. This along with the stage select allows the player to treat the game less like an endurance test, and more like a rhythm game. This design structure has more in common with being able to practice different movements in the later Guitar Hero titles or Rhythm Heaven than it does with its other genre contemporaries.

That said, SHMUP experts would probably be quick to outline that this random itchio browser title is just the first game I happened to play that does this rather than the first to actually do so, and I certainly concede to that point in advance. However, there's a fair reason to fixate on it anyway: it has a nice domino effect on the power fantasy approach to the genre here. In my view, games that give modular difficulty and encourage playing on an easier mode encourage the treatment of their world and environment as a power fantasy foremost. With a genre all about the fantasy of overwhelming ballistic warfare and competency being built through twitch dodging complex attack patterns, it's a genre almost entirely built for that power fantasy, yet most safeguard it behind the endurance test and I have to admit that I at least, don't typically associate power fantasies with endurance. I'll cut to the chase and say the lo fi magical girl power fantasy is an adorable approach to the genre. The whole experience has you fighting other magical girls and various bunnies in the meantime. The pixelated visuals and simplification of the enemies as red blobs that shoot out red arrows help keep incredible visual clarity, meanwhile the urban street scroll backgrounds. God these backgrounds are beautiful, they are still pixelated but done with a higher level of pixelation than all of the foreground enemies and characters thus allowing for various scrolling effects to happen without being disorienting. It all comes together with grace, feeling like a hazy dream you'd expect from a Cardcaptor Sakura fan.

Finally I will touch on the play mechanics themselves. This is a horizontal SHMUP which admittedly is not something I play often just because they don't generally get recommended. However if I were to hazard why, its likely that having to keep track of bullet patterns horizontally requires more of your peripheral vision thereby filtering the players who already have good periphery already, or forcing people with weak peripheral vision to glimpse back and forth more putting them at a disadvantage. Whereas, vertical shooters have a much more intuitive sense of tracking since the movement of the eye up and down goes faster. Bullet Hell games in general cause a lot less smooth eye pattern movement in particular, that is to say the eye is constantly jumping between points and the points in a vertical space are far easier to intuitate than a horizontal one. I use the terms 'probably' and 'likely' here because I'm not in fact an eye doctor. However, if you want a hypothetical reference point to better understand what I mean, think of how Tetris is laid out, the blocks fall vertical right? Well we could just think of the 'gravity' of Tetris if the game was played sideways as being a game about 'magnets' instead of gravitational measurement. I think you would agree that this Horizontris would be a lot less easy to measure and account for especially if the screen to do so is very large. Less hypothetically I have tended to find that when I play Pacman it's easier to run away from ghosts vertically than horizontally because I can more easily chart my escape route.

The point of this rather strange illustration here is to point out that if this is in any case true it thus explains the vertical dominance in the genre. Therefore it stands to reason that horizontal bullet hells have to in some way justify it through the mechanics. This is where Magic Vigilante shines most then through its main mechanic: Slow down. You build up a slow down meter through beating enemies that you can hold and after a small delay will allow to to more discretely navigate the bullet patterns. If you hold for long enough, you do a powerful counter attack, but it eats more meter in the process. This slowdown actually lasts for a really long time allowing for the player to fully gauge and process the bullets behind the ones you're currently avoiding. On top of this the boss health bar is actually positioned in 2 places, on both sides of the screen allowing for the player to more accurately assess how much more they need to navigate the wave. Finally, the game fixes this through having a wide range of resolution options so you can make the screen smaller or larger to fit your needs. The result is that it allows for a great sense of playfulness that comes from horizontal patterns, giving the odd sense that you are 'squeezing' through the bullets rather than flying past them.

Combine that with an absolutely adorable enemy design, wherein the player is fighting Bunnies and Mice blobs as mini bosses, and a kicking Progressive Electronic Orchestral soundtrack, and I think you have one of the best SHMUPs staring you down in a while! In contrast to the unfortunately benign droll of this write up, the effect is far more minimalist and gorgeous than I let on. It's also far more difficult than I make it sound to. Give it a shot!

Let me give you the elevator pitch on what might be the best action game of its decade: "What if Kirby played like Bangai-O?"

Copy Kitty rules. It whips, it melts, it owns, it slaps. Any butt-kicking verb capable of being performed, Copy Kitty performs it. I say it might be the best action games of the decade, and I mean it. Because while I might like other games with action more, Copy Kitty is pure action. It is action with a raw, molten core, full of dynamic challenges and massive explosions. It's art-style and lore are completely silly, but are genuine and charming. It also has a level editor and an endless mode and a completely seperate and radically different second playable character and??? It's just so damn good. If you love action games, do yourself a favor and check Copy Kitty out.