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Edit 2/11/24: Whoops I forgot to write my review. This game is really solid, I mean come on, it's Super Fuckin Mario Bros, this game is an important piece of gaming history and is well known for a reason. Even if it isn't as widely played as Mario 3 or Mario World these days, this game holds up. The game can feel weird for some with things like not being able to turn around while you jump or not gaining momentum during a jump, but you can get around those.

What I feel like most people don't acknowledge with this game is that it's secretly an exploration game. I reckon most people just go from 1-2 to 4-1, them 4-2 to 8-1 and beat the game. Hell no! Going from level to level, no warps, no continuing from last world, no save states or rewinds or nothing, gives you a whole new appreciation for the game. I'd be looking in every single ? box looking for coins, looking for hidden blocks, breaking every brick, and keeping in mind where the 1-ups and vines were, so that you can stockpile lives for the later worlds, where resources get a lot more barren. It adds a whole new layer to the game that is easily missed with modern luxuries!

And when you put it like that, with the exploration, all the little hidden secret areas, the speedrunability of this game, and even the playground rumors like World -1, you've got a really cool versatile game here! Definitely something real special here. Wonder if this Nintendo company will go on to make any more games after this one.

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Update 2/11/24 - I forgot about this website, maybe I'll start using it. Sorry for having one of the few reviews on this game be "test2" for so long.

This game is pretty sick! Really enjoy the two-screen action as you both manage a bullet hell and block puzzle at the same time. The game keeps giving you new gimmicks too, keeping things constantly changing. You've oftentimes gotta change up your playstyle with each new battle. This game isn't your average cut of meat, it's something!

The game has occasional difficulty bumps, and the writing is... in the game. It's not perfect or earth-shattering, but I enjoyed my time with this one!

This is more of a reminiscing post than a review. I'm going to write about the Flash version of this game, which is, effectively, no longer playable. Even if you can get it to boot up, it's effectively in a dead, offline state.

It was amazing. It was a far, far greater game than SAS3. I wasn't around for its early days, but I wish it was. You could spec into reload so much that your weapons had instant reload with no cooldown. You could apply the Overclock augment to semi-automatic weapons, and combining these made the HVM MPG, a Rocket Launcher, an absolute demon of a gun. If you specced into speed high enough, you could clip out of bounds and end levels early. With strong enough guns, you could break open the entrance to the grocery store at the start of Zombie Pods and run through the level much faster. This was a very special game, this top-down shooter with insane optimization for builds. Even after the Fast Movement nerf, you could still hit crazy speeds. You could get armor high enough to get 99% resistance on all 3 damage types. You could make a Suicide Medic that would die, throw out high-level medkits using Final Farewell, and revive extremely fast and repeat the process.

The game wasn't perfect, you definitely had to play quite a bit to get to the good levels. I definitely have hundreds of hours in this game (no way to check anymore) and never even hit level 100. The strongbox system was far from perfect too, you could get something truly beautiful like a HIKS S300 with some garbage augments like Skeletonized or Biosynthesis, and you just had to live with it. ZX840, if you're reading this, I still think Biosynthesis is bad regardless of what you think.

This game had another feature that Ninja Kiwi very sadly lacks nowadays: full text chat. Whether it was strangers in a public game or playing with my buddies, it was such a joy to be able to communicate freely (aside from the heavy censorship filter) and made the game so much more endearing. I even miss saying what strongboxes I got at the end of the game (in the form of something like: 112348).

Nightmare Mode. Oh my God I loved this mode so much, it was like crack to younger me. Every enemy was insanely buffed up, there were far more boss encounters, but you got absolutely ridiculous rewards in exchange. You unlock it at level 35, but you will barely be able to function in it until around level 50. Even with the 5-tickets-a-day system, I would play this mode ALL the time. This game had a really special way of being just unhinged enough in the right way. Even though sometimes I'd lose cause a Nightmarish Dark Minion Apex Runner jumpscared me because I couldn't see it in the foreground, it was still fun.

This game had such a fun variety of guns as well. To this day, the standard Lone Star is my most damaged weapon in the game, being one of few to I had to hit the 32-bit integer limit. The Mustang, Gebirgskanone, Shredder, Hotspot, Stripper, and oh god the 1887 Shockfield my BELOVED. I had so many fun guns in my inventory, I do wish there were more slots available cause it always killed me to get rid of some of them.

I guess I should criticize it, too. This is less of a criticism of the game than the player base: I despised how every. Single. Multiplayer game. Was done on Pods. Nobody every wanted to play anything but Pods. Pods Pods Pods Pods. It's a fun map, but I definitely got tired of it sometimes. And if you picked an actually fun map like Ice Station everyone would just leave. Shoutout to Nightmare maps which chose a random one, made it way more fun, even if you could look into your cache to see what the game was loading. But it was still tolerable cause people would take anything that wasn't Last Stand.

What I truly hated was this game's end cycle. Championships were one of the worst things ever added to a game. You had this shitty contest that was INSANELY grindy that lasted a week I believe, and for getting top 3 you get a disgustingly overpowered weapon that invalidates the whole game. It's so unbalanced and stupid. Fuck the HIKS M1000 in particular, that thing should be put down. I didn't care for the crafting system either, it was nice but felt really cheap getting whatever I wanted, I missed the Strongbox system where I would hope and pray more. It did let me get a 10/3 HVM 001 though, which I used all my Elite Cores on. Got some good reactions out of people in lobbies.

More than anything, I miss the Ninja Kiwi community. Back when the website had a profile feed and forums, and you could Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down posts, and the higher level you were, the more your votes would count. I miss a lot of the people from there. Won't name too many names, but if you were there, you were there. I remember always hoping that Rohan would accept my friend request, cause to me, that was like a status symbol. Alright, I'm getting off-track now.

I guess I should mention this here Steam port of the Mobile version, huh? Well, I don't care for it. The score I gave is for the Flash version. This version is way less cool aesthetically. I have no idea why for this, BTD5, and BMC, Ninja Kiwi thought the mobile ports should be the ones ported to Steam when they look much worse. Additionally, this version doesn't have Ice Station or Meltdown, but it does have a really funny car level which is cool. If I had to put it to words, this version is like a sauceless SAS4 Flash. It feels dry. And with a game dry like that, the long level-up times aren't easy to bear through.

You can find the Flash version on NInja Kiwi Archive, but you can't get any multiplayer games, so what's the point. The multiplayer is the heart of soul of this game.

Alright, reminiscing over. Thanks for reading, or thanks for scrolling straight to the bottom. I don't really care which you did.

This is, so far, the worst game I've ever played.

The performance is so bad I had to install an external program to increase my PC's fan speed. The drone mechanic is slow and annoying. The game as a whole isn't well designed, the part where you have to find all the objects (can't be bothered to remember what they are) is annoying, the chase sequence is unintuitive since there's an invisible wall where you think you would exit, you have to turn off the alarm that looks like a decoration. You don't even SEE BANBAN IN THIS GAME. It's not even "so bad it's funny," it just sucks. I'll still laugh at banban memes though.

The base game is really bad. If you include fan-made WADs, this game is really good.

It's the same engine as Doom with some sick new additions, like the super shotgun and Archviles. Unfortunately, it's held back by some absolutely atrocious level design. This game's levels feels like some dogshit from an old forum thread. Boy do I love softlocks, enemy spam, dumb gimmicks, stupidly long levels, introducing new enemy types in moronic ways, and camping. After falling in love with the first game, this one felt like a slap in the face.

In the lore, danmaku battles in the Touhou prioritize beauty above all else. This is the first game in the series that really feels like that's the case.

The game opens up on this beautiful, welcoming tune as you fly through a blizzard, seeing an old face in Cirno and a new one in Letty. This start is really imprinted on me, I don't know why. But anyway, as you'd expect, this follows the standard Touhou formula - 6 stages, 4 difficulties, and you have to get a 1 credit clear to get the good ending and bonus stuff. In that sense, this isn't breaking new ground, but I think for what it is, this game is special.

The back half of the game is what really sells me. Stage 4 is this really well made section with a fantastic music loop ending once you break through to see the clouds and are given a moment of calm before being tossed into an awesome boss fight with the Prismrivers. Stage 5 is short but damn is it majestic with the stairs in the background and the temple music. I just really dig this game, can you tell?

The big big big big one though, the big thing that makes me love this game, is the last stage. The cherry blossom trees in the background and Yuyuko's beautiful spell cards are so memorable, and once you beat her, I won't say what happens, but it is honest to god one of the most hype things I've ever experienced in any game.

I really struggle to find things to say about this game other than "it's beautiful." Go play it!

This game is fantastic if you don't go into with preconceived notions. I thought going into it, this would be hardcore run-and-gun chaos. This is not necessarily true.

You will spend a lot of time getting lost. You will constantly look at the map wondering where to go. You will wander the halls of the levels back and forth and back and forth. And it rocks. Going into the game thinking it would be hardcore off the bat, this game was off-putting, but after staying with it, I was rewarded with a game that has aged incredibly gracefully.

Doom is a very patient shooter. After a while, I enjoyed wandering the vast, detailed levels, all the rooms and details, all the secrets I occasionally came across. I think there was one or two levels I had to look up what I was supposed to do, but most of the game can be figured out intuitively.

The real secret is that the run-and-gun madness part of this game comes a while after you start playing it. After you get a feel for the maps, you'll understand where to go faster, and start getting into fights more. For this reason, this game has a TON of replayability, just running through the levels killing stuff and having a blast. It takes a while getting to that point, but I honestly enjoyed getting there.

The only thing that I guess stands out as weird is the inability to look up and down, creating weird auto-aim situations where, if an enemy is very high or very low below you, you'll seemingly shoot at nothing, but still hit them. It's nothing too awful though, you get used to it after a while.

It's overall just a blast, getting faster and faster and fighting through the hordes of enemies, all of which I enjoy aside from lost souls, seriously fuck those guys. Definitely recommend! It's no wonder this game has such a strong community to this very day.

The title screen of this game is so fucking funny.

It's frogger! A four level long game that loops around once you beat it. It's definitely harder than it looks, when I got to the Swamp level for the first time my hands were definitely shaking.

This is a decent challenge game to try and get through it all. And the multiplayer is fun to dick around with friends for a bit. That's about its whole purpose. I've done both in life, and now I can shelve this game. The main thing I can say about it is, "yep, that's a video game!"

It's a cute little game, I guess.

The main thing I kept desiring with this game was more freedom. The game is super linear, which really stinks in a beautiful game filled with lush nature like this. I couldn't really explore and go out of bounds, I couldn't hop over all these fences. I wish I could take in the world more.

It's wrong to hate too much, cause the credits says this is an Unreal Challenge game or something, so it likely had a very short development cycle. Whether that was a week or months I don't know. But I know the ability to wander this world would have been greatly improved with less invisible walls and a bit more collision (I thought it was weird that the crystals in the last stage completely lacked collision).

Also the butterfly kept annoying me. I can figure out where to go!!!!!! Quit yelling at me!!!!!!!!

Regardless, it's a cute little scenic game, it's still enjoyable.

I figured I'd never play one a Persona game, but here I am after taking up a friend's recommendation. Was definitely better than I thought.

First off, this game is LONG. It takes four hours of prologue just to get into the actual game, and I put in 100 hours of gameplay to get to the true end. Naturally, this review is going to be pretty long, considering how much ground there is to cover.

The game is split into a "social" half and a "dungeon-crawling" half. The social half has you exploring your hometown of Inaba, talking to your party members, family, people around the town, and notable individuals whom have a "social link" (the game's way of saying becoming friends with them), which in turn give you insight into these peoples' lives and allow you to rank up an Arcana type, allowing you to make stronger Personas to use in battle. I really do love the tie-in here between the two worlds, it helps prevent the game from feeling like two isolated halves.

The social links vary in how interesting they are. Yosuke's is a pretty convincing display of grief, whereas a character like Yukiko's more or less feels like just hanging out. Nothing wrong with just being buddies, but sometimes the characters feel a little basic. That's one of the game's flaws - it feels like it really wants to SAY SOMETHING about people, but oftentimes feels too shallow. Sometimes it does decently, sometimes there's cool subtext, but again, generally shallow. I feel this the most within the first half of the dungeons in this game, where you see these characters' deepest, darkest parts of themselves they vehemently deny, and then after a battle, they just sort of go "actually, I accept my other half I've denied for possibly years" and voila, dungeon complete. Specifically, Kanji, Rise, and Naoto all have some pretty serious, deep-rooted themes in their character that gets really plainly addressed. It felt cheesy, like it was the end of an episode in a kid's show. Which is a shame, cause you could make some very interesting dialogues about all three of them.

At the very least, I enjoy how many social links there are in the game. I was in the last part of the game and I was STILL finding new social links I hadn't discovered before, and even after beating it, I know there are some I fully missed, like the Tower and Hanged Man arcana social links. At the same time, it kinda felt like a hassle running around town all the time looking for people to level up, especially considering I didn't know when I would be locked out of leveling them up (I was SO close to getting Adachi to a high rank before being locked out of it). This is a very busy game. You have to rank your social links up, fill out your compendium, read books, go fishing, go to work. Of course, I tend to love games like that, but this game's system of limited days and being limited to 2 time-passing activities per day really puts pressure on the player to get all this shit done.

Alright, I've talked enough smack. Why did I even rate this four stars? Well, despite all those gripes, I still love those pars. I enjoyed the various Social Link dialogues for the most part, the characters in this game are pretty loveable, except Yosuke, who's only tolerable during his Social Link cutscenes. The major cutscenes in this game - all the Junes outings, the festival, going to the beach, the culture festival, a lot of things you'd see in a Slice of Life anime now that I say it out loud. They're charming! Of course, anime humor will be anime humor, this isn't exactly a funny man's game (it did get some laughs out of me though), but it's enjoyable watching this little group of friends live out their very ideal lives (despite the murders).

The dungeon crawling is, for the most part, pretty fun. There's like, eight or nine dungeons or so, each around 10 floors. Occasionally they'll introduce a shitty gimmick like having to backtrack for a key, but mostly they're linear. The only good gimmick was the second-to-last dungeon, (you have to be on the True Ending route to access it) which was such a crazy place I absolutely loved it. I even got a tiny teeny bit emotional seeing it. I didn't cry or shed a tear though, I haven't done that in many years. Though I wonder when the next time I will will be. It'll probably be something major.

I had a small dislike of them around the middle-ish point of the game, but I think that's cause I got a tiny bit fixated on this game and kept playing it all day every day, so it felt nauseating going through these halls trying to find the exit again and again and again. The enemies of the dungeon are pretty chill, it's like Pokemon where you just use the move type that they're weak to, except that in this game, you can do All-Out Attacks if everyone got hit with a super-effective move (or crit) which can end battles faster. It felt like a chore sometimes, but that's just how it goes. I did really enjoy the overworld shadow system though, I love juking those dudes and running circles around em. However, I will say I got annoyed when later in the game, most enemies were just recolors of old ones, with new ones being a rare sight. I can't blame them that much considering just how many detailed 3D models were made for this game, but still.

The Persona aspect was really neat, combining them was very fun, even if it took me a bit to get everything about merging them. Izanagi, Jack Frost, Rakshasa, Black Frost, Siegfried, Kaguya, Scacath, Trumpeter, Zaou-Gongen, I will remember you all. You all served me well. Which reminds me, I love all the move types in this game, the scaling of them is quite smooth and customizing movesets ended up being very enjoyable. Getting that card during Shuffle Time that ranks up a skill was always a mixed bag, but damn it really came in clutch sometimes. Filling out the compendium was one of my favorite parts of the game, but then again, my favorite part of Pokemon is filling out the Pokedex, so maybe' that's just me.

If I had to give the game props in one specific area, it'd be music. As most game music is, (with some exceptions, like the great Tim Follin) it's pretty whatever unless you actually play the game where it's from and get context for it. That remains the case for this game, but it's something to say about it, cause running around the town, school, and floodbank with the game's soundtrack was an absolute joy. It's phenomenal background music, even if it had a limited number of songs, they were so good that I absolutely did not mind listening to them on repeat. The battle music and dungeon music, as well as cutscene songs, were also super good. Definitely a big point in favor of the game. In particular, I loved it when the background songs changed with the season. During summer, the game stops playing music in exchange for background ambience of cicadas, which, my God, was so fucking beautiful. It just really brought me back, it was so peaceful and relaxing and just... GREAT! And then, when Winter came around, the song that plays is so good, it was the one other part of the game that got me a teensy weensy bit emotional (DID NOT CRY). In short, it's stated from the beginning of the game that you'll leave next Spring, so the song in Winter is about getting ready to say your farewells. It's very lovely.

Alright, I've gotta conclude this wall of text sooner or later. Basically, the story, while nothing too crazy or insane, (well, the main twist did surprise me) held my interest to the very end. I enjoyed all the little things you have to do in this game, although I wish I started fishing earlier. Didn't manage to get a River Guardian, very sad. I guess that's one small gripe I have, there's a bunch of little time-based things that will just go away after a while, and you have no real way of knowing what or when it'll be. One other gripe I have - Rise was crying to me, and I clicked the option to comfort her, because what the hell am I going to do, stand there and stare? And then from doing that, the game was like "ah, you're in a relationship with them now" and it's like MOTHER FUCKER I'm already dating Yukiko why did you force that on me. I guess I'll write it here for archival sake, but the reason I dated Yukiko was cause I was ranking up her social link and the game said I felt hints of love toward her (or maybe it was the other way around?) so I was like "alright, sure." And then Rise had the nerve to act all sad on Valentines, like we're not like that!! Calm down!! Anyway I got off track.

It's a good game. Would recommend, although it is quite long, and having some hints about how to get the true ending is recommended. I enjoyed my time with this one!

Kanji x Naoto for life...