If my PFP didn't give it away, I definitely enjoy the Battlemania/Trouble Shooter series so I'll probably be a bit biased.

This first installment is about as campy as it gets. The art style (clearly anime inspired) isn't exactly as polished as other Sega Genesis classics and it is full of fourth wall breaking, which is something I've always enjoyed in any sort of media. I was expecting some sort of crude or sexual humor because this is a game from the 90's with a female lead (and distinctly Japanese to boot), but fortunately, the dialogue during the cutscenes manages to keep it classy.

The gameplay itself borrows heavily from Capcom's Forgotten Worlds, but drops the multi-directional aiming in favor of a support character (named Crystal) who can fire in front of or behind you with the tap of a button. I like this idea quite a bit, but the level design sparingly compliments it. You can take advantage of the fact that this character does not take any damage whatsoever and really lay the smack down on the second and fourth bosses by positioning Crystal correctly, but that's about it. Oh well, at least the core shm'up gameplay is fun enough if nothing groundbreaking.

I'd also like to point out that this is a very beginner friendly shm'up, and one of the first I played when having a fling with the genre while my dominant hand was in a cast and I was somewhat limited in the kinds of games I could play. You do not die in one hit as the game works off a hit point system. The scoring system is pretty generous with handing out extra hit points and although you can be insta-killed by being sandwiched by the screen (sort of like sonic), there's really only one part in the game where this might screw you over on a first playthrough.

Trouble Shooter Vintage (the sequel) is miles better, but this is still well worth playing if you want something breezy and cheesy to kill a few hours with.

There isn't a whole lot I can say about this game that hasn't already been said about a trillion times by now, so I'll just leave it at this:

This game is a lot of fun if you're just going through it at your own pace and playing it through any%. The first and second floors are very strong in the level design department, although Shifting Sand Land's 100 coin star is pretty tedious. The third floor has some doozies, but I remember feeling like a genius for figuring out an unintentional way of getting the star on the far-off mushroom in Tall Tall Mountain as six year old.

The game really drops off in quality by the last two courses, which are not only super linear (contradicting the design philosophy of being more open ended that the game has used up to this point) but exist over a huge ass bottomless pit.

The beauty of this game's collect-a-thon nature is that you can skip all of the badly designed courses. You'll still have to collect more than half of the game's power stars, but there is more than enough leeway to ignore Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride (and then some). Go for all 120 stars, however, and it really puts things into perspective and suddenly all of those comments about the game aging poorly start to make sense. I have a feeling there's a reason that I never bothered to get all of them until a year or two ago.

I'll also highly recommend Super Mario 64 Plus for PC while I'm here. It's a highly customizable experience that lets you tweak the gameplay to be as close to (or as far removed) from the vanilla game as you'd like. Just want to play at 60 FPS with all of the growing pains in tact? Go for it. Want that buttery smooth 60 FPS with a side of no boot-outs and a much better camera? It's there too.

I usually don't like Super Mario 64 ROM hacks because they're designed for speedrunners or sadists, but this one is pretty good so far. I really like the concept of taking all the classic courses and redesigning them in a way that shows the passage of time. There are a few added gimmicks here from later 3D Mario games such as the shrinking tiles and flip-panels, and even the spring bumpers from Sonic Adventure make an appearance (and work surprisingly well for something custom). While the annoying boot-out mechanic from the vanilla game is still here, there is one massive QOL improvement- falling off the course is no longer an instant death/boot out. Instead, you'll lose half of your health and are usually kicked back close to where you dropped off. Considering how slippery and janky Mario 64 is by default, this is huge and I hope more Rom hacks will incorporate this concept.

Shifting Sand Land and Lethal Lava Land weren't very enjoyable to get all the stars in and I'd say they're actually worse than their vanilla counterparts, but beyond that, everything else has either been on par with or even improved. I'd say give it a go based off my experience, but keep in mind that it is a notch or two above the vanilla game in terms of difficulty.