(At the time of writing this, I beat the main game and am combing through for collectibles)

While it has a lot of neat ideas and an amazing OST from Tee Lopes, the core gameplay itself is brought down by bland and predictable level design. Your character ends up acquiring a bunch of different suits with unique abilities (such as zipping around in a flash of lightning or literally becoming the drill wisp from Sonic Colors), but you'll often find yourself doing the same kinds of platforming challenges over and over. I can't tell you how many times I bounced off of enemies over spikes or used the drill while running away from spiked walls over the course of the 15 main missions.

One other thing worth mentioning is that the second-to-last upgrade you get, which is a suit that enables flight, kind of breaks the game at certain points. There are a decent number of sections following this upgrade where you're intended to use the Ice Kunai (basically a ninja) to climb across these narrow ledges while avoiding obstacles, but you can just as easily swap to the flight suit and trivialize the whole thing.

There is also a ranking system per stage, but it seems to be similar to that of Sonic Generations' ranking system. (Basically you're good to go as long as you are somewhat thorough and do not die)

Overall this is not a bad game by any means, but I do think reviewers are hyping it up a little bit too much. It's a great "wait for a sale" kind of game (or, alternatively, something to get if you had an abundance of gold coins on switch and can knock the price down that way) but not necessarily a must-play at $20.

An adorable mini-Metroidvania starring some kind of wizard/witch girl as she goes through six fairly large stages. The character is a blast to control for the most part (the grappling hook felt really finnicky at times) and even if the levels are large and open-ended, I never really got lost or annoyed in the same way I have in other backtracking-heavy platformers. As with most games of this type, combat is very simple and while the bosses may be larger than life...they don't put up much of a fight.

I do think the level design drops off a bit in the last stage especially, hence why I didn't give this four or more stars. It relies just a bit too much on the whole "press this switch and rush back to the other end of the room before the door shuts" gimmick for my taste. I also found one point where I intentionally had to die because I did not have enough magic stars (the game's equivalent of magic points that allow you to use the abilities you find scattered throughout the stages) to get up to a ledge.

Still, if you can forgive that (and a few annoying sound effects), you're in for a good time that feels surprisingly modern.

Yes, it's a lot slower paced than Sonic, but it was never meant to be a high-speed platformer. This is much more of an exploration based game, and to this day, it amazes me just how much Sega was able to get out of the simple mechanic of grabbing. You'll be launching yourself off star poles, swinging around to climb and reach greater heights and head-butting the fuck out of anything that stands in your way.

I do think that the treasure-collecting side of the game could've been done better though. Each regular stage has a hidden star pole to find that will launch you into a special stage. Here, you'll be asked to reach the end of the area and pick up a bonus treasure within a set amount of time. Taking damage won't hurt you, but it will decrease the timer. Getting all of the treasures will reward you with special passwords at the end of the game that trigger anything from a sound test to a boss rush. For its time, this was a brilliant idea since the internet wasn't super relevant but has (of course) kind of lost its luster in a contemporary world. I can't fault the game for this, but what does bother me is that you only get one shot to do these per playthrough. Fail once and that's it- you need to start the whole game over to have another shot. Hopefully a remake will let you spend a life to retry (kind of like how Sonic Triple Trouble 16 bit did for that respective title).

Still, that's a very small issue when the rest of the game is brilliantly paced and accounts for the character's primary ability the way it does. Dare I say it's still the best thing Sonic Team came up with after Sonic 3 and Knuckles. It's just really damning that the game had to come out as the Genesis was on its way out.

Another weird ass game I played a lot in high school that doesn't have a review...I'll bite seeing as I replayed it in the past year.

Super Widget is based off a show I've only seen snippets of. The jist of it (and the game itself) is that you're an alien that finds himself crash landing on Earth and subsequently assigned to help clean it up. Because, you know, protecting the environment was a big deal in the 90's.

Widget's primary gimmick is that he's able to shape-shift into various creatures, which works well enough in the context of a basic A to B sidescroller. The power-up system is lifted straight out of a Mario game, with the various forms you take providing you an extra hit point before reverting back to plain ol' Widget and (of course) dying if you take a hit in that form. You'll be able to turn into a sumo wrestler, an insect, a hermit crab and eventually a whole ass saucer as the game progresses. Again, I'm not too familiar with the show, but it was a lot of fun seeing what the hero would turn into next as I'd honestly forgotten about most of the game in the past decade.

As this was a game meant for kids (and one of those rare instances where the devs actually understood that they were making a game for kids), it's not a very difficult game to get through for the most part. It's a tad bit longer than I would've liked and some bosses can be extremely difficult if you're stuck as regular Widget, but it also feeds you lives and I don't recall ever running out of continues.

Although the level design was nothing spectacular, the game did at least try to innovate in some ways. There's a ranking system tailored to speed and combat, but unfortunately, going for high ranks in the stages didn't seem to amount to much. As far as I know, you don't get a better ending or any changed dialogue for improving your times or score.

I'd say Super Widget is worth playing through in 2024, but only if you've already exhausted the rest of the platforming library on SNES since there are so many great must-plays in this department.

I admittedly have a soft spot for this game as I played it a lot on one of the PS2 Sega Genesis collections as a child. I still enjoy popping it in and seeing it to completion in about an hour or so every so often, but I'm willing to admit its flaws are hard to ignore. Alex is so slippery compared to how he handles in Miracle and Shinobi World, and it will throw you off no matter what. I also wish there would've been more proper bosses this time instead of rock-paper-scissors.

That being said, Enchanted Castle did try and up the ante a bit. For one thing, you're now able to stockpile items as well as equip/unequip them from the pause menu. It sucked to be stuck with just your bare fists after losing the bracelet in miracle world, especially if you were new to the game, but that's not as much of a problem here. There are also more secrets to find, and fortunately none of them are mandatory for progression this time (like the scroll in miracle world). It's just a shame the physics somehow got worse.

This is a fairly good conversion of the Amiga game with a fantastic OST and a few added quirks. You're now able to do short hops off ladders, and the ladders themselves are even able to collect flowers for you if they make contact. There's also the option to have an actual jump, but it's not really needed in my opinion. There's also a few additional levels that attempt to turn the game into a more traditional 2D platformer for their duration, but to be honest, they were the weakest part of the experience and (again) not really necessary. You also get the option to continue this time, and you're going to need it as the bee enemies are twice as fast and now shoot a barrage of missiles from their stingers. The last proper stage is pretty much a middle finger to the player as there are around eight of the bastards that proceeded to consume all the lives I'd been stockpiling like tic tacs. Still, had a great time although Amiga is still the way to go for this game to me.

It's a platformer on the NES based off a licensed IP where the developers actually understood that the target audience would be younger kids. Surprisingly, most of the game seemed to be based off the 50's version of the Felix universe and not the trippy late 80's movie that might have still been relevant when this was released. It's a simple-yet-charming A to B platforming affair that may even be breezier than Kirby's Adventure (often described as one of the easiest NES games in many lists), but still a very good time. In terms of Taito's platformer output on the console, I'd put it above the Flintstones and Jetsons games but just below Panic Restaurant (which is top dog in my opinion).

I've also finished the Game Boy version at some point, but from what I can remember, it's the exact same game with minor alterations to the sprites.

Outside of the God tier OST, everything about socket is just sort of "okay". Perfectly playable and far better than Bubsy or Aero the Acrobat in terms of Sonic knockoffs, but still quite a few steps behind the hedgehog in terms of physics and level design. Inclines and the few attempts at loops in this game are super awkward, and some levels are far too labyrinthine for their own good. It's worth playing through at least once if you're a fan of these kinds of games and have exhausted everything else.

Fun fact- Time Dominator (his name actually isn't socket like you'd think) appears in the train stage of Battle Mania 2 as an enemy along with several other clones. I guess Vic Tokai realized he wasn't going to be a sonic killer by this point, lol.