(This is the 51st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Caveman Ninja, Joe & Mac, Caveman Ninja: Joe & Mac, whatever you want to call it, is a platformer that released some time in 1991 for the SNES, MS-DOS, and, in 1994, for the Sega Genesis. Developed and published by Data East (known for Windjammers), this platformer is the worst 'well-known' SNES game I've played to date, not only because it is a rather boring platformer, but because the Arcade version is just so much better for some reason. The Arcade version had better framerate, better sound, better graphical presentation, more diverse and interesting levels, more dynamic boss fights and just in general looks way more fun. As I don't review Arcade games for this challenge though, I was left with the uninspired and truly lazy SNES release that Data East dropped onto the gaming market.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10

You play Joe, a caveman who has to fight Neanderthal 'nerds' who kidnapped the cavewomen. The prehistoric setting is described as 'days when "rock and roll" was just rock and "fast food" was dinner you couldn't catch.', which I thought was asuming. The main goal here is to go through each level, defeat the boss and rescue a cavewoman, who then run on-screen and give Joe a kiss on the cheek. Joe drops a peace sign and runs off to the next level. It's truly an unga-bunga game in all facets. At the end of the game, the credits roll as Joe & Mac just stand there motionless, smiling. I can only imagine Joe asking Mac where the hell he was while Joe himself was fighting for his life. In truth, this can be played with a buddy, who would control Mac.

GAMEPLAY | 7/20

This is an uninspired as platformers from the early 90s get without being a disaster on a technical level as well. You have access to five weapons, from throwing bones to boomerangs to fire to a stone wheel. They vary in speed that you can throw them and the power behind them. Most of the time, the weaker weapons are useless however. When you hit an enemy enough, they scream in pain and then become invincible for a few seconds and usually hit you with some sort of, let's call it 'super attack'. You wait, hit them again once they can be hit again and repeat this until the health bar depletes. Thing is, for some of the later bosses, if I throw the bones at them, the "screaming" animation plays but the boss doesn't actually lose one health point because the weapon is too weak. Alas, I still have to deal with the invincibility for a few seconds and defend their 'super attack'. But if I were to just use the stone wheel or fire, the bosses always lose one health point when they are hit. So there is no point in using the weaker weapons.

Before you meet the bosses, you do some platforming as you try to avoid those Neanderthal 'nerds', dinosaurs and rocks. It rarely takes you longer than a couple minutes to reach the boss area because all levels here are incredibly short. You could just run through levels without attacking a single enemy and overall they appear mostly pointless.

You have one ability in this game and that is to point upwards while jumping, which allows you to jump further.

In general, there appears to be a shocking lack of f*cks given for the SNES port. Apart from what I just mentioned, the devs just start re-using bosses in the second half of the game (they don't really become more difficult either). Apart from that one ability, if you can call that an ability, you can only run forward and throw your weapons. That's pretty boring. A level or two in and you've already seen it all.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10

No voice acting. The OST is focused on two themes. Stone age and positive vibes. Most of the tracks will sound similar to many other games that try to go for the positive vibes theme, which isn't a bad thing but means the soundtrack for this game is pretty average with its use of the xylophone, flute and bongos that you'll instantly be familiar with. Out of all, I'd say the 'Stone Age Skirmish' boss music is the one that will sound most recognizable should I listen to the OST again in the future.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 5/10

It's not that good looking compared to the other SNES games that were available at this time. There is a nice variety of colors here and there, the general design of the levels are somewhat varied, but where this game again fails is in attention to detail. The sprite work is meh, the design of the water for example is just a jagged lines and blue color and no animation to it and speaking of animations, I've seen plenty of NES games with much, much better animation quality and depth than in this game.

ATMOSPHERE | 6/10

This is a stone age themed video game alright.

CONTENT | 4/10

Apart from the very short levels and the lack of variety in most aspects of this game, there are a few secret levels you can unlock by figuring out a way to collect equally secret keys that unlock these secret levels. You catch my drift? So say, in the first level for example, where you need to crack open an egg which releases a flying dinosaur that flies around for a bit, and if you stand still, picks you up and flies you off to one of these secret levels. Those are nice, but not that easy to find and apart from them, there isn't anything else to get you hooked.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 3/10

I mentioned that levels were short. But only until you play the game will you notice how short some levels are. There is one level in particular where you simply need to jump up a few times. In 10-15 seconds, you already reach the boss. What? There are some that also take a minute or less, and none take longer than 3-5 minutes, which would be an average level length for other platformers. It doesn't help that bosses are re-used in the second half, and multiple times as well.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 1/10

Literally nothing about this game is innovative in the slightest. This goes double for the SNES version. I'd even say it is worthy of a -1, because it sell the capabilities of the SNES well short. But in its form, all it does is use a bunch of elements from other platformers in a worse way and add its stone age theme to it.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

Hard to say that this game is worth the initial full playthrough. But if you do enjoy it, your main motivation to play again will be to figure out how to unlock those secret levels and to beat your high score.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 41/100

A very skippable game. It doesn't take advantage of the SNES at all from a graphical and technical standpoint, it's a much worse version than the one for the Arcades, it's in general a rather basic platformer, very repetitive and lacks features. Not the worst game of the year, but a Top 5 contender.

(This is the 52nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

This is going to be a short review similarly to what I did for 1990's Wing Commander. The truth is, there are some genres and games that are not going to be my cup of tea. This means that my review for these games couldn't do them justice. The right person will absolutely love Wing Commander, and the right person will absolutely love Civilization I, despite its lack of QoL and overall features compared to newer entries. So in terms of this challenge, I don't think it would be fair for me to review these games with my review score.

That said, I can recognize an objectively well-made game when I see one, and Civilization definitely belongs in that category. I can't say I didn't have any fun with the game either, I definitely did in my 5 hours it. However, the game (and its manual) is so packed with features that take a while to get a grasp of in nature, and also get more difficult to figure out due to the old-school UI. Once you get somewhat of graps of the basics though, the game becomes kind of routine, where you use the cities you build to create settlers, militia, phalanx and more, where you use these characters to explore the world, where you meet other races and either go to war or make peace, and where you overall try to gain world domination before you lose.

The gameplay loop was definitely fun. If you're intro strategy games and you want to go into the Civilization series from the start, I'm sure you'll find a lot of enjoyment out of this. And even if I will likely not include most strategy games to my challenge playlist for the coming years, Civilization will likely become a mainstay.

Final Fantasy III was released exclusively in Japan for NES on April 27, 1990 until it got a worldwide release multiple times since, the first of such occasions occurring in 2006 with the DS release (a 3D remake). Most recently, a Pixel Remaster released worldwide on July 28, 2021.

I have played the original NES version because the DS version, despite few QoL improvements, is a 3D remake and therefore differs significantly enough that I chose to stick with the original. If you're considering playing this game, I would only play the NES version if you are really into old school RPGs of this time and have already played and finished something similar. Even though I found this to be more than playable, it hasn't aged well in many aspects that make a playthrough without using any guide extremely difficult. The HowLongToBeat time on this game (~20 hours for a playthrough) is very wrong in that regard. You will be stuck multiple times, you will die multiple times and most importantly, you will have to grind a lot (though this will not differ much from version to version).

The grind part is probably my most significant issue with this game and the reason why I didn't finish the game, and I'd assume a reason for many others. The game introduced the "job system" to Final Fantasy. This is a system of different classes (white/black/red mages, warriors and knights, dragoons and ninjas etc.) that you can apply to your characters on the fly. Each job has a separate level to your overall level and only the job you are currently using gains XP. This is in itself a great system and we will learn how it gets refined over the next few entries as this challenge progresses, however the first time this is implemented creates quite a lot of pain to first time players, especially those who don't check guides for this game.

The game has multiple sections where specific jobs need to be used to actually progress through them, and especially once you get near the end, there only are very few jobs that will actually be good enough for you to beat the game. Since jobs don't get XP unless you use them, this means you either have to use a guide (1), have to be lucky and figure out a working group of jobs (2) or grind out multiple of them (3). Even if you end up using a guide, you will not be spared of the grind.

It is typical for JRPGs of this age that you are expected to grind, and it's something I have done for a few hours over my 15 total hours with this game, but ultimately even that wasn't enough to progress through the boss that I ultimately abandoned the game at. I've definitely extended my tolerance for grinding with this game, which was pretty much non-existent before starting this challenge due to my inexperience with games like these (current JRPGs I usually play on "easy"). If you have a high tolerance, again, without a guide there is a good chance you will have build the wrong "team" to face the final dungeon with, which makes this a tough game to recommend to first time players on multiple fronts.

But if you're OK with all of that and want to play this game to experience every Final Fantasy entry (if you haven't played any FF games before, I would have to suggest picking one from 4 onwards), then you can check out the following review sections to learn more on what this game has to offer and what I thought about it. :)

STORYTELLING
This game has a very basic story about darkness and light that ultimately is your typical "the world is about to end, so be its hero" plot. I've not played many games from this time but they've so far all been the same overall. The reason why they're the same is because it works and is motivating enough, but don't look for anything special in the plot of this game.

You control four orphans who at the beginning of the game check out a cave that opened up as a result of an earthquake and find a crystal of light. The crystal gives the four of them its power and tells them to restore the balance in this world. In the past (a thousand years ago), a group of Warriors of Darkness fought against a "flood of light" to restore the balance, now our heroes of Light need to do the opposite. There are light crystals and dark crystals, antagonists looking to abuse their power, a bunch of characters that are aiding our heroes and all that stuff that works but is ultimately not memorable.

What makes this game stand out in this aspect however is the lore and world building. Each town has multiple town-folk running around who are waiting to dump a tiny bit of lore on you when you talk to them. This is optional and you don't gain anything from it apart from immersion - some NPCs do offer you items though - but the immersion gained is definitely worth it. They talk about the town you are currently in, the towns that are near, secret caves and/or entry points, about important characters in the world, about what ails their town and so on. So if you're looking for something extra from this game's story, this is where you find it.

GAMEPLAY
You start by giving names to your four characters, who all have the Onion Knight "job" when you start. Once you find the crystal in the first dungeon, new jobs unlock and you can start turning your characters into Warriors, Monks and three types of Mages. With each new crystal you find later on, new job sets unlock, though some prove more useful than others. Especially the final one you find pretty much gives you some of the only viable jobs that will help you go through the end game portion. Unfortunately, since only an equipped job gains XP, choosing "wrong" ones at any point can make you lose hours to grinding up the level of your newly chosen job. Also, before switching jobs, you have to unequip all items a character currently has on them.

A character can have 2 weapons, head gear, body armor and something for their hands. To my knowledge there is no level requirement for gear, you just have to have the correct job for them, but I'm not 100% on that. You can buy gear in item shops, but also find a lot of gear in items throughout the game world. I found that the more useful gear usually was hidden in the game world. Unfortunately, you had no way of knowing what items do in this game, so I found myself looking that up online many times. For example, who knew that "MidgetBread" would reveal the map of a specific location you're in? Some items are explained through specific people in towns but you'd have to find that person first.

So whenever you would switch jobs, you would have to unequip the gear, switch the job and then equip new gear. Why gear wouldn't automatically unequip itself when you switch jobs? Well, that's because there is an arbitrary inventory limit, at least for the NES version. You can carry a billion potions, but you can't carry more than 40 different items. The only way to clear your inventory is to sell stuff or use a "Fat Chocobo" that can only be found in a few specific locations. Since a lot of items are useful and shouldn't be sold, I found myself having to quicksell some of the stuff that was useful whenever I found multiple chests in dungeons. The items in the chests wouldn't be shown until I had enough inventory space, so it happened that I quicksold something useful for something that I had no need for and that was cheaper.

The DS version I believe has unlimited inventory space, and this is yet another reason to go with that (I think most ports of the game are based on the DS version) or the Pixel Remaster.

The items you do get are pretty varied however. For mages, there are tons of spells to use, both to heal your party and to attack the enemy. For your hand-combat focused party members, there are swords, nunchaku, daggers, bows and more. Unfortunately, bows need arrows that in the NES version where limited, whilst in newer versions are unlimited. Plus, in all my time playing this game I didn't find a single store selling arrows. Still, a lot of variety here.

Combat is turn-based and you can take your time before choosing your action. Your characters can attack and depending on the items they carry and their jobs, they can parry or cast magic or even "jump" (jump in one round, attack from the top in the next). You can also run away (in the NES version this reduces your defense to 0 and doesn't always work, so you can insta-die this way) or use items. I used a Warrior, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage until I unlocked the Black Belt job, and this group worked pretty well since I just let my White Mage heal party members while auto attacking or using black magic with the others.

In the game world, you always find better weapons and spells and are always incentivized to explore, but ultimately will need to grind to get your character stats up.

There are no side missions, mini games or other gameplay features in this game besides the overworld travel and the combat. Overworld travel first happens on foot, but as you progress you unlock a boat, an airship and various improvements to the airship, which was pretty neat.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound and soundtrack vary depending on the version you play. The Pixel Remaster for example modernized both but especially the soundtrack is still recognizable from the original, just remixed a bit. Since I'm rating the original, I can say that the sound design is great and that the music is for the most part excellent. As far as the tone of the music goes, I found that some boss fights could have gone for a bit more of an eerier tone since you're fighting this guy that is just pure evil to a rather cheery beat, but the soundtrack overall is pretty fun to listen to.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks really good for its time. Locations are really varied in terms of color, tiles and design, which is nice, and sprites look mostly clean but I also really like the attention to detail in a lot of areas or the dev's attempt to make some cutscenes look much more realistic than the technology allowed back then, like two characters having trouble falling asleep, the crystals sparkle transferring from west to east, NPCs dancing when you talk to them etc. There is also a huge variety of both enemy and character designs. With character designs I'm talking about the variety in how your own characters look when you change their jobs in particular. The models are different, unique and frankly some look pretty cool.

There are two minor gripes that I had that are worth talking about. First, some areas needed you to press a hidden button to progress. There was no indication that the button was at a specific wall, so I had to press every single one, which was not unique for this time but still annoying considering I sometimes had to fight multiple tough battles before I could find the right one. The other is that the NES version used a ton of flickering and flashing, which should be noted for those of you who have an issue with flashing lights. I believe this was toned down significantly in later versions.

ATMOSPHERE
Overall, the lore and world building, the soundtrack and the locations differing based on appearance and simply their placement in this world (Floating Continent, Flooded World etc.) made for a pretty atmospheric game.

CONTENT
There is a lot of content here. I got a bit over 1/3 of the way through this game as far as a walkthrough goes that I checked out after deciding to abandon the game, and that was after 15 hours where I used a guide a few times to not be stuck for too long when I didn't know where to go. I would be surprised if you get done with this game with less than 30, if not 40 hours of playing time on your first time with minimal uses of guides. The Pixel Remaster may be easier to go through since it provides you with maps but I don't think it saves you from the hours and hours of grinding that is necessary, which fills up your playing time but essentially is mostly qualitatively low content.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The NES version doesn't have side missions from what I can tell, so you go from main target to main target. At times, NPCs will follow you who have their little sub-story to worry about (which still is part of the main mission). These NPCs usually aren't around for long and don't help in combat, but you can talk to them and they sometimes give you advise. Their own little stories are nice little distractions from the heroes main goal, even if they don't necessarily all have happy endings. Since you don't spend much time with them however, nice distractions is what they pretty much all amount to and their endings often fall flat emotionally. Still, it definitely breaks up the monotony to have traveling mates who have their own goals and actually help you at the location you're going to anyway.

Apart from that, here is how it usually goes. You go to a town, get a mission which requires you to travel to a different town or usually to a dungeon. The dungeons often have multiple floors and require you to fight through a couple dozen random encounters before you meet the dungeon boss. You return to the town, get an item necessary to progress further, and so you do. It is not always clear where you have to go to progress, though most of the time it can be figured out by reading the dialogue or talking to people. Since the NES version doesn't have a map unless you have "MidgetBread" in hand, finding a town you know you need to go to can still be annoying.

The developers did a good job, mostly, of planning out dungeons in a way that lets you go through them without having your Magic Points run out, which would make completing it otherwise pretty much impossible. However, some dungeons require you to use a specific item/spell or some require you to change jobs, so it can happen pretty quickly that you are out of that item, magic points or CP and therefore stuck. In this regard, planning done by the devs was suboptimal at best.

Finally, the final dungeon, which I didn't get to play but have heard more than enough about, obviously sucks. It's a 2/3 hour dungeon with no way to save and multiple boss fights, some of which don't let you heal up in between. Emulators luckily let you do save states, but if you're playing without the ability of saving, there is a very good chance that you will run out of patience to beat this final dungeon.

It also doesn't help that the job system was implemented poorly here in that only a few specific jobs will help you beat this game and in that it requires a ton of grinding to be strong enough to win.

On a final note, most areas offer "secret routes" to chests that offer some incentive to explore. Some of these locations also aren't arbitrary and are actually very slightly marked, though you're more likely to notice after you found it than before on many occasions.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The job system of course was here to stay following its implementation into Final Fantasy 3. That alone means this game rates highly in that regard, however the implementation in FF3 itself is not great. Apart from offering a great variety, it's not like most of the jobs are viable for the end game. Actually, less than a handful are. On top of that, making some of these necessary for specific parts where they can be under leveled, or having you unable to switch due to a lack of CP (which admittedly will rarely be an issue) are other negative points worth mentioning.

In addition, the game focused a good amount of resources on the job & battle systems in favor of adding anything unique to the story.

REPLAYABILITY
This is a tough one to judge. On the one hand, there are a lot of jobs here that you'd think there is a lot more strategy to them that makes multiple playthroughs viable. On the other hand, it's unlikely you'll find much end-game success with more than a few of those jobs. Plus, you'll still be auto-attacking through multiple long grinding sessions.

PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.

OVERALL
When you're playing this, it's clear that this game is higher in quality than most of its competitors at the time. While the job system is rather simple now, it obviously was a much bigger deal at the time and if I had to guess, I would assume that grinding wasn't seen as nearly as big of an issue as I make it out to be. If anything, it added hours to the playing time and increased the value of the cartridge. Today, I'd say the games faults do stand out and later entries that still have the old school charm are also much improved in pretty much all aspects, so I'd recommend playing Final Fantasy 3 only if you're looking to experience all games in this series or want to get the internet points that come with beating that final dungeon.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan only release, no magazine reviews for this one.

(This is the 39th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Vice: Project Doom is definitely one of the best named games I've played so far. Is it one of the best games games though? Well, not really. It does some things really, really well, it has a lot more storytelling than you would expect from NES titles, but it is a game that shares similarities with many, many other games out there and other games have done many things better than this one.

This game released on April 26, 1991 for NES in Japan and NA, and got a release on Nintendo Switch Online in August 2019.

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STORY(TELLING)/CHARACTERS | 6/10
You play Detective Hart, to is tasked with investigating the "BEDA corporation", a front run by alien beings living on Earth in secrecy. They've developed a substance that was supposed to be food for the Aliens, however has been misused by humans due to its addictive natures, despite the fact that it has very bad side-effects.

Usually I would mention how the story resolves because for the vast majority of games, the plot and the storytelling in particular are afterthoughts. Not here. Vice: Project of Doom stands out in its storytelling and the sheer volume of its cutscenes. If I had to give a comparison, I think the Ninja Gaiden series fits best. After every stage, a cutscene plays with shots of the characters and lines of dialogue below. The camera pans left to right during these and the characters remain still otherwise, but this is very much unusual for this time and the #1 factor in which this game stands out.

There are some twists and turns in the story as well. That said, the storytelling isn't that great, probably because devs back then were game devs first and storytellers like sixteenth, so they're excused but the effort is there.

GAMEPLAY | 12/20
There are 3 types of stages in this game. In the first kind, you drive a car through a narrow driving lane and have to move side to side to avoid the edges, to avoid obstacles in front of you that damage you, and destroy/avoid enemy vehicles. This is not that great and there are only two short levels of this kind.

The second type is a side scrolling rail shooter kind of stage that repeats twice as well. You shoot enemies, some close by, some far away, before they shoot you. You pick up items they drop by moving the cursor above the items. You have a few different weapons you can use, some of which have higher AoE damage. It's OK and a nice-to-have change of pace, but I wouldn't say these levels are good. They're tolerable at best.

The third type, finally, is the main kind, 2D platforming with enemies everywhere. You have three weapons at your disposal, two of which need ammo (dynamite, gun). You also have a sword that you can slash your way through levels with. I mostly stuck with the sword. The timing window with your sword is not that long, so I often would be just early or just too late and get hit. It doesn't help that at many points, there are a lot of enemies coming from both angles. Some drop into view out of nowhere sometimes and immediately start shooting, which makes avoiding their shots impossible unless you move forward a step at a time, which would kill the pace and therefore your enjoyment of the game. So just eat those hits and keep moving.

At the end of each level, a meat item drops which regenerates most of your health, so getting hit a bunch of times is not a big issue. So yes, this is not a "one-hit and you die" type of game, thankfully. But it's not a very original game either, at least in terms of its gameplay. In fact, it's very average.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
No voice acting. Sound design is typical for NES games, so it doesn't stand out. The soundtrack is definitely one of the better ones of all NES games I've played so far, and has some bangers, including the track they've used for many of the cutscenes. The track for Boss Battles 3-2 and 7-3 is also worth a listen.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 4/10
It's very average graphically. It's an NES game, so it's inferior to some of the other games that came out at the time due to the move to 16-bit across the board. Artistically, it still has the ability to stand out but it doesn't. The levels and their artistic design are unimpressive and the kind of enemies that the devs have thrown into each level appears kinda random. You gut red ninjas flying out of the ground, fish too whilst bats come down from above, it just does not feel very thought out in that regard.

ATMOSPHERE | 6/10
The game is described as biopunk and noir. That's a nice mix of themes that you don't see often, and even if the technical limitations hinder the game from delivering a truly intense/atmospheric experience, I appreciate the difference in tone, especially in terms of its story the farther you dive into it. Within the levels, there is plenty of green and black but levels often rather feel like "levels" than actual places. More detail would have helped there.

CONTENT | 7/10
You have 10 levels I believe, all (most?) with multiple stages. 2 of those have you driving, 2 have you on rails. There are boss fights at the end of each level and probably over 10 minutes of storytelling all told. It's a good amount of content.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
This is mostly a very typical affair. Even though there are some levels where many enemies appear at once, it rarely really leans into the ridiculous like many other games do, even a game such as Ninja Gaiden, because enemies rarely take more than one hit to be defeated and you are such a tank with your own health. There is just one early difficulty spike for one boss that is just so insane that I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of players back in the day didn't manage to beat it. Thanks to the magic of emulators and rewind, I was able to eventually get it down, but man was that ridiculously difficult, especially since almost everything else in this game is very beatable.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 5/10
Innovative in only one thing, and that is its focus on storytelling. The way it tells its story is completely copied from Ninja Gaiden, but let's rather call it 'inspired' and be happy that storytelling is actually happening, something I'm always a big fan of.

The game also features a good soundtrack, but is decidedly average in every other way.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
Not really replayable apart from trying to beat your high score. But it's an important game because it leans away from the arcade into a more story-focused experience, which at this time, many games still didn't do. It even gave you a lot of health instead of one hit-point like many other games, so it wasn't too concerned with artificially increasing the play time of this thing either.

PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Playable for the most part. It just has that typical NES slowdown issue whenever 5+ sprites appear on the screen simultaneously. It happens often enough that I deducted a point.

OVERALL | 60 - Average/Slightly Above-Average
Are you looking for something like the early Ninja Gaiden games in terms of storytelling, whilst the game maintained a similar retro style? Well, you don't have the wall jumping here, but other than that, Vice: Project Doom is the best comparison I could find so far. Storytelling is exactly the same, there is some (not a lot) of variety in gameplay and a very good soundtrack here, so give it a try. But don't expect anything special here, as this is one of the most average NES games you'll ever play apart from its storytelling.

(This is the 38th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Well, I regret keeping this on my list. I have The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout as the 2nd worst game I've played in 1990's batch, but it was sort of entertainingly mediocre, so I thought I'd double down and play another Bugs Bunny themed video game.

This time, that game is The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle II, a GameBoy game that initially released in April 26, 1991. Wikipedia lists it as an "Action" game, which I think makes it the least "action" Action game I've ever played. I'd rather call it a Puzzle game myself. I would also call it a bad game. Check out the "Overall" part to see my overall thoughts, check out any part you want if you want more detailed thoughts there.

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STORY(TELLING)/CHARACTERS | 1/10
Very simple. Bugs Bunny's girlfriend, Honey Bunny, is captured by "Witch Hazel" and must be rescued by finishing 28 levels. The game starts by showing an image of the Witch's castle and the picture of Honey Bunny on top of it. Then the game starts. You'll get a tiny scene at the end but that's pretty much it. So pretty typical stuff for a puzzle / platformer type affair.

GAMEPLAY | 5/20
You start a level and find yourself on a screen filled with enemies and doors. The goal is to enter these doors, find all keys, and then exit through the designated exit door. In between, you also have to pick up weapons or a hammer for example to kill enemies or break some obstacles in your path.

The idea is simple. The level is presented to you as a puzzle, and you have to figure out how to perform all necessary tasks in an order that allows you to beat it without getting hit. Because if you get hit even once, you die and have to restart the level.

From the get go, I gotta say that the game design here is not that good. First, instead of simply picking up keys on the screen, you have to enter doors, all of which simply have a key. So why not just leave the keys on the screen and forego the minutes and minutes of time you will lose on opening all these doors over the entire play time.

Second, the game seriously lacks in features. Opening doors and collecting keys is all you do. Apart from picking up those weapons, you can also use a rope to get to another platform and you can step on platforms that are marked as "Up" to jump up. The game picks up in difficulty the further you go of course, but this is generally it. There is a small sense of reward of finishing a level that you feel and the game as a package is much, much tighter than Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout, but it isn't really fun.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 4/10
No voice acting. I didn't like the sound design that much. The sound of picking up keys got a bit irritating after a while, and the OST is only 7 minutes long. It's not the good kind of retro OST either, as its sound quality often is just subpar.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 3/10
It's an early 90s GameBoy game, so it looks like you'd think it looks. There isn't much attention to detail here and the fact that jumping platforms are simply labeled "Up" shows how little passion went into this. There are 5 games of this type by the way.

ATMOSPHERE | 2/10
There is no atmosphere to feel here. You could put anyone as the main character and it wouldn't really feel any more out of place. If you are going to enjoy this, you'll enjoy it for the puzzle design, but I doubt it will offer you any value in any shape or form by the way it looks and feels.

CONTENT | 4/10
There are 28 levels here and a boss fight. It's not a terrible offering. If you enjoy the puzzle aspect of this game, there is plenty here to work your brain over, but I don't know why you would choose to play this if you could instead play any of the other 4 Crazy Castle iterations or, here is a thought, a good puzzle game, of which there are thousands.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10
It works in that each level has a guaranteed way of being passable if you figure out the right way. Figuring that out on some levels can be somewhat of a challenge, so it does its job as a puzzle game, but it's too repetitive and not that fun to begin with.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 2/10
There is nothing here that could be considered innovating. As a concept, it works, that's probably the best thing to say here.

REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
Levels have a specific way of being completed and you won't really do anything differently the second time out. All you could do is try to finish the levels faster but why would you?

PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Unlike the other Bugs Bunny game I've played, this didn't play at constant 15 FPS, so that's a big plus. It works from start to finish without issue.

OVERALL
This is a repetitive, boring puzzle game that feels like a reskin of a reskin of a reskin, even if it isn't so necessarily. There just isn't anything here to make it stand out, the way the game is designed is just not fun and I was shocked to find out that by the end of 90s, it had sold over 200.000 copies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

(This is the 22nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

I've abandoned, checks notes, 13 of the 22 games I've played so far. It's the nature of games in 1990. Many were designed to be unbeatable within a rental period, so the devs made their games annoyingly (or if you played these back in the day, endearingly) difficult.

Never have I however actually "rage quit" any of the previous 12 games, until I've played Mega Man 3 that is, a platformer developed by Capcom and initially released for the NES on September 28, 1990. I found myself extremely frustrated throughout my entire time playing this. The only time I was really vibing with the game was when I didn't move and just listened to the amazing soundtrack. Maybe that's a bid too harsh, but we'll go over everything one by one below, so you understand where my frustration comes from for a game that does plenty right as well.

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STORYTELLING
While I call this the "Storytelling" section, it really is a review on storytelling, but also the plot itself, the characters and how they interact with each other. And as far as characters go, this legendary series has introduced a couple pretty important ones for the series in Rush, the robot dog that helps you jump to higher surfaces in this game, and Proto Man, who shows up in almost every level for a quick battle to test your skills. He appears to what has to be the most satisfying whistle sound I've ever heard.

The setting and the plot here are not explained in the game, only in the manual, and actual advancement of the plot only happens much later into the game. The set up goes like this: Two scientists are working on a "peace-keeping project" and need a few more energy crystals to finish their work. They send Mega Man to collect them, but Mega Man will have to face a bunch of bad guys to get to them.

This comes from the short conversation printed onto the manuals. In-game, you simply see a screen with Mega Man in the middle of a 3x3 display, with each of the other squares showing a portrait of a boss. You can freely decide which level/boss you want to face first and will be brought back here to select the next once you're done. All bosses have unique looks and abilities, but they don't talk and they don't taunt or something along those lines for them to have any personality, unlike Proto-Man, who's part in the story gets explained the further you go.

Overall, the story that is here has a bit more than your average one, where you get some text at the start and at the end of the game, but nothing in between. Here, you get nothing at the start, but a bit more towards the end with a nice little twist.

GAMEPLAY
First of, we gotta address the performance in this game. I thought it was due to my emulator but no, the game has lagging issues throughout and it really is irritating. Obviously it wasn't such a big deal back then, as it was sold over a million times, was placed 3rd in the Nintendo Power Awards for 1990 and got 9/10s and 4/5s from many magazines at the time. By today's standards, or even by my comparably lower standards for 1990 games as part of this challenge, a game that requires so much precision just got that much more frustrating to play when every time you used a specific weapon that shot multiple projectiles, the screen would lag significantly. This would happen when too many enemies where on screen at once as well.

But in general, the timing and precision required just was a bit too much for me. Not only that, but the game forces you to stand still, step back, wait for an opening and take a precise shot multiple times per level, or you'll be having a bad time. Add to that the amount of cheap hits you get in this game by things like clouds popping into frame just as you jump into mid-air, leading you to miss a platform fall to your demise, and it just wasn't an enjoyable time for me for most of the time. There was also a moment where I managed to avoid all clouds, only for the platform beneath me to clip Mega Man in an unfortunate way and torpedo him dozens of feet into the sky before dropping him out of the screen.

With all of this however, I managed to beat all levels at some point, but I just couldn't beat the bosses a lot of the time. I'd say it's lack of skill on my end for the large part, but also exposes some of the game's flaws again. Once more, I have to mention the poor performance of this game, which made using many of the weapons you collect by beating bosses a chore. It's not like many of these are effective per boss anyway, but have the game lag when using almost all of these also messed with my timing, which, as a new player, I suck at to begin with. With your basic starter weapon, the battles just are very tough because you have to dodge so many things at once and find an opening to attack yourself (with little damage output). It doesn't help that this is another game where you cannot turn your character until he finishes his attack animation, and when you press attack 0.001 seconds before you press turn, he will shoot in the wrong direction as well. Some of you might say this is fair, you might be right, but it just didn't translate to fun to me.

To explain the game more objectively to wrap this up, you pick a boss on the select screen and go through a few-minute long level to face him. If you win, you get the boss' power and can use it in future boss fights. The way you go through these is optional, but unless you are really patient, you will not want to face bosses with the wrong powers and have them take too long. Some bosses can be killed in a few hits with the right weapon for example.

Most levels have a fight with Proto Man as well, you have your dog Rush that lets you jump to higher surfaces and you can collect items that give you points, health and 1 Ups.

This was my first Mega Man game to play and the difficulty in addition to the terrible performance did leave a bad taste in my mouth, but I will obviously try out future Mega Man games and considering how popular the series is, I'm sure I'll enjoy some of the future releases much more than this one.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The sound design I found to be pretty average for a game from this year, I've certainly heard them all in other games already. The MVP in this game for me is the soundtrack, which ranged from good to amazing throughout. Even if you didn't play this game, but you enjoy 8 bit soundtracks, this game's OST is definitely worth a listen. It already starts with the intro theme, it continues with the oh-so satisfying Proto Man whistle which I already mentioned, and then you got an individual track per stage as well. My favorite definitely was the Spark Man track (and on a soundtrack that has so many bangers, I think Spark Man's track still stands out a lot).

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game looks pretty good in my opinion. Each boss has his own individual level, often with a unique theme. Shadow Man's level for example has a part where the stage darkens from time to time and the only thing you can see is the enemy coming at you. The Hard Man's level features rocky terrain, Spark Man has placed obstacles charged with electricity everywhere and Gemini Man's world offers two settings. Sprites look pretty good as well.

ATMOSPHERE
The game is supposed to take place on mining worlds. Now I don't know what that means, because most of the stages didn't really look like they were used for "mining" purposes, but disregarding that, most feel pretty atmospheric, but mostly in a cheery sense. Even the darker levels have cheerful music playing in the background, which makes sense due to the style and target group of these games. But due of that, it does waste some of the potential to create a more exciting and diverse atmosphere. Whenever the levels are colorful and cheery-looking as well however, the music fits very well.

CONTENT
On the surface, this appears to offer a lot. A bunch of boss fights, a little bit of storytelling, multiple different weapons and even the ability to choose the order of the fights yourself. In reality however, all of this is not only overshadowed by the regular lag issues, but there isn't as much here overall.

If you like Mega Man games and played these before, you maybe don't mind the lag by now. If a fellow newcomer to the series were to choose Mega Man 3 as their entry however, I don't know how many of that sort would be willing to stick with this.

Being able to choose boss fights randomly is correct, but I'd assume that unless you are very skilled, you will not be able to beat them in any order you want, but will have to rather rely on picking specific ones earlier to get specific weapons to make future boss fights that much easier. The weapons themselves do offer some variety, but since you can mostly use the basic weapon during the actual stages (where I personally died to gravity the most) and only need to use specific ones when you face bosses, I don't feel like they have as much purpose as I would have liked to see.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
As I mentioned above, being able to choose one of 8 bosses to start is cool, but you'll need to choose a much more specific order to get through this game in all likelihood. I also don't like how the stages themselves are designed in a way that you'll be taking cheap hits a lot and enemies pop into frame in a lot of unfortunate situations (like when you are mid-air), which forces you to anticipate this by jumping forward and back. Not only that but you're forced to stand still and wait a lot to be able to damage the enemy or at least walk pass without taking damage (if you're precise). Overall I found the game a bit too hard in the wrong places to find much enjoyment out of it, though I did like how each level had its own style and many of its own, unique challenges.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The game innovates in a few pretty notable ways from Mega Man 2, namely introducing your companion Rush and giving you the ability to slide. The stages are also a bit longer (and I believe there are more stages overall as well), but other than that, the game doesn't do much else and is pretty similar to Mega Man 2, which I assume is what fans wanted in the first place. From what I've read however, Mega Man 3 is less adventurous with the design of stage challenges, bosses and weapons, which sounds like a step back to me.

REPLAYABILITY
Not as much replayability as I would have thought based on the boss structure, but still more than your typical 1990's platformer.

PLAYABILITY
It works, but the constant lag/slowdown just makes it an unpleasant playthrough for a lot of the time, especially since I don't bring any of the enthusiasm that someone who maybe has played the earlier versions back in the day, or some of the later more refined versions.

OVERALL
My experience with Mega Man 3 was ultimately disappointing, though I will remember it fondly for its soundtrack. And even though I didn't like a lot about the gameplay, I did enjoy other parts of it and I can see how people enjoyed both this, and later entries a lot, so I'm still looking forward to playing all the other 60 Mega Man games that have come out since. Next one on the list is Mega Man: Dr Wily's revenge on the Game Boy, which came out in July, 1990.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Tobar the 8 Man for GamePro, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "It's got everything that a great video game should have: incredible challenge, exceptional game play, stunning graphics and some nifty weaponry."

Final Fantasy games, objectively, are really well done, at least from the fourth-generation games, as I didn't play any newer iterations yet. But let me start of this review by saying that I realize that 3 to 5 so far have not been for me. On the one hand, I think it has a lot to do with how the game has clearly a younger audience in mind, especially in its story presentation, so perhaps I would have fallen in love with the franchise like so many others, if I had played these games at a young age myself. On the other hand, young me was more interested in sports, fighting and platforming games, so I probably wouldn't have.

But having said this, if you are one of those who loves Super Famicom Final Fantasy games, I'm hoping you understand that I think fundamentally, Final Fantasy games are good, I just didn't gell with them yet. Final Fantasy IV I actually did beat, but both 3 and 5 I didn't, so let me go over why in this review.

As with IV, there are pre-named characters in this game's story and there clearly is a lot more attention being paid to it since IV then before. The production values are also off the charts here, and the game has added some QoL features to make life much easier than in III, which was the last game that had the well-known 'job system'. In this game, the job system is actually well explained and you quickly get a grasp of how it works. Many other features of this game are explained as well, making it less important to constantly look up a guide or the game's manual to figure stuff out.

The job system is something I want to quickly talk about here, as I finally understand why people rave about it. In III, I thought the job system was really lackluster and more of a gimmick forced on me than something I enjoyed using, while in V, it's really good. It's actually wild how many options it gives you to customize and mix&match your characters it gives you. From what I've seen, it only gets deeper the further you are in the game.

While that is great, to me it only affected my enjoyment of the game so much, as the gameplay itself is the same as in FF III, meaning it still uses constant random encounters that mostly either are too easy or too hard, though mainly the former, it still asks you to grind, and I don't want to know how much you need to grind for the final few dungeons, it still has a few enemy attacks that just make the gameplay straight up not fun for me (more on that in second) and it still uses the ATB system, which I'm not a fan of.

In terms of enemy attacks, the one in FF IV I disliked the most was the one that allowed your enemies to literally one-hit kill you regardless of your HP or whether you are guarding or not. I don't remember the name, but I found that to be a non-sensical thing, especially because it worked pretty much all the time.

In FF V, the thing that annoyed me the most was the "sap" skill that some enemies apparently have. From what I gathered, you couldn't even tell whether you were inflicted or not, and there is no telling when it would disappear, and I think no way to remove it, especially since it is easily inflicted on all party members at the same time. What it does is reduce the HP of all party members in a really quick way, which means you need to constantly heal against it until the effect runs out.

This issue gets exacerbated by the ATB system. The ATB system basically means that while this is a turn-based game, the enemies will not just wait out your turn. As their attack meter fully charges, they will just steal a turn, if you wait too long. And "waiting too long" is literally a couple seconds of thinking of what to do. To me, this places it between a true turn-based system and real time combat, both of which I enjoy a lot. The ATB system, I do not. Especially when I got sapped, turning on the proverbial jets to pick the skill I want got really annoying. The first boss that does this that you are fighting also has a bar that charges twice as fast, so as your party's HP is rapidly going down, getting hit is not a great thing to happen. There are only so many revive items I can use. And having to 'hurry' is not something that adds literally anything to combat. I either know what to do but can't do it quickly enough, or I don't know what to do and have to look at my options and strategize, which I can't do in a short amount of time. There is an option to turn the ATB system to "wait", but all this does apparently is have the enemy wait if you go into a specific menu like "Black Magic". Staying in the general command screen still lets the enemies steal a turn.

Finally, I want to go over the story. I played roughly 10 hours, so I got about a third of the way through the game I would imagine. So far, all I have seen about the story clearly tells me that it was written for a young audience. I don't mind this at all, that's most people who would play it at the time, and many people got emotionally connected to the cast with this story. Playing this now however, I can't say I enjoyed it simply because I'm clearly not the target audience. The game's way of endearing you to its characters is through multiple contrived events instead of genuine chemistry built up between the characters through its writing, which is understandable due to the Super Famicom's storage space but again, speaks to the target audience of this game's story.

So overall, again, I think this game is good and I can see why many people would enjoy the job system even today, but I can't say I enjoyed this game personally, both in terms of story and gameplay.

(This is the 82nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

This game was such a trip. The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout, developed by Kemco for the NES and initially released in Japan on August 3, 1990, is a very odd game. If you'd ask me about the structure of this game after I played AND FINISHED IT, I would just say "I dunno".

The game is easy and frustrating at the same time and it goes on for far longer than it has the right to. It uses Looney Tunes characters as both the protagonist and all antagonists, which does add a certain charm, but it's also probably the only reason why it's relevant enough for me to have put on my 1990 playlist.

More on the game in detail below.

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STORYTELLING
The game starts with a short cutscene with text and stand still images of Bugs Bunny opening a letter. The Bugs Bunny character is celebrating its 50th birthday and his friends are throwing a birthday party for him. Some of the Looney Tunes characters are jealous, so they decide to stand in Bugs Bunny's way as he tries to get to his party. We're talking characters like Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew and Sylvester.

Once you beat the game, you get a similar cutscene that has a little surprise in store.

It's about the minimum you'd expect for a game that wants to have any sort of story in it.

GAMEPLAY
You control Bugs Bunny through a variety of different levels in a game that features roughly 20 FPS and is pretty consistent with that. You are armed with a hammer and go through a colorful world filled with a bunch of random assets and bear similarities to Super Mario games in design. You even warp through "pipes", though here these signify the end of a stage most of the time and lead to a boss.

The assets are truly random here. You'll be hit by rocks, walking alarm clocks that explode, lava that shoots up from the ground, some weird moist-looking orange texture that can fly, guys dressed like milk cartons and characters that have a hammer for their heads. At least the boss fights are only against Looney Tunes characters that you'll recognize.

The problem is, there are about 50 stages and that many boss fights throughout the game. I'm exaggerating, but only kind of, and each boss is repeated at least 3 times until it all of a sudden just ends. It's not like levels are creatively designed to warrant this. At points it feels like you are walking through pretty much the same levels over and over again with only slight changes here and there. The boss fights sure are the same, so why are you making the player suffer more by overextending the playtime? Again, it doesn't help that the game runs at a locked 20 FPS.

After each stage you beat, you enter one of two mini games and can play those multiple times if you collected enough carrots. One has a Bingo like card on it and you have to try and match 3 or more stars horizontally/vertically/diagonally. If you do, you get 1Ups. This is no challenge at all and you will find yourself with 50+ 1Ups left by the time you beat the game. Then there is a Whac-A-Mole type mini game as well. Both just become annoying necessities after you've played them a few times.

The 1 Ups makes the completion of this game much easier already, but it's not like the levels are difficult either way. You find plenty of items to regenerate your health (you'll need them because there is a lot of stuff that you can't reliably dodge in this game) and platforming barely offers any challenges. Your only enemy there is gravity.

There are barely any features in this game and in today's day and age, we've seen plenty of these licensed game that are only made as cash-grabs, as there really wasn't much effort put into this one.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design is OK and the soundtrack is as well. The music is not terrible to listen to, it's very average as far as OSTs from this time go, but the repetitive and at parts non-sensical level design might cause anxiety whenever you listen to it after your time with this game is over.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The game is certainly colorful and Looney Tunes characters add to the charm of this game, but the game starts looking pretty basic the further you get into it, there isn't much creativity here and the fact that a bunch of random assets are thrown together here does reduce the aesthetical quality of the game in my opinion.

ATMOSPHERE
The game doesn't really do anything special graphically, it has a very average soundtrack and to add to this, your eyes are strained from looking at this 20 FPS, blurry, headache-inducing presentation.

CONTENT
It took me about 3 hours to beat the game and it should take you as much as well. Unlike some other platformers that take much longer for a first time player - but probably less than 3 hours for experienced players - 3 hours is all The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout has to offer. I rarely died, the game has barely any features that you could miss out on and it's a pretty straightforward experience. And even with a game that is 3 hours long, I was asking for it to be over very early on into my playthrough due to the sheer repetitiveness of it.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Terrible. I don't really think much thought went into creating a cohesive structure at any point. They simply seem to have created a start and end point for a level, throw together a bunch of random assets in between and added about half a dozen rotating bosses at the end of each stage. Very poor.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION
There is nothing innovative about this one. They seem to have copied a bunch of platformers that were more popular without understanding what makes platformers popular.

REPLAYABILITY
You can try to beat your high score, sure, but I doubt that anyone who starts playing this today would want to replay it.

PLAYABILITY
It works from start to finish, but playing it at 20 FPS or so throughout, if even that, really hurts the experience (replace 'experience' with 'eyes').

OVERALL
This is definitely in the running for Worst Game of 1990. It's the only game I've played so far that performed this poorly. If not for the Looney Tunes setting, this game wouldn't have anything to offer apart from boring, repetitive and simple platforming.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Couldn't find any thoughts, just two notices of the game's release in Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power magazines.

(This is the 36th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Hey, we made it to 1991. This is the first game in my challenge that released in 1991, as Street Fighter II: The World Warrior graced console players (SNES) on February 6th of that year.

This game needs little introduction, as it changed the fighting game landscape forever. How has it aged though? Well, my subjective opinions on that are down below. Spoiler Alert: Plenty of games from 1990 aged poorly, some however aged really well. I would put Street Fighter II somewhere in the middle, though closer to the "aged poorly" side of things.

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STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS
The game does actually have storytelling, but only a very brief cutscene when you win all battles with a character. Then you will be shown how the characters react to defeating M. Bison. The oddest one? Chun Li goes to her father's grave to tell him that she has avenged him by defeating M. Bison.... and that she can now go back to being a young single girl! WTF! So 90s.

So this does add some recognizability beyond their gear and special moves to these characters, but it's pretty limited of course and you only get the one cutscene per fighter. Despite this, some of the characters have "icon" status in video gaming, like Ryu or the aforementioned Chun Li. Hell, I've never played a Street Fighter game before this in my life (Tekken only back in the day) but even I recognized them immediately.

The manual includes a short bio on all of the 8 main characters and a list of their special moves and how to execute them.

There is good variety among these characters. Chun Li is speedy, Ryu is a martial arts expert who can also do a cool fireball attack (Hadouken!), Honda is a big sumo wrestler, Blanka has a low center of gravity, Dhalsim is a lanky piece of shit and Ken ... is another Ryu? Not sure why they made them so similar. If you listen to the experts, there are differences between the two, though I'm not sure how much that applies to Street Fighter II. I didn't play this game that much to be able to tell you whether there are slight differences in footwork and pace or whatever. But to conclude, there are a bunch of different characters here overall with different abilities.

There are also bosses, one of whom looks like Mike Tyson (which he didn't know about until recently funnily enough). Even more funny and interesting: Mike Tyson's character in the US is called Barlog. There is a different character called M. Bison who is wearing a red military uniform or something.

In Japan, M. Bison actually stands for Mike Bison and is the name given to the character that looks like Mike Tyson. They've changed names around when they localized the game out of fear that they'd be sued.

Less funny story: The M. Bison in the US version can fuck off kindly, man is he tough to beat.

GAMEPLAY
In this game, you can either play simple 1v1 fights or choose a character and then travel the world to fight all the other characters plus some bosses that are non playable characters, like Barlog, Vega and M. Bison.

Each character has a few special moves and their own stage. You fight until someone wins two rounds. By now this formula has been repeated a billion times, but of course by then this concept was never done as well as Street Fighter II did it.

And while I can see a young me putting a lot of time and effort into this to get better, the current me simply can't shake the fact that this game hasn't aged as well as some other titles have of this time, including F-Zero and Super Mario World, two other very early SNES titles.

Movement of characters is stiff and pulling off special moves was really tricky because a lot of the time I didn't feel like my inputs were recognized correctly. Or I was doing it wrong, I don't know. But even when I put the difficulty to damn 0, there were some enemies that just didn't let me breath for a second. Hit up, hit low, hit up up up, uppercut and while I learned to block attacks after a while, attacking windows felt so small sometimes and the opponent was able to block so many of my attacks that I had to resort to doing specific OP moves to get them off me. This is actually a gripe I had about fighting games back in the day and I guess will always carry with me, is that abusing the mechanics and quicker trigger fingers will often be decisive of outcome. Maybe this was done better in later entries, but once I got hit in a specific way, especially once I dialed the difficulty up a little bit, I often felt like I was hopelessly at the mercy of my opponent to ever get a chance to hit again. The game also has a feature where you get dizzy for a few seconds, which I think is really silly for a game like this and one I didn't like at all.

Animations and the different attack styles of all characters definitely do feel pretty advanced for a game of this time, so I gotta give credit for that. And now that I've played this, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how other fighting games that released in the coming years will compare.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
Voice acting is limited to damage noises and "Hadouken!", which is enough to have it be iconic. Sound design I thought was solid and the soundtrack is about 40 minutes long and includes music for each character. Some of my favorites include the tracks for Guile, Ryu, Blanka and M. Bison.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
I like the character design and the different styles of the backgrounds of the arenas that the characters fight in. I'd say the graphical quality is pretty good overall but nothing that will make you go "wow".

ATMOSPHERE
Seeing groups huddle around to watch you and your opponent fight is always awesome. But the stages themselves are otherwise very static, you can break a few barrels here and there but otherwise the environment you fight in doesn't change anything. The best thing the game does atmospherically during fights is have the tracks fit the "boss" of the arena. For example, Vega fights very fast and his track is also very fast.

CONTENT
You got 8 characters + 4 bosses. You can play any character in Battle Mode and face every other character. This will take you a good 20-30 minutes and you will be rewarded with a short cutscene that suits the character you fought with. When you win with Ryu for example, you get a cutscene where Ryu is supposed to be given an award for winning, but instead he is shown walking off into the horizon because ceremonies mean nothing to him and he is off to the next fight.

In addition, you can fight locally against a friend and adjust difficulty in the Options menu. Plenty of content here, as you get 8 different character "stories" to play through and will need to spend many more hours to properly learn how to fight with each character.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The structure of fights is pretty simple by today's standards. One v One fights, the first to two round wins, wins the fight. It's simple, but effective. You also can choose to play any character's story as I mentioned previously, and what I just said about the structure of fights applies here too.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Can't really do anything but give full grades for a game that has changed the shape of a genre like this. Few games accomplish for their genres what Street Fighter II did back in the day, even if it was the Arcade version and not the SNES version that I played that had done the deed.

REPLAYABILITY
Endlessly replayable to learn how to master this game, though that probably applies to back then more than it does to new players today.

PLAYABILITY
It works well from start to finish.

OVERALL
I can't say it aged as well as some other games from that time period but fighting games were not established at the time like platformers, so to have Street Fighter II take such a leap is to be respected, and it's not like you won't have your fun with it if you decide to play it today. The game delivers beyond expectations in the storytelling department thanks to endings for each character (and a hilarious/ridiculous one for Chun Li), has created characters that are still iconic to this day and has delivered multiple sequels since. And those sequels I'd probably recommend to you more than this game in particular, which I doubt will live on as a great game by today's standards rather than simply being an iconic old-school video game that propelled the medium forward in a big way.

When you think of a video game that is all presentation and no gameplay, Splatterhouse 2 is a good retro example to give. Its known for its gory, grotesque style as you walk the halls and punch, kick and smash enemies into pieces. Does doing that equate to fun though? Not really. Splatterhouse 2 was developed by Now Production and released in July 1992. It's similar in gameplay to the original Splatterhouse, and was followed up Splatterhouse 3 as well as a Splatterhouse remake in 2010.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10

You contol a character called Rick. The game follows on the story of the first Splatterhouse game. I'm unfamiliar with that game, but the manual makes things relatively clear. The mask talks to you, and tells you that you can still save Jennifer, so you must go to some house to do so. An atmospheric introductory scroll through an onimous field alongside lines of dialogue by the mask talking to you set the tone. With that, the game starts.

Each stage is introduced with a still image showing the stage number you are now on and a short comment by the mask on the next location. That's pretty much it in terms of story presentation.

GAMEPLAY | 7/20

Where to start? I guess I should first mention that no, this game is not fun to play. First, there is the fact that you simply don't have much you can do here. You can punch, kick, jump and use melee weapons to smash.

Second, everything you do is very slow. Fittingly, you can not sprint, just walk or 'strudge' as I would call it. This applies to dodging as well. Enemies pretty quickly start jumping over you, and you simply don't have the agility to dodge these jumps unless you know you are coming and preemptively are positioning yourself appropriately. That sucks.

Rick's agility generally sucks out the enjoyment I could have had with this game. You need to get close enough to enemies to punch them, but this means you are putting yourself in harm's way with no reliable way to dodge, so a lot of times, you take an unfair hit. I wouldn't even call it a hit, it's a mere touch. Then there are all these smaller enemies, which can easily find a way to jump at you from angles that you cannot reliably attack, meaning with a standing punch or a jumping kick. Instead, they will find the inbetween position to attack from sometimes, like the piranhas jumping out of the water in one early stage.

Boss fights are OK and certainly the highlight of this game alongside its atmosphere, but they are a minor part of the game. The major part of the game is simply not fun.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10

No voice acting. The soundtrack fits the theme of the game. I can't say I loved it or that it was memorable, but it was certainly fitting.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10

Splatterhouse 2 looks pretty good, but mostly due to its graphical presentation. Few games on the SNES look quite like this. The animations bring it all home. For example, there is one thing the game does in its presentation that I love, which is that when you use a melee weapon against an enemy, you either strike them from above and squish them into the ground or you hit them from the side and leave them a gooey mess on a wall.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10

Definitely the best part about this game. The game does a great job with its atmosphere. It all starts with the introductory cutscene, continues with the design of each stage and culminates with the boss fights, which are all uniquely positively disgusting.

CONTENT | 3/10

The game takes less an hour to beat, once you know what you are doing. It takes multiple hours to beat if you're a new player, and most of it is spent frustrated by the game's controls. There is little variety in gameplay, so even with that short runtime, it overstood its welcome.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10

Strudge through levels, maybe do a little bit of platforming by jumping over obstacles, and punch your way slowly through enemies. Get hit unfairly most of the time because of the enemy's attack patterns and reach, and there you go. You got pretty frustrating levels in your game. The saving grace here is the presentation of the boss fights at the end of each stage.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10

You can praise the game a bit for its atmosphere and grotesque presentation, an inspiration which is felt in well-presented boss fights as well. However, from a gameplay standpoint, it's a below average 2D beat 'em up.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

Apart from trying to beat your high score, there is no replay value here.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 51/100

Splatterhouse 2 is above average in presentation, below average in gameplay. Depending on what you favor, your experience may differ, but assuming that most gamers want fun gameplay, I'd make a guess and say you won't enjoy this game.

(This is the 72nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

(This is the 25th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

I hadn't posted this review on here back when I played it, so I'm adding it now.

Sunsoft released 4 different games under the name Batman in 1990, and this review is for the Sega Genesis version.

The Game Boy version I played previously was rather simple and while it was fun, it didn't feel like Batman. Among other reasons, Batman uses a gun throughout that game, which doesn't suit him all that much.

The Sega Genesis version is much more sophisticated and actually uses gadgets and weapons that you know him for. You fight by punching and throwing batarangs. You can climb up using a grappling hook. You drive the Batmobile in one section. And while it comes together to deliver a solid platformer for its time, regular cheap deaths are to be expected here thanks to sometimes unresponsive, often inconsistent controls. At least that is my experience and if you have experienced it differently, I'd love to know about that.

I'll explain what I mean, but first, let's look at my thoughts on the game's story and storytelling.

STORYTELLING | 1/10

The story is mainly told in a scrolling text before the game starts, plus a few lines when the game ends. There is also a scene where you see the Joker next to Vicki Vale while you fight a different boss.

The plot has similarities to the 1989 movie by Tim Burton and the premise is that The Joker and his goons are plotting to take over Gotham City. They've also kidnapped photographer Vicki Vale. Throughout the game, you have to fight Joker's henchmen to get to him and put an end to this unrest.

It's the barest of bones as far as storytelling in game goes and that's fine, just know to not expect anything.

GAMEPLAY | 12/20

You get 3 Lives and 5 Continues and have to try and go through about half a dozen different stages, each concluding with a boss fight. The final stage pre-Joker fight even has you fight all previous bosses in succession, a boss rush basically, and it's the part where I likely would have given up if it weren't for save states.

The first level has Batman walk across the Gotham streets with a bunch of goons standing in his way with either pistols or knives. You can easily punch them, or throw the limited amount of batarangs you have at them. There are icons to collect that give you more batarangs, and others that give you a health or even a whole extra life.

You can duck, jump, somersault and even use a grappling hook to jump onto higher platforms. There are lots of platforming sections over bottomless pits that will test your patience, because that was the part where I started to get frustrated with the controls.

I can't say with full confidence that my emulator did or did not have issues (I'd guess no issues there) but the somersault was very inconsistent and almost felt random at times. In one area where you have to jump on top of small platforms, doing a somersault becomes necessary. Somersaulting requires you to press the jump button twice. For some reason, the second tap sometimes wouldn't trigger and I would end up falling into a pit, which takes a whole life away. Was it my fault? Was it the emulators? Was it the games? All I can say is that I didn't have issues like this with the majority of other games I've played, so I'm gonna go with faulting the game.

While most stages consist of platforming, there are two different stages, one each for the Batmobile and the Batwing. Both offer a nice change of pace, but I found them to be somewhat frustrating. The Batwing part has a few moments where 7 or 8 enemies are on the screen at once and it's almost impossible to find space to move your Batwing into. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that you get 4 health points after you lose your first life and no health items during the entire run. It's the same with the Batmobile part, only there you have these vans that throw bombs and I kind of found it hard to understand where exactly they would drop. Sometimes I would think that I am far enough away from them, only to be hit anyway, and since each hit takes 2 health, dying in these parts is extremely easy unless you play it perfectly.

The boss fights are OK but pretty easy once you know what to do, which you will know pretty fast. The Joker fight especially was ridiculous on Normal difficulty as the game gave me enough batarangs to essentially insta-kill him without getting touched once.

Overall, it's a middle of the pack platformer, which means it's an enjoyable enough game, but it doesn't stand out.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10

No voice acting. I liked the sound design, my only issue with it was probably that there wasn't enough or pretty much any environmental sound. Would have enhanced the experience that tiny bit more. The soundtrack of this game is great. There is a different track for each stage and all are bangers.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10

Graphically this fits the mood of a Batman game really well, and the streets of Gotham especially look really good for a game of its age. All in all, you can tell that this is a Batman game, and you don't need to control Batman throughout it to realize that.

ATMOSPHERE | 7/10

It already starts off pretty well in the first stage, where you find yourself walking through the streets of Gotham, which look really good. Driving through them and over a bridge in a high speed chase, climbing up a cathedral and walking through a museum were all moments that provided plenty of atmosphere. I would have loved some environmental sound to really drive some of it home, but even so the package here is well above average graphically.

CONTENT | 7/10

It took me 5 hours to beat it after 3 non-save state attempts and one including save states. It'll probably take closer to 10 hours if you want to try to beat it with only your 5 continues, but considering that the Batwing/Batmobile stages and the final boss rush stage are rather unfair considering they are pretty long and don't offer that many healing items (only 1 each for the Batwing/Batmobile stages), I'd say not all hours would be of high quality. Still, this is a tight package with solid gameplay throughout, minus some of my issues with some platforming segments being frustrating due to unresponsive controls.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10

I didn't like how they only give you one health item for the entirety of the Batmobile and Batwing sections, they were way too long for that. The final stage also dragged on for far too long and felt like a lazy way to add a few more hours of frustrating gameplay, only for the game to finish off with one of the easier final bosses you'll ever see. I did like how the game attempted to mix up the platforming with the shoot 'em up like Batwing/Batmobile sections, despite my issues with them, I think every platformer should have something like that.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10

Graphically, this is a step above many other platformers I've played, though this is my first Sega Genesis game, so I can't compare it to its contemporaries. The grappling hook is a nice feature and overall, this game is worlds above the Game Boy version, but it doesn't seem to be innovating in any notable way.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

No reason to replay this after beating it apart from the usual reasons, which would be beating your high score and playing it on Hard instead of Normal, if you didn't do so before.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 60/100

A average (=solid) platformer for its time that actually looks like a Batman game (looking at you, Game Boy version) and has plenty of cool moments involving Batman's actual gear. There is only a setting, no story development apart from the typical good guy beats bad guy moments, so you will only be playing this for its gameplay, which should entertain for a few hours but frustrate for just as many. At least the soundtrack is great throughout.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME

H. H. W. for VGCE, Issue 31 (Aug 91): "There's an I've-played-something-like-this-before flair to Batman." | This is true for many other games that VGCE gave high grades for. Maybe by 1991 the landscape changed drastically?
Boogie Man for GamePro, Issue 24 (July 91): "Even though you may have done it all before, it's never looked this good." | Between this and the previous review, I'm getting real looking at a glass half-full / half-empty vibes
Matthew A. Firme for GamePlayers, Issue 25 (July 91): Well, it's not a review as much as it is a guide, however they do call Batman the Sega Genesis Game of the Month in this one

(This is the 58th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Before there was Wolfenstein 3-D, there was Catacomb 3-D: The Descent. Before that, there was Hovertank 3-D, but if you'd consider Catacomb 3-D a rough prototype, which I do, I don't know what you'd consider Hovertank 3-D to be. Humble beginnings to a genre that would evolve incredibly fast from here is what you'd call it I guess.

Id Software, developers of Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein, the latter of which will debut in 1992, started their work on the FPS genre by releasing the above mentioned games in 1991 using a prototype of the Wolfenstein 3-D engine. They would improve upon their framework in incredible pace, which you will be able to immediately notice just by comparing Hovertank (April 91), Catacomb (November 91), Wolfenstein (May, 92) and Doom (December 93).

Today's review focuses on the second of those 4 games, which is the third entry in the Catacomb series and the first in first person perspective. The game would be followed by the Catacomb Adventure Series that included three games. These weren't developed by id Software but rather internally by Softdisk, and apart from small improvements and additions, they offer pretty much the same gameplay, so I won't play and review them as part of this challenge.

But here is my review for Catacomb 3-D: The Descent. It will be more negative than I actually am about the game, it's just that from a critical standpoint it's not that good. From a video game historian's perspective, one will definitely appreciate the game for what it is and what it led to.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 1/10

Don't be fooled by the FPS categorization. You don't shoot bullets. You use your hand to shoot magic bolts in a game that has a dark fantasy setting.

You play a high wizard and need to rescue your friend, who is held captive by the evil lich Nemesis. There are 20 levels, some of which have scrolls in them that give you tips on how to progress. At the end of the game, you can just walk up to your buddy and rescue him without even defeating the Nemesis.

So yeah, no story, let's move on.

GAMEPLAY | 10/20

You likely know what the boomer shooter genre looks like. You move through 20 flat levels that are built in a more and more of a intricate maze-like fashion, with areas divided by walls and doors. The controls are set up so that you can move by pressing the keys on your keyboard while shooting with either the left mouse button or the ALT key. Although you can also use the mouse to help, turning is done very slowly in both cases.

You walk through all areas of a level to find keys that open locked doors, which hide portals. Some levels later on have more portals that mostly are there to confuse you and act as puzzles (read: filler). While looking for the keys, enemies - of which there are a grand total of 5 - will appear and will require getting disposed of. On easy, the first enemy, trolls, require 3 hits to die. The second enemy, orcs, require more like 10-15. Then there are mages, bats and red demon-type creatures, which require up to 50 hits. Only mages shoot bolts back, the rest just walk up to you and hit you, so the only real difference here is how many shots it takes to kill them, which should tell you how rudimentary the design is here.

Your bolts have no ammo and can be shot non-stop. That's also a requirement because a big part of progress here is to shoot at every single part of a wall, as some of them can be destroyed and hide key items, like, keys... So once you kill all enemies and still haven't naturally found the key to progress, you start a session of non stop shooting, killing your index finger in the process. It's not that bad actually, the simplicity of this task is definitely much better than having to play poorly controllable platformer game, by far.

You also can shoot nukes and rapid-fire bolts, and will find a large amount of healing items everywhere. The healing system is likely the same as in Wolfenstein 3D, but instead of having 100% health, your health is displayed with an image of your characters head. As he takes damage, he gradually loses the skin on his face and reveals more and more of his skull. I thought that was a nice touch.

Playing this will undoubtedly help in putting into perspective how quickly the genre is set to evolve. I thought it was interesting to see where the boomer shooter subgenre was about to find its foothold, but wasn't quite there yet.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 3/10

No voice acting. The sound design is as basic as the entire game, you know, apart from the fact of starting a new genre, but basic nonetheless. It includes some unpleasant noises, such as scraping against a wall, which was probably twice as annoying because you weren't intended to be stuck there in the first place. The soundtrack literally consists of one song, one that would a month later be used for a section in Commander Keen 4, so hearing that for 2 hours straight was very pleasant, as you can imagine.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 5/10

It's difficult to give this game a fair rating because, on the one hand, it is extremely brief and simplistic in design, with the only improvements over Hovertank being that the few enemies actually received some design attention and the walls featured textures rather than being painted a single color.

On the other hand, this graphics engine was quite revolutionary due to its unprecedented nature. Due to the nauseating movement structure of this game combined with the very little detail present here, I'll rate this lower than I probably will Wolfenstein 3D, but credit where it's due. Which it probably is with Hovertank.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 3/10

The only immersion comes from the fact that this plays in the first person view that players weren't accustomed to yet. There is barely any story or world-building here to really get immersed in anything else.

CONTENT | 4/10

20 levels that all have you do the same thing, just with a little bit more complexity each time. The simplicity of the shooting did feel fun when it flowed relatively well to be honest, and I'm likely going to enjoy the more sophisticated Wolfenstein and Doom quite a lot based on my experience here, but obviously this is very much lacking in depth and variety.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10

You go through levels that become more and more complex as you go deeper and deeper into the 'dungeon'. Unfortunately, late game it felt like filler and unnecessary complexity rather than fun puzzles to tease your brain over. Making enemies bulletspongy enemies late-game is understandable, because how else are they going to differentiate them in these early times, but it's not good regardless, and the fact that you can simply walk past the final boss to find your friend and win the game is an odd, yet hilarious oversight.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10

Similarly to the graphics section, how do you rate this fairly? By saying that Hovertank did it first and Catacomb didn't improve on it in a notable way to earn a high rating? I suppose. That doesn't make the fact that this is very innovative and a great thing that the dev team accomplished, and was about to accomplish from here on out.

REPLAYABILITY | 1/5

No replayability, though there are three difficulty levels. I can't imagine wanting to up the difficulty considering how bulletspongy enemies get in the later levels.

PLAYABILITY | 4/5

Crashed once when I was strafing a bit too much using ALT. Otherwise, works well.

OVERALL | 42/100

Hey, not the worst score in the world. Catacomb 3-D is a game I appreciate for showing what's possible, and for its time in history. As a game, its simplicity offered me with a fun, mindless first hour, but as a game from a critical standpoint, it's not good. If you want to go into id Software games, I'd recommend starting with Wolfenstein, as you don't miss out on anything significant with Catacomb that won't be present in Wolfenstein.

(This is the 35th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

The final game I played for my 1990 play-list is Actraiser, the fourth SNES game to ever release, which released on December 16th and is unique for combining two genres that you don't see combined often: City building and platforming.

There are multiple towns that you have to liberate from monsters in order for humans to live in them. You then help them establish themselves there and help them out with all their needs. Basically, you play god. Each town has a few monster lairs that you need to close and then a final one that you need to venture into in platforming sections to kill the boss. Once a town has no monsters left, you can move on to the next one.

Each town tells its own little story, which adds a lot of motivation to playing this game to completion. The gameplay itself offers a fun loop for a few hours, but due to its age and limitations does get repetitive after a while, at least it did to me.

But the mix of these genres works pretty well here and this game was yet another standout for the SNES, which looks to provide a lot of fun as I move on to 1991, where the world was greeted by classics like Street Fighter II, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Castlevania IV, among others.

OVERALL
Should be in your play-list if you're looking to find out what some of the better games of the early 90s were. It has a unique mix of city-building and platformer that is pretty simple in execution due to the time it released in, but overall pretty successful in offering the player a fun 10 hours or so of gameplay.

(This is the 34th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Zombie Nation, released initially on December 14th 1990 for the NES, is one of the weirdest shoot 'em ups you will play in your life time, because the character you play is the severed head of a samurai traveling to the USA to stop a meteor called "Darc Seed" from destroying the USA completely. The reason why he does that is because Darc Seed has the ability to control a powerful samurai sword.

So you control this severed head called Namakubi and vomit projectiles on jets, buildings, turrets, people, whatever gets in your way. Yes, really. It's such a weird premise but actually not a turn-off on its own.

What was actually the bigger turn-off for me here was that, all told, the gameplay is just not that fun and game doesn't impress in any area apart from its weirdness. The music is alright, the graphics meh and the level design essentially very average. You don't really get to find any fun new abilities or power ups, there are no secrets to uncover and the enemy variety is low. You pretty much do the same thing over and over again in each level with very limited options. To top it off, the later levels include so many projectiles on the screen at once that the game can't handle it and starts lagging.

OVERALL
Suffice to say, this game is not worthy of a suggestion if you're looking for a fun game. It might be worth checking out if you want to take a look at a very weird game at least. Despite my opinion, I think it's funny and worth a mention that the damn "St. Petersburg Times" (now Tampa Bay Times) ranked Zombie Nation tied for 10th among the best games ever list in 1992. That's some weird taste they got over there.