(This is the 30th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Silver Surfer is a scrolling shooter released exclusively in NA regions for the NES in November 1990. It was developed by Software Creations (defunct since 2004) and published by Arcadia Systems and it's based on the Marvel Comics character "Silver Surfer".

I have watched my fair share of Marvel movies, have played my fair share of Marvel hero games, but I'm by no means a Marvel expert or anything beyond a novice in Marvel lore. Just a quick glance of Silver Surfer's description however already tells me that the game doesn't really seem to fit the character.

The game is a slow scrolling shooter where you have to fight hordes of enemies from all types of angles, and a single hit kills you. You'd think the sections where nothing happens for a few seconds is great because it gives you a breather, but instead it creates a dichotomy where, in one moment, your forehead is sweating and your finger hurts from pressing A all the time, and in the next, you are bored to tears from sloooowly waiting for the screen to scroll far enough for enemies to appear.

Looking at the Silver Surfer description on Wiki, it says that he can travel faster than light on his surfboard-like craft. Looking at his Marvel Fandom description, it gets even worse. Under Powers, they list "Godlike Strength". In this game, my guy dies by lightly tapping any wall or obstacle, not to mention that, again, HE ONLY HAS ONE HIT POINT.

It is such a weird way to design a scrolling shooter like this and, if it weren't for emulators and their save state capabilities, I definitely wouldn't have been able to experience every stage and the ending of this game. It wouldn't have mattered either way, because the ending sucks, but still.

Wanna know how the ending sucks? Well the story of this game involves Silver Surfer, Galactus (who gives him orders) and an unidentified villain who apparently will destroy the world if Silver Surfer doesn't stop him and some Cosmic Device that Silver Surfer has to assemble. Beat the final boss and Galactus drops a line like "now the Cosmic Device can be ALL MINE", which is a classic final-boss-twist-reveal type of line, right? Instead, Silver Surfer says "No, no one can have it, it's too dangerous, I will hide it" and the game just fucking ends. This game is insignificant enough for this to not matter but it is a fitting ending to a bad game.

Despite the one-hit wonder that is Silver Surfer, I think this game isn't as difficult to beat as some other games I've played out of 1990. I think through enough repetition of maybe 10-15 hours or so, you'll beat this game, but it's really not worth the effort and it doesn't hide the fact that the devs idea of a challenge was to simply make their game unfair and death your first time through inevitable at nearly all moments.

What I did like about the game though is the sound design and a kick ass soundtrack. Graphics didn't look too bad either but most levels didn't look too realistic and especially the over the top levels just were a jumbled mess of assets and colors.

OVERALL
Hard for the sake of being hard without providing a fair or fun challenge. If you want to experience any of this game, I'd recommend just going to YT and looking up the OST of this.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Martin Alessi or EGM, Issue 17 (Dec 90): "The graphics are nothing special, but the soundtrack is absolutely awesome." | A different reviewer from EGM said the "cinema storyline is cool", there literally was nothing in here other than 10 lines of "I've seen this a billion times before, and a million of those did it better" type storytelling, even from a 1990 perspective
- Slo' Mo for GamePro, Issue 20 (Mar 91): "To beat Silver Surfer, you probably have to be an outer space being yourself." | Or have save states

(This is the 32nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Usually when I am this negative on a game, the reviews online reflect that somewhat, by having the score be something like 2.xx/5 (though every game has its nostalgic fans under a YT walkthrough calling it amazing no matter how shitty it is in hindsight, and more power to them, nostalgia is a beautiful thing). This time, Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi is a game that scores much better than I would have anticipated, because in anything related to its gameplay, I disliked this very much. Though due its critical reception as well, I wouldn't say the game is necessarily objectively bad.

This game released on December 1st, 1990 for the Sega Genesis and is a platformer/hack&slash game. There is a tiny story explaining the setting, but nothing worth playing the game for. And that's fine because the game was always meant to be played for its gameplay and its gameplay alone.

The game has a soundtrack that is not bad but not a memorable one in my opinion if we compare it to the OSTs of all these other games I've played in 1990. Still, it's nice enough to listen to and overall, the game does plenty right in just about every way apart from its gameplay, at least in my opinion.

The graphics and special effects are pretty good for its time, the animations are well done and the boss design is great for the most part.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't ever get acclimated with the gameplay and the design of the levels. First off, you are this bad ass Ninja that dies after his heel is touched slightly because you only have one hit point. That's already something I dislike (see Silver Surfer) but it's something I could live with if death didn't come so cheap as it does in these games.

The first 10-20 minutes were filled with death after death after death with every new step I took because enemies would come from the front, the back, the front and back, have wild attack patterns etc. This is fine of course, that's the intention behind the start of the game and you're supposed to overcome that. But as I neared my end of a 1 hour attempt to slog my way through this, I kept dying to the way these enemies were being positioned. Jump down into one enemy and immediately duck because someone else is firing at you. He does that every 2 seconds, so you better time your get-up right or else you'll die. Gotta fend off the other guy though, so better make sure you have your eye on both guys. Kill them, take a step to the left and there is this green dude who throws his shield at you. Jumping over it is not gonna work because you'll touch the tip of the shield with your toes and die. Instead, die, restart the whole level, go back to the same spot and make sure you go exactly to the point where you can see him, but where he can't reach you. Now send your companion dog at him so he distracts him while you come in for the kill. Oh wait, your dog is useless because he has both shields up, which knocks out the dog for 15 seconds.

Ugh, even if I know I will get through this part with repetition, it just is not fun. Gameplay is in many ways similar to Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, but just worse because of insta-death, and without the charm.

OVERALL
Again, I'll give it props for graphics and animation, but it's not a game I enjoyed as someone who had no prior experience with this series. It received praise at the time of its release though, so I guess I might be overly critical here? Nah, this just was bad.

(This is the 55th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

We found ourselves our first 1991 Game of the Year contender, ladies and gentlemen. Super Castlevania IV, an iconic platformer by Konami that originally released in Japan on October 31, 1991, is pretty much as good as advertised. And that says a lot considering that it was advertised as "one of the greatest games of all time". In many ways, from atmosphere to soundtrack to the simplicity of its gameplay loop, the game is timeless. In others, such as graphics, controls and features, it obviously lags behind more recent video games, but that's not a comparison we make here of course. For its time, Super Castlevania IV ranks high in those categories as well however.

Here is my in-depth review for the game. For the challenge, we'll be returning to the Castlevania series in October 1993 with Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10

If you're a big fan of video games, you will know about Castlevania and the story set-up for its games, at least for most of them. There is a clan of vampire hunters called the Belmont family, who are tasked with defeating the evil Dracula, who resurrects himself every 100 years, when the "forces of the Good mysteriously become weak".

Super Castlevania IV doesn't do things differently, in very large part because this game is actually a remake of Castlevania for the NES from 1986. Or at least kind of it is.

The Japanese version, called Akumajō Dracula (the Japanese name for the Castlevania series), shows both in its name and in its story set-up that this is a remake of the first Castlevania. Simon Belmont, the main character for this game, is described as the young heir to the Belmont clan and prepares himself for its first adventure.

In the USA version, it is said that it is "time once again for Simon Belmont to take up his whip...", indicating that there was a different time when Simon Belmont had been active, which would be Castlevania II. See, Konami USA didn't actually factor in that this would be a remake, I suppose hence the name Super Castlevania IV (IV!), so it was actually considered a sequel all the way until 2005, when Konami released an "Xtreme desktop app" with the canon timeline, which didn't include Super Castlevania IV at all (as it is in essence a retelling of the first Castlevania, which IS included in the timeline).

With that out of the way, what IS the story here? You play Simon Belmont, as explained, who must defeat the evil Count Dracula in 1691 Transylvania. Equipped with a holy whip called 'Vampire Killer', which makes him the heir to the Belmont clan, Simon Belmont makes his way to Dracula's castle.

That's pretty much it. As per usual, story has no big considerations for these early 90 platformers, but there is enough here to set a dark, gothic atmosphere that will be palpable throughout your time with the game. For some additional lore, the manual states that "Simon has found an ancient tome left to him by his ancestors revealing the secret of the whip. In it, he learns that the whip can snap in eight directions." Some tiny little lore to explain a new gameplay mechanic is the kind of attention to detail I like to see, even if the game otherwise doesn't have a lot to offer in terms of storytelling.

GAMEPLAY | 16/20

This game is a platformer of the best kind. You know, I have my typical issues with platformers that are almost ubiquitous in the early 90s. Whether it's unfair hit boxes, long-distance jumps that you will die due to unless you can time them perfectly, too many enemies and obstacles on-screen at the same time, unresponsive controls, no ability to jump and hit, not being able to jump and redirect yourself, only having the ability to hit straight, no crouch-and-move function, ridiculously overpowered bosses and many many more things I often find that make these old-school platformers incredibly frustrating.

But Super Castlevania IV manages to elegantly incorporate so many QoL-improvements and the devs seem to have figured out how they can find a great balance of fun and challenging, even if it's not perfect at all times.

Simon Belmont is equipped with a whip. As per usual, you can use it to hit enemies and candles, the latter of which are almost everywhere and drop items. These items are food items, which give you health, heart items, which give you ammunition for special weapons (ok..) and the special weapons themselves (boomerang (goes across screen, comes back) axe (flies in an arc), fire bomb (burns anything in path), dagger (flies straight) and watch (stops most enemies and their attaks for a few seconds)). Next to these, you can also pick up special items that destroy all enemies on screen, grant you invincibility for a couple seconds (called 'invisibility' in the manual, hah), that allow you to shoot twice per ammunition and that increase the power of your weapons. So a nice variety here.

The whip itself has gained new functions in this game, and boy are they useful. First, the whip can be whipped in eight (!) directions now. So up, down, left, right and then in each direction diagonally as well. Second, the whip can be used at rings, which allows you to latch onto them and leap into the air like you're Spider-Man. Third, you can also hold the attack button, which allows you to swing the whip around in a sort of limb state, which is funny and kind of unnecessary, but I appreciated it existing for sure.

What this game really does well, and is what I opened with here, is to keep the cheap deaths to a minimum. Your own hit-box is reduced, so projectiles that graze your hair don't damage you. The enemy hit-boxes are extended, and you can even hit them from below through the blocks that they're standing on. Enemies that would take a lot more hits in previous versions take fewer this time. Jumps on distant blocks are successful, even if one of Simon's legs barely touches the platform. The majority of enemies are easy enough to hit and avoid, and not bouncy and very quick like in previous games. The fact that you can whip in 8 directions makes hitting enemies above and below you so much easier, especially when you're on stairs. Enemies attack slower, and the levels are designed much better in a way that you don't have to worry about fighting multiple enemies AND having to avoid environmental obstacles at the same time.

None of the points above make this game a cake walk. They just make it a lot more fair and a lot more fun without all the hours of frustration that don't really need to be there. Are there still frustrating parts? Sure. When you enter a new screen and enemies jump on top of you immediately, that kind of sucks. When you jump and fall out of the map instead of on the stairs that are right below your feet, that's still annoying. Spikes one-hitting you is kind of dumb.

But for the majority of the game, you actually feel like you can control the action and do so naturally, without having to adjust to the idiosyncracies of a game's particular control scheme.

For some, most boss fights might be very easy, and to me, from what I've seen, I'd place them between Castlevania 1 and 2 in terms of difficulty, though closer to 2. What this game does a lot better than 2 though is that boss fights are actually mostly cleverly designed, or at least each battle has its distinctive challenges it asks the player to overcome. Some bosses you CAN simply brute-force your way through by mashing the attack button, and those definitely could have been improved upon, and the final boss fight does have some annoying parts in particular, but I'd say the boss fights were enjoyable for the most part.

Heck, the whole game was enjoyable for the majority of it. If you're looking for a retro platformer, you'd be remiss to not check out Super Castlevania IV.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10

No voice acting. It makes use of the sound engine of the SNES to create a satisfying group of sound effects, but where this game really shines in the aural category is with its soundtrack. Man is it fantastic and does it set the tone. The opening alone sounds so beautifully eerie and mysterious that it sets you off on the right foot before you even press START. The exact same can be said for the Prologue track and then some. That one got me bopping my head. The 'Stage 1 Theme of Simon Belmont' I can only imagine being iconic, but I loved listening to themes like 'Bloody Tears' and 'Beginning', which move the soundtrack from eerie to downright epic. Bloody Tears is originally from Castlevania II and I'd argue it sounds even more epic on there, but I'm glad it got re-used and re-mixed, so I could hear it here for the first time. It's literally one of my favorite video game tracks of all time now, it's like it's straight out of a symphony.

'Beginning' is from Castlevania III, as the NES trilogy's tracks were re-used in part here as you can tell, especially in the later levels.

And you know what else is amazing? When you are in the final stage of the lengthy final boss battle against Dracula and his two strongest goons, when both goons are defeated and Dracula is on his last few health bars, what music kicks in? Simon's theme. Not only is that a badass track to begin with, but the implications of using it just adds to the moment so much, as Simon knows he got Dracula, Dracula knows Simon's got him and now it's on the player to beat Dracula's ass one final time. Beautiful.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10

The SNES offers a big jump graphically, and this game makes use of it. Each level looks unique, with a lot of attention to detail in the design of the backgrounds and environments. There are some genuinely unique levels to explore here in terms of technical composition as well, like the rotating level that is powered thanks tothe Mode 7 graphics mode or the stage where you need to hang on to a ring with your whip while the screen itself is rotating. There is also the chandelier level with rotating chandeliers that you need to jump on, but oddly, the background for that level is simply black like it was more common to see in the NES days. These levels are pretty rare and don't really last that long and don't provide a big challenge, but it's still nice to see how creative the devs can get with this technology.

There hasn't been nearly as much work put into sprites and animations I felt like, which both end up feeling and looking like NES models a lot, but Simon himself has gotten some detail added to his sprite when it comes to the armor he is wearing, his hair and the definition in his arm and leg muscles.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10

Tremendously atmospheric. The soundtrack and story set-up already put you in the right mood for this one, but thanks to the power of the SNES, there is a lot more attention to detail in the graphical presentation, along with the Mode 7 feature that I just mentioned which allows some levels to come alive more. Now about those cooked meals that are hidden in the walls ...

CONTENT | 8/10

There are 9 numbered and two lettered levels, so a total of 11 stages. A full playthrough for someone who doesn't die once takes a bit more than an hour. For me, it took about 6-7 to get to the final stage, but I couldn't defeat the final boss gauntlet without using save states. These stages are varied in looks, sometimes even in design (keywords, again, Mode 7) but there is no progression system or any special hidden rooms or unique levels with different style of gameplay to mix it up. Regarding the progression system, you literally have all your abilities available to you from the first level and nothing new is introduced apart from different enemies in different stages. But your health stays the same, your strength can be temporarily improved by finding the appropriate items and you don't gain new skills. That's all fine of course, but a little bit more meat on the bone in some way wouldn't have been a bad thing I think.

That said, a game that can be beaten in one or two afternoons depending on your skill set, especially now with the power of emulation, and one that does what it focuses on really well, is a game with great content in my eyes.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10

In its core, this is pretty basic. 11 total stages, each with their sub-stages and boss fights, either at the end or sometimes in the middle. What this game gets bonus points for is its execution of the basic, which is simply very well done and shows why this formula has been so popular among devs and players for so long in the first place. Some levels that show off the skills of the SNES in particular add to the variety of it all as well.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10

There isn't anything particularly innovative about the core gameplay here. This game simply does a great job of putting it all together and bringing it to the 4th gen of consoles, while adding a lot of QoL improvements, a few very much welcomed additions to Simon's whip and creating a very dark and tense horror atmosphere.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

The main motivation to play this again would be to beat your high score. There are a couple secret rooms to find as well, though all they offer are a bunch of candles to find regular items. This is interestingly a step back for the series, as Castlevania III offered multiple different characters and multiple paths that you could take after specific stages, which added to replayability. Personally, I don't think this is a big deal at all, as I enjoyed the focus on Simon, who now had a lot more abilities, and not having multiple paths allowed for more focus on the fewer stages that had to be created. I'd be lying if I said I would have minded multiple paths for added replayability though.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 76/100

One of the best platformers of the early 90s for sure. It's a tremendous improvement on earlier entries of the series in pretty much every way, it's rather easy to progress in compared to its contemporaries and the much tighter controls along with the greatness that is the game's OST, the majority of you will have a great time playing this I'm sure.

(This is the 65th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

My first foray into the Contra series was successful. Contra III: The Alien Wars, released on February 28, 1992 for the SNES, is a fantastic run and gun video game, even today. It was developed and published by Konami, who simply knew how to make great games at the time, and the first Contra game they've released primarily with home consoles in mind (2 others released for arcades first, another one for the Game Boy) did a great job of utilizing the strengths of the SNES.

Looking at rankings of the Contra series games, this game ranks first in pretty much all of them, which has me feeling both validated and kind of sad, as I am very much looking forward to playing the future entries in the series. Though that's why I shouldn't look at rankings like that I suppose. Though the fact that this game ranks atop almost all lists is not necessarily an indictment on the rest of the franchise as it rather is high praise for a great game.

Accessibility (+1 bonus point): Before you start a game, you have two options to make the game easier for yourself. It by no means becomes easy, but much easier. First, you can choose to give yourself 3, 5 or 7 lives. This is not a very unusual feature necessarily, but the second definitely is. You can go for Easy, Normal and Hard. Contra III is not the first game to offer multiple difficulty settings, but to have not just two but three difficulty modes and to have all feel very notable different from each other shows that the devs went the extra mile to balance the game for three types of players. On top of that, it's cool to see certain things in Easy mode that don't trigger, while they do trigger on harder difficulty modes, such as the "man-faced mutts" in the first stage. There aren't really any other accessibility settings here apart from these, but the extra effort is something I definitely feel like deserves a bonus point for a video game in 1992. If you go for the Japanese version, you can have unlimited continues, as an fyi.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 1/10

It's February 14, 2636. Valentine's day. Well, there isn't much here that feels romantic, as from the get-go you're greeted by fierce and partly disgusting alien creatures that try to kill you from all sides. Literally, if you decide to go for the hardest difficulty. The intro cutscene doesn't give you much on story though, and the manual itself has a couple pages dedicated to the setting, which doesn't say anything noteworthy. You are Jimbo and Sully (if you play in 2-player mode) and are descendents of commando legends Scorpion and Mad Dog, and you gotta fight 'Red Falcon' as the main boss, who seems to have been present in other games, as the manual says it's back to claim revenge.

GAMEPLAY | 16/20

It's rare that I spend 10+ hours on a game that isn't an RPG, as most games can be beaten before that (especially when you use the luxuries that emulators provide for otherwise unfairly difficult games). Maybe it's the fact that I was abroad for a uni assignment and didn't have anything else to do one evening, but it didn't take long for me to really enjoy myself playing this on my Steam Deck and just sunking hours into it in one go. I'm likely to play this again on commute here and there, but I'm retiring it happily at 13 hours played and beaten once on Easy difficulty.

So this game is a run and gun. From a side and top-down view, mostly side-view though, you fight hordes of enemies that appear from all sorts of angles whilst trying to dodge their projectiles. As is custom, the idea is to improve through trial and error, as you will constantly find enemies appearing and shooting out of nowhere or simply attacking in ways that you weren't expecting and will simply not dodge during your first attempts. So while I was going through all my lifes during Stage 1 on my first attempt, a few hours later I found myself going through that Stage without getting hit once. It helps that the trial and error pretty much involves memorizing where enemies are, their attack patterns and effectively using the few types of weapons you can choose from. Many other games that call it "trial and error" simply put you in extremely hard positions where you fight both memory and controls to try to dodge attacks. You know what's coming, you just can't dodge it. In Contra III, if you know what's coming, you WILL be able to dodge it, which is great. I can't tell you how many times I was going "am I SUPPOSED to lose a life against this enemy?", only to figure it out and have a very rewarding moment. 'Moments' I should say, as the game is full of them.

It's a game that is easy to control but hard to master, even on easy. On normal difficulty, which I played after beating the game on easy, it still felt manageable, but once you go to Hard difficulty, you pretty much enter the same territory as many platformers from this time period. Projectiles coming from everywhere, coming out of the weapons that entered the screen a split-second earlier and more enemies appearing in general (from all angles). I can't imagine ever willingly playing that difficulty again.

If you read more than a couple of my reviews, you might have noticed that I love platformers / run and gun games that offer variety in gameplay to offset the technical limitations and to show that the devs put more work into their games than was expected from them at the time. This game is a great example of what I enjoy on that front. The first level is a side-scrolling stage. The second implements a top-down perspective on the action and has you move side-to-side. Both types of stages come with their own boss fights, which feel unique this way as well. In general, boss fights are pretty good and varied as well.

In terms of weapons, you have 6 weapons and one special attack available. The special attack is a "helio bomb", which you can collect and use whenever. The weapons are your basic rifle, a laser gun, a spread gun, a fire gun, a crush gun and a homing gun, which follows enemies. Apart from the laser gun (which feels like the worse version of the crush gun with no additional benefit), all others felt unique and had their advantages and disadvantages. The homing gun hits enemies without the need to aim at them but it does very little damage and is useless for most boss fights. The crush gun fires in short distances and only allows a few projectiles to be fired at the same time, but does immense damage and is the weapon I found most useful. The spread gun covers a larger area and the fire gun can be fired non-stop. There are two weapon slots in this game, which is unusual, and whenever you are hit, the equipped weapon is lost. But you can still switch over to the other weapon, which adds an additional strategic element, as you can switch to the weapon you're more OK with losing when you know a tough part is coming up. Different weapons are more effective against different enemies as well, so choosing which weapon to keep is another strategic consideration you will make from time to time.

Overall, this was just a blast. Rarely did I feel frustrated about the GAME OVER screen. Almost always, I only had myself to blame and was looking forward to do better on my next run. I'm not surprised that I heard of this series every once in a while over the years.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10

No voice acting. The sound design is very good. Weapons all sound unique, the sound of impact gives satisfying feedback, the sound of the bombs is kind-of haunting and overall, I enjoyed listening to the sounds for sure. One little thing I want to note is the sound that plays when you press START. It reminded me of the sound I first heard when you would start Resident Evil 4 (or prior Resi games I believe). Just a sick sound effect that gets you pumped to play. The soundtrack here is really good as well. It's capturing the style and theme of this game really well. There wasn't one track that stood out in a way that makes me want to listen to it outside of the game itself, but there are memorable ones in here nonetheless.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10

The game has good graphics and makes use of the SNES' Mode 7 feature on multiple occasions. There are the top down stages which utilize it and a short moment where a chopper flies into the camera and shoots missiles. Looked pretty nice. There is some good environmental detail in most stages, like the smoke coming out of those factories. There is also a stage where you need to climb up a building with some sort of robot alien holding you hostage in between its arms/legs, where you have the background moving along, which gave the actual perception of height. Definitely a few things here that weren't common quite yet at the time, though this also is not the most detailed and colorful game the SNES had to offer. Presentation and setpieces here are very good.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10

Some games have this look of randomly assembled levels to them. You're left thinking "this area seems totally impractically designed by the evil mastermind running it". Contra III gives the opposite direction. By its nature, it can't be very immersive, as the focus is mainly put into its gameplay. But the impression it gives of these aliens throwing everything they got at Jimbo and Sully, all the way until the final stage, where they enter the Red Falcon's lair, is pretty well done. All these setpieces you are thrown into that pretty much all have a unique feel to them also add to this feeling of being in a badass fight for your life.

CONTENT | 8/10

Some might find 6 stages to be too short, but personally I think it's a good amount for a game that is this difficult. It took me over 10 hours to beat it on easy and after you beat it on easy, you still can play the game on Medium and Hard difficulty, which add dangers to each stage that weren't present at all on easy mode.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10

Definitely the highlight of this game. Each of the six stages is also offering something new, and I don't just mean different enemies, so there is plenty of variety on offer here that games with twice the amount of stages can not replicate. There is the use of different perspectives, the interplay between normal enemies and mid-stage mini-boss fights, the top-down stages where have entirely different challenges and even symbols that make you turn in circles, and an entire level where you ride a bike or have to do a balancing act on missiles shot from a support helicopter. All levels feel distinct and they're not just simply different, but all very enjoyable to go through.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10

Run and guns aren't a new concept at this point, and the only innovation this game really offers is its use of some of the capabilities of the SNES. Whatever it does utilize makes for excellent results.

REPLAYABILITY | 3/5

You can of course keep playing after beating this to improve on your high score. What you can also do is choose Normal and Hard difficulty settings, which mix things up pretty notably.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times. The emulator had some issues with slowdown here and there, but from what I can tell, that's not been an issue non-emulated.

OVERALL | 74/100

A great run and gun video game and a great game in general that understands what fun gameplay and a fun challenge looks like. Never did I find the game unfair. All it is is a game where you need to memorize a lot of things and partake in a dance with the enemies, as you let your weapons take them out slowly but surely. A lot of fun, definitely recommended.

(This is the 63rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

The 'SaGa' series started in 1989 with 'The Final Fantasy Legend', as it is known by in the West, and was a Game Boy series for its first three titles until Romancing SaGa brought it to the SNES on January 28, 1992. Well, at least in Japan it did, as the game did not get a release in the West. The SNES actually never did, in fact, but a PS2 remake called 'Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song' did release in North America in 2005, though the 'Mistrel Song' subtitle would only be included in Japanese versions.

'Romancing SaGa' did pretty well, with over a million sales recorded for its SNES version. The game was developed by Square, who had released their first SNES game in 1991 called 'Final Fantasy IV', you may know it. The alliance of both games with Square is immediately notable, but Romancing SaGa , and SaGa games overall, are different in many ways from their Final Fantasy counterpart that makes the SaGa games stand out as their own, distinctive series.

Personally, I think it differs positively in many ways, but negatively in at least just as many. I go over everything in my review for 'Romancing SaGa'.

(I was able to play the SNES version with fan translations. If you are interested in this game, I would recommend the PS2 version for both its official translation and the many QoL and overall graphical improvements you will find with it.)

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 7/10

You play Albert, heir to a noble lord in Rosalia. No wait, you play Sif, a warrior from Valhalland. Or do you play Jamil, a thief in Estamir? Wait, what?

Off the bat, you will find out why the SaGa series is very different from your run-of-the-mill JRPG in terms of its story set-up. You have eight unique characters to choose from. Not eight different classes (though they do all differ in class), but eight (!) unique (!) characters, each with their own name and background and, most importantly, their own journey. Their journey all lead to the same destination, but you'll be surprised with the amount of freedom in play here. This is not Cyberpunk 2077, where a few intros play out differently and all culminate in the same outcome an hour into the game.

For example, I chose Albert. In his introduction, he and his sister clear a cave near the castle that is their home. Upon return, the castle is attacked by monsters, and they are to flee and report the incident to a nearby kingdom. Diana, his sister, pushes Albert off a cliff to save him from strong enemies that have surrounded them (why she doesn't jump after him, I don't know). She dies trying to fend off the attackers, while Albert wakes up later in the home of a caretaker. From here, Albert finds himself in Loban. From there, he is to take a ship to Yeoville that runs into a storm and washes up near Valhalland, where he meets Sif.

Sif's story starts in Valhalland and she finds Albert knocked out on the ship wreck, so there is some crossover at times.

Then there is Claudia's story, who is an orphan raised by the witch of the forest in Mazewood. She goes to clear a cave from monsters as well, finds a Knight called Gian getting attacked, helps him and then proceeds to leave the Mazewood later on in her introduction. She takes a totally different route, explore different areas and meets other potential companions than Albert or Sif, either meeting them much earlier or doing so at all, such as a bear and a wolf-like creature that lived with her in Mazewood.

The locations you explore are not only relevant in the companions you can fight for battles, of which there are dozens, but also in the quests you find and can pursue. These quests often don't go beyond simple set-ups to explore nearby caves and exterminate the monsters within, but it adds to the replayability and the unique structure of each character's playthrough.

So overall, it's not just eight different intros, but many different journeys altogether. This unfortunately does come with its many concessions and makes tying things together for the main story, which does exist, much more difficult. The execution in the end is lackluster, both from experience and, mainly, from reading up on it, as I couldn't justify playing the game more than I did (a little over 5 hours), which I will mainly explain in the 'Gameplay' section.

Let's start with the main story. The game is set in Mardias, where three gods called 'Death', 'Saruin' and 'Schirach' waged war against the lord of all gods, 'Elore'. At the end, Death and Schirach lost and were stripped of their powers. Saruin, who was not willing to accept defeat and the same punishment, was instead imprisoned within ten fatestones by a hero who would perish in that battle and be turned into a god by Elore as thanks. Now, a millennium later, all Fatestones are scattered throughout Mardias and evil powers festered bent on releasing Saruin, with eight heroes fighting back to make sure that this doesn't happen.

It's an OK setup for a main story of its time. How does it happen that the Fatestones are scattered? If Saruin is imprisoned in them, how can you not take care of even one of the stones? Well, we shouldn't try to look for too much logic here. The game treats the main story as an afterthought, which is OK for what it is going for, but so should we in that case.

Unfortunately, 'afterthought' is an understatement, because the main story doesn't really get any mention apart from certain main story quests that trigger for mid-game and end-game portions. I found two conflicting notes on this online, one saying that the amount of quests you finish trigger these 'jumps' and another saying that the amount of encounters you had does the trick. I'm finding number of quests to be likelier, but either way, you're not going through a linear path of quests to unlock those main quests. And only in those main quests do you learn more about the main story, which, overall, is very little for an RPG. Is that a bad thing? That's for you to decide. The non-linearity is a positive for some, a negative for others. Personally, I'd be more of a fan if the execution wasn't like this.

Because here is the issue for me. The game will take you 30-40 hours to beat just once. You can complete it with all eight characters (and get a secret ending), but those 30-40 hours are brutal in terms of the content that fills them. A good 90% of your time is spent in caves fighting near endless waves of enemies in, 90% of the time, battles that can be described as cakewalks. Of the remaining 10%, I'd guesstimate that 8% is walking around in same-looking towns to collect gear and quests, and 2% is actual story dialogue.

The combat does not have nearly the amount of depth necessary to pull the majority of players through, at least not in a fun way. In my opinion, there needs to be plenty of balance between lengthy 'dungeon-crawling' and story bits in RPGs. Final Fantasy IV did a good job in achieving this a year earlier. With Romancing SaGa, that is not the case, and I couldn't put myself through the monotony for dozens of hours, both because I don't consider it to be fun (maybe I would have if I was 8 again and didn't have many other games to choose from) and because I can put the time into the other games in this challenge which have more varied and, most importantly, rewarding experiences.

Overall, the game employs a "Free Scenario System" that shows a lot of potential. Spiritual successors such as The Octopath Traveler exist. Sequels in the SaGa series exist. This challenge will be exploring those sequels, but in Romancing SaGa, there is not enough in the side-quests and pretty much nothing in the main storyline to push one through the brutally repetitive combat system. The SNES cartridge space will not have done the developers any favors, so future generations should help out there, but I also think that improved balance in the next SNES iterations could help the potential be reached sooner than later. We shall see.

GAMEPLAY | 8/20

Gameplay is not as unique as the "Free Scenario System" we went over at length above, but there are certain elements to Romancing SaGa that make it stand out over other JRPGs of the time as well. Let's start with the similarities.

Just like Final Fantasy, you explore many different locations as you visit their towns and dungeons. You go into many battle encounters with turn-based combat. You purchase healing items, magic items, weapons and armor to equip your party members.

There are many differences though. First, let's go over exploration. Instead of traveling the overworld to find the towns and their nearby dungeons, you select a location from the map and fast-travel there. There is no exploration to be done in between.

Towns have their shops and inns positioned slightly differently, but inherently are all the same. You got an inn, a weapons store, a magic store and a pub to look at quest notices and find companions. There are few, if any, other houses that specific characters own. There are nearly no characters roaming in these towns in general, perhaps 3 or 4 apart from the shopkeepers. Nearby, there is emptiness that fills the space between a town and the dungeon you're supposed to enter once you get the quest. There also is going to be a path that allows you to open up the map and travel elsewhere.

There are barely any, if any, secret paths to take. Nearly all chests, if not all, simply contain gold. I haven't found anything else in 5 hours. Items to buy with the gold usually seem overpriced, though perhaps later locations give you a lot more to make up for that.

The biggest difference you will find however is encounters. Instead of walking around and randomly being thrown into a battle, you find all enemies running around in the overworld. There are a lot, and I mean A LOT, of them running around in the same area and you can defeat them one by one to reduce their number to zero, at least until you leave the area and re-enter it, which makes them respawn. It makes encounters more predictable, but my god does it not help you avoid them whatsoever. These enemies will rush after you once they spot you, and most of them are faster than you, so they will catch up. They also mirror your path, so if you try to walk left, they will walk left as well until they catch up to you and engage. If they engage you from the side, it throws your party formation into disarray and leaves you in a tougher spot, though I'll go over that in a little bit. The worst part though is when you try to flee from a battle.

In Final Fantasy, when you escape, the encounter is simply over and you keep moving. In Romancing SaGa, GET THIS: The enemy remains right where they were when they engaged you. So guess what? You are immediately thrown into battle against them again. WTF? You have a split second to react and try to run away, but by the time you process which way to go (usually at least two directions are blocked off by enemies), the enemy re-engages and you enter the battle again. Hilariously terrible and makes escapes pretty much useless.

OK, so let's go over the battle system. It is a turn-based system (doesn't have a 'real-time' component like FFIV, which I don't mind) and uses a 3x3 grid, meaning you can choose to line up 3 party members on three rows. The front row is most susceptible to be attacked, but can use melee weapons. The second and third rows are less likely to be attacked, but can't reach with melee weapons. Spears, bows, magic skills and special limited-use attacks for melee weapons (a slash on swords for example) do reach first, second and possibly third rows of the enemies. I did not get the impression that the row has a damage output penalty like in Final Fantasy games.

Unlike many other RPGs, you don't have a 'level' that you increase. Instead, you have a number of stats that get increased after each encounter, like Speed, Vitality and Charisma, which increase hit points and damage output for specific attacks. That's the game's specific oddity but not a bad one. Here is an oddity that IS bad however. As you use weapons more and more, you get upgrades to those weapons, like a slashing attack for a melee weapon that lets you hit the second row. This experience needs to be gained for every weapon that is in the game. If you don't like a weapon and decide to switch back, guess what? All your experience for the weapon has reset. Why? Who knows, maybe a developmental oversight.

The UI for combat also makes matters worse. In Final Fantasy, you select whether you want to attack, guard or use an item on one screen. In this game, you need to cycle from left to right to find the screen you are looking for, and there is a screen for each weapon and skill you have equipped. With the thousands of encounters you will have in this game, all the cycling can become really tiresome. The game saves the screen you were on last time, which means you can spam A to do quick attacks when the cycle is pre-selected. But as mentioned, side-engagements by the enemy throws your formation into disarray, so the same characters will find themselves in the second and third row all of a sudden, unable to attack. You can either let them "defend" (which doesn't really do anything like 'Guard' does) or have them move forward/backward a row, but this means cycling through the menus. Next time, you need to cycle back when you had a frontal engagement. So you're not spared all the cycling. I didn't sign up for Tour de France, man. So all the grindy fights where you simply would just spam a basic attack, you have all these extra steps involved, and things move at a snails pace. Before the screen pops up, you first need to press a key. Why? Who knows. But this means instead of two key-presses (attack, enemy select), you do three (empty press, attack, enemy select).

To conclude, it's an interesting system but slowed down to a horrible degree. There is a fast-forward feature on the emulator I am using, and I did an experiment through a dungeon to show you how horrible it is. Even if you fast-forward, the in-game counter doesn't know it, so it updates as if you did everything in regular time. In real-time, I went through a dungeon in five minutes using the fast-forward key. In game time, and in would-be real time without the fast forward, it took 40 (!) minutes. And none of the fights required a drop of strategy, so you literally are spending 35 of 40 minutes pressing the same button and waiting for it to play out the same way. Yeesh. That's literally 30-34 of 40 hours it takes to beat the game. I understand that most gameplay in RPGs is spent like this, but it's not nearly this much and it's also not in a game where there is no strategy involved for the majority of battles.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10

No voice acting. The sound design is average, but the one thing I noticed was how your strikes in combat didn't have the satisfying ferocity that they had in Final Fantasy. The soundtrack has good and bad parts. The main theme sounds like your prototypical Square NES/SNES main theme to the point that it is indistinguishable. The unique part about the soundrack, which isn't overly long, is that each character has their own unique theme. The bad part about it is that it plays endlessly in a loop, unless you are in a story set piece or in a dungeon. After 5 hours, Albert's theme makes a shiver run down my spine. The battle theme is the same as well, but that's typical for most RPGs and this one actually sounds pretty good, even after 5 hours. Overall, it's a soundtrack that sounds solidly average, one that you will remember fondly, if nostalgia is involved and one that is mostly forgettable, apart from the battle and character themes that you end up listening to for 30-40 hours.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10

Graphically this gives the impression of mid-budget early SNES game. That's to say that it certainly makes use of the jump to 16-bit, especially for a game that was Game Boy exclusive up to this point, but there is a lot of potential left to reach still. One thing I like the most about the game graphically is the sprite work and design for the companions, which look pretty good and distinct. Battles play out in terrain that you engaged the enemy in, which is a nice touch that will become more common on the SNES. Enemy sprites look OK but the lower resolution look compared to the characters is slighty off-putting. Sprites are also not animated as they await their turn, similarly to FFIV, which would have been nice but is not the norm yet.

One note worth making is on the menu UI, both in battle (which I commented on in 'Gameplay' -> sucks) and in your inventory, which is worse than in Final Fantasy. Stacking items isn't possible, so I was stuck having two slots occupied by 'Balm' from the start for some reason and equipping stuff requires you to go through many more clicks.

Overall, the game looks like a small upgrade to 8-bit RPGs. The first sentence in this section above pretty much describes it simply.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 6/10

I really like how you can choose one character and then meet the other starting characters in the areas where you would be had you chosen them. This gives the game world a sort of realistic feel that you simply visit from the perspective of one of the available options. Enemies being visible in the overworld is also a nice touch, at least atmospherically, as it doesn't necessarily equate to a more enjoyable experience based on execution. I also like the world map that covers a number of different kingdoms, and these points are pretty much the most notable things as it pertains to immersion. The game doesn't accomplish anything else specifically, but it isn't as good a look to have all towns be pretty much copies of each other and be mostly barren of life.

CONTENT | 5/10

There are plenty of dungeons to fight enemies in, thousands of encounters to go through, dozens of companions to recruit, lots of locations to travel and quests to find, but one of those points proves why quantity is never better than quality, especially if you don't have much quality in that department to begin with. Thousands of encounters that play out the same way to bloat the play time way beyond where it needs to be. Final Fantasy IV isn't this long, and it includes a ton of story elements as well. This game barely has story and lasts 30-40 hours. It's just way too much.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10

I do like the amount of freedom on offer here, from choosing the character to play, to being let go in the world, but I definitely expected more from what I heard. "Open world" and "non-linear" are attached to this series a lot, but for those 5 hours I played, the path was certainly as linear as it gets, it simply was a unique path to Albert (and presumably Sif). Going from one location to the next also necessitates fast travel, with no way to organically go there, which eliminates open world as well, especially since each individual location usually comes with the same few features like towns and dungeons, with basically no motivation to explore in between. Then you look at it more closely and you're expected to go through dungeons with a solid 50-100 encounters per dungeon, the majority of which require next to no strategy, and I can't say I'm too positive on the design here for the most part.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10

The "Free Scenario System" certainly is unique. The 3x3 grid used for the combat is not bad as well, nor is the fact that you can see the enemies in the overworld instead of being thrown in random encounters. Unfortunately, innovation comes with growing pains, and that's certainly the case here, as all of these features have more negatives than positives attached to them in this particular game in my opinion.

REPLAYABILITY | 4/5

There is genuine replayability here. The only reason I'm not giving it a perfect score here is because replaying it means another few thousand encounters to go through, which will not be a lot of fun unless you're a massive sucker for turn-based combat that doesn't have much depth. But to be able to go through eight charaters and have most of them go through pretty different journeys is definitely a very nice feature, if we don't consider the concessions that were made to make it happen. There is no character development and very little personality in characters to make these unique routes stand out as much as they should as well, but for its time, having this much 'freedom' was unheard of, at least when it comes to Japanese RPGs.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 57/100

I'd like to summarize the game as follows: Romancing SaGa introduces many unique ideas to the JRPG genre, but its innovation comes with very apparent growing pains. Had this been as clean as it gets for a first iteration of a formula (A Link To The Past), you would have definitely heard of it by now and would have had this game release in the West way before its 2005 PS2 port, so my opinion isn't a unique one. Future games in the series will definitely do a better job to appeal to more players, and I'm excited to find out, but as it stands, I'd recommend to skip to those for newcomers or to play a spiritual successor like "The Octopath Traveler".

I really wanted to like this game. Games that are lean on gameplay and heavy on writing don't scare me, I specifically chose to play this game due to that. I didn't know much else about it though.

When I played through the first Act, I thought to myself: OK, what the fuck? I have 0 idea what is going on. I don't know if I like it, but let's give it more time

When I played through the second Act right after, I thought: OK, what the fuck? I have 0 idea what is going on. I don't really like it, but I'll give it more time. There must be something that I hang on to at some point.

When I played through Act III, I realized that the game was not going to satisfy what I'm looking for. I like the visual style, I think the songs that play are nice (albeit not really leaving any impact on me) and I think the game's style is unique and certainly worth experiencing for yourself to see if it sticks with you in a way it didn't with me.

One major thing that I didn't really gel with was the "magical realism" style that this apparently has. Never heard of the term before, but it's basically a realistic, mundane setting with magical elements in it. It's not sci fi, not fantasy but it's own thing and personally, I dislike magical realism. At first I thought the game would have a grounded setting and would tell a deeply human story. There is certainly the attempt of it here (a successful attempt if you ask many others), but I just couldn't buy this setting. Give me something grounded or buy into the magical more. I, subjectively, dislike the middle road a lot and I doubt I'll interact with media in this literary style again.

The game has a heavy focus on dialogue (I don't mind. I read plenty of books, I enjoy visual novels and Disco Elysium is one of my favorite games of all time for example), but a lot of conversations just felt so odd and unpleasant. For one thing, too often I think characters don't conversate, they just say things unrelated to what their conversation partner is saying. The game was sold to me as very realistic, but I've never done that in my life. Second, a lot of conversations drag on by going on tangents for no apparent reason. Third, a lot of the dialogue and characters were too cryptic. Sure, I get that there is commentary about life, about the highs and lows, about death, about regret and a lot more topics that make life what it is, but the way these topics are addressed left me unimpressed for a lack of a better word than be brought along a mysterious, bittersweet journey like it seems to be the case for many others. Ultimately, I have felt more emotional about these topics while playing dozens of other video games, either by telling a grounded story and or a story in a fantasy setting with human stakes involved rather than what Kentucky Route Zero tries to do.

Look at the review score for this by critics and on many online sites. They're pretty high. Needless to say, this is just my opinion and it's not shared by the majority. So if you own it, give it a try. For me personally, the game was not fun as game, which was a given, but also was not enjoyable as a novel, which was not.

In Tacoma you play as Amy Ferrier and have the task of retrieving data and the wetware of an AI, ODIN. from an abandoned station, Tacoma, which was struck by a meteor a few days prior. The crew was rescued, so as you collect the data, which happens automatically, you are free to explore the many different rooms in the station, where you can re-watch interactions between the crew members during and immediately after the meteor strike from a few days ago. Doing this, you find out about each member's role, ambitions, backgrounds and relationships between each other.

As mentioned, the devs are behind Gone Home as well. These games are very similar in that there isn't any threat, you can basically just explore a location and piece together the story and the events that unfolded and so, they place a heavy burden on narrative, world building and atmosphere.

It's possible that you can beat the game without really "completing" the story or finding out every truth but I wouldn't recommend it, because the story is actually pretty interesting (way more than Gone Home in my opinion). Beware that this is a walking simulator, so there isn't much in terms of gameplay. You just walk around, read some notes, listen to dialogue, do a few very easy puzzles and interact with a couple other things and that's it. All the value here is in the story and the characters, so your prior experiences with walking sims should tell you, if this game is for you.

That said, that value is quite high, as the game places you in a narrative that is quite thoughtprovoking when it comes to our current dabbles and battles with AI and how it might look like in the future where AI is more embedded into our everyday lives. I don't want to say too much, because as I said, the narrative is very important in carrying your experience, but this is a game that, while it doesn't take that story theme to an unexplored area, does create an interesting and engaging plot where the player feels actively involved thanks to the rewinding / fast-forwarding mechanic that the player needs to use to gather clues on what happened on this station.

Overall, I can recommend it and it's definitely up there as one of the more enjoyable walking sims I've played. This comes from someone who isn't necessarily a big fan of the genre, but whatever that genre needs to do to make up for its lack of gameplay, this game has accomplished.

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did because I enjoy the immersive sim genre (though I'd say System Shock isn't the most accurate representation of the genre) and all of the well-known games that were inspired by the original System Shock to this day.

Unfortunately, System Shock has something that regularly makes me fall off of similar games, which is a big reliance on quick-saving and reloading. Enemies that kill you with a few shots, health items being very scarce compared to how easily and how much damage you take, multiple areas that you just aren't supposed to be at yet (keyword 'radiation') that will empty your health items before you eventually realize that you shouldn't have been here in the first place and more. It's something that makes me hesitant to say I'd recommend it to everyone, and I think that's more than acceptable among gamers. It's a niche game made for a certain audience who will love it, popularized and refined in games like Bioshock, Prey, Deus Ex, heck even Dead Space and more. And even beyond that, System Shock has done things that I have not previously seen in the 100 other games I had previously played as this retro challenge I'm doing (see bottom of the review), especially in terms of its storytelling, which has caught on in the years to come.

Yet, despite the fact that I can acknowledge and respect what this game has accomplished at its time, it unfortunately never managed to grab me. Both because of the first issue I mentioned, but also because of some other issues. For one thing, the progression in this game truly shows its age. That's a good thing for those who want the remake to be faithful to the original. But to start the game and have a general idea that you're meant to stop SHODAN, but other than that rather aimlessly walk through 9 or so separate areas to just progress further and further to the end, didn't feel all that engaging. It can't be helped that in each area, you look for keycards to unlock progression, a pretty common thing back in the day, and do the same few puzzles and shoot the same few enemies throughout. Enemies that either felt too weak or too overpowered to me. Another thing is the recycling system in the game. To get currency, you grab junk items and vaporize them in your inventory, which turns them into scrap to recycle for the currency. That becomes pretty tedious after a while, and it's not as optional as I anticipated it being because items will be very useful in this game (healing items in particular) and you get very little currency outside of recycling.

The storytelling is pretty good to this day, as it's told through voice recordings for the most part, which gives you an idea of how it was for the people working at the space station this game is set in while SHODAN went rogue. Some of the voice acting is less good than most of it, but I enjoy this style of storytelling and that's true for this game too. The atmosphere grabbed me as well, and the threat of SHODAN was portrayed really well throughout.

Unfortunately, as a package, the gameplay loop itself did not grab me as much as I would have hoped. There is a demo for the game on Steam, so I'd urge you to try it and decide based on that whether you want to buy the full game. It has its many fans, but it's worth mentioning that the game is definitely not for everyone. And I'd definitely say that has more to do with the taste of the player then with the quality of the game, though the game does have its flaws.

(This is the 101st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)

(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.

(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 50th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Game #50. That's a nice milestone hit. We get there with Another World, a short cinematic platformer / adventure title developed by Delphine Software, who are also known for the game 'Flashback' and 'Shaq Fu'. This game is a unique one, so a good choice for #50, as it mixes up actual cinematics with gameplay, something that wouldn't become the norm until much later down the line as we all know. The game was initially developed and released for the Amiga in November 1991 but later came out for the SNES and Sega Genesis as well, among many other platforms.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 6/10

You play Lester Knight Chaykin, a physicist who at the start of the game arrives in his laboratory, rides an elevator down to his main office and starts an experiment. I couldn't figure out what it was about, but wikipedia describes it as 'attempting to reconstruct what happened when the universe was born'. During his experiment, the facility and him are hit by a lightning strike, which teleports Lester to an alien planet. Here, he has to evade monsters for a while until he is taken hostage by the locals. He escapes and helps free an alien creature that was captured with him called "Buddy", who henceforth assists Lester in his escape from this planet.

The manual itself only has a short diary entry from around the mid-way point of the game, where the main character talks about the friend he has found in the alien planet and how the energy weapon works that an enemy has dropped earlier.

The cinematics are mixed in between gameplay sessions of a game that will take you roughly an hour or two, and only 20 minutes if you know exactly what to do, which isn't too hard on a second attempt.

The plot itself is basic, but the inclusion of a friendly, strange creature is the kind of story element that will be used many more times in the future of gaming and that will pull at the heartstrings of many gamers. I doubt this was the first platformer to use this, but 'Buddy' definitely played a noteable and pretty useful role here.

GAMEPLAY | 11/20

This is a platformer / adventure, and your goal is to do platforming, solve some light puzzles, shoot a few bad guys and do so without dying a lot, as the checkpoint system can get pretty frustrating. If there is a particular part you are stuck at, it's not going to be unusual for you to go for a couple minutes of the previous parts over and over again. The most popular comparison I could give here would be the bonfire system in Souls games. Die to a boss and you respawn minutes of running away. Die here to anything and the same thing is true pretty much.

Sometimes, it's not quite clear where you are to go next, so you kind of end up shooting at everything and see if it opens up a path forward for example.

But other than, it's OK. The 'Buddy' character actually is quite useful in that he opens up holes for you to climb in and in general assist you through various means, which was pretty cool to see friendly AI this 'advanced' in 1991.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10

No voice acting. The sound design has no business being this crisp and atmospheric. The echo of your steps when you run around in caves, the sound of the wind howling when you're outside, the sound of the water while you're swimming in it, the sound that translates the power behind those shots you take with your energy weapon really well and so much more is so well done.

The soundtrack is incredibly tense and perfect for the type of atmosphere this game is going for. Most of the game is played in silence and only accompanied by the various ambient sounds, but when the soundtrack kicks in, it only adds to the action.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10

Mostly a good looking game but partly a mixed bag, most notably in its design of the backgrounds in some areas, which look rather uninspired, and characters. On the other hand, you have great detail in particle effects, the cinematics and some of the backgrounds, especially when you first enter this alien planet. But overall, it's a good looking game compared to its 1991 peers.

ATMOSPHERE | 9/10

Very atmospheric, from start to finish. You start the game wondering what this odd looking dude is out to do late at night in his labratory. You continue wondering as Lester is teleported to an alien planet, with weirder and weirder looking creatures and natives. You build an unlikely relationship with this friendly stranger that you rescue, you try to make your escape through dark caves, squeeze your way through vents, use your energy weapon to shoot your path forward and do so while the soundtrack amplifies the tension in the right moments. It's really well done.

CONTENT | 4/10

The big focus on cinematics means there is less space left to make this a lengthy game, or at least so I'd assume. So you're left with good content here for the most part, but not a lot of it at all.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10

The design, apart from the inclusion of cinematics, is pretty basic. You got the old-school issues with an unfair checkpoint system rearing its ugly head from time to time, but other than that, there isn't anything notable to add here.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10

Very unique in the way it tells its own story using, for the time, sophisticated cinematics. If we're fair, it's questionable whether this type of game has a higher fun factor than many of the top-end platformers that would release in the early 90s, as the game has to balance the high quality cinematics with much less content overall, but the concept in itself is promising and brings the medium forward in its attempt to blend story and gameplay together.

REPLAYABILITY | 1/5

Once you've beaten it, there is no extra incentive given to replay it.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 67/100

Solid graphics, great atmosphere and sound, well done cinematics that were unusual for its time. Definitely worth a try.

(This is the 49th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Ugh, an EA game, I bet it's filled with microtransactions. Oh, right, we're in 1991. This game is called Road Rash, and is a racing game with some fighting elements. There is a spiritual successor for it called Road Redemption, which released in 2017.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10

There actually is a set-up for this fictitious world in the manual. There once were two bitter rivals in Fang and Polygon. After Fang lost their final official race because Polygon tempered with Fang's bike beforehand, Fang challenged Polygon to an unofficial race, which started the cult behind 'Road Rash Races'. "Punching, kicking and clubbing and 150 miles per hour are the norm for Rashers".

In-game, you are greeted with messages by friends and foes before and sometimes after a race. Sometimes it's trash talk, sometimes it's a friendly hint and sometimes it's a police officer who tells you to not drive too fast, so he can catch you. After each level you beat, there is also a very short cutscene that plays where your character and, I presume, his girlfriend take their helmets off and enjoy the fresh air after winning all tracks in the previous level.

It's a bit more than the bare minimum, and I liked seeing those messages before races.

GAMEPLAY | 12/20

This got kind of addicting really quickly. Obviously I'm gonna move on as part of the challenge, but I'm sure I'll play this to chill out from time to time like I used to do for F-Zero.

You start with the standard bike and have 5 races available at the beginning. Your goal is to win each race against 15 or so competitors, which allows you to move up in levels and difficulty, until you reach the final race. After each race, you are compensated in $ based on your finish and can use it to upgrade to bikes that are faster and can be controlled better. Most of the time, progress is blocked because your bike simply won't be fast enough to win, so you'll need to farm money in races you know you'll lose to be able to afford a better bike. I can't say how much of a grind it is at later levels, but it was acceptable where I stopped, which was after I finished the second level.

The special feature of Road Rash is that during races, you can ram the bike of the other racers, punch/kick them and hit them with melee weapons. You have a meter for your bike and your character health. If your character health goes down to 0, you fall off your bike but it recovers over time. There are also cars on the road that drive in both directions, which you have to avoid. If you are hit, you usually fly far away from your bike and have to run all the way back to it to get back to driving, which takes a while. Cars can hit your bike after you already crashed and kick it even further away that way, which is a funny mechanic, but might get frustrating later down the line because after two crashes, you're pretty much not going to win. I didn't find any way to back out of a race other than a reset of the emulator. Finally, there is a police bike that drives around sometimes as well, and if you fall off your bike near the officer, he will bust you and fine you money.

I really like the idea of this, and it's recently gotten a spiritual successor in Road Redemption (2017), but at least for the first two levels, I never really saw much incentive to battle the bikers. You either don't catch up to the fastest bikes or you can blaze past them once you do, so there isn't a lot of time for when you could be in a confrontation with them. Plus, I never got a melee weapon up to this point and I'm not even sure how to attain one, so that was disappointing.

The racing was fun regardless. It's very simple, you have to try to stay on track in a vertically scrolling 2D track, avoid the cars and get past the other racers. Your bikes differ in speed and handling, though that is not indicated everywhere but in the description of the bikes as far as I could tell.

Road Rash got two sequels over the next years, which were both praised for the same fun factor that you got with the first, but also criticized for lack of innovation. For those reasons, I'm not going to try those, but Road Rash goes 3D in 1998, has a PlayStation release in 2000 and then one final release in 2009 on the EA Mobile site only (hello, modern EA) before it then started to sit dormant ever since.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10

No voice acting. The sound design in this is actually not so good. There aren't many sound effects here to begin with, including when your opponents crash into cars or the sound of the engine of any car in general. The main sound you will hear is the tires screeching when you turn corners, and that sound doesn't even sound like how it sounds in reality or even close to it.

As far the OST, I think overall it's a plus. If you played this when you were younger and played these maps over and over again, it's a soundtrack that feels distinct enough to stick around with you for a while. The track I liked the most is probably the Pacific Coast one. All tracks have this element to them I can't really describe well, but if I had to make an attempt, I'd describe it as a low pitch bouncey sound, which definitely is a terrible description. But nevertheless, my point is that it didn't quite gell with me and it being the connecting theme in the OST, I can't say this would be among the great soundtracks of this year if I were to make a list. Unlike a game like F-Zero, the OST didn't have any really good tracks that I would gladly listen to outside of the game either.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10

The game doesn't look bad, it doesn't look fantastic. You drive down a road that looks the same throughout for each map with forests and mountains visible in the horizon. You and your opponents look the same and are only distinguished by color. What I really like about the graphical presentation is the animations. The animations of the crash and how your bike and you fly into the air and down on your butt and how you rush back to your bike is pretty funnily presented here. In terms of graphical fidelity, your main issue here might be that you will have a hard time sometimes figuring out that you're approaching a car, as the low resolution from time to time makes them hard to see quickly enough.

ATMOSPHERE | 6/10

In terms of atmosphere, it hits best when you drive behind a group of bikers and see them drive into the trunk of the car in front of them and fly off their bikes as you leave them in the dust. Or when you are side-by-side with another biker and throw a punch or hit their bike with yours to drive them off course. That doesn't happen often enough though I thought.

CONTENT | 6/10

There are 5 levels with 5 races each and 8 total bikes you can unlock. It's a solid amount of content, nothing special here.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10

Pretty basic but clean design here. You go through more and more difficult levels and continue to earn money to unlock faster and faster bikes. Effective, and I'd say you'll have a fun 10-15 hours or so trying to win all races.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10

I like the concept of using illegal tactics during a race to gain an advantage. I just don't feel like it's fleshed out here and you rarely have a need to use these tactics. It would have also been more fun if we could have gone into a race having some sort of melee weapon pre selected, because I went through two levels without getting my hands on a single one.

REPLAYABILITY | 3/5

It's a racing game, so you'll have plenty of motivation to keep playing and trying to beat your previous high scores.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 60/100

It's an enjoyable racing game. If you're looking for a more modern experience though, I'd suggest checking out Road Redemption. Road Rash's main selling proposition, the fighting during the racing, is only a small part of the gameplay here and it quickly just turns into a normal racing game for the most part.

(This is the 31st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

You'll see many people compare StarTropics to The Legend of Zelda, and while I never played the first two Zelda's released in 86/87, I too can see the resemblance slash inspiration. Another game I would compare this to is something like Crystalis, a JRPG from earlier in 1990 that too had some unique mechanics similar to this game that was half-fun, half-detrimental to the gameplay and we'll get over that later on in the review. A big similarity my ears noticed when playing this however was the soundtrack and late-game level design. I was wondering if the game's had the same composer but nope, doesn't look like it. Either way, listen to some of the late game songs of StarTropics and the early game overworld track of Crystalis and you probably will hear the similarities as well. In addition, in both games you find yourself in a futuristic dungeon late-game.

Of course, StarTropics has none of the RPG mechanics, as it's an Action Adventure game, and ... did you know that this is a rare Japanese developed game that only released in the West? Yes, seriously. In NA in December 1990, and in EU in August 1992.

I'm not sure what the idea behind that was, because apart from calling every town something-something-cola, giving characters generic American names, mentioning 1492 and 1776 as ID codes and referencing Indiana Jones (?), nothing really screams "lots of appeal in the West". The game has a tropical island theme, your character literally has no recognizability (Mike, brown hair, blue shirt, your average kiddo) and, while I actually appreciated how the storytelling was more geared towards children (NPCs ask you if they should repeat "complicated" story parts, so that you can read them over and over again to get the story), the gameplay on the other hand is so difficult that I'm not sure who their target audience was exactly.

Let's take a step back. What do you do in StarTropics? You play Mike, an average kid who arrives at C-Land (shaped like a C, you see. And each village name ends with cola) in a damn helicopter. Village people say that you're an "ace pitcher", a reference made at the start twice and never again, and you find out that your scientist uncle has gone missing. In 8 chapters, you gotta try to find him and figure out what happened. Each chapter has a dungeon and potentially some overworld puzzles in it. All told, you'll probably spent around 10 hours with this game if you don't use any save states. If you use save states like me to "adjust" the checkpoint system in this game, you'll probably beat it in the time I did, which was around 6 hours.

There are two parts in this game, the overworld and the dungeons. In the overworld, you walk around the bland island and enter villages to talk to NPCs. Sometimes villages are harder to get to and you have to find secret passages to get there. You get a submarine later on to travel on water and get a robot buddy as well.

In the dungeons, there is a unique mechanic in this game, which is that there are special green tiles that you have to step on to either activate buttons that open doors, or you have to jump on them in a specific order to avoid falling into water or other liquids that lead to your death. It's a neat puzzle mechanic when used right and not an issue in itself, but the controls in this game are annoying and require some getting used to. When more enemies appear at once later in the game, it also becomes clear that the controls/mechanics weren't properly balanced with the enemies, because it becomes near-impossible to avoid getting hit.

Basically, to turn somewhere, you first press the button to look that way. Only by pressing it once more or holding down the button for a second longer does your character start walking that way. With the green tiles, you can actually chain jumps better, but it gets really repetitive after a while to jump, jump, jump, unlock a button, jump, jump over to the button, jump on it to press it and jump all the way back to the now-open door. Plus you have to jump one by one, but many enemies can simply walk over them, so it often happens that they outpace you and touch you to deal damage. Finally, there are a few awful sections where these tiles disappear for a second and then reappear for a second. That itself is OK, having to time your jumps is a nice challenge. But in these instances, three back to back tiles disappear, and the only way to jump through all of them is by PERFECTLY timing your first jump and mashing the jump button as fast as you can. Chances are, you'll fail your first 10 attempts anyway because it's that unforgiving.

Combat itself, if enemies are not so aplenty that they get on your nerves, is actually fine. You start off with a yo-yo, but get access to guns, ninja stars, reflecting shields and so on later on. There are also roller-skaters that attack every enemy on screen at the same time and illuminating staffs that reveal hiding ghosts. Lots of cool stuff that loses some of its magic due to the game's odd desire to be more challenging than it should be.

The story has a satisfying conclusion but is very simple otherwise. Something a kid will definitely enjoy as it's more fleshed out than many similar games and less prone to filler-talk. The soundtrack is solid. Graphics are too repetitive and bland in the overworld especially, but don't look bad.

Between the 8 dungeons, there are multiple that look unique (like the ghost town and final dungeon) and there is a tiny bit of reward for exploration, which is nice, in the form of health potions and permanent health rewards.

OVERALL
If you're into this sort of game and the old school look doesn't bother you, StarTropics is definitely a 2D Action Adventure worth adding to your play-list. It not being an RPG is great because with the stories these games had back in the day, those complicated RPG-features often drag games down for these retro-playthroughs. StarTropics is much more efficient in its gameplay as a result, even if being repetitive and unnecessarily difficult (especially late game) are flaws that pop up here.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Couldn't find anything apart from a Walkthrough/Guide by Nintendo Power

(This is the 47th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

It's always exciting to hit a milestone in video gaming with this challenge, and we certainly did that by arriving at the first 'Final Fantasy' game for the SNES, Final Fantasy IV. Called 'Final Fantasy II' in North America, because FF II and III didn't release in NA originally, Final Fantasy IV is a rather big step forward for the series in many ways. It originally released for the SNES on July 19, 1991 and was re-released for PlayStation in '97 before the decade was over. The game also got a 3-D release in 2007 for the Nintendo DS, which, if ever get there, will probably be the time where we revisit it. Is it worth revisiting? Absolutely it is, but I'll go through all of my thoughts one by one in this lengthy review, hope you enjoy the read.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 8/10

Finally a game with more to write about than "this is character X, he is hunting after evil person Y to save person/object Z". In Final Fantasy IV, the main character is Cecil, who is hunting after Golbez to save Earth. Just kidding, there is of course a lot more to this.

Cecil is a Dark Knight and Captain of the Red Wings at the start of the game, an elite air force unit of the kingdom of Baron. They are tasked to steal the Water Crystal from Mysidia, which makes Cecil feel guilty and ask the king of his motives. Due to this, he is relieved from his duties as Captain. He, along with his friend Kain, is taked to go to the Village of Mist and deliver a package there, a package that, once they arrive, releases bombs and destroys the village.

In the aftermath, he meets Rydia, who is a young and gifted Caller who loses her mother during the bombings and summons a Titan out of anger, a Titan that causes an earthquake. The earthquake separates Cecil and Kain, and leaves Cecil next to an unconcious Rydia, whom he brings to a nearby town. There, Baronian soldiers try to kill Rydia at night, but Cecil fights them off and he and Rydia become allies as a result, and Rydia can help you in battle.

From here, Cecil goes on to meet many important characters that have story impact and/or become playable characters. There are a dozen playable characters in fact, which regularly rotate throughout the game. There are Cecil, Kain and Rydia, then there is Cid, an aircraft engineer, Edward, the Prince of Damcyan, Tellah, a sage, Palom and Porom, twin mages, Rosa, Cecil's love interest and many more. Each character has a set class, so the job system from Final Fantasy III doesn't make it over here.

Final Fantasy IV is lauded for taking a big step forward in dramatic storytelling. Is that fair? If you compare it to games from the last decade, FFIV obviously does very little in comparison. If you compare it to the 46 other games I've played through this challenge, Final Fantasy IV is probably only outmatched by Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and blows everything else out the water just thanks to its depth and its many, many, dramatic set pieces.

THE PART WITH THE SPOILERS: The problem? So, the dramatic scenes mainly include the death of some of the playable characters. Palom and Porom turn to stone to lean against walls that were closing in to crush the party. Tellah can't bring them back to life. "They have turned into stone by their own will." Yang, a monk from Fabul, sacrifices himself to do ... something in a control room to destroy artillery systems, I couldn't make sense of that one yet. Cid BLOWS HIMSELF up to allow Cecil and crew to leave an underground area. Tellah uses his life energy to use a powerful spell and scare off the antagonist, Golbez, for the time being at least. Some manage to feel more dramatic than others, but the issue is, that apart from Tellah, all of them return to life later on. What? It's like they couldn't do that to all the kids playing the game, so they reversed their decision a few hours later into the game. Are any of these returns explained? Nope. Palom and Porom's return is actually, but apparently it's because their elder unpetrified them, but I thought you couldn't do that because they turned into stone out of their own will? Oh well. As a result, all the dramatics that are being lauded end up being teases than anything else, which is a shame. The game also pulls one of my least favorite ploys of any story, in a game or any other medium, which is present you with a main antagonist for pretty much the entirety of the game, and then announcing an even bigger antagonist right before the end, an antagonist who you never meet until the final boss fight. All this said, some characters do stay dead, and the plot twist of Golbez being used by Zemus, being the brother of Cecil and killing all of these innocent characters does manage to stir one's emotions, especially as you are left feeling like all of this could have been avoided.

The main themes of the game are, of course, the interplay between the Dark and the Light, and the power of friendship / support of your loved ones. Especially the latter you will find to play a role in a ton of JRPGs near the end, but not only does it work, but FFIV is one of the earlier games to do it.

From a critical standpoint, obviously the story does not leave you impressed anymore. There are some plot holes, the dialogue being rather basic, characters being one-dimensional, characters being swapped in and out regularly (which doesn't allow for character development for most) and many of the tropes you've become used to.

But if you look at it from the perspective of your inner child, and, from the perspective of the early 90s, you can't help but feel impressed by what this game set out to do and what it accomplished. Knowing what I know about the reception of the Final Fantasy games that are to come, I'm pretty excited to dive further into the series, which this game accomplished a lot more than Final Fantasy III did.

GAMEPLAY | 13/20

Final Fantasy IV is at a glance of course the same as the previous one's from a gameplay perspective, and as the one's to come in the next years as well. You have your party on the right side, the enemy's appearing on the left side whenever you are randomly (or as part of boss fights) pulled into battle, and you order each member around on a turn-by-turn basis by telling them to attack, use special attacks, use healing magic or an item from your inventory.

But looking at it deeper, there are some additions, subtractions and changes compared to FFIII. First, the game introduces the 'Active Time Battle' (ATB) system, which means that you need to give orders in 'real-time'. So if you take too long, the enemy will not wait for you but instead start attacking again. Second, this is the first Final Fantasy where each character has a pre-determined job/class and unlike in FFIII, there is no job system, so it can't be changed. Third, this is the first and only Final Fantasy which allows your party size to be five. Finally, unlike the previous versions, this has a very simple character development system, in that spellcasters get to gain new spells as they reach pre-determined levels, so you can't purchase spells and give them to your characters anymore.

For the first half or so of this game, this was considerably easier than FFIII. Without having to grind at all, you could pretty much spam attack through the entirety of the boss fights in the first half and heal with your white mage. Done. Then, three things happened. 1) Bosses and regular enemy types start doing a ton of damage, 2) You pretty much have to find a bunch of hidden items in order to deal enough damage or have enough defense to withstand the stronger enemies and 3) The game introduces the single worst enemy attack ever to a bunch of enemies and to pretty much all late-game bosses, which is one-hit kills. Doesn't matter if you're at full health, if you are parrying or whatever, you will simply get one-shot.

This is the biggest game design flaw in my opinion, but there are a few more minor ones that become annoying. For example, if you want to heal someone and he dies before the healing animation plays, you pretty much wasted a heal. If, on the other hand, you anticipate a death and use LIFE on someone (to revive them), and the character does indeed die before the animation plays, you still do not revive them. If you want to punish me due to timing, I should be rewarded for anticipation as well. There are also a lot of late-game bosses that pretty much attack you after each turn of one of your characters, meaning that before you go through all five party members, you are attacked five times. If you don't grind a lot, look up a guide to find all those easily missable 'OP' items and go through OPTIONAL late game areas to grind/get items as well, those attacks all also do a ton of damage.

This all culminates for the final boss fight, where it is not difficult to arrive in a state where your entire party can get one-shotted. I think this is really poor game design where simply following along the main storyline is punished this way. Once you're there, grinding the area immediately prior to the boss fight for hours is pretty much the only thing you can do at that point, and as you can imagine, that's no fun.

Overall, the ATB system I'd say was more negative than positive to me, because you're essentially being punished for having to go through various menus to find the option that you're looking for, which gives your enemies ample time to skip the attack order and strike again. I'd have rather appreciated more time to choose and strategize.

But all the critique aside, if you want to look at it from a glass half-full perspective, the game rewards you for taking your time with the game and then some. It rewards you for not escaping out of fights more than a couple times, for going through optional dungeons, visiting optional areas and yeah, grinding a little bit, by allowing you to make your way through the game easier. At the same time, it makes completion impossible if you simply follow the main path, which is what irks me.

The gameplay itself, which does continue to involve from one Final Fantasy entry to another, is also still not varied enough to really make me feel like playing those extra 5 - 10 hours to do all those optional things or to pop open a guide to go through dungeons again and find those missable items hidden each and every way.

But ultimately, whether you enjoy this or not will pretty much depend on whether you enjoyed the combat system in the other turn-based Final Fantasy entries. This one will improve upon that in some ways, potentially worsen in others depending on your viewpoint (ATB system) but will stay the same more or less.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10

No voice acting. This game takes it a step further with its sound design in that there are a bunch of different attacks with their own special sound effect. That's a small thing, but definitely noticeable. The soundtrack for the most part ranges from good to great. There were a few tracks that I remember hearing in the few hours that I had spent on FFVII before I started this challenge (Red Wings for example), and they were good tracks, so it bodes well for FFIV's soundtrack for those to be originating here. Of course, some tracks are relatively similar to earlier FF entries (battle themes) but the main beauty in the soundtrack of FFIV lies in its diversity and the way it hits the tone of the different dramatic scenarios. You have your romantic tracks (Theme of Love), your ominous tracks whenever you'd take a look at what the antagonists where doing (Ring of Bomb), bittersweet tracks that capture the feeling of powering through despite the loss of your loved ones very well (Rydia), the sad tracks for one of many sorrowful moments (Cry in Sorrow) and then your "shit's going down" track to top it off (Run!!!). Each city/town/village have their own themes as well, many of which differ in tone and theme. Overall, one of the great soundtracks of the early 90's.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10

The jump to the SNES from the NES obviously comes with an improvement in graphics. From improved sprite quality and detail, to increase in detail in the overworld, in locations and in dungeons, to more impressive looking special effects and enemies, and to actually have a background in the battle screen that aligns with the overworld location / dungeon you find yourself in, all of these points are improvements over the previous main entry. Then you add the underworld, some futuristic looking locations and the damn moon to add some variation to the environments and this is overall the kind of step up you would like to see with the jump to the 4th gen of consoles.

ATMOSPHERE | 5/10

You have a mash of themes here with medieaval fantasy along with elements of science fiction, both in terms of location and enemy design. At the same time, apart from using magic, your party is limited to weapons and skills you'd only see in medieaval fantasy, whilst you're being beamed with lasers and such from the enemies. The soundtrack would also support a focus on medieval fantasy rather than the science fiction elements, so it can feel out of place.

CONTENT | 7/10

You have 12 party members overall, about a dozen or so main + optional dungeons, about as many towns/villages/cities, plenty of different versions of your equipment, plenty of dialogue compared to pretty much any other game out there at this point in time and overall a good 20-30 hours of content depending on how much of the optional stuff you end up doing. The optional dungeons are more of the same compared to the main dungeons, of which more than a couple do unfortunately lack in variety and are much too big in size. Apart from those dungeons, and a little bit of optional dialogue here and there, there isn't much else as far as side content goes, but overall there is plenty to do here if you're not opposed to repetitive gameplay.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10

The formula works in a specific way throughout. You go into a dungeon and go in deeper and deeper until you defeat the boss, get back to the quest-giver and get story progression. This game doesn't deviate much from that formula, but it's a good formula, so it doesn't have to. It would be appreciated if it did in some sort of fashion though, because unless you are really into using the same few moves for dozens of battles per dungeon for a dozen dungeons, it will get repetitive after a while.

But a part I subjectively don't like about these old-school RPGs and that I appreciate about more modern ones is the fact that, whether you go through the main path or grind a lot more and do optional dungeons/side quests, the game is designed in a way to be beaten either way. So for the game to be unbeatable at the final boss for me, I definitely didn't like that personally and would call that poor game design personally.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10

This game successfully evolved the Final Fantasy formula and made a rather big leap in storytelling, which is great to see. It didn't put everything in terms of storytelling together quite yet, but it's much improved, and the jump in graphical quality makes this a big step forward compared to FFIII for sure.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

If you didn't do any or much of the optional content and still managed to beat this game, you have a few optional dungeons to look forward to for replay value.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 68/100

You want sequels to be better than the previous game in some shape or form. Final Fantasy IV is better in many ways compared to Final Fantasy III. Graphics are much improved thanks to the jump to the SNES, there is a much bigger focus on storytelling and the new ATB system, even if not ground-breaking, can be something that makes battles more enjoyable to you. So yes, FF IV is better than FF III in my opinion. But ultimately it comes down to this. Did you enjoy earlier FF versions? If yes, you will enjoy this more. If not, you won't enjoy this either. Personally, I enjoyed it but see a lot of room for improvement, and am excited to see what Square came up with for Final Fantasy V.

(This is the 28th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Hey, finally a game I can remember playing as kid. Super Mario World is a game that some of you may have heard of. It is one of two games that originally released with the SNES on November 21st, 1990 (the other: F-Zero). It was kinda popular. It sold over 20 million copies worldwide. Yeah, so that means I've played the best-selling SNES game ever already.

I mean, I don't need to explain Super Mario games to you, so I won't. What made this one stand out of course is that it was the first Mario game for a 16 bit console and one that used a much larger color palette, so it looked really good when it came out.

Plus, this game has a big difference over Super Mario Bros. 3, and that's of course that you have an ally in Yoshi. But before I get into that, I just gotta start with my conclusion for this game.

Because yes, this game is amazing STILL and honestly, not just easily the best game I've played out of 1990, but one of the best games I've played period. The best part is, I played this on my Steam Deck and not only did it run well, but it was a super smooth experience from beginning to the "end" (didn't beat the game yet). The controls are super responsive, the game looks fantastic, the sound quality is crisp and I was constantly in awe with how well this game aged in pretty much all areas.

The game has a ton of uniquely designed levels. That's a compliment of both the quality and quantity of them. I knew the game was good in that regard, but having played a couple dozen platformers that released in the same year previously, I can't believe how big of a jump in quality Super Mario World makes over every other game. Not only can you enjoy a variety of different levels, not only can you enjoy the challenges for well over a dozen hours for one playthrough, but the game is also just crammed full with features and secrets that allows for your future playthroughs to play out very differently over your first.

It starts with the power ups. Granted, not each power up will be as useful as some others, but you got the power up to increase in size, you got the ability to shoot fire, you can fly, you can turn invincible for a few seconds and you can even combine these when you are with Yoshi.

It took me a little while, but then I discovered that you can sprint, I discovered that you can spin in the air which allows you to destroy blocks below you, I discovered that Yoshi can eat enemies and shoot some of them back out even, and I discovered a bunch of other secrets, like special paths that you can take to finish a level, which opens up hidden paths. These aren't just there for padding, but completing them then adds new colored platforms to all other levels and makes them easier. This adds tons of replayability for multiple reasons.

OVERALL
I could really go on and on here, but I think I made my thoughts clear by now. The game was not just revolutionary at the time, but is still a damn fine video game by today's standards. That's the biggest compliment we can really give to games of old and this game deserves it and more.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Steve Harris for EGM, Issue 25 (Aug 91): "While Super Mario World may not be the ideal cart to show off al the fancy things that the SNES can do..." | and the game goes on to be the best-selling game of the entire console. Not sure what was expected but expectations certainly were high
- ? for Nintendo Power, Issue 27 (Aug 91): "Mario's latest adventure is gigantic."