(This is the 90th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)

Mario felt so bad after kicking Wario's butt in Super Mario Land 2 that he decided to gift him his Game Boy series. So in his first adventure as the protagonist, Wario figures out a path to obtaining enough money to buy a castle for himself in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, which initially released on January 21st, 1994 as a first-party Nintendo title exclusively for the Game Boy.

It went on to sell over 5 million units to date and released to mostly positive reviews at the time. Wario would go on to start in plenty more games after this, including Wario Land 2 to 4, as well as Wario World and Wario Land: Shake It! among others. Wario was still a very new Nintendo creation at the time of this game's release, having debuted just a little over a year prior to this as the final boss of Super Mario Land 2. All players knew about him at the time was that he was a bad guy who stole Mario's appearance and castle (he would be called the "wicked imposter" in commercials for that game), and with the release of this game, the manual would go on to describe him as "mean and ugly". You would also quickly come to understand that Wario is quite a greedy individual. You'd think that doesn't sound like the ideal protagonist, but 1) the sales numbers tell a different story and 2) I can appreciate a unique personality for a protagonist in the video game medium, where "Protagonist saves the world" stories are all you have at this point in time.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10

Wario lost his chance at his own castle when Mario took his own castle back from the thieving hands of Wario. Wario remains steadfast in his desire to find his own castle howevere, and one day, he hears of a rumor that the giant golden statue of Princess Peach got stolen by the pirates of Kitchen Island. "Mario is looking for it but, if I find it first, I could cash it in for a princess' ransom." Wario is looking to get enough money to buy a castle that is even bigger than the one Mario has.

This little summary of what you find in the manual is pretty much all you get here, apart from the endings, which I think add a lot here. Depending on how many coins you collect through your playthrough, you can get one of five different endings in this game. The thresholds are not known to me, but if you don't reach the first threshold, a cutscene plays where Wario hands a genie one bag of coins and gets ... a tiny birdhouse. Wario looks to the floor in disappointment and as a player, you can't help but feel sorry for him. Get more coins and you can get Wario a ... treehouse, which he also doesn't like. Keep going and you can finally get him his castle at one point. Reach the 99,999 limit of coins and a surprising gift awaits Wario. I thought these were well done and add nice incentive to do well during your playthrough.

GAMEPLAY | 9/20

Wario Land plays like the uglier version of Mario Land, which fits the two characters and therefore, if this was intended, should be seen as a compliment. In reality though, I just couldn't enjoy my time playing this game as much as I would have liked.

The game is functional and overall well made, as is typical for a first-party Nintendo title. The end product does not equate fun to me however. Similarly to many Mario adventures, you see Wario on an overworld and start in World #1 Stage #1. With each stage or 'course' that you beat, you get closer to the boss stage. Beat the boss, and the next world opens up.

Each world is themed differently and each course has its own challenges for the player to overcome through platforming. You have to watch out for enemies, spikes, gravity and something that looks like water but actually isn't and will kill you.

What makes or breaks platformers though is how you engage with these challenges, and in that regard, I think Wario Land falls short in what makes a platformer enjoyable to me. First off, Wario Land's gameplay is really slow and repetitive. Through the first two worlds, most of what I experienced felt pretty much the same, looked mostly the same and played exactly the same. Few enemy types (there are a total of 10 in this game with little variety), low difficulty (apart from many cheap deaths like the aforementioned "water" and jumps having to be a lot more precise than one can comfortably do) and bland power-up choices.

Wario can have a normal size and a shrunk-down version of himself just like Mario. When he is at his normal size, finding a "pot" allows him to become Jet Wario (which lets him fly for a short period of time), Bull Wario (attach Wario to the ceiling with the horns) and Dragon Wario (fire breathing skill). Wario has no speed to speak of and the challenges are just way too one-dimensional to ever really get a fun gameplay loop going in this game.

As far as items to collect go, there are only three. A star like in the Mario games, which I found just once. Hearts, which you find regularly and which give you 10 points to your heart counter (when you get 100, you get 1 extra life) and a key, which you are meant to carry while you search for a treasure room, which you need to find to get better (and the best) endings.

It's all competently made but it just plays like one of the less inspired Nintendo games of its time.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 3/10

No voice acting. For sounds and the soundtrack, I've played plenty of Game Boy games by now and I understand its limited sound capabilities. That said, Wario Land is one of the worst sounding games I've played during this challenge and has among the worst soundtracks of games I have played that were professionally made. I assume it's supposed to be a somewhat uglier soundtrack to tell us that we're playing a Wario game, not a Mario game, but man, I feel the need to apologize to my ears for having exposed them to this. None of the tracks I heard in this game ever felt like they had any cohesion in their composition and just sounded like an odd mix of horrible sounds. Usually when I play these monotonous platformers, I have the soundtrack to lean back on and to at least bop my heads to some of the tracks. Here, I wouldn't even know when to bop because way too often there is seemingly no rhythm in these tracks. If this is supposed to be intentional and there truly is that hidden meaning of "Wario is just an uglier version of Mario, so the soundtrack is supposed to show that", than that's fine, but doesn't make the soundtrack less bad sounding.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 5/10

The limitations of the Game Boy are excusable to a point, but we are closing in on the 32 bit gen of video games and from the perspective of anyone not tied down to a handheld system, the games on the Game Boy look pretty bad for the most part. What devs can mainly do visually is to be creative in their visual design of levels and keeping things varied. While Wario Land has some of that variety I'm talking about, it doesn't have a lot of it and whenever things visually do look somewhat different, the gameplay still feels the same. Sprites are also really big here, so they cover for more of the screen than I'd personally like. It negatively impacted gameplay as well, especially during sections with spikes at the ceiling.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10

The game kind of does a good job of presenting us with the 'uglier' version of Mario, as they described Wario at the time, by making a lot about the game ugly as well. Whether it's by design at times and not by design at others, whether the atmosphere the game presents is on purpose or isn't, it's just not something I would consider very pleasant in how it is presented.

CONTENT | 5/10

There are seven worlds with multiple courses each. After each course, you can gamble your money to try to double it or play a mini game to try to get an extra life. There are also 4 treasures you need to find to have a chance at the best ending. Overall, this game is on the longer side of platformers, but I feel like this is one of the few Nintendo first-party platformers that really shouldn't be anywhere near this long. A similar length to Kirby's Dream Land due to the lack of features would have suited this better.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10

The length of most levels here is OK, however most of them lack fair and interesting challenge. While the game is generally too easy, whenever it does get difficult, it's more often than not because of the poor controls and big sprites that you have to combat than actually having to show off the skills you've learned while playing this game. That said, when you pass some worlds and come back to them, new areas open up, so there is some reason for players to explore and experiment in this game.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 3/10

This is, at its best, a platformer like you've seen hundreds of times already by the time this game was released. At its worst and, mostly at its normal state, it's the worse version of those platformers due to a lack of variation and slow gameplay.

REPLAYABILITY | 3/5

The endings add replay value to those who enjoy the game's gameplay, especially the best ending, which will require you to find and open all treasure chests.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 46/100

A good example of a competently made game that just isn't a lot of fun to play, even though it works as intended. Clearly, a lot of people disagree with me based on its sales numbers at the time and its score on a site like MobyGames, but I can't pretend to have enjoyed the very limited offering here just to go with the majority's opinion, at least critically at the time. On top of that, the game was not nice to listen to either, a rare occurence within gaming I feel, at least among known games.

Initially beat this in 2017, but went back to it because it aligned pretty well with my current situation of "detective game itch / something to play on my Steam Deck / as a bonus a game I can get all achievements in". Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders was a pretty solid choice in that regard, as I only had a few more achievements to get from my initial playthrough, plus I had forgotten most of what this game was about.

As someone who has had no prior or subsequent experiences with detective Hercule Poirot, I can't say this is a good introduction to the character. Or maybe it is? Poirot doesn't have much of an interesting personality, he's just a rude dick and can also be an terrible detective based on the dialogue choices you pick and the writing in general in this is not great. An example for how dumb Poirot can be, the game sometimes asks you to deduce something via dialogue choices and the "wrong" dialogue choice pretty much makes Poirot sound like a 5 year old imbecile, like when you're asked about whether you know anything about the killer and can answer with "he is unpredictable", even though you just went through 2 hours of detective work with roughly 89 points of evidence clearly showing a pattern.

There is a nice bait and switch to the resolution of the ABC murder mystery here (probably more due to the source material rather than what the devs came up with), and a few of the puzzles are challenging in a good way, so I'm not going to say that this is a bad detective game. But the pacing is one of the issues I've had, being locked out of investigating thoroughly because you accidentally investigated the person/item that moved the story forward is not great, areas in this game are very tiny and lack much detail and as mentioned, the writing is forgettable.

It's probably below average all things considered, so I guess to sum up I would say: If there are other, more acclaimed detective / mystery games that you have not played (Disco Elysium, Return of the Obra Dinn, Her Story, Orwell, Ace Attorney, Judgment, LA Noire and lots more), I would suggest picking those. If Agatha Christie is in your library and you got very few other choices though, I guess the game is servicable enough to provide you with two afternoons worth of entertainment. But I doubt that's the case (The Wolf Among Us, Grim Fandango, The Council, Danganronpa, Paradise Killer, Subsurface Circular, Sexy Brutale, Ghost Trick Phantom Detective, AI The Somnium Files ... again, the list of games I'd rather recommend is pretty high).

Yo! Noid released in March 1990 in Japan and November of the same year in NA, is a side scrolling platformer developed by Now Production and published by Capcom for the NES. Well, that's a lie. The game that was actually developed was called "Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru". Pretty much the same game then simply got a visual overhaul in "The Noid" style, The Noid being a Domino's Pizza mascot at the time.

So instead of the game being about a Ninja, it's actually about a Mascot stopping his evil twin to get some pizza as reward.

With that, let's talk about what Yo! Noid is about.

As established, you play as the Noid, a long-eared red rabbit-like creature that likes pizza a lot. He is equipped with a yo-yo and has to fight two obstacles. The first? Platforming through a variety of different levels like the icy and slippery second stage. Or how about the first stage, which takes place along a wharf. The land moves up and down and the water rises and falls, so the Noid has to avoid falling into the water when this happens. The second obstacle? A large variety of random enemies. In the first stage for example, you have to worry about flying birds, random humans and also fishes that jump out of the water. In later stages, there are bats, wasps, flying bullets, falling icicles and more.

The re-skinning of the Ninja game to fit the Noids "universe" falls awfully flat and while it may be a minor complaint, the stages just feel incosistent and random. In the first level, the humans that attack you are just random pink men with a harpune in hand. There is no meaning to the color they wear and their attack is simply walking into your character. In addition, it's a water level but you got both fish and bird attacking you. Why are the birds flying so low? I guess I'm looking for logic unnecessarily here and it probably is a weird complaint, but there isn't much else this game offers apart from world & level design, gameplay and its soundtrack.

The music in this game is typical 8 bit music, but it doesn't sound as catchy as I'm used to from other games. Plus, music is reused for two consecutive levels, even if they are thematically very different from each other, so there doesn't appear to be much thought given there.

Gameplay in this game I would describe with one word: Frustrating. The hit box of both the Noid and enemies is very inconsistent and simply stretches many inches away from the character models. Even though you jump above and past an enemy, the game sometimes still says you hit the enemy. You only have one life before a stage resets, so this exacerbates the frustration there. Sometimes, hit detection is really just completely random, especially in a skateboard level where you are meant to hit pigeons with the back of the wheel. The same hit two times can result in a kill or death seemingly at will of the game.

In stage 2, the ice level, the footing of the ice was also frustratingly inconsistent. You have to jump on a small, icy and slippery platform and most of the time, you would slip one way or the other and would have to try and adjust your footing before slipping off and falling to your death. However, sometimes you wouldn't slip at all and stand still. It really wasn't possible to tell which roll of the dice you would get. Not to mention that sometimes it would look like your character was slipping off, but it was actually a graphical glitch making it appear that way, and trying to adjust against the "phantom slip" would result in falling to one's death as well.

But later stages do kind of make up for the frustration of the earlier levels with the use of pogo sticks and even some levels where you are flying and have to avoid spikes in a level that is designed in a way that reminds be of Floppy Bird. But getting to these stages takes a high frustration tolerance for many hours and also is mired with what I have to call the "worst boss fights in video game history".

Or at least as far as I have experienced so far, the experience through 1990 and beyond should lead me to valleys far darker than what Yo! Noid has to offer. But this game will undoubtedly be a first ballet worst boss fights Hall of Famer if for nothing else. Because the boss fights in this game are ... PIZZA EATING CONTESTS.

After every odd numbered stage, you face your evil twin in a pizza eating contest. What does this entail? Both you and him have a deck of cards with numbers from 1-5. The evil twin, Mr. Green, makes the first selection at random, let's say 2. Then you can choose one of your cards. If you select 3, which is your highest numbered card in the earlier stages, then you win the round and get 1 point to your total. You need to get a specific amount of points before your opponent does to win the boss fight. There are also power up cards, so you can double your 3 to 6 and get 5 points to your total. That's literally it. These fights can take up to 2 minutes and throw you out of the action completely. They are boring and it's only a matter of time before you win, not a matter of skill, unless you think 2 is higher than 3, in which case you will lose. In Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru, you have to prove that your "Ninjutsu" is higher in what is essentially the same game, simply thematically different. But in both instances, boss fights suck.

I checked the Internet Archives to find reviews of this game in Magazines way back when and I found it listed in the "Video Games & Computer Entertainment issue of December 23rd, 1990". It's very positive about the game, maybe too positive, but even it denotes the boss fights as "the only area that's not fun for gamers of all ages". If you didn't play this back in the day and aren't wrapped in a nostalgia bubble for it, you likely will find that most areas of this game are not fun for gamers of all ages.

P.S.: Did you know that this game sold for $49.95 USD at release? No, seriously. We give gaming companies shit for their business practices these days, and rightfully so, but selling a re-skin of a game that you already made and one that has so little content for 50 bucks would surely cause a shit storm or two if a similar thing happened in the age of social media. I loved seeing this price because it made me appreciate how spoiled we are with incredible indie games going for barely half the price at release and offering a hundred times more. Is it weird to compare this random game from 1990 to indie games in 2022? Maybe. But maybe not.

To top it off: According to the VG&CE magazine, "the hilariously exaggerated look of concentration that replaces his buck-toothed grin" when The Noid whips out his yo-yo "is worth the price of admission". How liberating it must have been to have such low expectations that an animation is worth $50. I'll definitely take this positivity over "Starfield is unplayable if faces don't show 2% more emotion" any day though.

(This is the 60th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

The first game in the Alien Breed series, simply called Alien Breed, came out in 1990 and was released by Team17, who are behind the Worms series as developers and are more active as publishers these days, most recently publishing 'Dredge'.

This Alien Breed review is for the original version, though there is a 1992 special version with more levels, improved sounds and a funny message at the end explaining that the game didn't have a high budget originally and that, if you are looking for better production value, you should play their other 'blockbuster' games that released since. Those blockbusters? 'Project-X' and 'Assassin', the latter of which reviewed quite well, but that's an interesting definition of blockbuster.

Nevertheless, here is my review for Alienbreed.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10

You work for the IPC, the Inter Planetary Corps and are sent to a Space Research Centre. Upon arriving, you find it is infested with aliens. This is explained in the opening text scroll. There is an ending text scroll that is not 4th wall breaking here, unlike the special edition, were a sequel is teased. Finally, each stage starts with you getting your objectives/targets.

What I found to be better than your typical early 90's non-adventure / RPG is that there is a tiny bit of lore added here, both regarding the IPC and the Intex Systems technology, which basically works as the in-game menu/store. That said, if you need a good story for your games, this game will of course still not suffice.

GAMEPLAY | 10/20

This has a top-down perspective and is what you would call a run and gun with maze-type levels that you need to explore to find your way forward.

You have a weapon and need to shoot hordes of aliens as you explore, aliens which respawn all the time as you leave a certain screen. You have finite ammo and need to find key items to open locked doors, of which there are many in each level. In fact, there are more doors than keys that you can find, which is really fun whenever you enter an area through an electric barrier (one that doesn't let you exit back out) and find yourself key-less, with doors looking you in. This means you can't continue forward and need to damage yourself on the electric barrier until you die.

Enemies are aliens, and only aliens, which is not so great in terms of variety for a game lacking it in general, for which you can play the low budget I mentioned earlier. Objectives are more or less the same all the time as well, so you will only enjoy this for long, if you really love the simplicity of the game. I suspect that was easier to do back then than it would be today.

There are the few boss fights as well, but they are poorly designed since you can simply hide in a corner, where the enemy can't reach you, and easily kill them. This is worsened by the fact that bosses, as well as normal aliens, can't do any attack apart from ramming into you, again, likely for budgetary reasons.

Overall, this game can easily be described as repetitive and basic, which only those who really enjoy the simplicity of it can go through for more than an hour or two.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10

No voice acting. Sound design is so-so, with some good and some awful sounding effects. The music is only present during boss fights, the outro and the title screen (great track). Instead of music during gameplay, all you hear is a sound that I could best describe as a mix of a heart-beat and a cat's purr, but alien sounding. Definitely adds to the atmosphere.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 5/10

I don't mind the top-down perspective one bit. I did mind the bland, grayish levels though and the same aliens over and over again with the littlest differences in color based on the level you're in. The only level I truly found worth highlighting was the final one, which looked positively disgusting, as it depicted the Queen Alien's lair.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10

Very commendable job done here. The lack of music during gameplay, the sound that plays constantly instead and the timer that starts whenever you finish your objective and have to exit the level as soon as possible make for a stressful, tense, atmospheric experience at times.

CONTENT | 5/10

You go through about more or less 10 levels that all are basically the same. Very repetitive, but you will all have your own perspective on that depending on how much you enjoy the core gameplay.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10

I liked the maze-style layout of the levels, but the creativity with that can only go so far, if the gameplay features are lacking. What I didn't like was getting stuck in certain parts because I didn't have enough keys.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10

Nothing innovative about this game. The most unique part about it, in my opinion, is the atmosphere it manages to create.

REPLAYABILITY | 1/5

No motivation given to replay this game after having beaten it the first time.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 54/100

An average score for a game that is slightly below average in gameplay, slightly below average in graphical presentation, but notably above average in the atmosphere it manages to create. If you enjoy the simplicity of the gameplay, this could be something you can spend a few mindless hours on and enjoy yourself doing so.

I jumped into Metal Gear Solid II: Sons of Liberty right after beating Metal Gear Solid 1 and I'm very glad I did. Metal Gear Solid II is a true sequel to MGS 1, which ends on a post-credits phone call scene between one of the antagonists of MGS 1 and the president of the USA. MGS 2 released on November 13, 2001 for the PlayStation 2, which means this game released three years after the original and for a new generation of consoles.

As someone who has played a lot of old school games over the past couple years, I was pretty used to MGS 1's visuals (I usually played games before the 32-bit era, so MGS 1's visuals actually looked really good in that respect). This meant that seeing the jump to MGS 2 and all those improvements felt even more exciting and I can happily say that MGS 2 truely feels next-gen for its time. Visuals are much improved, controls are smoothed out and gameplay has a lot more features, including much more persistent enemy AI, among other things.

So if you enjoyed MGS 1, MGS 2 is a must-play, though I preferred MGS 1 slightly over its sequel for a couple reasons which I will go over in my full review.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10

There is a lot I loved about Metal Gear Solid 2's story. The last two hours of it felt incredibly relevant for today and I'd almost consider the story GOATed just for that (the story was relevant in its time for other aspects, as the 9/11 incident occured just before release and a lot of content had to be cut, as it was too similar, which is just eerie). There are some very emotional scenes in the game that were excellent in delivery and near made my cry in one particular scene. Finally, there are two full "books" in the Bonus section of the game with 100+ and 300+ pages (though with a very low word count per page, so around 1 hour's worth of reading for the latter), the sort of detail that I love in games. One is from the perspective of Nastascha Romanenko, who was on comm support in the first game, and the other is from a conspiracy theorists perspective.

Overall, there is a lot to like here. The setting is great (the Big Shell part especially), the themes are great and well-explored, the bait and switch part I was more than OK with (though I see how people at the time could have been mad), Otacon remains a legend, the connection between war and misery and how it affects nearly every character in the game is just very tragic and finally, Snake's post-game speech is fantastic. The two things I thought could have been better was 1) keeping the 4th-wall breaking or the jokes out of certain scenes, as it took away from their meaning a little bit and 2) the gameplay-cutscene balance. The series is obviously famous for "interrupting" gameplay with cutscenes and codec calls on a regular basis, and while it's not something I see negatively per se, I thought MGS 1 struck that balance better. Maybe it happened this often here because Kojima realized how many more cutscenes he could fit in thanks to the power of the PS2? Either way, I can see how certain gamers would not be too fond of this, though it didn't reach WTF levels for me.

A final word regarding the game's preditive nature and its themes. Look at these quotes that are incredibly relevant regarding social media and fake news. "Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander..." / "All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate" / "The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards development of convenient half-truths". There is more like this on that topic, on AI, on censorship and more. The game also explores themes more hopeful and in a more optimistic way, which I hope you discover on your own by playing this game, but suffice it to say that I loved the messaging and I can see why a lot of players where impacted by these games at a younger age, when even today I can only tip my hat to Hideo Kojima for this.

GAMEPLAY | 17/20

As with the Storytelling part, gameplay could have been slightly more enjoyable, if the balance was struck better. Rarely do you play for more than 5-10 minutes uninterrupted, unless you are really lost on what to do or where to go next, which can happen on two or three occasions. TIP: Keep an eye out for doors that require a higher level keycard to open. When you get an upgrade to your keycard, go back to these places to sometimes find items that you will need for later.

Gameplay overall is once again very unique and a lot of fun in Metal Gear Solid 2. The movement controls have been smoothed out a bit over the original and you feel more in control of what exactly you are doing here. There are also several other improvements and additions that have been made. Most notably, whenever you alert enemies to your presence, they don't become completely oblivious to your presence after the fact. Instead, they stay on alert afterwards by keeping more guards in that area and by roaming the place searching for you. Meanwhile, you can use some more tactics yourself to stay out of sight or gain an advantage in combat. First-person mode lets you aim at specific targets, you can peek out from cover and quickly take a shot at enemies and you can hang off of railings to get past enemies that cover walkways.

As per usual, boss battles are a big part in this Metal Gear game. It's subjective, but I think I enjoyed the bosses in MGS 1 more, though I think this speaks more positively of MGS 1's bosses than it does negatively of MGS 2's. There are memorable boss fights in this game and the antagonists are all very interesting personalities, but the Fatman fight for example took too long imo while the Metal Gear battle felt almost insulting to the threat Metal Gears are supposed to represent, as you can take out not just one, but 3 (!) of them singlehandedly in this game. But then there is Vamp, the Solidus fight and the Metal Gear and Fatman fight having their positive qualities that are definitely worth mentioning, plus the aura of impossibility surrounding Fortune and just like that, you got a pretty strong line up. The resolution to these boss fights were also pretty satisfying and I'm sensing a theme that defeating every boss in Metal Gear games is just a bittersweet experience.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10

Voice acting is great once again, which isn't too usual for a game of this era. The only character whose voice acting I didn't quite enjoy for a while was Rose, but I feel like that got better over time. The sound design is great just like in MGS 1 but takes it up a notch, especially with its use of ambient sounds and music in each area that you are, whether it's on the connecting bridges outside at the Big Shell where you hear the wind and the birds chirping, whether it's the sick Crew's Lounge track or the sounds of rain on the Tanker and more, it's really well done and adds something distinct that you can remember these locations by.

The soundtrack is great as well. Just listen to the Main Theme and you should already be hooked. The game's subtitle is "Tactical Espionage Action" once again, and the soundtrack captures that very well throughout while adding an additional pinch of epic or suspense to the tracks whenever appropriate. And shoutout to Fortune's theme as well, it captures the Metal Gear theme so well.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 10/10

Visuals are much improved over the original. It helps that locations are more varied in this game as well, which keeps things looking more fresh visually, especially in terms of color. Once again, what makes the game stand out is its presentation, especially in cutscenes.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10

The quintessential Metal Gear atmosphere shines through once again. The feeling of being a special ops spy, especially when you manage to get past a particularly tough section of the game undetected. The seemingly supernatural antagonists that are omnipresent. The exploration of real world themes. This time, all this happens in multiple locations to keep things fresh visually as well. On top of that, you have the final two hours and some parts of the game as a whole that can leave you thinking through things for hours. I'm not going to spoil anything, but it's pretty special at times.

CONTENT | 9/10

Unlike Metal Gear Solid 1, there is a lot more additional content apart from the main story. There are collectable dog tags in this game for example to provide a challenge to those looking for it. Personally, I didn't get a single one because I forgot about them after I read about them before starting the main game, but also because they don't just lie around everywhere but have to be acquired by pointing your gun at an unsuspecting enemy for several seconds, which makes their dog tag drop.

Then there are a lot of VR missions and alternative missions to play through if you want, the latter of which include bomb disposal mode, elimination mode and hold up mode, with several challenges in each. Finally, you can read three "books" / "reports" to get more background information and different perspectives on events in the first game. It also serves as a refresher on the original's story, if you didn't pick up MGS2 straight after MGS1.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10

For as great as a setting the Big Shell is visually, repetition is unavoidable due to its layout. The game keeps things fresh in terms of your objectives often enough to where I never truly got bored or anything like that, and each strut looks more than different enough once you're inside but walking over the same bridges multiple times wasn't always enjoyable. Then there is the Fatman boss fight, which just takes way too long and is also way too repetitive.

Other than that though, levels and locations are packed with plenty of different methods to achieving different objectives that you are going to face through your 10+ hours with this game. The Tanker chapter is a great introductory level that highlights all the great parts with MGS 2's gameplay as well.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10

MGS 2 doesn't innovate as much as its predecessor, but that wasn't going to be possible anyway. Where it can and does succeed a lot is in its concepts and exploring those pretty thoroughly, and in a way that is relevant even to this day, if not much more so.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

After beating the main game, there is only one thing that makes it replayable, which is exploring higher difficulty settings. For things to do outside of the main game, check out "Content".

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 89/100

The Metal Gear Solid series keeps going strong with MGS 2, another fantastic stealth action game which proves to also be prophetic through its exploration of its themes. "In the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness". Unlike trivial information though, there is nothing trivial about MGS 2, and I'm glad it gets to be preserved with the upcoming Metal Gear Solid collection. I'll likely pick that up and play through this and the other MGS games rather soon. I'd recommend every other gamer to try the series out as well.

I've just beaten Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, a platformer for the NES developed and published by Capcom. Its producer was Tokuro Fujiwara, who was also the producer for the Mega Man series and the Gargoyle's Quest games. It released on June 8, 1990 in Japan and in NA the following day.

The game is based on the kids TV show with the same name, and one that I used to watch a lot as a child myself. It was a nice flash of nostalgia whilst looking up info on this game and I was surprised to recognize some of the characters despite me not having watched the show for at least 15 years.

The game starts with an image of Chip, Dale and their friends and a little text of Chip talking, who says that a neighbor's kitten was lost and needs to be found by them. From there, the 2D platforming gameplay begins. From my count, there are about 10 levels if you decide to do them all, but at least 2 can be skipped. Levels have multiple stages and conclude with a boss fight.

You get 3 hearts and 3 continues, after which you have to restart the game. The game is very short, I beat it in roughly 2 hours, and I'd say it's the best introductory platformer to late 80s / early 90s gaming that I have played so far. To put it simple: It can be beaten relatively quickly and it has pretty basic features.

More on that down below.

____________

STORYTELLING
The game revolves around the cast of the TV show with the same name. There are Chip and Dale of course, but also their friends, namely Gadget, who in this game scouts ahead and gives players clue on upcoming levels once they finish the previous one, Monterey Jack, who finds "secret doors and pathways" for Chip and Dale (manual) and Zipper, who can be found as a special item and flies around you for a short while to kill every enemy in sight.

The intro dialogue between the friends reveals that the Rescue Rangers have a new job: Find the neighbor's lost kitten. During your search, the shows main antagonist, Fat Cat, introduces himself as well and will have to be bested to win the game later on.

Characters don't show up or talk apart from this intro until the end of the game. In between, only Gadget shows up to leave tips on upcoming levels, and Fat Cat has one little speech as well, but that's it. There is no storytelling beyond that. So it was pretty basic, which was more than fine for a game of this year of course.

GAMEPLAY
You can choose to control either Chip or Dale or even play with someone else. In each level you play, you must walk and jump for most of the game and either avoid enemies or kill them by throwing crates at them. There are cacti, electric wires and of course gravity that you can die to, but all of these deaths can be avoided by simply timing your jumps. There is nothing creative that you need to do to make it through this game. There is no jumping and slashing in mid air, climbing walls or stacking power ups that you need to worry about, especially since none of the latter are even available in this game.

All collectables are there for you to get "1 Ups". Collect 50 nuts, get a 1 up. Collect 10 stars, get a 1 up. Collect a 1 up item, get a 1 up. The only additional gameplay element that is provided in the game world are metal crates, which you can use to stack them up and access higher platforms.

Other than that, what I describes is pretty much it. There are 4 or 5 boss fights where you need to collect a red ball and throw it at the enemy whilst dodging their projectiles. This was very easy for most of the game, only the final boss gave me some trouble there.

After every level, an overworld opens up where you choose the next stage to go to. You can sometimes go one of two directions and pick different levels, but I haven't really tried going back and doing the level that I had missed, so I don't know if you are stuck with the direction you go in. Anyway, this offers tiny bit of replayability in a game that otherwise doesn't offer much depth.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. The music was good as per usual for games of this time period, there is a remix of the theme song of the TV show here too and the sound design was solid as well, or at least in line with how most games of this time made everything sound.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
I liked the graphics here. Good use of colors and despite the technical limitations at the time, the devs did a good job of creating detailed environments that all had an interesting theme. There aren't many enemies here, but they look unique and have clean sprites. There are few animations here and no special effects, so the game did well on the artistic front outside of those two areas.

ATMOSPHERE
Does it feel like a Chip 'n Dale game? I can't really say, it's been a while since I watched the show. I assume the enemies have some relation to the show, maybe, and all the characters do of course, and there definitely is relation to the show in the soundtrack but I can't judge it too much beyond that. As its own thing, I liked how the levels mixed up its themes, had bright colors, detailed environments and multiple unique assets included.

CONTENT
There are about 10 levels with bosses at the end of multiple of them. Almost every level adds new enemies, however there are a total of 10 enemy types overall, so variety is pretty limited there. The game is also very short at 2 hours or so based on someone with my ability, which I would call average. There is little filler, so I'll take 2 hours of this over 10 hours of some of the other, more unfair platformers, but at the end of the day 2 hours are pretty short and apart from themes and some new enemies, levels don't really mix it up in any other noticeable way.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Artistically pleasing as levels are, they are not different enough in terms of gameplay challenge. I'd put this on lack of gameplay variety rather than the lack of puzzles, lack of environmental hazards and low enemy variety, but overall it's a combination of all those things.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION
There isn't really anything the game does that stands out over the rest or moves the needle. Graphically I thought this game was above average, but if you just look at gameplay, you'll notice that it is pretty simple. There are no power ups in this game. You can't climb. You can't run faster, you can't double jump and you can't fly, you pretty much can't do anything apart from three things. Walk, jump and throw. Throwing is limited to apples, bombs and mostly, crates, which one hit enemies and clear your way forward. It's not a bad gameplay hook and the game doesn't need all of the things I mentioned before, but a bit of mixing up or one more feature or two would have served the game well. As it stands, it feels like a solid entry into the genre if for nothing else.

REPLAYABILITY
There isn't really any variety here, so the only reason for replaying this after winning would be to beat your high score AND to choose a different path in the overworld when you select stages.

PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL
Here is a game that uses a license and the platforming experience of its developers to be an enjoyable, albeit extremely average platformer. Due to its basic features, yet good soundtrack, solid graphics and short game length, it combines to make for a solid game to introduce newcomers to late 80s / early 90s platforming games. But unless you're the biggest Chip 'N Dale fan or have played this when you were young, it is unlikely that this makes for a game you will remember for long, which may be fine depending on your expectations.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME

- Gary Barth for GamePro Issue 9 (Apr 90): "Chip 'N' Dale Rescue Rangers boasts the same fast action and detailed Disney graphics as [...] Mickey Mousecapades and Duck Tales."

(This is the 33rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

I don't really have much to say about this game, so let's rapid-fire this. Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu is a platformer starring well-known martial artist and actor Jackie Chan that released on December 14th, 1990 for NES.

The special thing about this game is that Jackie can do special kicks that can target enemies behind you, in front of you or above you. The game also has a solid soundtrack with some great songs. As far as its gameplay goes, it's one the easier side of 1990 platformers, but also on the unimaginative side. It's really an average fair through and through in that regard, and it gets pretty repetitive through the five levels this game has to offer.

Don't get me wrong, it's easier accessibility and no existing fetish for placing enemies anywhere and everywhere, plus not supplying the player with just one hit point like some other games of its ilk makes Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu a member of the better half of platformers of the year according to me.

It also boasts good graphics in tune with the Martial Arts theme and China setting, plus the game has nice animations for Jackie Chan's attacks. And the face he does when he falls on lava and touches his butt resembled the real Jackie's "pain face" really well and was pretty funny to see.

OVERALL
Very average and almost forgettable platformer / run & gun. That's neither bad nor great, it's just not a game you will hear anything about amongst the great platformers of the 90s. The soundtrack might have its fair share of fans still though.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Ed Semrad for EGM, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "Jackie Chan is another average jump and kick game."
- Martin Alessi for EGM, Issue 16 (Nov 90): "It's not highly original, but the game plays better than most similar titles."

If you're looking for a 3D puzzle game like The Room, a game I haven't played but seen The House of Da Vinci compared to many times, then this game should definitely be on your radar.

You play as an apprentice of Da Vinci's, who has left you notes that describe his suspicions regarding being in danger. You must use his inventions and your wits to solve many different puzzles in different locations to find out more about why Da Vinci is suspicious, who might want to harm him and what you can do to help. The story bits are mostly told in scrolls and very short cutscenes after each level, but those do provide some nice motivation to see each level through, though I'd say you'll either stay for the puzzles themselves or not at all.

The puzzles for the most part range from very easy to medium/high difficulty. Until the final level, I needed to make use of hints only once and I wouldn't say I'm above average in puzzle solving. The problems for me came in the final level, where the game not only felt like it overstayed its welcome, but more and more puzzles appeared to have random solutions to them. That might also be a result of wanting to see it through quickly at the end, so I can't say this is definitely the case.

But again, for the most part, you're looking to solve puzzles by working on one thing, grabbing an item to help you complete another thing, and doing this a bunch of times until the door to the next room opens. It's a fun loop and the atmosphere and surprisingly nice looking textures do put you into the right kind of mood for this game.

If you enjoy puzzle games like this, I'd say this should be high on your "to play" list. If you don't, this won't change your mind.

(This is the 99th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)

I'm constantly hearing great things about Earthbound or "Mother 2", a 1994 JRPG developed by Ape Inc. and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. Admittedly, when hearing of the game's Japanese and Western titles, I had a totally different type of JRPG in mind. One with a much more sad tone than I was met with.

It doesn't take long for Earthbound to show you what kind of game it is, and it won't take you long to figure out whether you like said tone or not. As a child, I would have absolutely adored it. As an adult? I absolutely adore it. The humor hits a lot but it misses quite often as well, at least for me. Depending on how that balances out for you, you might be more or less inclined to play on Earthbound once you start.

However, there are other reasons to continue or stop playing this game, which I want to go over in my review of this game.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 7/10

You're playing the character that you can give your own name, but is canonically called "Ness". It takes place after the events of the first Mother game, which I haven't played, but I didn't ever get the impression that you need to play that. (That one got first localized in 2015 under the name "Earthbound Beginnings")

The game is set in the fictional country "Eagleland", which is a parody of the USA. The word "parody" should already give you an idea about the tone of this game. This is not a medieval / fantasy JRPG. The game's setting is themed around a parody of Western culture, which is why you can enter burger and pizza joints, go to ATM machines to withdraw cash, rest in hotels, heal in hospitals, are able to go to police stations and much more. There is a humorous tone to nearly everything in Earthbound, and it's what drives the game's charm.

The story has you investigate a meteorite crash in your home town. You figure out that an evil creature has engulfed the world with his evil nature and turned lots of creatures hostile. A bee from the future tells Ness that he is prophecized to save the world and that he has to collect melodies in a Sound Stone to put a stop to the evil.

On your journey forward, you visit several other towns, forests, a desert, swamp and more. I spent 12 hours with this game, so I didn't see everything, but expect quirky characters, odd obstacles to overcome and eccentric bosses to fight.

Characters that have stuck with me are apple and orange kid (one who is deemed smart and capable, and who isn't, among which you can choose to help one), a man who interrupts your gameplay to take a photo of you (which I hope is then shown at the end of the game), a boss who wants to turn everything blue and created a cult over it and several more. Lots of NPCs have funny one-liners you can read through alongside the usual lore dump they are used for in RPGs.

I've read up on how the story ends, and it seems to take things into a very interesting direction. So if you see it through, I believe you will be satisfied with it. For me, the reason why I didn't stick with it can be read through just below.

GAMEPLAY | 11/20

Earthbound does a lot of cool things that are pretty unique for its time and have stuck with the genre until today. Most of these things are related to the game's setting and quirkiness, but I found some interesting things to highlight in its gameplay as well.

Just recently, it was announced that Like a Dragon 8 would introduce a feature that lets you win battles automatically, if enemies are a lot weaker than you are. I don't know if Earthbound was the first game to do it, but that feature is in here.

Additionally, the game does not use an overworld. You seamlessly move from town to town in this game world. For random encounters, you can see enemies placed on the map, which I've last seen in 1992's Romancing SaGa. When these enemies run towards you, additional enemies can run up to you before the encounter starts.

The game does cool things with its times as well. Buying salt packets or ketchup and eating food with these items in your inventory leads to boosts to the food items, like additional health recovery. Not all "enhancers" work well with all foods, which impacts the boost you get.

Finally, each time you win in battle, you don't just get money from it, but rather a money deposit from your father to your bank account. Since money on your person is halfed whenever you die, you can choose to keep money on your account until you want it to buy stuff. I can't say that I think this is a good unique feature, but it is certainly unique.

So Earthbound does a lot of interesting things and many of these are pretty neat ideas. In its basic form though, the game employs similar gameplay mechanics to other RPGs of its time. The game uses a turn-based battle system in which battle order is chosen randomly each turn. This means you can use a healing item, but die if the enemy is chosen to attack first. That part in particular was really frustrating to me during my playthrough. With the help of an emulator, you can easily rewind and get different outcomes, but I've noticed just how RNG dependent the gameplay is during tough fights.

For example, say you are on low health. You can choose to heal, but if the enemy does an attack, you will lose all or most of that health again anyway. Or you can use a powerful PSI attack, but if the enemy activates a PSI shield right before that, you just waste a turn and PP points (yes, PP points). If you attack and the enemy attacks, you may die, if you haven't healed. Healing items and PP points are limited, so you can easily run out before killing a tough enemy. Or, alternatively, the enemy uses buffs or PSI shields while you are attacking, which lets you kill them before they get a chance to get enough hits in.

I got the impression that RNG dependency is too high on the one hand and/or grinding requirements are on a level that I'm not interested in engaging with.

Inventory management is also not the best and much more tedious than it needs to be. You can carry few items until you get additional party members, at which point you can carry twice as much and the issue is not nearly as bad. But for the first 10 hours or so, with all the key items you have, I found myself hard-pressed to be able to carry more than one food item, which made battles unnecessarily harder.

I've seen some people say that the game gets much easier as you go, so sticking with it may be rewarding in that sense. To me, the games 30+ hour runtime meant that I wasn't really too motivated to grind through the gameplay for that much longer.

Outside of combat, progression is also achieved by doing some light puzzles here and there or finding proper items to progress, such as figuring out a way to get past pencils that block your way forward. How could that be done?

Overall, your tolerance for the combat will decide how far you will take it with this game, and as is evident by this game's cult following to this day, the journey has been worth it to many.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10

When I played a few hours, I couldn't believe how recognizable and nostalgic the music sounds in this game. I have never played the game before, and only after a couple hours did I realize that I actually have heard one track in this game in particular many, many times over the years without knowing that it's from Earthbound. "Sanctuary Guardian" or the What Meme is what I'm referring to, and if you give it a listen, I can guarantee that anyone spending more time online than the average person will have heard of it (listen to at least 20-25 seconds in).

This track's weird, quirky, confusing and oddball vibes are exactly what the whole game sounds like though, and not only does it make the game's sound immediately recognizable no matter how many years later you think back on it, but I also found it to add to the wackiness of the game's moment to moment gameplay, and in a positive way for sure.

Sound design overall is very good in this game, with unique sounds at a time where a lot of games use very similar sounds for most actions, so overall, I had a pleasant time listening to the game.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 10/10

The grounded, albeit parodied, real life setting is always very pleasant to me. Yes, there are humans and animals in control of evil who come after you like zombies, but seeing the setting and the design of the various towns be grounded like this is getting more and more rare these days where fantasy and sci-fi is included in nearly every single AAA game, so I appreciate the visual treat Earthbound ended up being in that regard.

In general, the look of the game is very distinct. You control kids who look like kids, in a world filled with your average modern-day adults (with quirky personalities), and run around from burger joint to flea market on your quest to save humanity. It's a pretty funny combination and works really well. So the art design I find to really be fantastic in this. Lots of stuff feels like it was drawn or written by children and then added into the game, so they really embraced this vibe and went for it.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10

Few games have the same vibe as Earthbound. I've read that Undertale is one inspired by Earthbound. Even there, I can't say I ever got the same vibe from it, and I don't think that was intended either. The closest modern games to me that have this vibe are the South Park RPGs, and according to the South Park creators Earthbound apparently was a game they took inspriation from for those ones too. Considering the South Park RPGs, especially the first one, are some of my favorite games ever, you could see how I dug Earthbound so much, though I'd say there is one big difference between those two in terms of the vulgarity of course.

I've described it a few times in this review already, but quirky, whacky and weird will be common adjectives that will be used to describe the game. For example, early on, a bee of all things comes to you to tell you that you are to save this world and that it will follow you until you finish your journey. Minutes later, you get to your neighbor's house and the bee unceremoniously is swatted down and dies. Can't say I've played a big budget game during this time where things like that ever happened. It's unexpected, it's funny and even today, I was caught off guard by it.

CONTENT | 8/10

The game takes roughly 30 hours to beat if you mainly focus on the main path. There is plenty of distractions on top of that, and lots of those hours are spent talking to people and finding your way forward that way. There are lots of items to find, buy and get to use on key things, lots of unique characters to meet and many different enemy types to fight. It being an RPG however, it also means that many of those hours will be spent in combat, which, as described above, has not aged very well.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10

The unique world map (no overworld) is a nice change from other RPGs for its time. Seeing enemies and being able to dodge random encounters at times is a good approach to them in my opinion.

In terms of the mission design, for the most part, it's your typical RPG affair. You go from town to town, dungeon to dungeon and beat boss after boss as you get stronger and stronger. While the dungeons I've seen all looked pretty much the same, towns are where a lot of work has gone in. Sure, you get the same main areas in all of them, but in layout and non-key buildings (hospital, burger joint, hotel..), there is enough variety there to give towns a distinct feeling.

In terms of the dungeons, as mentioned, they have all looked the same in the first third of the game. You enter caves and either come out the other end in a mountaineous arae or something similar, or you find yourself in the bigger part of the cave and have to move upwards to find the boss. Gets the job done, but not much creativity here.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10

The tone and setting of this game are both very unique components of it, and there are plenty of QoL improvements the game brings to the fold. Unfortunately, the combat system is too RNG-dependent for me to really say that all changes from your typical RPG work well here, and overall, Earthbound still is a 90s RPG in its core, and uses a similar formula for the most part.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

Early on, there is a choice to go with one of two kinds of kids to help them. Maybe there are more of those later on, but other than that, the game is not gonna offer you branching paths in key areas.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 79/100

Earthbound is among those dozen or so games from the 99 games I've played as part of this challenge so far that I can recommend everyone to at least check out. There is a reason it remains this popular, and it's one of the most unique games in terms of atmosphere that you will be able to play from the early 90s. The SNES is a console that keeps (kept) on giving and Earthbound is one of its many highlights, though the combat might be unendurable for some at this point in time.

(This is the 66th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

The Fire Emblem series returns with its second ever game, Fire Emblem Gaiden, which released on March 14, 1992 exclusively in Japan for the Famicom. Unfortunately, well over a year after the release of the Super Famicom, Intelligent Systems did not decide to bring the series to the fourth generation console quite yet. The game's director is Shouzou Kaga, who would direct Fire Emblem games until 1999.

This game sold over 320.000 units as of 2002. I got a Famitsu score of 28/40, which is indicating that this game is a solid entry, though it is seen as a black sheep in the Fire Emblem series similarly to Zelda II and Castlevania II are looked at for their respective series. The game changes some things up from the original, of which I found some to be positives and some to be detrimental to the strategy aspect of the game, but overall I can't say I was overly negative on them due to the QoL improvements included.

The game received a remake for the Nintendo 3DS in 2017 called Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10

This game features dual characters, including a female one. There are maybe 2 or 3 games per year for this challenge so far where protagonists are female, which is why I mention it as something pretty unique. The protagonists are called Alm and Celica. The game has five chapters. The first is a chapter introducing Alm's side of the story, the second is for Celica and the other three include both Alm's and Celica's path once per chapter.

Alm and Celica were separated during their childhood and meet during the end of Chapter 2, where a disagreement in course of action makes them go their separate ways. The disagreement is regarding the events forming this game's story. The story plays in two kingdoms, Rigel and Zofia. Zofia Castle's king is killed and the kingdom is taken over by general Desaix, which prompts a character called Lukas to ask Alm's uncle Mycen to guide the liberation army. Mycen declines, so Alm goes in his stead to liberate Zofia and save the continent of Valentia.

Meanwhile, Celica seeks to find out what happened to the deity Mila, whose blessings helped crops to grow on earth. Since her disappearance, crops stopped growing, and after three years, Celica had enough.

So Celica's journey of discovery and Alm's journey of liberation happen alongside one another and intertwine at certain points. The story is told through a bit of dialogue here and there like in the original, but it overall simply boils down to the names of kingdoms and rulers mentioned a bunch of times, protagonists promising to save people and antagonists promising to make them pay for it. The game does the, for the time, unique thing of telling a story from a dual perspective, rather than telling a unique story. Games at the time wouldn't and couldn't spend much time on story vs gameplay, so in that sense a dual perspective might be ahead of its time, in that it doesn't really work that well. You have a hard time getting to know a single protagonist in a game, let alone two.

Then there is the issue of pacing and time allocation. In Final Fantasy IV for example, I'd say about 30% of the time is spent with dialogue, "cut scenes" and general enemy-less exploration. This is almost required because the combat itself is not varied enough to offer you an enjoyable time without it feeling incredibly repetitive. Now mind you, I'm looking at this from a (young) adult's perspective, not a child's perspective, who wouldn't mind mindlessly doing the same thing over and over again, and who's perspectives therefore are not a benchmark for quality. Meanwhile, Fire Emblem Gaiden will take you 30-40 hours to beat and gets very repetitive even after a few hours. I'll go over that in the other segments of this review, but know that you don't get 30% of story rewards. You're lucky if it's in the 5-10% range.

Without this sort of reward consistently, this game becomes a slog to play through and the story suffers from it as a result. More dialogue and fewer stages would definitely not have hurt this game.

GAMEPLAY | 10/20

Fire Emblem Gaiden plays similarly to the original, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. This is a turn-based strategy RPG with battles playing out on grid-based small maps. Each unit has specific stats like POWER, which is the value for damage output, DEFENSE, which controlls the amount of damage taken, SPEED, which determines how many steps a unit can take and a few more. Units also either have classes assigned to them, which seem to all be the same as in the original, OR they start as villagers for example and can then be upgraded a class after they level up. Unlike the original, where specific items had to be given to units for them to be promoted to a new class, here, you have to approach some sort of blessing fountain in one of the few caves you will find from time to time.

There are a couple of other changes in this game as well. In the original, to buy new items, you would have to move your units to a store on a battle map and have them purchase whatever they needed. For this, you either needed to clear out the map first to do it without being disrupted, or you would need to take this unit out of battle for the time being. Either way, it was annoying and just added a lot of additional turns to each battle/chapter. Here, items can easily be given to and swapped between units before and after every battle thanks to an overworld screen that is new here.

Another change is weapon degradation. In the original, iron swords for example would have 18 (?) hits in them before breaking. Here, no weapon that I found could never break, and from what I've read, only special weapons have limited uses assigned to them. The optimist would call this a QoL feature, the pessimist would say this reduces the strategic element of this feature.

Regarding the overworld screen, I don't particularly like it. On paper, it's a great addition, and the QoL improvements that come with it are appreciated. But what this overworld allowed the game designers to do is to make it optional to go back to areas you've been in before. And optional in the early 90s meant mandatory grinding based on my understanding. For example, there are caves you enter where you beat a group of enemies, which allows you to bless a unit with health/power/defense/speed buffs. You can enter a cave, beat the enemies and choose a unit to buff as many times as you want. I did not do this more than once after initially going through those caves.

At the beginning of Chapter 3 then, I went into battle and was met with a couple dozen enemies, most of which were strong Knights. The game gave me 5 or 6 units up to this point, and I had lost one prior. With the one's I had, it didn't matter what I did, I got demolished every time. I assume I had to grind those caves? Because there was literally nothing else to do. But here is my issue: Why is grinding included in a strategy game? Give me the same tools you give everyone else and let my decisions impact the outcome. Don't make me sit there for 10 hours and watch as the slowest battle animations of all time play out hundred times per battle. In fact, watching animations will easily be 70-80% of what you do in this game.

These difficulty spikes / grind necessitating encounters are in general demonstrative of two of the game's issues in gameplay. I discussed the grind part already, but the difficulty spikes coming in right after you breezed through the previous hours is also very annoying. This issue is only exacerbated by the fact that the map design in this game is really poor, at least for the first 7 hours I played. First, there is barely anywhere to go. A lot of maps include one staircase or bridge that you and the enemies can approach each other, which makes for awkward back-and-forths. A lot of maps also include enemies positioned in two or three locations, while you often start at the bottom right corner. Generally speaking, you move once and the enemies are already right next to you from at least two directions, and all of this just reduces the impact that strategy can make in this game. Add in that the game is very much RNG-dependent (I just love games where over half of the attacks during the first few hours miss) and you certainly got a turn-based fighting game, but limited strategy and even more limited RPG elements to make the title worthy of the genre it places itself in.

Overall, I felt like the original was definitely more enjoyable than this, despite some time-wasting shenanigans included there (stores in battle maps) that were fixed here. Overall, this game just feels bloated with not much to show for it, and I can't say it aged well in terms of gameplay. Hopefully, the move to the SNES in 1994 rectifies a lot of this.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10

No voice acting. The sound design is typical for the NES, though of course very grounded compared to platformer type NES games, so I can't say it played any factor here, neither positive nor negative. The soundtrack, based on the time I've played, sounded generally OK but not all that impressive. Listening the OST, I did find a few tracks that I actually think sound pretty good. In the original, my favorite track had been 'Trouble', the opening theme for each chapter. Here, I can recommend giving 'The Slumbering Labyrinth' a listen. Apart from that, battle and chapter themes sound fine but uninspired, and some tracks sound like they've been copied from other games from this time period, though I can't name which exactly. 'The Fiends Rapture' and 'Warring Powers' for example I definitely heard somewhere else before.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 4/10

It's 1992 and the SNES has existed for about a year and a half now. This game is of course for the NES and at this point, graphically behind now, and it's noticeable both because I played games like Contra III, Super Castlevania IV and A Link to the Past very recently, but also because a game like Bucky O'Hare for the NES also is graphically much more impressive through diversity in environments and attention to detail. This game places you in plain grass fields and you enter battle mode with a simple black background. It's nice to see sprite animations while units simply stand around I suppose, but environments constantly looking the same and lacking both detail and color does not make for a great sight graphically at this point.

Then again, I had similar complaints for the original already. Just like I said for the sake of both story and gameplay, reducing the length of the game would have probably impacted graphics positively as well, as some memory space would have been saved up to use more than the handful of assets present here (I'm being facetious).

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 6/10

There are some things I liked atmospherically. Some characters apart from the main protagonists actually have a bit of personality, they say their final words whenever they fall in battle and there are some nice story scenes, like the first meeting between Alm and Celica. It also helps that there is an overworld where we can see the locations of the kingdoms. Atmosphere and immersion didn't receive heavy considerations here of course, but it's more than I expected.

CONTENT | 4/10

The game has 30 to 40 hours of content. What good does it do the player however if it is mostly the same stuff, and when 25 of those 30 hours includes looking at battle animations that play out slowly? There should have been fewer levels, quicker animations and a bit more story to strike a better balance like Final Fantasy IV managed recently.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10

There are maybe 10 stages per protagonist per chapter, and a few towns and caves you can also visit to get distracted from the main path. In Chapter 2, there is also an optional dragon you can fight, and that dragon plus all bosses drop special items you can equip your units with. Unfortunately, the map design in this game I found to be very poor and restricting, strategic elements felt like they were less relevant at times as a result and I really don't understand why the game expects me to go backwards and grind in a strategy game. I can't explain any other way how the first stage of Chapter 3 destroyed me otherwise, as I had taken the correct path and had every unit but one alive at that point. In general, random difficulty spikes are additional proof that balance is not great in this game's design.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10

A strategy RPG has a lot of potential, and the Fire Emblem is obviously pretty popular in modern times. In this game, you have a situation where 1) there already was an original game which did nearly everything that this game does, 2) you have little innovation and not all of it is good and 3) you don't even make the jump to the next gen of consoles, even though it come out 1.5 years ago at this point. The game feels like the devs just at one point said "why AREN'T we working on an SNES game again? Ah you know what, just quickly make a few dozen stages and let's ship this, so we can start on the next one". Future entries in the series have a lot more potential here, but this one doesn't reach it.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

I doubt many people these days would be interested in playing this game again after beating it the first time. Strategy games usually should have a bit more replayability than this game has to offer though, as battles usually can be fought in different ways. Here, at least for the first 7 hours, it didn't feel like you could change up much because the map restricts you so much. And considering that most of the time spent is watching animations play out, I can't imagine many people want to go through that again.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 50/100

Not great. There is a remake for this game, as mentioned, so if you want to experience the story (but in much more detail) and experience how the gameplay looked like (more or less) just go for that I would say. There wasn't really anything here that was memorable, and the most positive thing I could say is that it's clear that the mix of genres this game is going for has potential that is not being realized here. The next game comes out for the SNES, so I have higher hopes there.

(This is the 67th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Kid Chameleon, a platformer developed by Sega Technical Institute and released in March 1992 for the Sega Genesis, is the 35th best game for the Sega Genesis according to magazine "Mega". That seems like a pretty good ranking for a game that I found to be overwhelmingly 'meh'.

The game got re-released in multiple collections over the years, and even is available on Steam for just 1€ since 2010 (it has 4 user reviews since then).

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10

Here is how the manual describes the setup: "Wild Side is the newest game in town. It's a hologram that creates a reality not our own. You step inside to play..." Basically, kids enter a building to play the most realistic VR game ever. Turns out, the antagonist of that game, Heady Metal, found a way to enter reality from the game world and started abducting the kids who played. The obvious question arises of how another kid was sent in to play after the previous one disappeared behind closed door, but alas, many kids are "KID-Napped!".

Casey is the cool Kid Chameleon, and he enters the game world himself to rescue these kids. Try to guess why he is called 'Chameleon'... Yep, it's because he can shapeshift into multiple different alter ego's. You collect masks in the game to take the persona of characters called "Iron Knight", who has 5 hit points instead of the Kid's normal 2, "Red Stealth" who can attack with a blade, "Berzerker" who can bull-rush and break walls and, among other options, "Maniaxe", who can throw axes and looks like Jason Voorhees.

That's pretty much all. You go through a bunch of levels to find the bad guy, kill him and free the kids.

GAMEPLAY | 9/20

This game is a side-scrolling platformer. You start off as Casey in his Kid Chameleon persona. Here, all you can do is walk and jump. You have two hit points. The game has Super Mario Bros-type blocks with hidden items in them, like diamonds for currency, clocks to give you more time, keys to give you more lives and, of course, masks to change your persona.

Once you collect a mask and switch personas, you either get 3 or 5 hit points depending on the character you get. You can also use their abilities, like throwing stuff at enemies, climbing up walls and flying upside down, to name a few examples. These characters are varied enough and fun to use, but most of my time, I simply got one of very few masks that would appear based on the situation at hand. A wall needs breaking? The game drops the Berzerker mask. You need to climb? The game drops the Iron Knight. Later levels will definitely get a bit more creative here, but considering that I got about 10% into the game after 3 hours and already saw enough, I didn't get that far.

Overall, the game doesn't play all too well. It falls victim to the control issue that plagues an occasional platformer, which is the icy block phenomenon. For some reason, jumping on a block means Casey takes a few extra steps forward, giving a "slippery" feeling to the controls for no apparent reason. The game also has a few issues with glitches, at least from what I can tell. Sometimes mask simply disappear, sometimes you jump on top of an enemy but it doesn't recognize it and you take the damage instead and sometimes you jump on a block that shoots spikes and for some reason, you get hit by them and instantly die. Fighting the game instead of the enemies is never fun. Finally, the pacing often felt slow. In one level, almost all you do is just stand around and wait for platforms to arrive. Breaking blocks, whether by jumping or running into them with the Bezerker, felt tedious and slow as well. Even boss fights, at least from what I saw, are very slow. And after playing this for hours, I couldn't believe how much game this game still had left. Why make it so long?

Apart from the personas, this game doesn't really stand out in any way, and the novelty of those personas does wear off after a while. So I can't say I am shocked that there is no official sequel, but maybe that had other reasons. According to the developers wiki page, the game sold well for Sega, whatever that means.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 4/10

No voice acting, apart from a specific sound I will mention in a second.

The sound design has that Sega vibe to it but doesn't sound impressive as a whole. For some reason, when certain enemies shoot (or spit) projectiles, the sound that plays is a voice saying "die". Why? The soundtrack fails to have a kick to it in my opinion, it just sounds so stale and more like background music that is uninvolved with the gameplay. Thematically, the songs also often don't fit. The "Fantasy" track for example sounds futuristic for some reason. Didn't really enjoy listening to this a whole lot.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10

I'd say there is both good and bad here. For example, go to 1:07:34 of NintendoComplete's playthrough of this and look at the background. It literally looks like something my six year old brother drew. It looks like it came straight out of Paint and it's truly crazy how bad that looks compared to what you would expect out of a 16-bit console. I'm less insulted by NES games which simply have a black background to be honest.

But if you play most of the other levels, you will realize that this level's background is more of an oddity. Mountains have actual textures on other levels, entire cities are drawn on others, and the game does a solid job on a technical level. One level for example has the trees reflecting into the water, and that image moves as the water flows. Clouds move from side to side. And the sprites look pretty good here. The design of the different personas is especially well done and they remain the highlight of the game graphically as well as they already are from a gameplay perspective.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 4/10

Remember that you have entered virtual reality in this game. The game's way of reminding you of this is to have a stock image of a room with square tiling, which is the room that the Wild Side game is accessed in. Those squares fill out to give you the impression that you're in the game world. The game's levels themselves feel like a random mash-up of thematically different levels. There is the fire, water, earth and ice themed levels, there are levels playing below and above ground with no coherent overall map design apparent and all in all, immersion and atmosphere does not feel like a priority for this game apart from that initial set-up for the game's plot.

CONTENT | 4/10

The game has a lot of stages, with not nearly enough variety to justify it. The game is also fairly difficult at times, so the game can drag after you beat one of those more difficulty sections, only to realize you got many, many hours still to go.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10

Apart from there being too many levels in my opinion, a lot of them give the impression of being haphazardly designed. Often, I just felt like I had no idea where I was and somehow, some way I found my way to the exit. Having fewer levels and spending more time on each would have done wonders here, though finding the occasional secret passage to some (bland) treasure was enjoyable enough.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10

The personas are a neat idea, but it's not like that didn't exist before this game. If people reminisce about this game however, the personas will be what they will remember primarily. In every other way, the game is a very basic platformer.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

Not much replayability apart from trying to beat your high score and maybe using the personas slightly differently, though you won't be using them differently in a way that makes a notable difference.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at almost all times apart from the occasional glitches I mentioned.

OVERALL | 45/100

Worth trying for the novelty of the chameleon aspect, but other than that, the game is a very typical, and slower-than-average platformer that I wouldn't recommend.

(This is the 114th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)

I enjoy LucasArts adventure games and I've played lots of them as part of this challenge. Loom, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Full Throttle, Indiana Jones and now The Dig, which had been recommended to me a few times when I reviewed the others. Straight off the bat, it's easy to see why. It's an incredibly atmospheric adventure with a more serious tone than usual for LucasArts, though not bereft of their trademark witty and dad joke loving characters.

It's about a 5-person group assigned to plant nuclear bombs on an asteroid that is on collision course with the earth to basically make it securely orbit around Earth. The group that is assigned for the job is an interesting mix, as you got one journalist, a technician who is also running for congress, an archeologist, a pilot and the main character, the Commander.

The Commander, Boston Low, the journalist, Maggie Robbins, and the archeologist, Ludger Brink, enter the inside of the asteroid after blowing it open, stumble upon an odd puzzle within and are teleported into deep space. When they come to, they are on an alien planet that seems to no longer have any sentient life on it. Based on what is left behind on this planet though, it seems clear that there WAS sentient life here at least. So you start solving these mysteries to figure out a way back to Earth.

Unfortunately, for such a great setup for its story, a big issue with The Dig is that its puzzles are maddening. I'm OK with a few obtuse puzzles, they are practically unavoidable in LucasArts adventures, but The Dig puts a new meaning to it. There is one puzzle in particular, where some sort of fish / turtle is eaten in front of you and its remains are spit back on land. Interacting with it opens a window where you see about 15-20 pieces of this fish in disarray. The goal is to reassemble everything into the correct order. How are you supposed to do this? Well, there are the really conveniently placed remains of the same type of fish on the next screen. So go there, remember how ALL these pieces are set up, go back to the fish in disarray, and try to place everything in the same way.

EXCEPT. You have to place it EXACTLY in one specific way and every item has to be in EXACT order, otherwise you didn't do it right. After spending way too long on this dumb puzzle, I looked up online how to set it up. After setting it up exactly that way, the game said I STILL did it wrong, meaning something was probably an inch off or something. I couldn't be bothered to find out, so I called it quits there.

There are more bad puzzles in the game up to that point, and most definitely after I'm sure, but the problem with these puzzles is that 1) they're bad, obviously but 2) they ruin an otherwise incredible atmosphere set up by a very well paced first act, the great visuals (for its time), the cinematics and the sound design.

The game feels much more big budget than prior LucasArts adventures, and it has some cool ideas, like talking to your crew members and regularly being able to ask them about clues you find as well as just engaging in optional conversation and getting to know them better, but the puzzle difficulty ruined it for me. Only play this if you're a more hardcore point & click adventure fan, because you're gonna be at some of these puzzles for a long while without a guide and even with one, some of them are just tiring.

I got Cuphead close to release and played through it in about a week and about 20 hours. I'm by no means a skilled gamer, and thankfully, despite its high difficulty, you actually get better really fast in this game.

Fast forward to today and I have put over 64 hours into it through multiple playthroughs of just playing around on my own or with my little brother without really getting far, including the most recent 20 hours which I spent to get all achievements in the game. I'm not someone who goes for achievements usually, but I recently got the itch to do so and chose Cuphead for my first (intentional) 100%, and I'm glad I did.

First off, replaying Cuphead has shown me once again what a fantastic game it is, both in terms of gameplay and especially visually. Cuphead's presentation is among the very top for video games. The attention to detail in every level is just absolutely insane. On top of that, the devs went as far as to create three different difficulties, all of which add plenty on top of what is already present in the boss fights, making it possible to go for three different runs, all of which are tougher than the other. Going above and beyond is a statement that fits Cuphead very well.

The soundtrack is great, the bosses and their variety is great, the challenge is almost perfect (Why do I not get invincibility frames after I use my Super Art???) and the replayability is very high.

Maybe don't go for 100% if you're not a skilled gamer or OK with getting the urge to punch the wall a couple times, but do play Cuphead, it's one of the must play video games in my opinion.

(This is the 44th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Duke Nukem is not a franchise I'm familiar with, apart from the endless negative things I heard about Duke Nukem Forever over the last decade. I was surprised to learn that the game has its roots right here, all the way back in July 1991 on the MS-DOS. The series would go on to have three more releases over the following 20 years, including two 3D games, whereas this one is a 2D platformer/action shooter.

I've played this game for 2 hours in total and did not beat it. My main issue, which I will, among other things, touched on below, was the headache-inducing (literally unfortunately) sounds. But here are my overall thoughts.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
This game has a lengthy explanation on what's going on before you start, plus dialogue that happens between Duke and the game's antagonist, Dr. Proton, which I always appreciate for this time period. Dr. Proton is a scientist who has turned evil and wants to take over Earth (a popular backstory for video game antagonists at the time I must say). You are Duke Nukem (called Duke Nukum in game because an animated series apparently had a character with the same name, so the devs wanted to avoid a lawsuit), and have to stop Dr. Proton. The intro says the following: "Armed only with his pistol and his can-do attitude, duke is hte one person who might stand a chance of success." Really? A squad of hundreds equipped with that same pistol (or more?) couldn't stand a better chance? Duke then drops a brutal one-liner: "I'll be done with you and still have time to watch Oprah." I appreciate the silliness and am shocked at how long Oprah has managed to stay relevant, despite being one of the fakest and obnoxious people I have ever seen on television. It makes me wonder whether I should like Duke now. I digress.

GAMEPLAY | 9/20
There is nothing wrong with the gameplay in Duke Nukem other than the fact that it is very repetitive and limited in the amount of things you are able to do.

You control your character with the left and right arrow keys, you use the UP arrow key as the "action" key, like taking elevators upwards or teleporting, you use CTRL to jump and ALT to shoot your pistol.

Your goal is to reach the EXIT of an area, which can be pretty much anywhere in a given level. The game uses the space it has fully both vertically and horizontally. This means you can fall down the entire map in some levels, you have lots of space to cover from left to right and a lot of the levels are designed in a kind of labyrinth sort of fashion, as you have no pointers on where to go and some areas can be kind of similar looking. Your goal usually is to find a key to unlock access to other areas and/or the exit itself.

While you are on the lookout for the key, you have to fight off robot enemies and helicopters, you have to break crates which can either have healing items, miscellaneous items that give you points for your total score and dynamite, which explodes, so you have to watch out. There are also cameras that "watch your every move", and if you destroy every camera in a given map, you get bonus points. There is some light platforming here as well to top it off.

The game this reminds me of the most in terms of design is actually Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout. In that game, you also work your way through relatively large open areas with exits that can seemingly be everywhere, and on your way there, you fight enemies and collect stuff.

Unlike that game, Duke Nukem doesn't suffer from 3 FPS and basically 0 difficulty level, but I can't say I liked the level design of either game.

Duke Nukem doesn't really have the variety to keep you engaged for the 10+ hours it will take you to beat it on your first playthrough and for me, playing it at all was literally headache-inducing, which is a first for any video game I have ever played, mainly because there is no soundtrack here at all and all you here is those typical MS-DOS sound effects, which I never realized sounded so horrible until I played a game without any music.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 1/10
There is no voice acting, which is pretty typical and no big deal. But there also is no soundtrack, which is very odd. Literally no music at all. And then there is the sound design, which, if this didn't exist either, I would be inclined to at least give one point, but the sounds are so horrible and headache-inducing that I'd give this minus points, if it were to be in my rating system.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 4/10
The game looks like your cut and dry MS-DOS game. The sprite for Duke is a man who just constantly is grinding his teeth, the game lacks detail in environment and animation, there is some use of too strong colors in the background which isn't too kind on the eye and the background itself is either a still image or just pitch black. There are definitely stronger games than this that released for the MS-DOS at the time, so this wasn't that impressive.

ATMOSPHERE | 5/10
Pretty nice to see each episode move to a different setting (earth, moon, future), but visually, this game is rather basic looking and apart from the handful of dialogue that you see throughout the game, and the 0 music and ambient sound, there isn't really anything to give the impression of anything atmospheric, apart from the lack of which on the moon I guess.

CONTENT | 4/10
Game is pretty long but has pretty repetitive gameplay and mission design. Rewards for doing some extra stuff, like destroying all cameras, pretty much always is just some bonus points, so there is a lack of incentive to go through each corner of the map as well (if you can find your way there).

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10
A long game with labyrinth/maze like levels for no real reason. The gameplay variety here does not really justify the maps being so convoluted. The game has its fair share of fans still, just like any game from the past pretty much, but I doubt any new players will find a lot of enjoyment out of finding their way to the target, especially since the maps don't seem to be designed all too well.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 3/10
This is a platformer that doesn't really do anything differently. Perhaps it was an above average platformer on the PC, but there several other platformers who have done just about everything better than Duke Nukem does here.

REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No real replayability after you're done, unless you want to get those bonus points and increase your score.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 39/100
This game is celebrated for being one of the best platformers for the MS-DOS at the time. Flux magazine ranked it the 39th best video game of all time in 1995. I have played 44 games for this challenge and this score would rank it 39th also. The lack of music and the terrible sound design really make for a brutal experience, and couple that with the repetitive nature of the gameplay and you really feel like you're in for a nightmare. Play it on mute, and it's not quite that bad, but still hasn't aged well.