What you see is what you get, folks! You want 20 small mazes? Well, have I got the game for you. What makes this game a little more than just a solid 3 stars is just how fun and unique all the mazes are! All have completely different rules and looks to them, and the way they're scattered about is cute. I like how finishing some mazes gives you a key-item that you may need for completing another maze, but it's rare enough that you don't get annoyed needing to depend on it. Super, super charming game - and the fact that it's free only adds to it! What are you waiting for? Go solve those 20 Small Mazes!

3.5/5

https://youtu.be/fee1uS_gn0A?feature=shared

If Street Fighter II made an entire genre of video games go from novelty time waster to at least a somewhat contest where skills felt like an aspect of the equation then Tekken 3 goes the extra mile and makes the contest a full blown sport.

What’s the evidence for this? Well a very direct piece I found while playing this game on my system was how fast the loading times were. There is very little empty time when you play arcade mode and this game is almost 30 years old now, even continuing after losing is so fast you’re always given a chance to come back and get better. Another piece comes with what moves and movement mean here, Tekken feels “realistic” in the sense that your actions change where you are in the space of the map where your opponent can go in other directions because of the 3D with sidestepping being as powerful as blocking at times. With the movement, you could easily be a walking tank fishing out pain or you could full blown spring at your opponent and end a whole round in less than 30 seconds if you’re that fast.

I’m sure there are broken aspects in this game (it is 27 years old at the time of me writing this lmao) and I have not played Tekken 1 and 2 but based on hearing how 1+2 were slow and I’m sitting here playing a game as fast and tense as this I just think the evidence that this is a significant piece of fighting game software because of all these design aspects says enough.

Tekken 3 good, Tekken 3 significant, Tekken 3 addicting, Tekken 3 more like Heckken 3/3, Tekken 3

A day in the life of THE STRIDER!!!:
>Perform Olympic-level jumps on a whim because I’m just gonna assume his parents made him take gymnastics that long
>Be animated like you’re from a 1970’s anime
>Get thrown into a wall by the jock and shatter instantly
>Cry

Great and creative platformer for the NES. I have no idea how I would have beaten the game without the holy water (or the "fire bomb" as the manual calls it lmfao) being super fucking broken, but I'm happy to say I beat it nonetheless! I love the variety in additional weapons you can use, and feel as though the whip has to be one of the best things I've gotten to arm myself with in a NES game yet. I would take Simon Belmont's whip over a gun any day!

I just came off of playing a bunch of NES Mario games with Castlevania, so the platforming parts were a bit annoying in comparison, but it's still a good platformer don't get me wrong! I'm just too used to how fluidly Mario can move and even change direction while in air. Come on, Simon! The stairs are overblown in being hated in this game, and I actually found them to be a last minute life-saver from the REAL enemy in the game... how Simon always gets knocked back when hit... UNLESS you're on the stairs, which just gets you some health depleted vs falling off the edge.

I actually don't know if I'm supposed to be playing as Simon Belmont in this game... I just assumed lol. His name isn't dropped in the manual anywhere, and the Nintendo Player guide book I looked at for tips just calls him the "Hero". It's probably brought up later, or I just missed a detail, oh well lol. He is my random muscle man, and I shall call him Simon.

Overall, Castlevania is a fun time, with a satisfying challenge. I probably cheesed it with depending on the holy water too much, but it was still a fairly difficult game! Bless whoever decided to allow players to continue right outside Dracula's final boss area after dying; I probably would have rage quit broke the cartridge if not for that.

3.5/5

The first Final Fantasy blew my mind. Maybe it’s because it’s the first Final Fantasy game I’ve ever played, maybe it’s because it’s the first RPG I’ve played on the NES that physically shows your characters fighting the enemy rather than using the classic 1st-person view, maybe it’s because of that stupid flying boat I’m now obsessed with. Who knows. But what I do know, is that Final Fantasy I is a fucking AWESOME game that has withstood the sands of time beautifully. Throughout this review, I will be comparing Final Fantasy with other NES RPGs I have played, which is just Dragon Warrior (1986/1989) and MOTHER (1989).

I played the game on my NES and had absolutely no issues with lack of save points, enemy/boss difficulty, and getting around to figure out what to do next. The manual for Final Fantasy 1 is insanely kind, going above and beyond what the already jampacked manuals for the time usually had. Again, the manual, not the guidebook, gives the player information for where to go until you discover the airship. That’s pretty much the end game, with help knowing the best weapons and places to go until that point. The manual of course also includes all the information for enemy, weapon, and armor stats, and a map of the whole area to boot. Final Fantasy gameplay wise is also just very, very player-friendly, with little need to ever grind if you focus on destroying every group you run into. In fact, I would argue you will quickly become OVERpowered if you focus on eliminating everyone you run into. With Dragon Warrior and MOTHER, I definitely had to put aside time just to level up between bosses, while Final Fantasy seemed to always lead me to be just the right level at just the right time, even when running away from a lot of the bigger groups.

Final Fantasy is a gorgeous game on the NES, even including cutscenes and a credit roll, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen on a 3rd-generation game (though I still have lots to check-out!). The music is really impressive too, with a very large variety that I can think back on fondly (though my wife eventually had me mute the TV because she couldn’t stand it lmao). I loved all the effort put into both the visuals and music in this game, and appreciated even the little things we might not think much about today, such as being able to change weapons and visibly see your change (I love the Coral Sword for being a bright hot pink hehe), the cute little dance after beating an enemy, large and varied groups of monsters to fight against, and the awesome and varied transportation you unlock throughout that only helps you move faster and faster! That’s what’s great about the original Final Fantasy, it really feels like a great video game conversion of DND. You pick who you want in your party, get to name them, create little stories in your head, and play them through a fairly open story that you can adjust to fit in a way you may prefer. My party had two fighters, a thief, and a red mage. I drew my own interpretations of them which you can see here!

My biggest complaint with Final Fantasy is that a bunch of the spells and magic are just plain broken in the game, so stuff like mages not being able to raise their intelligence and certain spells simply not working was a bit frustrating, but I heard they fixed that in later adaptations, so that’s good! Sadly, it did affect my playthrough, so I gotta dock some points towards the game for that as it was a bit annoying, and had me restart from my original team of fighter, thief, white mage, and black mage.

I feel there’s so much more I could say about Final Fantasy I, but I feel I’ve already rambled enough. It’s truly a wonderful experience and has so many fun visual elements that I felt were missing in Dragon Warrior and MOTHER. MOTHER came out after Final Fantasy I, and I’ve never played Dragon Quest/Warrior II though which is a NES/Famicom RPG with a party system that came out a year or so before Final Fantasy I, so that might be a more fair comparison, but oh well! This is the experience I have so my review is going to play off of that! If you’re looking for a 3rd-gen RPG to get started with, Final Fantasy I has to be the most player friendly I’ve ever played, and I can’t recommend it enough!


4.5/5

If you play this game with people who are joyful about games and want to just hang out, it feels like a horror movie generator with all the lovely cheesy moments you could ask for and the anxiety adrenaline pumping you need.

If you play this game straightforward and with people who are super straightforward it’s neat but not mind blowing besides the fact that it recontextualizes horror gameplay ideas to be as simple as a game you could make up on a playground in elementary school.

Lethal Company fun

Slight Spoiler Warning

The Night is Grey is an indie point and click survival game made by Whalestork. The game itself is visually very beautiful and the music is lovely to listen to, as well. I found most of my issues with the gameplay, story, and the protagonist himself.

Starting with the gameplay, I found the first two chapters pretty fun, and honestly didn’t mind the backtracking too much… Though having to double-check the same items to get a second dialogue response to THEN get a necessary item to move forward is a bit annoying, but I didn’t have too much of an issue with it. The real gameplay issues started popping up for me in chapter 3, where your character has to start going through this awful maze that has your character DIE if he doesn’t find a room with an oil barrel to keep his lantern lit. A lot of the time, you have to take guesses for the next room you enter as you don’t know if it will have an oil barrel or not, but you sure as hell better mark it down, since the oil lamp runs out after searching 3-4 rooms!! I just started saving whenever I found a room with an oil barrel. I had issues understanding the last two puzzles in the game after chapter 3, but that’s probably more of an issue for me as I’m usually an idiot when it comes to that stuff, so I had to look up the answers.

The story and the protagonist disappointed me as it followed a formula I usually love! I’m a die hard fan of “adult man that has to protect and take care of a little girl trying to survive”, but the protagonist, Graham (but he looks so much like Matt Walsh that I unfortunately kept thinking his name was Matt LOL), is so unpleasant to be tied to, and is an awful dick to the poor little girl he’s trying to help (even though the ending helps explain some of that) that I hated having to constantly hear him be so annoying and swear, swear, swear at her! I’m no prude to swearing, but Jesus Christ, all this guy does is swear! It gets annoying. It reminds me of shows like Hazbin Hotel that try to add edge and grit to their series, so they just have the character swear every other word. It would have worked better with the story if maybe he started swearing more towards the end to hint towards the ending, instead of kind of spoiling it from the start, as the way he acted immediately had me suspicious.

You can tell there’s a lot of love and passion put into The Night is Grey; the artstyle is gorgeous (and the reason why it caught my interest in the first place!) and the music is lovely throughout it all. They clearly had a plan for how they wanted the story to be and wrote accordingly, I just don’t think it was a good match for what I personally enjoy. The ending was fine… but to me, it came off more as them not knowing how to end it and creating a loop instead. There’s definitely worse endings out there, but there’s also definitely better ones, too. Check out The Night is Grey if you’re interested, but I wouldn’t go in expecting anything extraordinary.

2/5

Alright, so this is the first time I’ve ever beaten the first Mario on the NES, and after playing a bunch of old games that came out before the first Super Mario Bros, it helped me come to appreciate it to a whole new level. It’s making me interested in doing some kind of analysis on home console games before Super Mario Bros. and after, because just looking through this “History of Famicom” catalog book I got that talks about EVERY game that was made for the Famicom EVER, it’s crazy to see how the first Mario completely turned the gaming world upside down on its head. I won’t go into too much detail for this review, but Super Mario Bros essentially put home consoles on equal playing level with arcades. Not in graphics obviously, but rather in public interest. What would you get a home console for before 1985? To play games from the arcade but at home instead! Sure, these consoles had their own unique games that you might not be able to find at arcades, but the point was to emulate the arcade experience, so the majority of games focused on exactly that. One screen, maybe several if you’re lucky, with usually the same goal: get the highest score!

The only game I feel I can closely compare Mario to from before it came out, is the arcade game Pac-Land. They’re both side-scrolling platformers that feature a silly little guy running to the end of each stage to move on to the next. But Mario took that formula and made it like… good. Really good in fact! Absolutely excellent! Pac-Land isn’t bad by any means, but having to move right and left with two big red buttons instead of a convenient joystick or D-pad is hard to adjust to, and after playing Mario, feels so awkward.


Super Mario Bros itself has aged wonderfully. The controls are great and the levels are short and easy to learn to master, with the final world really putting your skills to the test. The way you control your gameplay through power-ups and physically growing larger and gaining fire projectiles as rewards is insanely unique. The gameplay is enough to offer a challenge, while still being very player friendly. The warp tubes and the start + a for continues is very, very kind to players, while still being hidden enough to not ruin all the fun. My only personal complaint is that Mario does slide around a bit which can be annoying to get used to, but my bigger complaint is the random maze parts in the later castles. I’m such an idiot that I couldn’t figure out the first two, and was forced to look up the pattern I needed to follow, which took away some of the fun, but is really more of a personal issue than a real issue in the game.

Super Mario Bros as a game is just weird too, but in a fun way! We’re so used to seeing him everywhere involving video games that we don’t really think about it… Sure, the Mario character was used before Super Mario Bros, but he was used in environments that fit his character a bit more. Mario, or Jump Man, was always in scenarios with construction and sewers, and is probably why you’re playing an Italian New York man anyways. Donkey Kong is clearly based around King Kong, which takes place in New York, so Mario was branded accordingly. But with Super Mario Bros, you’re in some far off land with a kidnapped princess of mushroom people, fighting off a terrible dragon turtle man to save her… You’d expect some kind of warrior or stereotypical hero to come save the day, no? Well, here’s an Italian-American man in overalls that climbed straight out the Brooklyn sewers to come break some turtles’ backs! It’s so random, it’s so weird!! I guess Mario was randomly hopping on turtles even while in the sewers in the original Mario Bros. arcade game, so at least he's following a theme it seems, but I would honestly have understood a monkey coming to save the day more in Super Mario Bros. because that at least would have fit the Journey to the West inspiration they seemed to be going with! But I’m so glad they didn’t go that route, because now it’s so much more odd and memorable just having this random everyday-man fight in this mystical world. Can you imagine American players seeing it when the NES first came out over there? Here you go kids, some arcade-style games, some sport games, a few shooters, and this random game where you play as an Italian beating the shit out of turtles and helping talking mushrooms... of course! Well, if the game is fun, who cares what wacky cast it uses ⸜(ˊᗜˋ)⸝

Mario absolutely blew up the home console market, and made it so getting a Famicom or NES was a must have, not just to enjoy arcade favorites in the comfort of your own home, but to enjoy video games in general! Sure, you could argue there were more complex and advanced things already happening on home computers, like the PC-88 for example, but the Famicom, and in turn Mario, was insanely user-friendly in a way many had not seen before. It makes sense why the system was such a hit, with Mario really helping push the future of gaming into millions of households throughout the entire world.

4.5/5

Dude, Lupin and gang are BARELY in this thing. It mostly focuses on this self-insert kid that has a feud with a kid across the river who's trying to woo your girlfriend with ice cream from his job. Lupin and everyone joins in once in a blue moon to save the day or continue the main boy's hideously boring story rather than do something cool like, I dunno, being the goddamn protag or whatever. The fact he takes up 2/3s of the game cover would have you think otherwise… A game I tried because of my love for Lupin’s pizazz of sex drugs and rock n roll - I guess he has a large little boy market I didn’t really know about...

Dude... ルパン三世とー隊はこのゲームにほとんど出ていない。このゲームはたいてい 2 の小さな子供の間の愛の抗争に焦点をあてている。私が覚えているのは、ある少年がアイスクリームで少女に言い寄った。ホント、バカだね。ごくたまに、ルパン三世はこの退屈な物語を救いに来た。なぜルパンが主人公じゃなかったのか不思議がる。なぜ彼が表紙に大きくなるのか。ルパンのノリが大好きだ... 少年に人気があるか私は知らなかっただろう…

1.5/5