Extremely ambitious in terms of size, storytelling and aesthetics. It is indeed a significant achievement in software development and game design that something like that even existed on the Game Boy so early in its lifespan. The black and white graphics are absolutely gorgeous--they fit the "dream" aesthetic wonderfully and leave a lot to be imagined by the player. Dungeons get extremely complex and labyrinthine near the end of the game, and the final boss fight is one of the coolest and most difficult I've ever experienced in retro gaming. Really well encapsulates the quintessential "frustrating and confusing, but satisfying and engaging"

Some of its structure frustrated me a bit; the overworld is filled with random cul-de-sacs and can be extremely frustrating to navigate even w/ the map and warps. Imagine Dark World in ALTTP but twice as difficult to navigate. At times this made me disconnect from the game and brought me significant frustration as there is so much backtracking and getting lost. Some puzzles in the dungeons are pretty dumb too, i.e. there is some Zelda 1-esque "go bomb this random wall that has no cracks" bullshit in some dungeons, which is unforgiveable in my mind for a game released after ALTTP.

Yet, Link's Awakening is indeed a statement in story telling for Zelda, it's difficult, and it's one of the most beautiful Game Boy games I've seen. It's a great game in many regards, and I definitlely want to try playing the remaster in the future.

Doesn't do anything new; It Takes Two ports pre-existing ideas from some of the best video games games in history to a cooperative context and massively succeeds in doing so. It indeed clearly takes significant inspiration from Nintendo games, especially Super Mario Odyssey's transformations and its aesthetics is sometimes comparable to 3D Zelda dungeons, sometimes to Pikmin, sometimes it plays like Mario Kart, sometimes it plays a bit like Metroid... it's extremely diverse in its playstyles and inspirations, yet surprisingly, it succeeds in everything it attempts to do. The beauty of its environments is jaw-dropping (especially for an Unreal Engine game), the gameplay (incl. 3D platforming movement, which isn't an easy thing to master) is smooth, and everything it tries works so well with co-op. My girlfriend and I felt engaged from the beginning to the end, and I especially fell under the game's charm in the latter half.

Its ultra-linear progression sometimes make the levels feel rather hollow, giving not much reason to explore new environments. Furthermore, its fast pacing and perpetually changing gameplay makes it feel a tad unfocused and elusive at times. Writing is also extremely cringe-worthy at times--although Dr. Hakim's incredible personality completely fixes that. I would have hoped for each section to be a little more fleshed out and to have more collect-o-thon elements in it.

Despite that, It Takes Two is an essential short game to play with somebody--whether it's your significant other, a good friend, an avid gamer, a non-gamer--it has something for everybody and I was pleasantly suprised by its quality. Never knew EA were capable of publishing an actually fun and innovating game.

Negative points first. Using 3D World's controls for an open world Odyssey-style game feels restricting; while the cat and tanooki suits work fine in this environment, Mario's basic move set feels uncomfortable with much of the platforming. Bowser's fury being set on an uncontrollable timer (unless you have a Bowser Amiibo, gross) almost completely ruins the game's pacing. Since many of the shines are only obtainable during this fury state, I spent a lot of time near the end of the game just patiently waiting for the next cycle, not touching the controller. I also disliked the amount of water around the islands--in the first half of the game, when you have no means of teleportation--if you find yourself in the water, you'll be swimming in there for what feels like forever. Furthermore, it seems that you have very little control over Bowser Jr. who often feels unresponsive and glitchy.

Complaints aside, I can say that I had a lot of fun with some of those shines. The game mostly feels, as intended, like an Odyssey/3D World hybrid, but I also sensed level design inspiration from Galaxy and stylistic choices which are more aligned with Sunshine's artistic vision (in fact, I would say it's probably the closest Mario game we've got to Sunshine so far). While a bit simplistic, most shines are straight-forward and enjoyable.

Bowser's Fury is a short, rough and incomplete game, but it is also an interesting new concept which offers an interesting idea of what might be next for 3D Mario games. However, I'm glad they didn't release this game on its own. It's a fine game, but for someone who already had played 3D World on the Wii U, I feel like Bowser's Fury is most certainly not worth the big price of the bundle.

Clear lines of similarly-shaped pieces and they dissapear, while being quick enough to avoid new falling pieces. It really is everything you should expect from Bullet-Proof Software: it's a well-presented, easy to pick up and addicting Tetris-style puzzle game. Sprite work is very solid and the atmosphere kept me engaged until the very end. Regular game isn't too hard, containing 100 stages which were pretty easy but fun for me to play through.

Cartridge also contains split-screen multiplayer (which I have yet to try) and a Puzzle mode in which you have to clear a preexisting set of lines in a maximum amount of moves. There are 100 of these puzzles, and they were designed by Tetris creator Alexei Pazhitnov. Don't really feel like playing these for the time being, but if I ever want to get better at the main game (to speedrun or whatever), then those puzzles could help me get better at the game.

Regardless, it has a lot to do and has very fine replayability. Worth obtaining.

3D World is a childhood favourite of mine, and I dipped my toes in speedrunning it when I was a teenager. However, I haven't played it in about half a decade due to having a bricked Wii U -- therefore, it feels good to finally get to play this port. This is a very solid and underappreciated 3D Mario game with excellent level design, good progression in difficulty, and a rather epic post-game (maybe the best in the entire Mario series?) which ends in the absolute hardest Mario in an official game.

This release is essentially the same game as on the Wii U, but I have some specific notes about this port:

- While the controls have been decently well ported, but it is still a game which was intrinsically built for the Wii U's gamepad, and in that regard, there is not a single controller that works as well for it. To complement the screen, they used the same pointer system that was used in the 3D All-Stars port of Super Mario Galaxy to emulate the original DS-style screen touching. It works fine, but it feels clunky and unnatural compared to how satisfying it felt to interact with the world in the original version.
- The mid-air roll--just about the only thing that was added in this port compared to Wii U--is a new move I have positive feelings for. It allows for some pretty cool trick-jumping and SMW-esque cheese. It got me out of some crazy situations and had me experimenting with the limits of movement.
- Another thing they added is Photo mode, which they seem to have almost directly ported from Super Mario Odyssey but I really could care less for it. This game does not have the same type of theatrical settings as Odyssey so the opportunity for memorable screenshots is very limited.
- Unfortunately, the only use for Stamps appears to be for use in the aforementionned Photo mode. It was more rewarding to get the stamps on Wii U in order to use them on Miiverse, but now there is really no reason to get them other than to unlock the final world.
- Finally, it goes without saying that 380 Stars/80 Stamps should more than ever be considered the de facto 100% completion of this game. The genuine 100% completion--which involves beating every level in the game at least five times--is an absolute load of horse crap. At least, on Wii U, you got rare stamps to use on Miiverse, but now that Miiverse isn't a thing, it is a pointless and excruciating endeavour (unless you're willing to spend numerous hours replaying the game 4 more times to get an extra star on your file).

I am satisfied with this port, and if you find a good deal for it 2nd hand, it might be worth playing if you are an OG 3DW player. I was lucky enough that I was lent this game, but I would still have not complained if I paid it full-price because it is a very fine rerelease considering the tools they had. I am also excited to finally play through Bowser's Fury!

It indeed has decently comedic writing, good style, interesting setting and characters and kickstarted an influential RPG franchise. While I do consider this to have been a pleasing experience in the greater scheme of things, there are many things which have infuriated me, such as unbalanced boss fights (including the completely unbalanced Mush Badge which allowed me to 2-hit KO one of the most infamous final bosses in the franchise), cryptic mechanics (i.e. Advance attacks) and a lot of very repetitive enemy spamming. It is worth playing for the exploration aspect and to experience the writing, but it is one of those RPGs where I feel like they might have been better off just making a comic.

Choosing to follow the original Zelda's play style rather than making another Link's Adventure worked incredibly well here. Indeed, A Link to the Past builds on the concepts that were tried out with Zelda 1 and makes just about everything better. The controls are satisfying and there is a huge variety of items are your disposal to try and figure out what the next step is. It just tickles the brain in a certain way that is so satisying; you'll get to a screen where you will have no idea what to do, and you will progressively get more and more of an idea what to do to progress until you actually manage to logically figure it out by yourself. It also shows how desperately top-down Zelda needed a more proper map system than the NES's very primitive one. Everything just works perfectly, it's incredibly difficult, has you thinking a lot, and just feels amazing to progress in. However, some of the puzzles near the end of the game did push my patience in terms of how cryptic they were a bit further than what I was comfortable with; I did use the help of the internet a handful of times for the very rare occasions where this game tries to pull some NES Zelda-type cryptic secret that is required to progress through the game. Furthermore, some of the game design did lead to a fair bit of backtracking and mindless exploration of the overworld with no idea what to do next (even though the hints given by the psychic dude worked pretty well for the most part in figuring out what to do next). My complaints are few and scarce though, this is indeed an amazing SNES game and it makes me excited to play the following installments in the series.

Its visual presentation is less than eloquent (just compare it visually to Faxanadu, a similar-styled game that came out merely months after this title), it's outrageously frustrating and a lot of game design elements are questionable at best. Overworld enemies spawn out of nowhere to pick fights with you and they're hard to avoid. If you avoid too many enemy fights, you won't be leveled up enough to make it through rough sections such as Death Mountain. Some enemies are way too overpowered, taking a stupid amount of hits to take down and having an AI that feels omnipresent. Dialogue is badly written and translated. I have a lot more negative than positive things to say about this game, but I still got incredibly invested in it and couldn't put it down until I beat it. It's much less cryptic than Zelda 1 (still better off having a guide, but it's much more doable without as much mindless wandering as the prequel), its controls are very tight and satisfying to master and some of these bosses reach a Mega Man-esque level of difficulty, epicness and satisfaction. If you have an opportunity to play through this, then you'll probably find something to enjoy about it despite some of its horrible flaws.

Bizarre cartridge I picked up in a retro game store for $5. Surprisingly a very fine experience; glover mixes platforming, collect-o-thon and puzzle game into one very complete experience. The music, especially in the earlier levels, is very good, and the atmosphere is uncanny but charming. It feels like the controls could have used more thought and the level design more depth, as there are some very infuriating design choices here and it feels like the game is trolling you more than anything else sometimes, but that's kind of a part of the experience and it requires a lot of adaptation to get used to trying to move the ball around. However, while it is very infuriating at times, I think it's very much so worth playing for its uniqueness. Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Super Monkey Ball and Zelda all mixed together in one big shit show melting pot. Unfortunate that the sequel was cancelled and that this company is defunct; this game could definitely use a reboot of some sort.