Believe it or not, there was once a legitimate rivalry between Sonic and Mario over who was the better mascot and who had the better games. And as someone who grew up with a Master System and then a Genesis, I was obviously on Team Sonic - the quick blue hedgehog jumps over the fat plumber. Imagine my surprise on a revisit when it turns out I like the first Super Mario game far more than the first Sonic game (which came out nearly six years later!)

The controls aren't the easiest to get used to especially by today's standards - Mario slips and slides with a slightly unintuitive momentum, making it feel like the player has to fight against the game in order to keep him from running facefirst into hazards. However, this battle against the controls is extremely rewarding to eventually overcome, and at the heart of it is the run button. By being able to speed Mario up and slow him down at the drop of a hat, it opens the door for some really cool momentum-based platforming tricks; this is incidentally what makes Mario far more satisfying to speedrun (ironically) than Sonic, whose momentum the player has far less control over.

One thing that SMB does far better than nearly all its contemporaries is provide a low skill floor to go with its high skill ceiling. Playing a safe, careful, deliberate game with minimal use of the run button will get you as far as 75% of the way through the game before World 7 arrives to kick your teeth in. Being able to see 6 worlds worth of bite-sized stages with interesting gimmicks that don't overstay their welcome provides fantastic motivation to keep returning to the game and improve your skill incrementally in order to see the last stages through to the end.

I feel like this would be a 3.5 or 4-star game, but having spent the past couple of years revisiting older games, I have to add at least a half-star to SMB for being an absolute windmill dunk in the context of the era it was released in. It's not perfect, but as far as first entries in beloved series go, on a scale from Street Fighter to Doom, it's far far closer to the latter.

I remember reading some time ago that Minesweeper and Solitaire were deliberately chosen as the preinstalled games on early Windows computers because they would teach users important skills for interacting with a mouse - Minesweeper for left/right clicking and Solitaire for dragging and dropping.

Wii Sports played that exact role for the Wii and the Wiimote. It enabled players to get used to the new hardware quickly, and more importantly - made the process fun. It's obviously not as polished as more recent games, but it's actually still good fun to play today and that's all I can realistically expect from it.

Here's my thing: I'm the Rick Astley of JRPGs. I never give them up no matter how much they may be letting me down. My 'played' page has its share of RPGs that I absolutely detested but soldiered through anyway, through a mix of Fear Of Missing Out and feeling like I need to have experienced the entirety of an experience to judge it properly, with a bit of Plain Old Fashioned Stubbornness thrown in.

I started playing Vagrant Story on the back of my fifth playthrough of Final Fantasy Tactics (gotta set it up with the Ivalice connection), and was immediately awestruck by the gorgeous graphics that pushed the PSX to its absolute limits, the stellar translation that was sorely lacking from FFT, and the near-perfect cinematic quality that seemed to be the platonic ideal that earlier Square titles like FF6 were striving for. Never would I have imagined that this was the game that would break me!

This game has mechanics on top of systems on top of subsystems; I've played games with obtuse mechanics before, but Vagrant Story is particularly bad at teaching you how to play it. I'm aware that there is an in-game manual, but it's way too much information and the game's early stages don't push you to learn the mechanics in an organic way. The idea of a pure dungeon-crawler with no shops and the only tools at your disposal being what you find and what you craft is sound, but again the crafting mechanics are so obtuse and so irreversible that you can so easily hose yourself at any point with poor crafting decisions and end up in a situation where none of your tools work. And equipment is so influential to the point that it stifles strategy - you either have the right equipment and steamroll the enemy or don't have the right equipment and get stuck poking at a mook for ten minutes.

But the aspect of this game that really made me bounce off it was how soul-crushingly tedious it was. Yes, the load times and spell animations are inexcusably long, and yes, there is endless menu-hopping to be done to change your setup every time you meet a new enemy. But it goes a lot deeper than that: the totally-unnecessary limited inventory necessitated an storage box system which is of course extremely tedious to navigate and which you also inexplicably have to save every time you use. Even something as simple as getting your bearings takes way too much time to do because you need to enter the map menu in order to see the compass directions! This tedium bled over into the bread and butter of the combat as well, with the Risk Bar increasing whenever you attacked, forcing you to either use consumable items to bring it down (which remember, you can't buy because there are no shops), or.... to wait until it goes down on its own.

I really wanted to love this game, but in the space of a week I dropped it three times, talked myself into giving it another chance three times, and realized on my fourth attempt that I was at 20% map completion and completely burnt out, and I just brought out the white flag.

There is absolutely plenty to love in here. Depending on what you value in your RPG experience and your level of tolerance for specific types of bullshit, this game could very well be one of the best games you play, and justifiably so. As such, this is probably the only 1.5-rated game on my list that I would recommend every RPG fan at least give a fair shot!

I know it, you probably know it, probably anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the Rayman series knows that the first game is really hard. But as someone who grew up in the 8-bit era where games were brutally hard by default, and who generally enjoys playing rage games like I Wanna Be The Guy, this game got me wondering what it is about some hard games that filters me more than others.

The answer I arrived at ended up being pretty simple: the best hard games find a way to be fun anyway. The best rage games get really creative with their trolling and don't punish death too harshly, making you want to keep playing. Games like Qwop and Octodad make it ridiculously hard to do the simplest tasks, but also make your inevitable failures hilarious. Road Rash 64 had plenty of cheap jank but was gloriously chaotic and offered you incentives for causing chaos, so you could lose a race and still have a good time.

Unfortunately Rayman has very little to balance out its unforgiving difficulty. Every gimmick, from the tiny slippery platforms to the darkened rooms to the reversed controls to the autoscrolling sections (which don't give you any warning when they start!) to the long waiting sections interspersed with instant-death hazards, are obnoxiously unfun and strung together in gauntlets that drag on for way too long. It even takes a leaf out of Fantasia's book by being a collectathon with extremely obtuse requirements; in order to unlock the final stage you need to find and break every single hidden cage in every single level. And the problem is the requirements aren't so much puzzles as they are completely arbitrary, like "walk to this completely unremarkable corner of the map then walk left and suddenly the cage is there!"

It's not all bad: the visual style is really great, Rayman is a cool wholesome little dude, and the setpieces/bosses that aren't obnoxious are actually quite creative and memorable. But this was unfortunately one of the games that crossed the Bullshit Event Horizon where the isolated "bullshit" moments were so plentiful that they became my main experience with the game.

I'll get to the sequels eventually once my trauma wears off, and I promise I'll bring an open mind!

(In a testament to the unreliability of childhood memories, the awesome game I remember playing as a child was in fact Mega Man 2 and not the original Mega Man as I remembered.)

How does the grandpappy of the series hold up? It certainly looks and sounds good, and establishes plenty of the core mechanics as well as the charm that would go on to be a hallmark of the franchise. But (and I'll admit to being a casual scrub) it's simply too difficult to be fun. In an alternate timeline somewhere, this fades into obscurity and is picked up two decades later by the Angry Video Game Nerd who declares it "ASS" and shoots the cartridge with a cheap-CGI mega buster. The gameplay certainly bears all the hallmarks of fake difficulty dialed up to eleven, but I'm glad we avoided that timeline because this flawed game contained the seeds which sprouted into the far more refined Mega Man 2 and the superlative Mega Man X and I'll always appreciate it for that.

It's hard to believe that it's been almost 3 months since my last entry on here, especially given how busy I've previously been on this site. I'm no stranger to adulting, but this year finally seems to be the one where real life has started imposing itself far more - a busier work schedule, a self-imposed exercise routine, a major illness in my extended family, and a routine visit to the doctor somehow ending in emergency surgery and weeks of recovery.

It almost feels like fate - I've been slowly but steadily inching my way through a replay of this game, whose central theme is how messy life can get and how you can't turn back time and how growing up sometimes unfortunately means shedding things that bring you joy. Could this game be trying to tell me something?

...NO!

This game is a joy to play. It has some of the best graphics of its generation. The soundtrack isn't 100% bangers, but tracks such as the opening, the Farnheit theme, the battle theme (which gives me Breath of Fire 3 vibes),and the Liberation Army theme are strong enough IMO to stand with the best music Square was turning out during this period. Mechanically, this game has so much to offer - each party is made up of four characters and a dragon, so feeding dragons to raise their stats and evolve them into more powerful forms unlocks new abilities for the party tied to them, which in turn can be used to get better item drops from enemies which can then be fed to the dragons to make them stronger again. It's a really great gameplay loop with so much potential for synergy and exploration, whose weakness is perhaps the upside-down difficulty curve where the game becomes extremely easy after unlocking certain dragon forms (including one that is completely invincible!)

But Bahamut Lagoon's biggest strength - like a certain other game about a summoner princess who falls in love with one of her captors and opens the door to another world - lies in its narrative and characters. While few of the 31 characters you recruit over the course of the game are particularly deep, I always loved walking around the airship talking to them in between battles - from the gossip who updates you on the latest goings-on to the three knights who are nothing like each other but stay fast friends to the unlikely tank/wizard pairing who go from frenemies to a couple, the crewmembers interact not only with you but with each other in a very believable way, making them really feel like a close-knit group made of real people. The fact that you also realize that these people who are all fighting for a worthy cause have their foibles (and occasionally do some Really Shitty Things) does add a sense of depth to the narrative - which I'll refrain from spoiling for anyone who hasn't played it yet, but subverts some very foundational expectations about the genre and takes you to places which very few games of the era would think of going.

Pretty ironic then that this game about leaving the past behind is the one that cements my determination to keep this medium as a core part of my life. I might not be able to play as often as I did before, but I'll keep coming back. On to the next one!

Before I say anything else, I want to say that Alien Soldier is an extremely effective experience that accomplishes everything it sets out to do. However, given that backloggd scores are simply an average of user scores, I feel comfortable with giving this game a score that reflects my own level of enjoyment with it rather than a measure of its objective quality.

So much about Alien Soldier is perfect, but in a way I don't personally enjoy. Given the game's frantic pace I'm totally onboard with the weapon wheel not pausing the action, but I don't like how many frames it takes to appear - if I'm in the middle of a pitched battle I want to be like "A, left, left, go!" and not "A (wait) (get hit)". I also really dislike how getting hit by anything knocks you out of the weapon wheel. I really love your character's moveset - being able to swap firing modes a la Contra Hard Corps is a great option. Having a powerful dash attack available at full health turns your lifebar into a resource, and having the ability to turn enemy bullets into life bonuses gives you a nice risk vs. reward way of interacting with that resource. However, I prefer the way Gunstar Heroes encouraging expressivity with its large moveset, as opposed to how Alien Soldier seems to railroad the player into an optimal approach and loadout through its unforgiving time limit and with some weapons simply not working against some bosses. Also, while I'm no stranger to difficult games, I prefer games that gradually ease you into the masochism (see Rabi-Ribi and Contra) rather than throw you into the deep end of a hydrochloric acid pool like Alien Soldier does.

Then again, I did finish it! Alien Soldier is proof that games don't need to be fair as long as they are motivating - many of the challenges seemed downright mean-spirited, but the combination of the stellar presentation and tight gameplay kept me soldiering on. Alien Soldier is perfect for certain profiles of players: gamers in the 90s who would generally persevere far longer on games they bought, and people willing to sink a sizable amount of time into a challenge that brings supreme satisfaction to surmount. If you're not one of those people - say a casual scrub like me - too bad. Like the fabled honey badger, Alien Soldier doesn't care; it invites forces the player to play on its terms, take it or leave it. In my case, the terms were "I'll stomp your scrotum into the ground like a cigarette butt, then make you swallow your pride and select SuperEasy mode, then continue stomping anyway". And while my personal reaction to completing the game was "oh thank heavens, I feel so satisfied but I don't think I'll play this again", its general reception and average score vindicate it - I completely understand why this is a favorite of so many people on here!

Would that more games gave as few shits as Alien Soldier.

I can't believe EA came up with something so original!

There is so much I love about this game, and the parkour mechanics are a good place to start. The moveset is intuitive and tight, the controls mostly feel smooth, and the first-person camera manages to viscerally capture the 'feel' of parkour for a couch potato like me to enjoy, alternating between being exhilarating and vertigo-inducing. You also know that a game mechanic is effective when it starts to bleed over into your real-life experiences, and that's what happened here; Faith's instinct and insight on how to get around the environments is represented in-game as various key objects being highlighted in red, and when I went out after a particularly long play session I walked a path I'd walked many times before and noticed some pipes and AC units I'd never paid attention to before.

The aesthetic and character designs are great - I particularly like that Faith is a badass Asian female lead who they didn't sexualize at all, and her design reminds me somewhat of a modern-day Ayame from the Tenchu series (another of my favorite characters). But let's be real here, the best 'character' in the game is the city itself. A dystopia in utopian make-up, with its beautiful skylines and starkly sterile colors (even the plants look more white than green!), with buildings everywhere but seemingly no one in them but cops, the City of Glass takes on a life all of its own. The design of the city parkour sections is incredible, and while there is a key that you can use to point yourself in the direction of your end goal, the level layout does a really good job at subtly directing your eyes towards where you need to go anyway!

This makes it all the more a shame that some aspects of the game just feel 'off', for lack of a better word. The fact that this game was so unique and fresh makes a certain lack of polish inevitable, but I can't pretend it didn't affect my general gameplay experience. For one, certain moves were rather unreliable; wall-running is rather finicky, and there were plenty of sequences in the final act of the game which required near-perfect wallrunning in order to progress. The difficulty curve was all over the place, which I can excuse, but the placement of checkpoints didn't seem very well thought-out. One particular moment stands out to me where I must have died and retried dozens of times: I pressed a button to open a door (which took about 5 seconds to open), walked through the door and was killed within 5 seconds, and was sent back to before the button press, ending up in a very unpleasant loop of playing five seconds and waiting five seconds.

I also feel, given the game's laserlike focus on parkour, that it could have leaned even more into it. Just prior to the final act, the game made a big deal about introducing a new enemy type - a parkour cop that could follow you around the rooftops - and that idea was strangely underutilized in favor of a more action-based final act that mostly took place indoors and shone an unwanted spotlight on the game's gunplay mechanics which are functional but not much more.

As a final point, I wish the game weren't so linear in the paths it sets out for you. There are of course different ways to tackle the various obstacles, and the robust parkous mechanics lend themselves to all kinds of insane speedrun strats. But there are almost no instances of branching paths to get from Point A to Point B, and it really kills the illusion of freedom for me. I'm aware that it's sequel/reboot somewhat botched the transition to open-world, but I would have loved some form of open-world mode in this game because the moment-to-moment gameplay was so good.

The relative failure of the sequel, combined with a seeming lack of spiritual sequels, mean that Mirror's Edge still feels fresh 14 years later, but also means that (AFAIK) we don't have a game that transplants the wonderful spirit of this game into a more refined experience. Mirror's Edge is one of a kind, both for better and for worse.

(PSA! I nearly gave up on this game due to motion sickness at first. If you have the same problem, switch graphic quality to 'low' and remove the reticle - it saved my playthrough and I hope it helps someone!)

Having gotten into Metroidvanias earlier this year, I finally (belatedly) got to experience this slice of gaming history and it didn't let me down; it really does so many things excellently.

The areas are full of character, no doubt helped by the moody and atmospheric score - I wouldn't exactly call it 'lore', but each area tells its own story, the highlight for me being a derelict ship whose power you need to restore in order to fully explore it. The auto-mapping function is very welcome here, and makes the game seem much younger than its 28 years of age. Perhaps most relevantly for the genre that it helped to name, the upgrade system is superb. The gradually-expanding moveset functions not just as a series of keys to unlock more of the world; they really convey a sense of both Samus getting stronger and the player getting more skilled. By the end of the game, Samus has a large and versatile moveset that you will generally have very good control over due to being drip-fed new abilities rather than force-fed them all at once.

With so many cool new abilities to unlock and play with, it's a bit ironic that the mechanic that probably gave me the most grief was the most bread-and-butter one of all: the jump. I can probably point at least one finger at myself for a lack of skill, but I found the momentum on Samus' somersaults extremely difficult to nail down, and this made certain platforming segments drag on way too long, with a single mis-aimed jump necessitating backtracking and a do-over. I also often found myself wishing for a slightly more zoomed-out perspective - it would have been easier to orient myself making exploration smoother, would have given me more time to react to hazards and reduced the number of blind jumps I had to make.

These niggling issues do little to tarnish the brilliance of the overall product, and I feel like they would be less significant on repeat playthroughs. Between its obvious merits, its relatively short runtime and its forgiving difficulty, this is another title I'd add to the list of games that everyone should experience at least once.

"Give me the best story told in flashbacks of a good-hearted man who inspires a musician, falls in love, goes off to fight in war, is involved in the downfall of a political leader, and is finally reunited with his son after his lover's death."

Forrest Gump

"I mean, the best story told in flashbacks of a good-hearted man who inspires a musician, falls in love, goes off to fight in war, is involved in the downfall of a political leader, and is finally reunited with his son after his lover's death."

Final Fantasy VIII

"Perfection."
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If you'll excuse the corny meme transcribed awkwardly into text, I just wanna say that Laguna is not only the true main character of FFVIII, he is the best main character in the FF series. Endearingly goofy and relatable, he also has some of the best character development squeezed within relatively little screentime (and secondhand accounts from people who've interacted with him).

And if you'll excuse me jumping excitedly from point to point, I have to draw a parallel with another movie (or book, if you prefer): Battle Royale. The entire premise of the story - addressing deliquency among the youth by sending one randomly-selected class a year over to murder island - is such monumentally stupid policy, but it's still an awesome movie because of the way it really explores the character and motivations of everyone in that class through the lens of extreme circumstances. See also exhibit B - Gantz - for a manga whose strength lies in viewing how each character copes with being called into extreme danger, and whose quality arguably plummets once a logical 'plot' starts to reveal itself.

I tend to view FFVIII's much-maligned reveal (you know the one) in much the same way as the above two examples. Ok yeah, it's contrived! But it throws the actions and personalities of every party member into sudden context. These are all orphan child soldiers (which we already knew) carrying various mental and emotional scars which they can't begin to work through because they have no memory of what scarred them in the first place. Quistis' inappropriate behavior towards Squall - and Squall's reluctance to reach out and form any kind of connection - makes more sense. As the only one who still has a memory of their orphanage days, Irvine's reluctance to shoot at Edea makes more sense. And my favorite of the bunch is actually Zell - the kid who deep down is kind of a big dorky nerd but acts loud because he also desires to be cool. He's always the first to protest when the party decides to go against orders, but Seifer knows how to play him like a fiddle ("fine, stay here. I don't want any boy scouts.") It also manifests in him being the de-facto Mr. Exposition when he's in your party, giving you plenty of information about where you're going, resulting in an (optional) subtle bit of character development from Squall who goes from "Thank you Mr Know-It-All Zell" to "I should give this guy more credit".

And that's what I like about the game - big romance aside, the character work isn't grand and sweeping and theatrical - it's just a lot of little moments that subtly shade each person's character. There's isn't a whole lot of point to much of it, but that's what the vast majority of dialogue is like anyway - a lot like what hanging out with friends is like. I do have to say that FFVIII is helped immensely by possibly being the first FF with a truly excellent localized script. It still has its blemishes, but it nails a lot of the nuances that make the subtle character work possible. This is the first time I'm playing the game as a dad, and young Ellone's no-filter "Uncle Laguna says yoo dress weird but you're a nice person!!" is 1000% something a little girl would say.

The intimate character stuff is good, but let's not ignore that the large-scale stuff is phenomenal. This is actually the first FF game I played so I could be speaking with my nostalgia shades on, but this game is probably the one with the best-directed cutscenes, perhaps ever. Practically every setpiece left me with my jaw hanging when I first played it in '99, but even now, between the beach landing at Dollet, the clash of the Gardens, the first glimpse of the city of Esthar, and the scenes on Lunar Base, I'd be hard-pressed to single one out as a favorite - perhaps the creepy Sorceress Parade, with its absolute banger of a soundtrack complete with dancers doing the moves from Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Mechanically the game is controversial, but there's a lot of fun to be had once you get to know its ins and outs - there are so many ways you can tweak your playstyle that will lead to a very different experience of the game. I just finished a self-imposed 'bigamy challenge' where each character stays with the same two randomly-chosen GFs, and it forced me to get really creative with how I approached combat - especially since only two characters had any way of boosting their strength.

Finally, I love FFVIII's world and its lore. It doesn't spell everything out, but you do have access to a ton of optional information that adds context to what you're doing. And - fitting for a game that is all about fate - almost everything is connected to everything else, just waiting for you to talk to the right person and make the right connection. The fact that the movie starring Laguna as the sorceress' knight is the inspiration for Seifer's romantic dream - and ostensibly the reason he uses a gunblade - is something I only caught this time, and the game is all the richer for it.

I know that this review overlooks a lot of flaws - but I know they exist. Perhaps the best way to summarize the issues with the game is that it's kind of a mess. The writing, the pacing, the mechanics, the way the lore is presented - it's all kinda messy. But it's a mess with heart, it's a mess with substance, it's a mess that - like its characters - reveals more and more layers as you peel away the surface, and its a mess that does so many things so exceptionally well that I can't help but love it.

FFVIII is one of the very few games that I've done a complete 360-turn on. The flashy graphics and fantastic cutscenes made a huge impression on me at first. Then for a while I found the game to be rather cringe, the mechanics needlessly complex, and the game generally unrefined compared to its cousins. After four completed playthroughs, the 360-degree turn is complete: it sits second on my list of favorite FF games, a position that is entirely subjective but also entirely earned.

Against my introverted self's better judgment, a week or so ago I went to a dinner party hosted by a good friend. I arrived a little late, and by the time I walked in, everyone was crowded around the TV playing Puyo Puyo against each other. "Yo Iyellatcloud!" someone calls out. "Have you played Puyo Puyo before?"

"No," I say. "But I've played Mean Bean Machine..."

"I don't know what that is. But you should try playing Puyo!" A controller is thrust into my hand, and 30 seconds later I've hit a 4-hit combo and won. (and then everybody clapped...) Everyone takes turns trying to challenge me, and the closest I come to losing is when the most experienced Puyo player dumps junk all over half my playing area, but I manage to calmly clear it all and pull off the comeback.

"I don't get it!" she says. "How are you kicking everyone's ass if you've never played Puyo before?"
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At this point I'd like to take a detour to rank the opponents in Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine in ascending order of punchability.

- Grounder (Stage 8): My favorite badnik from AoStH because of his Inspector Gadget powers, it's kinda hard to dislike his goofy voice. He even cries when he loses, the poor thing.
- Arms (Stage 1): The mandatory easy first opponent, he looks like a chill fella; I'd have a beer with him.
- Humpty (Stage 3): Another slightly adorable little doof.
- Coconuts (Stage 4): His "winning" face is kinda annoying, he might rank higher on this list if not for the fact that you won't see it much because his AI is a joke.
- Sir Ffuzzy-Logik (Stage 10): Not particularly likeable, not particularly punchable; kinda generic.
- Frankly (Stage 2): Very annoying and punchable "winning" face... and it only gets worse from here.
- Davy Sprocket (Stage 5): Frankly v2.0. Never trust anyone who smiles that much.
- Spike (Stage 9): Augh, what a snot nose. He looks like the stereotypical fat bratty kid that bullies the protagonist in every children's book/movie.
- Dr Robotnik (Stage 13): The big man himself. Not quite S-tier levels of annoying, but when he starts winning his moustache takes on a life of its own and it gets really distracting flipping up and down. His "HUAHUAHUAHUA" when you lose against him is worth some extra points on its own.
- Dynamight (Stage 7) - The most shit-eating "winning" face on this list so far.
- Dragon Breath (Stage 11) - Now we're entering the S-tier of punchability. This prick looks more like a pig than a dragon, and his "winning" face looks... perverted. He looks like he's ogling at girl dragonpigs while he's beating you at Puyo and it's utterly infuriating.
- Scratch (Stage 12) - "I'm winning this one by fair means or fowl." How apt that his entire thing is chicken-related puns because this guy is a gigantic cock. Puts on an extremely skeevy smirk when he's in the lead - real "you can't touch me, do you know who my dad is?" vibes here. Also, he has teeth. WHY DOES A CHICKEN HAVE TEETH
- Skweel (Stage 6) - The champion, nay, Grand Master of Punchability. This damn cylindrical purple pig on wheels already has the most aggravating smile, but when he's in the lead he starts swinging back and forth like a giant purple dick. Can you imagine trying to focus on the falling-block puzzle with this self-satisfied pig face is flopping back and forth in your peripheral vision?
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Ahem, back to the story.

"I keep winning," I tell my friend, "Because you honed your skills against cutesy anime characters, and I honed mine against a giant swinging purple dildo." Well, I didn't say that because it would have led to more questions than answers, but that just added to my mystique.

Mean Bean Machine is essentially nothing more than a Puyo Puyo reskin, but through its wonderfully expressive and smug smarmy character designs it manages to be a far better teacher than Puyo Puyo, by harnessing the power of hatred. Back when I was in middle school and before I could buy alcohol, there was nothing more addictive than finally wiping the bloody smirk off each opponent's face, and I trained tirelessly to that end. It's been many years since I last touched Mean Bean Machine, but I can still beat most people at Puyo Puyo, and a quick playthrough has shown that I can still beat Easy and Normal modes within 1-3 credits. The principles of planning ahead and setting up good combo strings have been seared into my subconscious by the sweaty pigdragon perv.

Thank you, Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, for giving me an extremely niche life skill and briefly making me a celebrity. All it cost me was some longstanding unresolved anger issues.

In my younger days, my impression of 90s Japanese horror/thriller movies is that they went all-in on atmosphere, sometimes at the expense of plot. A tad reductive, but I think there's some truth to it - and that quality is evident in this matriarch of Survival Horror. The 'creepy mansion' vibes are immaculate, and the idea of using the main character's psychological state in lieu of a health bar is a masterstroke. Even the game's slow pacing adds to the atmosphere, with your character's slow walk cycle emphasizing her frailty, but also the long stretches of time without running into Scissorman ratcheting up the tension, something akin to the panic that sets in when you realize your kids in the next room are being abnormally quiet...

With vibes like these, I'm totally willing to put up with the slow gameplay and the relative lack of ways to evade/hide from Scissorman. However, I feel like the game is extremely skimpy on lore. The point-and-click interface is the perfect medium for making every object and room tell a story, and it seems quite underutilized, even accounting for details getting left out in the fan-translation. While it is possible to piece together everything that's going on in the mansion through contextual clues, it will typically take a few playthroughs, and that's more than enough time for the atmosphere to wear out its welcome.

Endings unlocked: S/C/D/G

(beat all leagues on beginner and standard)

When I was young, I played this at a friend's house prior to our families going on a road trip together. I was absolutely terrible because I never took my finger off the accelerate button ("slowing down is for the weak", I reasoned) and couldn't finish any of the races except for Mute City 1; still, it was enough of a vibe that I ended up playing Mute City again and again. We then went on the road trip and I proceeded to annoy the everloving shit out of everyone by singing the Mute City theme for the entire duration of the trip.

F-Zero has many of the same annoyances that I've savaged other early racing games (see Road Rash and Super Mario Kart) for: wonky collision physics that seem to always work in the AI's favor, rubberbanding, invulnerable opponents, and a Grand Prix mode that doesn't let you continue if you don't place in the Top 3, walling some interesting tracks behind bullshit ones.

However, unlike those games, F-Zero is at its heart an extremely solid pure racer. This is - at least in part - down to the vibes, but also due to the smooth controls and excellent physics (with the noted exception of when cars crash into each other). The devs made the very wise choice of working within the system's technical requirements and making every track on a flat plane, which ensured a very good draw distance, especially compared with its contemporaries.

Also, instead of leaning into the 'versus' style of gameplay like other casual racing games, F-Zero feels more like a time-attack game with a GP mode thrown in as a bonus. There's too much bullshit for me to even think about completing any of the Grands Prix on expert mode, but there's something therapeutic and satisfying about roaring round the tracks on Practice.

brb off to annoy my wife by singing Mute City again

When I was a really small kid and the youngest in my extended family, I remember crowding into a room with my relatives to watch my cool older cousin play this game for the first time.

"You're a spaceship?!"
"Watch out for the flying caterpillars!"
"Are those big pink things enemies too?"
"Don't crash into the ground!"
"Wait... can you even crash into the ground?"

Then my cousin moved Opa Opa the sentient spaceship towards the ground... and he sprouted little feet and started walking around. The room erupted in laughter. Then we all took turns at the controller - I lasted all of ten seconds, but that was enough. Pandora's Box had been opened and kid-me was now a Gamer with a capital G.

It's definitely awkward to play by modern standards; the slippery controls, large hitbox and lack of mercy invincibility when starting a level or exiting the shop menu are indicative of an era when games as a whole were still figuring these things out. But the aesthetic and soundtrack are definite plus points, and the ability to buy upgrades at shops add a nice little layer of strategy to the gameplay loop (I wish you were able to save weapons for later when you needed them most though). And the very first game I ever played is deserving of at least some nostalgia points!