I wanted to like this one more than I did, but it was still a good enough time. Well, until it stopped being fun near the end. But hey, I enjoyed most of it!

GOOD:

-The world and characters. Really like the style of this game, a lot of fun personality. Especially like the two main character designs. Oh, and the Garbage Grump.

-The music is pretty good! I dunno if I’m gonna be remembering them much now that I’m done, but I was enjoying them while I was playing.

-Well thought out platforming challenges. Whether or not you LIKE them is a different story, but a lot of thought was put into designing them. Definitely a game for fans of hardcore platforming challenges.

STUFF I DIDNT LIKE TOO MUCH:

-Conveyance. Maybe it’s just me, but I felt like I was lost in this game more than once.

-The camera. Boy do I hate this camera. If I’m trying to look around, find where to go, or even do some of the demanding platforming this game asks of you, I don’t want my camera snapping back where it was. Got extremely annoying by the end.

-Some of the later platforming challenges are just not fun. At all. I feel like the later parts of the game knocked this game down a whole star for me.

-The length. So, this is a short game, instead of having multiple worlds, it’s really just a handful. I’m fine with that idea, but you spend the majority of the game in just one of these worlds. A lot. Like, a LONG time. I was sick of this world by the end. I was getting pretty bored with it. On the other hand, I feel like if this game were longer, the problems I have with it would be WAY more annoying. So I dunno, I feel like they don’t really use their time very well. Again, maybe it’s just me.

So yeah. I dunno! I wish I could’ve enjoyed it more, but still a good time.

As someone who loved Sea of Stars enough to Platinum it, I'm sad that The Messenger didn't win me over in the same way. Instead I was mostly really annoyed that this game's plot connections to Sea of Stars were the exact opposite of a cinematic payoff. Sure, all the shared locations and music were really cute, but all of the villains that stepped through a portal and walked out of the plot of Sea of Stars all just come back as pretty generic demon monsters and that's a little irritating.

It genuinely adds nothing to know that the Demon King was once four reoccurring minibosses and a Dweller glued together by the Fleshmancer for the shits 'n' giggles. The villain who would later become Barma'thazël has his memory wiped so nothing about this character carries over between games beyond his facial hair. Could've just let me defeat all those guys in the RPG I was playing earlier instead of playing Keep Away.

Narrative connection gripes aside, it is what most people say - The Messenger's first half is probably the best Ninja Gaiden clone you'll ever hope to play with a gorgeous sprite art and soundtrack, an absolute delight of a 2D platformer that plays well and gives the player enough of a toolbox to do sick endless jumps through their environment...and then it decides to be a mediocre Metroidvania and just piss away your time with obnoxious backtracking as you comb the map for shiny things while Quarble is eating your time shards and making rude calls to your mother.

The Metroidvania part really is the iron shackle chained to The Messenger's ankle that drags the whole game down. The level designs in this game are not a one-size-fits-all for both pure 2D Ninja Gaiden bliss and explore-y, backtrack-y Metroidvania-ing. Scarce checkpoint placement that's forgivable for a tough action game becomes an absolute slog if I have to explore the same long stretch of map over and over again for a fetch-quest. Howling Grotto and Searing Crags in particular were revisited a good 4-5 times during my Platinum run and I was starting to get really bored of gliding through the same air vents over and over and over.

It's a shame too, because after you choke down the second half's backtracking like a leftover turkey sandwich and get all the magical MacGuffins, you're rewarded with an amazing final level that times the environmental hazards to the music, reminding you of the game that The Messenger could've been from start to finish.

Despite all of that, I'd say it's a decent game. It has extremely high highs but then trips and sprains its ankle for a couple hours because it needed that cool little hook to set it apart from its retro contemporaries. I stuck around long enough to Platinum it too; I just miss the cool game that it was until it decided to become tedious.

I had heard pretty bad things about Tonic Trouble through the years. When a friend of mine started playing through it, I figured I should give it a go as well.

And… yeah, it’s not GOOD, but I mean, I guess there’s way worse.

Controls are clunky, the camera is pretty good awful, there’s some obtuse level and puzzle designs here and there. Flying takes a LOT of getting used to. I adapted to it eventually, but it took a bit. Boy, I really wish that pogo stick move was more interesting.

But hey, it looks nice! Lots of charm in the character designs and world. So it wasn’t a miserable time. Just a not very good one.

But hey, it would pave the way for Rayman 2, a much better game, so hey! It wasn’t all bad!

This game is kinda BASED actually??

Let me start off by saying I actually really like the red and black Virtual Boy look. Sure it can be grating when staring at it a long time, but I think it’s a cool look.

This is my second Wario Land game, and honestly, I enjoyed it a lot. More than the first one even! Something fun about having to make your way back to the top floor of the Awazon cave. Perfect middle ground of not too hard and not too easy. I loved that each floor of the cave was a different theme and it wasn’t just “cave level” for each one. Great designs for the bosses.

It was just a fun, pleasant time. Loved it!

Solid remake for a solid game

Missed opportunities to fix the issues that originated from Adventure (getting hit once being enough to lose an ability). I was fine with the limitation in the first 4 worlds but world 5 onward it got annoying.

Good game overall though, I prefer it over the original.

F-Zero was one of the Super Nintendo's launch titles, meant to not only showcase the console's capability with Pseudo-3D graphics. thanks to its Mode 7 technology, but also showcase high-speed gameplay with the Mode 7.

F-Zero is a very simple racing game. You got 15 tracks (5 on each league), 3 difficulty levels, 4 vehicles to choose from, and you only really get two options to choose from: Grand Prix, the main mode of the game; and Practice, which is exactly what you think it is.

Unlike many other racing games at the time, the original F-Zero does not contain a multiplayer mode. It's a pure single-player game, and that's a bit lame, but I think I can understand why, limitations at the time, and stuff like that.

What we got is a fast-paced, and hard racing game. This game is so hardcore, that you only have a set number of lifes, and after you lose all of them, you gotta restart from the beginning of the entire league.
It also has a health-bar for your vehicle, and after you lose it, you go kaboom! and lose one of your lifes.

Early on, when you're playing through the Knight League, I'd say the game isn't so hard. Mute City I and Big Blue are good beginner stages that help you ease into the game's controls and physics.
Then Sand Ocean teaches you how important it is to briefly break your speed, and use the L and R buttons to make sharp turns.

And I'd say that the game's difficulty evolves quite naturally from there. While it is a bit disappointing to always start with a Mute City course in each league, they're good warm-up tracks for what's to come in the rest of that league.

But I think things start to get quite difficult with Port Town II, the third to last track in the King League (the hardest league in the game). While it is natural for a track that late into the game to be so hard, the reason why I found it too difficult was because of how narrow the stage was, and how frequent it is for other F-Zero machines to bump into you, which grinded my gears plenty.

Thankfully, the track that came afterwards, Red Canyon II, was much more comfortable, and had a pretty cool, although tricky, shortcut.
And Fire Field, the final track, is pretty hard, but I'd say it's a bit less annoying than Port Town II, but be prepared to get hit... a lot... and also die a lot.

But after that... that's it. If you want, you can do the stages again but on a harder difficulty, but I'm like "fuck that", but besides that, there's not much to do. It's a bit lackluster when it comes to modes, but the overall gameplay loop is pretty fun!

F-Zero is a nice series' first game, even in spite of the lack of content.