I rented Sonic Spinball a lot as a kid, and even back then I recognized it as being kinda awful. It was sheer stubbornness that kept me playing, attempting weekend after weekend to make it past the third level... Suddenly I'm going from collecting three chaos emeralds to five!? Fuck off!

I've been able to beat Spinball in the years since via emulation, but I've still had this nagging feeling that somehow this game - which is neither a good Sonic game nor a good pinball game - had beaten me. I decided to fix this recently and slapped down 20 bucks on a remarkably well kept CIB copy for the Genesis. It's almost like someone played this once, said "nope!" and then kept it in storage for the following 29 years. Weird. But at least now I can finally say I've beaten Sonic Spinball on actual hardware.

The 2.5 stars is almost entirely because I harbor some sick fondness for this game, like the victim of a crime who keeps visiting their assailant in jail. Sonic's weight and momentum feel like a betrayal of who he is as a character, heavy and clumsy - it's not even a good approximation of pinball physics. I've never played a virtual pinball game where it was harder to line up my shots. I'm sure they exist, but I put quite a bit of time into other pinball games of this era and Sonic Spinball remains one of the worst.

I do really like how the minigames feature characters from both the Saturday morning cartoon and The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, though. There's one where you knock Dr.Robotnik's god damn teeth out one by one, and that always stuck with me. These minigames are also dreadful to play, the ball is so squirrely that it'll likely hit a bumper immediately after being launched and go careening past your flippers and into the mile long gutter between them. It is nevertheless novel to see the 90s cartoon characters actually show up in a game.

There's also the soudntrack, which is... interesting. It's very grungy, even abrasive, yet it has its own unique charm. I bought the vinyl of it recently, so add that in with the 20 dollars I spent on the game itself and I'm out about 50 on Spinball related paraphernalia. Disgusting.

Sometimes I can't help but wonder how differently I might've turned out if I got really obsessed with Mario in the 90s instead of Sonic. Probably have a wife and kids and a good job. My life is a mess.

Finished as part of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the Nintendo GameCube.

Robot Master Order: Cut Man, Guts Man, Ice Man, Bomb Man, Fire Man, Elec Man. You go left to right (in this case, clockwise) and you use the Mega Buster on everything that's not a boss. This is the way GOD intended Mega Man to be played!

No... No that's insane. I need to deprogram myself from this psychotic way I've been playing the Mega Man games my whole life. And to do that, I'm going to play all the Mega Mens while being far more conscious of Mega's copied powers and boss weaknesses. I shall exterminate everything around me that restricts me from being the Mega Man.

The best place to start, of course, is the original Mega Man. Ok, actually that's the worst place to start. Mega Man has not held up - hell, you could say it hadn't "held up" in 1989 when Mega Man 2 released. It's rough, it's janky, and at times it's downright sloppy... but after looking up the suggested boss order and playing the game properly for the first time in my life, I found myself actually having fun. It probably helps that I'm playing this on the Mega Man Anniversary collection, which not only lets me enjoy these games on my CRT but allows me to use my new Retro-Bit LegacyGC controller as well. I am unshackled from the GameCube's shitty analog stick and no longer weighed down by the hideously cheap click of its face buttons, and it feels good.

However, having a better time doesn't make Mega Man a great game. Or even a good game. It's more like my opinion has gone from thinking it's bad to mediocre. Mega has a really strange momentum to his movement that always makes you feel like you're on ice, which needlessly complicates already precise stretches of platforming. Some level gimmicks are just irritating to engage with, like the asynchronously moving platforms in Ice Man's stage, or the vanishing blocks that appear periodically through the game but which are also in Ice Man's stage. Man, I'd like to take a torch to Ice Man, but for some reason his weakness is Elec Man's weapon? ... Alright! Strap this parka-wearing freak to the chair, no sponges, I want to watch his eyes pop.

Every level has a stretch that's just tedious to get through, like slowly climbing the ladders in Elec Man's stage while waiting for nodes to finish discharging energy. It's a snooze, but on the other end of the bullshit barometer is how frequently the game throws swarms of enemies at you that move erratically and exist to knock you into bottomless pits. Once you understand the sequence of how they spawn in, they're not a problem, but you'll probably take a few undeserved deaths until you realize how each level is paced. The most satisfying moments of the original Mega Man, the ones that clue you into why this series has endured, are when you turn a Robot Master's weakness against them, utterly dominating them after an arduous trek through their level. It feels good to turn the tables like that, but part of why it feels good in Mega Man: The First specifically is because the game is such a slog. It's like, I overcame this and I don't have to play it again. That's nice. That's a good feeling.

I don't think anyone in their right mind would recommend Mega Man as someone's first game in the series. They'd probably point you to Mega Man 2, which is far more refined and better at realizing Mega Man's core concepts. In fact, the series really owes its longevity to that game, but it's still worth looping around at some point and paying the original to appreciate the genesis of these mechanics and ideas. It definitely has worth as a novelty more than it does something you want to sit down and earnestly spend time with.

Actual boss order: Bomb Man, Guts Man, Cut Man, Elec Man, Ice Man, Fire Man.

Every unkind thing I said about TaleSpin is applicable here, only you should consider my vitriol doubled for this piece of crap. Aero the Acro-Bat is truly undeserving of even a modicum of recognition, and if I could give it zero stars I would.

Aero is a slippery unwieldy mascot platformer borne from a desperate attempt to emulate the success of Sonic and Mario. That is to say, it's just one in a slew of mediocre-to-bad platformers that the generation was rotten with. There is, however, nothing particularly remarkable about it as a game to earn it any sort of staying power the way something like Awesome Possum or Bubsy has, though I do recall it being heavily marketed in gaming magazines at the time. Perhaps that's why there's still people today who remember Aero the Acro-Bat. It's certainly why I sat down to play it, my memory of the game itself (which I rented a few times back in the day) being far more vague than those of the adverts, which featured Aero bursting through the pages, or chomping down on large letters spelling out BITE ME.

It wasn't worth the effort, and I should have known better. Some of the worst games of the 16-bit era had good spreads, after all. Aero's levels are massive and every inch of them is agonizing. The controls are horrible, and missing a jump and losing progress as a result is rage inducing. It doesn't help that your senses are assaulted with one of the most screeching, grating, eardrum bursting soundtracks ever to "grace" the Genesis' sound chip. Imagine blasting off in a canon up to some tight ropes and needing to make a very careful jump while "EEEEEEEEEEE DUHN DUHN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUHN" blasts through your speakers. They found a way to package misery in a clam shell case and sell it to children, and something about that just seems like it should be illegal to me, I don't know!

EGM awarded Aero the Acro-Bat the title of 1993's Best New Character. The press is the enemy of the people.

I think the most bewildered I've ever been about an average rating on this site is Mega Man 8 being .2 below Mega Man 7.

That might not seem like much but consider how vast the disparity is between these two games. One is this gorgeous, wonderful attempt at revitalizing classic Mega Man for a new generation without compromising on the key elements that made the series so beloved in the first place. The other is Mega Man 7, a game thrown together in three months that (while miraculously stable) was rendered dull and downright messy for it. At no point playing Mega Man 7 did I think Capcom was doing anything notable or worthwhile with the formula to justify it being an SNES game, not that rushing it to market would afford the team enough space to innovate anyway. Mega Man 8 has a soccer ball. You couldn't do that on old consoles!

Alright, I'm being somewhat facetious, but I'm not kidding when I say Mega Man 7 and Mega Man 8 represent the classic series at its wort and best, respectively. Not that I always felt that way. When I first played this game on the Mega Man Anniversary Collection way back in 2004, I hated it. I was filtered out by "jump jump, slide slide" and am adult enough now to admit it, but I was also one of those people who was very dismissive over the game due to its cutscenes. I was 16 and stuck in a sad state of mind where all the media I enjoyed - including Mega Man - had to be treated with enough self-seriousness as to not embarrass me by proxy. It's taken me almost 20 years, but I now find stuff like "doctah whywee" to be very silly and fun and part of the appeal of Mega Man 8, and to correct that with a more competent dub would be akin to stealing Mega Man's soul.

Even if you still hold some animosity towards the goofy cutscenes or the jump/slide levels (which I beat first try on four hours of sleep and energized by a single can of NOS, which means they can't be that bad), I still feel that the rest of the game is a brilliant refinement of what Mega Man was up to that point. Everything just feels better than it ever has here. You have more control over Mega Man, levels are intricate and their aesthetic design is vibrant and imaginative, and robot masters are at their peak both in terms of visual and mechanical design.

I think weapon powers in Mega Man games are at their best when they also provide distinct utility for navigation, and that basically describes every weapon in Mega Man 8. Flash Bombs can light up dark areas, Tornado Hold effectively replaces R. Coil, Thunder Claw can be used as a grappling hook, and Astro Crush serves as a powerful screen-clearer, to name a few. I paid some lip to it earlier, but I also love the soccer ball power-up. For the most part it's not terribly useful, which is kind of appropriate considering how soon you get it, but it's fun kicking that thing around and watching it ricochet all over a room and take out smaller enemies. In general, I think the weapon powers just feel really good to use against enemies, especially bosses. Tangling Clown Man up with his own limbs thanks to a well-timed Tornado Hold, or annihilating Dr.Wily's Dr. Whywee's ship with a cluster of Flash Bombs results in some pretty good feedback.

My only real complaint is with the item shop, and it's barely a complaint so much as it's a matter of personal preference. You can buy items between levels using bolts, which are few and far between and generally require some ingenuity to obtain, meaning you'll likely only be able to afford so much. Some of the ways you can augment your arm cannon are cool and upgrades to the amount of weapon energy and health you're able to recover are invaluable, but I find scouring levels for bolts to be less engaging than Mega Man X's system of locating armor parts. Not only do I feel Mega Man X is better about incentivizing exploration, but having the armor pieces reflect Mega Man's growth is more interesting visually than dropping a new icon on the second page of the inventory screen.

Honorable mention to the robot master contest submissions being shown during the end credits. It's really cute and something I wish was present in the other games, though hardware limitations understandably made that impossible or at least too difficult/compromised to be worth it. It's neat seeing them side-by-side with their final designs, which of course had to drop certain elements in order to achieve a more unified design, but they're still undeniably the same characters, and I can't imagine how cool it must've been for these kids to see their robot masters in the actual game. At the risk of treading old ground, I think it's such a shame you could never do a contest like this again.

My journey back through the classic Mega Man series is nearly over. I'm going to take a brief detour into the two fighting games included in the Anniversary collection and then wrap up with Mega Man 11, and I might give the Sega Saturn version of Mega Man 8 a shot at some point in the near future, too. I hear Tengu Man's stage is totally different and it adds two previous robot masters, and I just plain like MM8 enough to do a second playthrough just to experience those small changes.

Great game. Better than Mega Man 7. Shouldn't even be up for debate. I want to confiscate and immolate every copy of that game in existence and then subject everyone to the Mega Man 8 draft and force them to play this until they like it, and if they don't then it's straight to prison!

"We have Contra at home."

The Contra at home:




Contra Force is the one Contra sequel you likely forgot exists, mostly because it's so bland and forgettable that there's no reason to commit it to memory a second longer than it takes to say "Huh. Contra Force." Every review on this site for it is, at best, a sentence long. Nobody is willing to give this game a deep dive, really tear it apart and get into the guts of the thing, talk about its mechanical strengths and shortcomings. Or, rather, they can't because there just ain't much to talk about. Have you ever played a NES run-and-gun with really bad slowdown? Congrats, you've played Contra Force.

I have the most words logged on this site for Contra Force and it was just to tell you why nobody ever talks about it. I think this qualifies me enough to log this game as having been mastered, even though I absolutely did not do that.

Capcom Classics Collection Revisits #9

When Capcom Classics Collection hit the scene on PS2 a lot of us saw the three versions of Street Fighter II on there, and asked "why isn't Street Fighter 1 here?" None of us played it, but we were always curious about this piece of history to this world famous video game franchise that just suddenly started at "II". It's gotta be great right?

How naive.

Fighting Street's entire feel is shit, the characters don't move around in any smooth capacity, and just shimmy all over the place like crabs. Hits have zero impact with garbage sound effects vaguely sounding like someone dropping their rubber ducky in the bathtub. Next to no hitstun means constant button mashing, and hoping that Gen doesn't divekick you four times in a row for your whole lifebar, unless you know the special moves, which you probably do since you weren't born yesterday. Best of luck getting a hadoken or shoryuken out consistently, because it's really strict and is based on button release rather than button press. They were originally intended as hidden secret moves of sorts, which explains why one dp or tatsu can potentially kill a man in one hit.

Capcom decided to try voices with this one, but unfortunately the one guy they got to do the voices just couldn't stop munching on toffee that morning apparently.

"WHAT STWENGTH BUTDONTFOWGETDEWAFBFBFBF ALL OVAH DA WOWLD"

Probably the same one they got to play Dr. Light in MM8.

The characters for the most part are horrifically stock and stereotypical. How many people can you find who are clamoring for the return of fucking Joe the homeless guy from SF1? How about the amazing English representation in the form of the mohawked punk and the stuffy aristocrat? What about bushy eyebrows man from Japan or THE NINJA GUY? Unfortunately, I've actually seen people online who want Retsu back without any memes attached. Dorks.

It took me a while, but I beat this piece of shit after spamming DP against Sagat and managed to oneshot him two rounds in a row, lucky me. Goddamned great music here by the way, sounds like an infant Sega Genesis with whooping cough. It's kind of sad that my only reasoning for not giving this a lower score is because of reasons like "I've played worse", or that it's at least hilarious for how much of a low point it is for the series. If I played the version with the stupid pressure-sensitive buttons I'd probably rate it lower after breaking my wrist and splitting my knuckles on the cabinet controls.

I think my favorite trivia is that Capcom still tries to pull the wool over our eyes by declaring that Mike (SF1) and Balrog are different characters, because they're still afraid of Mike Tyson swimming across the pacific and beating the shit out of them for parodying him like everyone else during the late 80s/90s.

No. You can't make me approach PaRappa with any degree of objectivity.

Let me tell you what PaRappa the Rapper is.

The PlayStation was such a revolutionary console, and not just because it did 3D pretty good. It was the first significant challenge to Nintendo's vision of the industry. Sega, SNK, NEC, whoever - they were just trying to adopt the established playbook for another audience. Sony didn't want to do that. They had a reputation to uphold. They were a gateway between music, film and art into the household. They'd follow through on that trajectory on their first dedicated videogame platform. They wouldn't only seek out innovative, talented game developers in Japan, Europe and America to define the console. Music and art would need to play a substantial role in shaping the PlayStation.

Masaya Matsuura and Rodney Alan Greenblat were two weirdos who could only have been who they were in nineties Tokyo and New York. Experimenters, producing quirky little projects with no obvious utility or market, and selling them to whoever could be convinced to put them in shops. Nothing speaks to how different the PS1 was to the PlayStation brand of today more than the fact that they not only funded PaRappa's production, but published it in Japan, America and Europe.

PaRappa can't compete against the pounding thrill of modern rhythm games. Its gameplay is very rudimentary. Just copy the phrases your teacher says. The feedback on what you did right or wrong isn't well illustrated, especially since the game encourages you to experiment with your own rhythms. Buttons are displayed on a phrase bar, and there's little on-screen indication of when you're jumping to the start of a new bar. It doesn't really matter how badly you do throughout each level, as long as you nail the last couple of bars. There's a ton of trial and error in PaRappa, and I can't blame anyone for finding it too frustrating to stick with. In a way though, that's part of the charm, and that's everything that the game has going for it.

The game's sense of humour is incredibly tame, and equally weird. Visions of toilets flying out the car stereo, and the pump over here coming with a truck. It provokes a reaction from anyone, and for me at this point, it's pure love.

PaRappa is an idyllic vision of summer in young adulthood. Sitting outside the donut shop, planning birthday parties. Sitting on the hill in sunset. All incredibly innocent, benign and lovely. PaRappa's journey of being taught to repeat single phrases, until he's eventually performing entirely original phrases, on stage. It warms my heart.

You can't overlook the overwhelming sense of 1996 weirdness in its visual presentation, either. It's odd to see PS1 textures with varying line thickness at all, instead of rigid pixels, but the pre-rendered stuff invokes the game with a sense of scruffy, handmade breeziness. They've crammed as many different kinds of objects as they could into the cutscenes, with (then) high-poly, shiny models, the flat characters, low-resolution backgrounds and even a cut to live action footage of a rocket launch as PaRappa shits himself. It's fiercely distinct. Uncopyable. Other aspects of the follow-ups and rereleases have improved different aspects of PaRappa's formula, but none have come within a mile of the PS1 game's charm.

It's not a game worth taking seriously, and I love it more for that.