This is easily the most ambitious Adventure Island game. Adventure Island 4 (only for Famicom!) comes close by being a Metroidvania, but this goes even further than that by adding small RPG elements like random encounters on the overworld and several sets of armor and weapons. Between these things and the magic spells you can collect, you could say there's a lot of Zelda 2 influence.

This is definitely my favorite Adventure Island game. It's pretty much a great game, the actual design is quite fun. But it does feel a little undercooked, or at least under-budget. The graphics are somewhat lacking for a late SNES game. The backgrounds can be a little ugly and sparse, and the animation is noticeably limited. The game transitions between areas by abruptly cutting to black, which feels really cheap, and every scene change takes a few seconds to load in which is very unusual for a Super Nintendo game. When you kill a boss, the screen cuts to black and then it drops you back in the room but with the treasure spawning in. I don't remember running into any bugs that actually messed with the gameplay, but all of these things give the vague feeling that this game is held together by duct tape, which is an odd impression for a 16-bit adventure game of this scope to leave.

This is still a unique and enjoyable game, and the music is great. I just wish it'd been a little more polished.

The longer you play Dragon Quest III, the more you really come to appreciate just how far the game took the burgeoning JRPG genre. The class system is great with long-term payoff. Having stats be halved when changing classes is especially genius, giving real weight to that decision. There are much more unique and interesting scenarios in each town, and the main story overall feels more involved with some awesome, even emotional plot twists. And of course, the graphics and music are really nice.

It's still an 8-bit RPG, which means it's still grindy (but not nearly as bad as DQ2 by the end) and lacking QoL features that became common sense in the 16-bit era. Remakes address this, but the fundamental game design still has some cryptic moments later on, even with all the NPC hints in mind. I couldn't fully relax and fall in love with DQ3, but it's still quite an inspired game. The endgame was especially great, and further elevated this game as something special. Maybe the Super Famicom version of Dragon Quest III is where it's really at.

It's cool that they tried to make a platform adventure game early on, but Konami's first attempt with Vampire Killer sucked. The levels loop forever until you find the key which is such an annoying way to do this type of game. Maybe if the levels were closed off instead of looping so they made more sense to navigate, it could actually be kind of fun to navigate them...but it's not. It's nice that it has the graphics and music from the NES version more or less, but they're terribly downgraded and the game can't even scroll between screens because it's for the MSX. Save your time on a better game.

The presentation of Brutal Legend gets everything right as far as a metal-themed video game goes. The soundtrack rocks, and they even got Ozzy and Lemmy in on this! But I found the actual gameplay to be quite middling and couldn't get past the second-to-last level. The game's attempt at genre mashup was ambitious, with the driving hubworld and overall hack and slash + RTS style at least being an interesting experiment, but really I think a more straightforward action style would've done this concept more justice and probably been more fun. It also doesn't help that the game's audio mixing was totally fucked up for me unless I made sure to update to a version that was more recent than the launch game, but not the most recent version, which is especially egregious for a game whose primary appeal is its connection to a genre of music. I recommend that metalheads check this game out but otherwise feel free to skip.

I thought this would be derivative of Zelda 1 in the natural sense that it's an early top-down open world action/adventure game, but it's a pretty direct ripoff. From the moats to the staircases to the Keese and Stalfos to the enemies spawning in as puffs of smoke when you scroll onto a screen, the game constantly says "Hey, Sega can make Zelda too!" The only real distinguishing qualities this has over Zelda 1 are magic spells, more NPCs, only having one weapon/item button, and a greater emphasis on environmental traps in dungeons.

Despite being blatantly unoriginal, it's actually kinda fun. The world map is too big for a game so repetitive, though, and a bit confusing. This game is decently well made, but I only recommend it if you really like Zelda 1 and want something else like it.

Comix Zone epitomizes Genesis style with its macho 90s comic aesthetic, hard rock soundtrack, and challenging action-packed gameplay. The combat feels very good thanks to strong animations, and the puzzles are very simple but satisfying. The makings of a truly great game are there, but unfortunately Comix Zone is also really short and compensates for it by not giving you any lives or checkpoints, making health items scarce, and throwing some harsh beginner's traps at you. I'm never gonna be able to beat this but I still admire it quite a bit.

Like Chakan: The Forever Man, this is a Genesis game with an awesome atmosphere that's just terrible to actually play. Aesthetically, this is among the most interesting games of the 16-bit era. I love the somewhat cryptic dialogue, the claustrophobic feel, the eerily beautiful blue ocean, and the engrossing Sega CD soundtrack. I understand the game goes in a more horror direction as it goes on, which seems really cool, but I'd never be able to make it that far because Ecco does not control that well (especially in tight spaces, i.e. seemingly most of the game past the intro area), the camera seems to move a bit overzealously, and the levels aren't especially fun to navigate. What a waste of awesome potential.

There's a part in the first level where in order to progress to the end, you have to spam grenades really fast or you die pretty instantly. It's a beginner's trap and a serious red flag for a game, but when you die you spawn pretty close by, so it's not that bad. I love the Terminator movies and this definitely does capture the pitch-black atmosphere of the dark future in the first film. The game features clips from the movie, crunched to hilariously bad Sega CD FMV quality.

The music is seriously outstanding, and you can go straight to the options and listen to all the songs, which even have titles. You don't even have to bother with the game to listen to the music, isn't that great?