Listen to the soundtrack here!

With the release of Feather Park, the first real game I'd composed for, I'd talked about my raison d'etre, why I do what I do. It would be a bit redundant to go with that same topic of "I've wanted to make music for video games all my life!", so I want to try and offer a different angle to the idea of "Why do I do what I do?" - why do I make the musical choices I do, and how am I brought towards them?

As much as music is my calling, the language of art I feel the most comfortable in, it's also one of the more abstract ones when it comes to representing ideas.
I'd written in my retrospective of Feather Park that I feel that "there aren't any real answers when it comes to sound design, I think - just personal opinions and justifications on how you think your opinions will impact others' experiences."
What I hadn't mentioned there was that music isn't all that different, honestly. Compared to how two people might draw a bee spy or a cozy barn full of friends, two composers may approach each of those ideas completely differently. Sure, there are musical tropes, cliches and associations that a lot of us may choose to draw upon, but that's just that - associations.

Hive Spy Remi brought to me two challenges in that regard: How do I musically represent that this is a game about a bee, and how do I represent that it's a game about stealth?
Regarding the former, I had a discussion with Naughty Monkey - the sound designer and audio implementation wizard on the game - about what to do. I started off by bringing forward some 90's stealth games like Metal Gear Solid, Goldeneye 64 and Tomb Raider (probably stealth? I've never actually played it), and agreeing that we should soften its tone up to fit the whimsy of the characters, I found additional sources like Rayman 2 and Looney Tunes' Sheep Raider.

Those last two probably ended up being most important, informing the choices I made with both the percussion and DnB loops used in the main themes, which ended up driving the music in a way! Metal Gear Solid informed additional rhythmic sensibilities (There's a part that just takes the rhythm from MGS2's Twilight Sniping wholesale) and additional context as to what the 90's consoles were capable of when playing sequenced - and not streamed - audio.

This is in pretty stark contrast to my approach for Feather Park, where my direction very naturally found itself without explicitly relying on any reference material. (I did listen to a lot of Animal Crossing, though. I wonder if it shows at all?)
I'd remarked to myself countless times during production that I felt in over my head. Since stealth is a genre I never really partook in - neither for study nor for personal enjoyment - its musical language and the way it conveyed tension was actually quite unfamiliar to me!

Drawing so heavily from existing material makes me feel a little insecure about myself, honestly. I wonder if it's how artists may feel about heavily basing a work off of something else (albeit not tracing it wholesale). Sure, Igor Stravinsky- the composer of The Rite of Spring - has been attributed to saying that "a good composer does not imitate; he she steals,” but it sure doesn't make me feel good, you know?

Representing the bee side of the game was equally challenging, in no small part because I couldn't find anything that I felt musically represented bees besides... Flight of the Bumblebees, which is clearly not something I was interested in drawing from. (Somehow, neither I nor anyone I'd spoken to brought up Buck Bumble, though I don't think that really hits the mark either?)

I'd initially started by thinking about the buzzing of bees, and trying to represent that with flutter-tongued muted trumpet, but it quickly proved that in a stealth setting, the sound was nowhere near subtle enough anywhere but far in the background, where I simulated it using a regular muted trumpet sound with a volume filter.

From that turned into "what if I had tremolo violins for a similar but less brash effect?", which I ended up using at the very end for the title sting. Eventually, I landed on the idea of the BACH motif - embedding a name or word within a melody through the letters of its notes - which B - E - E lent itself to very easily. That was actually what it took for me to finally start writing a melody, at which point the song started taking shape.

With all this in mind, I get the impression that composing music for video games ends up as a bit of a problem-solving exercise where you're brought to consider what you need to represent through music, and you have to consider all sorts of creative ideas that sometimes will fit, and sometimes you'll just have to look for a different idea instead, but one will find you as long as you're willing to consider a wide variety of ideas and learn on the job.

That last point - "you learn on the job" - is something I've been told countless times about any position, and that's fair enough, I suppose. We can't all be completely perfectly equipped to solve any problem that's thrown at you from the get-go; no one is, and that's why it's all the more valuable that we find it in ourselves to adapt to these situations. But I can't help but worry about whether it takes me too long to accomplish that, you know? Not even just in music, but in life, there's always a part deep inside me that ruminates over "what if you're taking too long to get started; you're taking too long to learn how to get started?"

I'll have to take solace in the fact that I've gotten started, and I've put out art worth enjoying. Finishing my work on the game was still a really satisfying moment - it was the happiest I'd felt in the two weeks since I'd started working on it - and... well, at the end of the day, it's just another example of how composing music is my drive, the battery that fuels me to move forward no matter what.

So... see you on the third game!

If a review is a reflection of one's experience with a game, then it only makes sense that my review of Feather Park is a retrospective of my role on it as the sole composer and sound designer.

Since 2012, my raison d'etre was "I want to write music for video games!", and despite hanging around hobbyist circles around it for years, I never really had a real finished game to my name. I could name multiple factors - mental health, poor family life, most likely undiagnosed conditions, so on - but I've watched friends, acquaintances and strangers start from the same sort of place I began at and move on to do the very gigs I would have dreamed to score.

It always crushed me, and I'd be lying if I said I've overcome it for good with this one game. Still, the fact that I can say with complete integrity that "I wrote music for a game!" means a lot to me, as does the fact that Feather Park was the first thing to really break me out of my shell, my mental blockade of not being able to write and complete original music since my last gig, one October ago.

I'll get the gameplay out of the way first. It's a simple game jam game made in two weeks for the 2022 Cozy Autumn Game Jam - you explore a simple overworld (about eight screens), control this hat-wearing bird around to meet other animals, play their minigames or solve miscellaneous tasks to cheer them up and make friends with them. There's no text, and everything's conveyed through audiovisual context, meaning that my role as sound designer was probably a tiny bit more important than usual.

The rock-paper-scissors minigame, for example: you're supposed to figure out which the other animal is going to choose, then deliberately lose to them and give them the win.
With the deadline looming ahead of me (I'd put off sound effects for the most part until the last day of the jam) and reusing sound effects across multiple contexts being the only seemingly viable way to get everything done, maybe it was a little ham-fisted that I gave a stereotypical "incorrect" sound effect for when you, the player, win the game of rock-paper-scissors. Or maybe it's not, and maybe it was helpful that I laid it on thick that actually, winning against this creature is a bad thing.

There aren't any real answers when it comes to sound design, I think - just personal opinions and justifications on how you think your opinions will impact others' experiences. That open-endedness definitely stumped me for a lot of the more abstract sound effects: how do you represent a heart icon popping up, for example?

Music being my primary avenue, not sound, I ended up representing most of the abstract sound effects with musical elements - a jingle on mallet percussions for the heart icon, a guitar slide for question mark popups, and so on. I tend to do this kind of psuedo-Mickey Mousing a lot (my original plan was to have the main character's footsteps sync in time with the music to play a little xylophone sound, but it was too complicated), and it worked out for a silly, cozy cartoony game like this, but I wonder how I'll fare for a game that needs less of that and more synthesized, sci-fi sounds.

Getting to implement the sound effects myself within the game engine definitely helped, though, and it was a learning experience I value a lot. The developer, Jon Topielski, was happy to get me set up with the engine he was using so that I could go into the project myself in order to implement, test and tweak the sounds without going through a game of telephone. (He's a swell guy, really! I can't thank him enough for how everything turned out in the end!)

Not only did this save a lot of time avoiding said telephone game, but it meant I got to be a lot more hands-on in deciding how exactly these sounds were going to play. I felt like a real part of the game development experience, and - if I could do it once, I definitely can and would love to do it again!
Being able to say "I can do sound effects and implementation for your game" is bound to be an asset.

I guess that leaves the music. Following some mental health crises between September and March, and burnout both as a person and as a musician that had accumulated since all the way back in 2018, I spent most of the past year not really directly working on music. Most of what I did do was small experiments, tiny transcriptions and arrangements, mainly to justify the questionable amounts of money I was putting into music creation software as a means of coping with my ennui and anxiety.

It relieves me that just about every single purchase went a long way into helping this soundtrack come to life. Besides some stock percussion, and my live instruments, every single instrument in the soundtrack was from a purchase within the past year: the alto flutes in the main theme; the brush drums in both overworld and minigame themes; the jazz guitar whose sheer character lent itself so obviously to interesting chords that ended up being the backbone to the main theme; the horns on the minigame theme that I still think was the best possible value for something of its quality; even notation software I chose to write the ending theme on instead of on Logic to save myself from writing an entire grand staff piece solely on a piano roll; all of it.

It contextualizes my purchases as an investment, something I've committed to so that I can now just focus on getting the music written the way I want to instead of coveting over tiny, negligible upgrades because I'd chosen to cheap out on my equipment. As long as music's being made with them, I think I'll be alright - and especially as long as I'm writing music for video games with them just like I have here.

I guess I could tell my ten-years-ago self now:

"Hey! You know how you've always wanted to write music for a game? I've done it!"

"It took you so long? And it's just a non-commercial game jam game?"

"I know. I fear I might have taken too long to get here all the time. But I've gotten at least to where I have so far, so from here, I might as well appreciate what progress I've made and promise to myself to go further, as far as I can, and be proud of where I get."

"..."

In April 2013, my nine-years-ago self recorded a record scratch sample. I don't remember where I recorded it from, but I know that I could dig for a higher-quality version of the same sample in one of my virtual synths. On September 22th, I briefly considered doing that - but it would take too much time to look for when a version of the sample was right there in my hands already.

Was this a present I made to myself nine years ago, like a time capsule? A little something to make my life just a tiny bit easier down the road? Who knows. I had no idea where my life was going to be in nine years, and I definitely couldn't imagine it would be where it is now.

"Thanks, Can of Nothing," I said to myself, and inserted "KorgRecordScratch.wav" into the FailedMinigame node.
"I won't let your efforts go to waste. I'll write for more games, I promise."

I should note that as a proofreader credited in the game, my perspective is inevitably a bit biased. Still, I think Post-Disclosure, Devil's Night is full of colorful writing, good imagery, and a really good grasp on depicting emotion in every scene.

It's a short read, and I think it's cozy and with much to relate to one way or another for many of us whose friendships are forged online more often than off these days.

All in all: I'm glad this exists. If you're reading this, whoever you are, go create some art! I'll love to see it.

Between Super Mario Kart and Sonic R, I think I've been fairly lenient on janky, poorly aged mascot kart racers, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that I'd extend that generosity towards my feelings towards Pac-Man World Rally.
But it doesn't earn that generosity in any aspect. The two aforementioned games triumph in areas that Pac-Man World Rally could only ever dream about.

Think about how Super Mario Kart's locales are either set directly on Dinosaur Land, such as Donut Plains and Chocolate Island, or draw heavily from it, such as how Vanilla Lake evokes the Vanilla Dome and Soda Lake, and how the Ghost Valley draws from the many ghost houses and Sunken Ghost Ship.
Sonic R, while not directly drawing as heavily on any one existing Sonic game, still makes fantastic use of familiar environments and themes while being completely in line with the visual and level design philosophies of the official games before it, arguably enhancing them in some ways.

The key result of all this is that Super Mario Kart ends up feeling very solidly and confidently Super Mario, and Sonic R the same to Sonic the Hedgehog - their identities as games are strengthened by their faithfulness and authenticity to their source material, in a way that extends not just to aesthetics but even in moment-to-moment gameplay design as well.

It's this aspect that Pac-Man World Rally completely drops the ball on in every way except for its great musical score. What on earth are these Pac-Bombs that mimic Mario Kart's shell in every way - including their color scheme - and why are they?
Mario's shells actually connect back to their associations in his home series, with Green, Red and Blue shells translating decently accurately to their personalities in the platformers.
By mindlessly bringing them over without any context, Pac-Man World Rally declares its source material it draws from is in fact its greatest competitor, which begs the question as to why you wouldn't play Double Dash instead of it.

Which is... not entirely true, actually. An effort was made, if you'll believe me! The Snowman that freezes enemies? Would you believe me if I told you that was a power-up from the 1983 Pac & Pal that I'm pretty sure me and five other people ever played?
You could argue that's a coincidence, but it absolutely isn't - Pac-Man World Rally borrows sound effects from it and Super Pac-Man, and it's fairly evident that the game did some amount of research within the entire Pac-Man series that extended beyond the Pac-Man World's rather trivial, superficial handlings of Namco's legacy.

So out of all the things that they would choose to reference, why was the only real thing they brought over an obscure power-up from an obscure video game? It's outright baffling.
Battle Mode actually does try to go a little further by weaponizing the bonus fruit from the original Pac-Man, a concept that Super Smash Bros. would later perfect, but it comes across as either a little half-hearted, or at the very least, half-baked. Smash's idea of giving each fruit very deliberate functions for different roles and situations seems absent, and... I mean, what on earth are some of these fruit? I think Pac-Man's set of the cherry, strawberry, orange, apple, melon, Galaxian, bell and key are fairly iconic - so what on earth is a watermelon doing here? Was that a kiwi I just saw? Why lemons?

And why is that design mentality not in the main game? Let's go back to the Pac-Bombs for a second. Even if we decide that okay, there's literally no other way to handle Mario Kart's system of tiered projectiles than a bomb, hear my opinion out:
- The bombs that just go on a set trajectory should be either orange or cyan. I think orange is a better pick to reference Clyde's non-committal approach to targeting his enemy, but I think you could make a valid argument about Inky.
- The bombs that navigate around the track to target an enemy should be pink. What is Pinky if not tactical and strategic around navigating a space to target an enemy?
- The bombs that target first place specifically should be red to reference Blinky and his persistence towards chasing Pac-Man.

That's the very minimum I'd ask from the game. Really. That doesn't even start to cover things like the Steel Ball from Pac-Man World! Or the Super Pellet from Super Pac-Man! Or the magical boots from Pac-Land! Or the sheer amount of references they could draw from other legacy Namco repertoire--

When I started writing this review, I expected to have very little to say about Pac-Man World Rally, to say that "it's just boring, there's no merit to it". But no - the more I write, the more Pac-Man World Rally irks me. It's a game that's absolutely unengaging to play (what references there are to the source material are cute but inconsequential at best - fruit gates like the first Pac-Man World - or just straight up obnoxious - like the Pac-Dots), but frustrating to think about.

Adam Neely said - paraphrased from The Music You Hate - that what most inspires antipathy is that which would normally instill empathy, but has fallen short to the point of feeling insincere. Pac-Man World Rally is that for me. I don't hate a lot of games - I casually dislike a lot of games, but I don't actively despise a lot of them.

Had I not thought to write about Pac-Man World Rally, my relationship with it would have ended with a nonplussed "meh".

But I decided to write about it, and thanks to it, I now find myself saddled with unnecessary... feelings.

I think it speaks volumes that Evoland lets you unlock loading times and longer, drawn out chest animations just because Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time did them respectively, without the slightest interest in making any meaningful commentary about it.

Over the past few months, the Ys series has found itself quickly moving up the ranks of my favorite video game series. Considering how much I feel nostalgia plays a role in my preferences and biases, the fact that this series of games have been so increasingly on my mind is remarkable - even moreso when you consider that before Ys Origin, I had played Ys VIII, which has become one of my favorite games, but... also Ys I through III, which can only really be described as "aged quite poorly".

I'm not honestly sure why I chose to start with the series with the first two games. Even though I admire them far more than the likes of Dragon Quest and Hydlide, they still have their shortcomings. There's much I could write about the two games, but this is a Ys Origins writeup, isn't it?

I think the most relevant point to address is that for the story that the entire series is named after, Ys I and II have fairly underwhelming, rudimentary storytelling that completely undermines its significance. Foreshadowing the two retellings that would come after (Oath at Felghana and Memories of Celceta), Falcom decided to expand on the story and scope of Ys by...

Making a prequel? I'm honestly very torn as to how I feel about it. On one hand, I really would have liked to see the original duo of games fully reimagined like the two aforementioned retellings, with their story expanded, taking into account what came after, bridging some things and setting up others, and... I won't lie, I would have liked to see Adol get more time with Reah, Feena and Lilia.

On the other hand, I can't really complain about what they did end up doing! The expanded story of the land of Ys really helps contextualize basically every single thing that happened in the first two games (it doesn't hurt that Origin is drenched in tribute and homage to them), and having protagonists who actually talk leads to a lot of room for charming character development that resolves (...in each of their playthroughs, at least) their own self-contained story arcs, told and completed through the course of one game.

It's something that the numbered Ys games understandably shy away from, because Adol's story arc is deliberately unfinished, and considering the premise that we've only seen nine out of what might be a hundred of his travelogues so far, I assume Falcom would be hesitant about this kind of active character-based storytelling for him. Still, it's a refreshing change of pace! I was engaged by every second of Ys Origin's storytelling, enough to go through three whole trips of the tower.

Right. The tower. The location that the entirety of the game is set in, the one that you can't leave as any character at any circumstance. I think this design affects Ys Origin heavily, influencing every part of its design and progression.

I've honestly found myself questioning at times whether the Ys series count as RPGs, given their heavy differences from what I'm familiar with from the genre (mainly because I need to be sure if I can include them in my RPG rankings list). Ys Origin stretches that definition of ARPG so far that it starts to encroach into straight up arcade action dungeon crawler status.

Ys Origin employs an EXP multiplier system based on whether you can keep a combo of hits going, which leads to a sort of rush of "okay, defeat this enemy, now move onto the next ASAP" going throughout the entire game as you try and keep this momentum going. Between that and the extremely linear ascension up the tower (although progression does involve some backtracking and exploration sometimes), the game explicitly presents players not with a world, nor a locale, but a location, whose progression is honestly not very much unlike games like The Tower of Druaga (down to the feeling of being on a timer, albeit not one that threatens death), just on turbocharge.

I can't honestly say it's for me. The constant sense of momentum gets fairly exhausting, and I liked the illusion of freedom and openness that Ys VIII provided by comparison, just by opening up its environments, providing some trivial map interconnectivity and letting the player take more detours while exploring.
The more I play RPGs, the more I find myself craving spending time in worlds - even if fairly small, cheesy, often contrived ones - and Ys Origin is decidedly not that.

And that's okay. Ys Origin doesn't have to be the game of my dreams - no game really has to be, and by that metric, no game probably ever will be. Perhaps there's a small part of me that wishes it was something different, both in terms of its narrative and premise, and in terms of its game design. But Ys Origin knows what it wants to be, excels at it and manages to confidently love itself and its forebears at every single step of the way.

I could waste a few paragraphs breaking down how this game fails to champion Pac-Man in any meaningful way, but what's the point? Past all the miserable, miserable flaws is a game whose fatal flaw is... just being plain boring. Count how many levels are just the original Pac-Man maze, maybe with a small gimmick; revel in how unconfident the developers themselves were about the Pac-Man gameplay that they constantly interrupt it with forced minigames. I think that alone says all I need to say about how much fun there is to derive out of this game.

I've learned an important lesson, though: bad games deserve to be played on Easy difficulty. It's for your own good.

For once, I'm entering a review with zero idea of what final score I'll give the game. Sonic R's flaws and oddities have been dissected like an open book, not that identifying them takes much work: the controls are slippery and weird for an on-foot racer, the course design is surprisingly labyrinthine, made worse by how the game makes use of tank-like turning, there's an embarrassing lack of content compared to other racing games, and the soundtrack is definitely love-it-or-hate-it.

If you walked up to me and told me that you dropped the game immediately over each one of these points, I'd definitely see where you're coming from. This isn't my first playthrough - I've already been somewhat acclimated, even though my last playthrough was probably a decade ago at this point (oh no, how the time has flown).

Sonic R is clearly not perfect, and I'm not going to even attempt to make a case that it's anything but absolute 90's jank. But I'm the kind of person who adores Super Mario 64, and defends Super Mario Sunshine, games with their fair share of jank that people these days find themselves split on.
And you know what? If you're willing to give this game a chance to speak for itself, I think it's possible you could see like I do how much of its oddities can be charming.

You might call me crazy for attempting to defend the loose, imprecise controls (especially considering both Sonic's reputation up to this point as a series with immaculate control, and my love for Super Mario 64), and honestly, you should. But... hear me out, if you will - and I assume you will if you've gotten this far into this review.

Like I mentioned earlier, Sonic R is extremely thin on content. With only four initial courses, one unlockable course and six unlockable characters that either have overly pathetic or overly broken stats, Sonic R would be exhausted in about fifteen minutes if it were structured like any other racing game. But Sonic R sprinkles in collectables within the first four courses: one or two Chaos Emeralds, and five coin... token... Golden Circular Things With Sonic's Face On Them.

But why on earth am I describing game mechanics? Wasn't I supposed to be making a defense for controls that don't deserve defense?
It turns out that in order to actually retain the Chaos Emeralds you collected, you need to finish a race in first place, and in order to challenge (not unlock!) an unlockable character, all five tokens need to be collected within a single race. These two objectives can be done separately, but this means that Sonic R asks for players to demonstrate a grasp on both execution and navigation.

Even if you hypothetically knew where all the Emeralds and tokens were from the start, it's quite possible that you might slip up on getting one your first time because of the controls, and by the time you've circled back to get it, you might have fallen quite behind on the competition. That doesn't mean it's a wasted run, though - by freeing yourself from the thinking that you have to win this race, it opens you to explore the whole map without the pressure of competition. And that's when Hirokazu Yasuhara's mentality of Sonic-like multiple paths shine brightest, turning these places into playgrounds to explore and find details, discovering how to get to a part of level in the distance, figuring out what's the fastest routes for the unlockable character races and... even taking in all the scenery in.

Did I mention Sonic R is a brilliant, impressive game for its time? Its graphics are gorgeous, having fully modeled 3D environments and characters in contrast to Mario Kart 64's rather basic geometry and pre-rendered character sprites. The fog and fade-in is done with excellent taste, allegedly all the more impressive considering that the Saturn had difficulty with effects like fog and transparency.

It's this level of visual fidelity that lets each individual route and the entire vast, open track as a whole breathe. And on the topic of the sheer amount of alternate paths that exist in Sonic R's tracks: you know how Mario Kart 64 doesn't show you racer positions in Yoshi Valley because the game can't actually determine it alongside gameplay? Sonic R manages to pull it off with every single track, while still keeping the visuals pristine and the gameplay smooth.

And no review about Sonic R and letting it speak to you would be complete without a mention of the music. Super Sonic Racing, Can You Feel The Sunshine and Living In The City are simply anthemic - there's no way denying that.
Funnily enough, I started this playthrough with the vocals disabled, only to get this nagging feeling that something was missing. Upon switching the vocals back on, I found myself singing along to the three songs above, and even to bits and pieces of Back In Time and Work It Out that found themselves lodged in my brain.

(I should note that I initially wanted to include a section of why I think Can You Feel The Sunshine is great, actually, but it basically ended up turning into a script for a video essay. I'll link it here if I ever complete it!)

For one short, janky mess of a game, all this adds up to something that's honestly really fun to complete, to go back to tracks multiple times to find and unlock everything. What Sonic R doesn't have in breadth, it offers in depth - it only makes me wish it wasn't as horribly rushed as it was because of the Saturn's lifespan.

...Wow. All this sounds like I love Sonic R to death. To be clear, I don't - I haven't played this game in a decade for a reason, and I probably won't play it again for another decade for those same reasons.
But the more I think about it, the more I feel like Sonic R is a classic example of my video game hypothesis that feels all the more relevant with each passing day:
That a key factor that's essential for games to remain interesting over time... might be a little bit of jank.

By 1992, Final Fantasy IV was already two years old. While it was definitely far from perfect, it to me represents an important step forwards for the JRPG genre, with more attempts to properly tell stories through combat, innovations in turn-based gameplay and more.

With this in mind, Arcana is dated, somewhat off-balance, and honestly? It's a bit tedious. With navigation in a tile-based first-person perspective with awful draw distance and framerate, and Return Rings and the Home spell having so little consequence, dungeon crawling becomes a matter of trial-and-error, warping back to town when resources run low, naturally Getting Stronger in the process, and trying again until you happen to find the right path forward and survive on your way there.
It gets even more trivial once money becomes less of a concern and you can just stockpile Tents from the shop, which fully restores the party's HP and MP.

But... I don't know! It's really not particularly more compelling than something like the NES Final Fantasies, but... it's a HAL Laboratories JRPG. It's got a Jun Ishikawa and Hirokazu Ando soundtrack! You know those more JRPG-ish tracks that Ishikawa did for Kirby Triple Deluxe? He's got some serious chops for this kind of genre! I would have loved to see more of this!

To me specifically, Arcana is just such an aesthetic game. It's brilliant to see and hear and experience, to keep wondering "was this song written by Ishikawa or Ando?", to listen to little motifs and melodic fragments come in and out in a way that foreshadows how Ando would handle future Kirby soundtracks, to finally get to the credits and see Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata's names.

And it's wonderful to experience these things that lead up to the legacy of that pink puff that means so much to me.

Upon receiving criticism that the homing attack stops the pace of the fluid, momentum-based gameplay of the Sonic series, Dimps proceeded to add tag team abilities that literally pause the game whenever they're activated.

A mediocre Metroidvania in essence is a platformer without level design.

Cool soundtrack, though! I like it a lot.

Although Platinum was my first proper Pokémon game, Generation 2 was the first one I played as a kid, being introduced to it alongside a copy of the TCB Dual emulator on a CD I must have received from some older kid around where I lived.

Platinum was definitely influential for me in its own ways, but you can argue it's through emulation - this game and all the others on the CD - that I gradually learned about basic tech savviness, got into chiptune and retro video game music, and ultimately became the person I am today in what I do, what I play, and what I listen to.

You might notice that I didn't really talk about the game itself in these first two paragraphs.
I, uh... I went through the first seven gyms, got stuck in the Ice Cave, and never reached Blackthorn City.

It's for that reason that I'm happy to be finally done with Pokémon Crystal after all these long years, but doing so was admittedly a bittersweet experience. I've always considered this one of the better Pokémon generations (not really having played the games past the DS), but its problems are laid bare in stark contrast to future generations.

The easiest example? The difficulty. There's a few reasons I think Generation 2 suffers really heavily compared to the other games. The level curve is something people always mention about this game - how much of Johto between Ecruteak, Mahogany, Olivine and Cianwood hover around the level 20-29 mark, how there isn't much that prepares players for Blue's mid-50s team in Kanto, and how there's absolutely nothing that prepares them against Red.
Lots of other people have gone in a lot of detail about these, but I have a slightly different problem I wanted to address.

Let's explain it with an anecdote: I used a Magneton for my team somewhat out of impulse because I happened to encounter Magnemite on the way to Olivine. On paper, this is a decent idea. Mareep is inaccessible in Crystal; Pikachu and Electabuzz are only available in Kanto; the Thunderstone needed to evolve Eevee into a Jolteon can only be found in Kanto or through receiving calls from an extremely specific NPC; all of which leaves your options for an Electric-type in Johto to Magnemite or Chinchou, the latter of which can't be found unless you fished.

Do you see a problem here? How about if I told you that between Magneton and Lanturn, neither of them learn Thunder or Thunderbolt by level-up, and need to be taught them by buying those moves through Game Corner coins, just like how other Pokémon like Chansey, Tauros and even Gyarados(????) would have to?

Generation 2 has a problem.

Generation 2 has a problem, and it's that I think it's sandwiched between the far more interesting Generations 1 and 3, and - especially with the remakes - doesn't have anything cool to its name anymore other than its aesthetic.

Beneath the surface, Generation 1 has a decent amount of themes and topics, such as Pokémon cloning, genetics and mortality, that lie in the forefront of its narrative. It's definitely even rougher than Generation 2 in terms of its intended gameplay... but it's a lot more immediately exploitable for those willing to put in half an hour into learning some of the most convenient, fun and fascinating glitches that in my opinion only add to the atmosphere that Generation 1 uniquely possesses.

Generation 3 on the other hand improves on the storytelling that Generation 2 tries to introduce to the series (Generation 1 was really only held together with a plot and no story, let's face it), with a compelling main conflict, clearly defined plot curve with its antagonistic team(s), and with a clearly, explicitly defined theme of harmony between human activity, Pokémon and nature.
In terms of its gameplay, Generation 3 is also much more compelling with the addition of abilities, a far more sensible level curve, and a genuinely compelling overworld to explore.

So what does Johto have left to its name? A traditional Japanese theming to it? Emphasis on folklore and legend?

I'm... honestly really not sure. I really like parts of what the prototypes were going for, between Pokémon like Twins that was meant to be a Girafarig pre-evolution before being retooled into Wobbuffet, or Norowara, being the signature move holder of Curse... but I don't know if that iteration of a Generation 2 would have ended up particularly amazing either, especially since it was even worse about game balance from what we know.

I think it's a testament to how solid Pokémon's core formula is that even a game with such questionable design choices as I've mentioned can go on to become such a memorable, beloved entry in a franchise, helped by arguably being the first time Pokémon found an extremely strong aesthetic (artistic and musical) direction within the games. At the end of the day, I really liked playing through this game again.

I know I can thank this trio of games for two things, though:

1) Wow, what a soundtrack, am I right? It's a departure from Junichi Masuda's almost neoclassical Generation 1 soundtrack to be sure, but I think it was a necessary one to ensure Pokémon's musical success moving forward.

2) precious water rabbit friend azumarill best pokemon

Final team: Sandslash / Magneton / Typhlosion / Azumarill / Jumpluff / Shiny Crobat!
It was surprisingly exciting defeating Red with such a team.

Save file playtime: 37:51
Irl playtime: 13:04

It's strange. I don't really think Kirby's Star Stacker is a particularly good game.
It doesn't really have the thoughtful kind of design that better puzzle games like Puyo and Tetris have; Star Stacker relies on a weird mix of pre-scripted levels (in Round Clear) and RNG, as well as excessive game speed and janky movement and rotation controls to be difficult, mostly for the sake of being difficult.

But seeing a combo I thought would be pretty simple turn into 5 or 6-chain combos and basically wiping my entire screen as the 1-UP and then Kirby Dance jingles play in celebration is... it's nice, I won't lie.

I still don't think it's particularly good. Maybe the SFC game will change my mind. I'm pretty curious about getting to play it on hardware one day, so... we'll see.

But it's like Squeak Squad: the fact that this is one of the franchise's lower points speaks volumes as to how consistently good the series has been throughout its runtime.

people really out there completing celeste b-sides and saying lost levels is too difficult and masocore, huh