Pokémon Platinum was one of my first - and favorite games I owned and completed. Even after barely scraping past the Elite 4 with a team of Infernape, Pikachu, Lucario, Giratina, and a Tentacruel and Pelipper I found just outside Victory Road, I continued to pour hours into this game trying to fill up as much of the Pokédex as I can and simply having fun in the game world; in Amity Square, in Contests, going back to the Distortion World, occasionally even in the Battle Frontier.

It was bit of a waste of time in retrospect. """Completing the Pokédex""" is a charade - albeit an admirable one, seeing the people who have such collections - that absolutely does not feel worth entertaining. I stayed in Sinnoh for as long as I did primarily because for the longest time, it was one of very few options that I had.

But so much of my sentiments regarding the Pokémon series lie here. It's no surprise that my Renegade Platinum team was 3/5 Sinnoh Pokémon; it's no surprise that I think Gen 4 was near the peak of the series, compositionally; it's no surprise that this region is the one that holds my heart.

And that's why I'm glad Renegade Platinum respects your time. It gives you more options in terms of finding and building your party, streamlines the Pokémon experience as much as it can within the Gen 4 engine and does it all in a way that usually feels very unintrusive and respectful of the original game.

My one concern would be with its difficulty. I'm not a competitive or even strategic Pokémon player, and my teams are usually comprised of the Pokémon that I like for aesthetic or sentimental reasons - though usually within basic team balance limits, at least.
I appreciate that Renegade Platinum tries to make you think more about the team you're building, both in the moment and in the long run, which is something I think Pokémon games probably don't do enough of... but I think it says something that even with Belly Drum Huge Power Azumarill (the best!), I often struggled and reset against Gym and Elite 4 battles.

But I think that's something the fanbase seems to love, anyway. It's nice. I enjoyed being back in Sinnoh for a bit, but I think I'm ready to move on.

At least for now.

Mechanically, it's one of the weakest in the entire series and most of everything it introduced has been done better - far better - in future games, but this is the one game that genuinely feels like you're racing across the Mario world - Super Mario World, to be precise.

I like to imagine this is what Mario, Peach and his friends do after Mario saves Peach and goes on vacation at the end of Super Mario World. Lots of SMW key locales are faithfully depicted, with designer Hideki Konno and composer Soyo Oka's own signature twists on them - perhaps Rainbow Road was their take on the Star Road and Special World, even.

It's one of the worst Mario Kart games, to be sure, but it's easily the best companion game to Super Mario World - and that's why I love it, aside from its great soundtrack.

It's a nice way to experience old MapleStory's world and general charm in a format that very much respects your time. Movement feels a lot more fun, level designs are generally more thoughtful and there's just a whole lot less filler. The plot keeps you moving through the world and the gameplay requires much less grinding.
The story was also more interesting than in anything I've seen from main MapleStory.

...but that's not to say it's perfect.
In exchange for its much faster pace, MapleStory DS trades away the exploration and open freedom of the original, and the options you have to explore the world.
The main story is generally set in a very linear path, and backtracking, even after the game is complete, is fairly nonexistent.
The game world itself also feels very small, partially because of the shrunken maps, and furthermore disjointed as a result of the plot involving portal malfunctions.
The soundtrack is also... very low quality.

But it's worth a play, even if only for a single run. I enjoyed the Thief playthrough, and liked it more than what I've experienced of the Warrior route; I would at least recommend the former - if you can read Korean, anyway.

It's interesting coming back to this game after growing up on its remake. Super Star at this point feels like a beta of Ultra: there's a lot of slowdown, the graphics are less polished, and there's so much quality of life changes that Super Star is lacking in hindsight.

Dropping your ability as a star, sharing invincibility candies, proper maps and UIs in the Great Cave Offensive and Milky Way Wishes... not to mention so many more additional minutia all over (including how the abilities control) that you can't really describe but very much feel.

Super Star was the pioneer in Kirby's gradual shift into becoming a combat-focused platformer... but even that has been very much expanded upon in later games, where Star Allies makes every single ability extremely combat-capable by contrast, leaving Super Star in the dust.

But it's still a revolutionary game for its time, and a pivotal one in the direction that the Kirby series would take afterwards. It's important, and very much worth respecting... even if it's far shorter than the "8 games in one!" tagline may imply.

One thing I should mention in addition is that Super Star does a great job doing more with less. There's a fair amount of recycled content throughout the subgames, but they're recontexualized very well through the different mechanics and rules of each of them.
I think I'd like to see future Kirby games do this again.

It's a fantastic game, especially considering how much of an innovation it was and how influential it became for so many games that followed it.

The problem with having played it for the first time in 2020, though, is that there's so many games that are cut from its cloth that it's hard to really get an appreciation for how distinct and amazing Super Metroid really was - especially when there are games that are just "Super Metroid, but X" that fill in niches and shortcomings that the game can't fill on its own.

For example, Rabi-Ribi - my go-to Metroid-like fills the problem I have with Metroid's combat. Aiming missiles is clunky; too many bosses have specific weaknesses and vulnerabilities and gimmicky attack patterns; and Samus' hitbox is simply too big with too clumsy movement controls - Rabi-Ribi solves all these problems by basically being Kirby meets Touhou in boss battles.

But I don't really want to spend this... review? gushing about Rabi-Ribi. What Super Metroid does get right, even moreso than other games like it, is atmosphere and storytelling through sheer intrigue and its world. The brief glimpse at what looks like a Metroid in the drop in Maridia, the menacing statues of the four bosses encountered early in Crateria, the Chozo statues and so much more...

And honestly, this and Zero Mission combined really do absolve the sins of the first game, huh.