Normally if I enjoy a game I'd either try to have fun with my writing and do something corny like roleplaying as a character or go insanely heavy on the showmanship, but for the sake of this I'm actually going to be really vanilla and bore everyone to death.

Before I heel out, I'd like to let it be known that I was rooting for this game. When it was originally revealed in one of the Directs, I clapped, I hooted, and I hollered, for she deserves the universe and everything in it. She's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment. I heard it get compared to Wario World, which made me bounce off walls like Spring Wario from the classic Game Boy games. I could imagine it now, Peach womanhandling every bad guy in sight and going on an exciting journey through every genre of artistic theater known by Mushroomy Kingdom history. Unfortunately, comparing Good-Feel to even one of Treasure's lesser developments is essentially like putting silly putty next to an unpolished diamond.

"Engagement" and "difficulty" are two separate things, and it really needs to be stressed that the latter means little in the grand stage of what makes a game do what a game does, which is engage the player and take their mind off life, with the "fun yeah woo" energy replacing all their other thought processes. Spyro the Dragon and Ninja Gaiden are on opposite ends of the spectrum and still manage to be a few of my favorites to ever do it. Just a few days ago, I played Bugs Bunny Lost in Time on stream in a Discord call with one of my friends as she did some programming, and that is a game "made for children" with very little punishment dealt out for mistakes. For how jank and lower budget it was, it was fun with decent puzzles, cool ship combat, car chase segments, and even pretty good boss fights! It's something I enjoyed when I was eight, and still do now as an adult.

Peach Showtime for all of it's poor performing extravagance doesn't even use a lot of the joycon's controls, and many segments are very linear and on-rails with one of the Detective Peach puzzles quite literally having the solution put up on the wall for you. Using a simple control scheme is never a bad thing in itself, I enjoy an Atari game now and then, but the fine art of utilizing that simple control scheme demands creativity that extends beyond auto-scrolling sections that make 100%'ing the game annoying. It would also ask for enemies to master the very tricky art of "moving the fuck around a little" to justify having the world's most lenient parry window. It's frustrating, because for every half-decent powergaming moment that involves throwing hitboxes around enemies that are less threatening than beginner mode Musou soldiers it's spliced between very uninteresting unskippable dialogue, uneventful non-combat plays, auto-scrolling/auto-running sections, and "puzzle" segments that are more trivial than microwave cooking. It makes me drowsy! I've played stuff like Toy Story Activity Center off the Collection Chamber and Number Munchers last year, and that stuff was pretty fun despite the target audience! Hell, I still come back to Wacky Worlds Creativity Studio on Sega Genesis just to screw around with the music maker! It stimulates my imagination, unlike Peach Showtime!

Give kids some respect, or even better give Peach some respect. A little bit of both I feel would go a long way.

....Also, I know I'm preaching to the choir on this subject, but why does the game run so goddamn bad? The loading screen and results screen run worse than a bunch of Atari Jaguar games I've played, was it a bad style choice? It would check out I guess, I may as well be playing a movie game.

A dull direct-to-VHS Disney movie game.

[Revisitation of my Childhood, Part 2]

Okay, what..? This was honestly a crazy experience for me because my whole life, I was thinking that this game was definitely the better out of the two LEGO Indiana Jones games. But this is...much worse. Not saying it's actually bad, but there is a clear drop in quality from the first game. The best way I can describe it is "undercooked additions, baffling exclusions." Example: Hub world. Definitely the most notable new feature of this game from it's predecessor, the hub world is probably the biggest example of an undercooked addition. Everything besides playing levels, including unlocking characters, vehicles, bonus levels, and actually going to the story/treasure levels is done in the hub world. And uh...it's not fun. The minikit equivalents are basically dropped, and everything is unlocked through the hub world, which gets VERY annoying after a while, because of how much slow transportation you have to do during it. Another example of this game motto of sorts is the shorter levels. All of the levels in the game are shorter than they are in the previous game, and while many would argue that doesn't mean a drop in quality of those levels, in this case, it most certainly does. Oh, also, after you beat the story of an episode, in the hub world there is now treasure levels(basically replaying the story levels with changes to the level design and sometimes appearance of the stage) and bonus levels(custom levels made in the level builder VERY LOOSELY based off of moments in the story not in the story levels, which just comes off as lazy of all things) to do as well, which means a total of NINETY levels to do, EXCLUDING the stupid million stud levels. Other examples of this are the level builder, and the vehicle levels. Oh god, the vehicle levels. Not only are they super annoying to actually play, but the True Adventurer stud counts are stretched SO FAR that you're better off just going for that after you've gotten stud multiplying red bricks. The only new additions that I actually enjoy are end-of-episode boss battles. Most of them ROCK, like Raiders, Temple of Doom, and Crystal Skull 2 and 3. Also the Green Brick extra "Snake Whip", all my homies love Snake Whip.
Also, THERE'S NO BOULDER TEMPLE LEVEL IN RAIDERS STORY. HOW DO YOU HAVE RAIDERS WITHOUT BOULDER TEMPLE

It's a good thing this is a "Noire game" and not a "Nep game", otherwise this might damage the good reputation of the Neptunia franchise! Ha, haha, haaaaaaaaaa...

I know someone who enjoyed this game because "it's a strategy game, you can't make them bad".

Are you sure about that?

I'd have to say this game's biggest flaw is the fact that it's built like a typical Neptunia RPG. Health and attack values are way larger than necessary, maps and enemy types are constantly reused. The game's big gimmick is lowering the exorbitant SP costs on your skills by keeping other units adjacent to you, represented by a yuri kiss on the cheek. This is counter-intuitive because grouping everyone together makes it absurdly easy for an enemy to stroll over and use an attack that targets your entire cluster of chibis. Sometimes you don't even need to be grouped together, some enemies just have attacks that hit like a truck and cover half the damn map. On top of that, your units can be afflicted with status effects, of which there are WAY too many to keep track of. I don't even know what half of them do!

The game is also just constantly wasting your time (and not just because I'm spending mine playing a Neptunia game, har har). Even once you cave in and turn off all attack animations and whatnot in the settings menu, it still feels like it's dragging its feet. Stop showing me that enemies aren't taking any actions, it adds up when eight or so of them aren't necessarily doing anything as I slowly approach them. So many of this game's maps revolve around shitty gimmicks, like tediously lifting and tossing wooden boxes to gradually create staircases, or avoiding floor panels that damage you and instantly end your turn, or waiting a turn for a moving platform to come back, just so you can board it and wait another turn to have it take you to your destination, and THEN you can depart it on the turn after that. Maps are reused ad nauseam, so you'll grow accustomed to groaning at the mere sight of certain locales.

The writing just rubs me the wrong way, moreso than usual for a game of this pedigree. Most of Noire's friendships just result in her getting sexually harassed in extra scenes, with the accompanying CGs having the Bad kind of voyeuristic feeling. And then there's the self-insert, with probably one of the worst examples of this trope I've ever experienced. A true self-insert comes with a certain amount of agency from the player, but you don't get any choices here. Secretary-san is effectively his own character, one you're expected to project yourself onto. Sorry Noire, our relationship fell through years ago. I've personally been sizing up Vert quite a bit lately...

The true ending of this game is locked behind Noire having a lily rank of at least 70 with every other unit by the end of the game. This mandates an endgame grind that's a total snog-I mean slogfest. I unironically think this game is on the same level of enjoyment I had with the original HDN on PS3, and that is a very low bar to cross. You are missing nothing by ignoring this, even if you're a Nep freak like me.

“Save Fairyland in this Special port!”

I don’t think anyone has wanted to see another person review Hydlide. I even reviewed it already this year on the PC-88 thanks to the release on Switch. Despite the “age” and infamy of Hydlide over here, I enjoyed it for what it was even if it was far from perfect. What’s different about the version I’m reviewing is that it tried to be more than just a port of the computer game. While US players would know this game as just Hydlide, in Japan it was given the name Hydlide Special. (NOTE: there is no Disk System version, I just couldn't label this as just Famicom as of writing this.) This is because it adds some elements from Hydlide II making this in a way a unique game. I’m not going to go into the same depth as I did for the PC-88 release so I’d recommend reading the review I left for the Eggconsole release if you want my full thoughts on the actual game as a whole.

Well first thing to note right off the bat is the story is a lot more vague then the text screen of the computer versions. You’ll see the main bad guy Varalys shoot fire at Ann and she becomes three fairies and that’s about it. You can also put in your password here which brings up a new thing about this version, the saving. Okay it’s really weird but made sense for the time. So if you press Select, you can open up this menu. You’ll see Save as an option which does Save where you’re at and if you hit Load, you’ll go at that spot with everything Saved. What will trip people up though is this Save dies when the game is powered off, Famicom games still didn’t have batteries in the cart to allow saving so that’s why you’re supposed to pick Password to write it down and use when powering the system back on. While some reviews do mention this, the famous AVGN episode actually didn’t and assumes you have to use the Password every single time you die.

When you actually begin the game, it starts just like the original where you’ll be grinding on the first screen two times from Slimes. A lot of the adventure will feel familiar to you if you have played the computer versions. The biggest change you’ll notice right off the bat is the Magic system. Jim can use five different spells and he’ll unlock one for the first five levels. The sad part is all of it is basically worthless as magic can’t be used to gain EXP. The only one worth using is Turn which can turn the enemy around which helps as enemies are best hit from behind. Though even this isn’t good enough because sometimes the enemy can turn around immediately and possibly kill you. There are three special ways you can get infinite magic for a short amount of time but again magic just isn’t helpful so don’t go for it. It also causes the music to go really fast for some reason. I also was only able to get the one where you kill thirty Worms in the same area which makes a big purple sandworm appear to activate the infinite magic.

Going inside dungeons feels less punishing then they did originally. You still do lose HP in areas like this one but I swear it’s a lot slower in this version of the game making the strategy of it a lot less interesting. The only other thing I noticed different about them is I think getting the ring is different? I know it was always RNG if it showed up but I think they changed it by having to kill enemies first? You’ll begin to notice one of the bigger problems with this port in these areas as well which is the stupidity of the enemies. It’s actually a lot harder to grind in these areas if you wanted to as the enemies love to just not find you most of the time and constantly like to spawn in only to leave the area. It’s weird because when you’re grinding off the Worms it feels like the opposite problem where you’ll constantly get unlucky and get one shot as turned to you right as you started attacking. At least getting the last two levels with the Hyper enemy isn’t too annoying.

The third fairy got a very interesting change as there are now two Wizards and you must use the magic spell Wave. This is the only time you need it in the game. The problem with using it though is the space you’re in is very tight horizontally and you can only shoot the spell left or right. The best tip I can give you is just distract one and hope the other one gets behind it and then immediately use Wave and they should be both dead. You’ll then be taken to the dragon but with a new change once again. The Dragon can’t die and you’ll have to use the Fire spell to burn a tree that reveals the way in. You then must go in there and destroy the grave and then fight the Dragon like you would in the computer version. Once you finish that and get the Luby, you’re off to fight Varalys. Good god this fight sucks in this one. It’s still the same strategy of hitting him a few times and then retreating to heal but I now have to do it in the room before it as the place near the grave is way harder to heal in as it was in the PC-88 version. I also just kept getting bad luck but eventually I did it and you’re given the same ending as it normally is though at least you won’t get a potential seizure this time.

While Hydlide Special is an inferior version of the game, it’s not the worst thing ever. I think 1986 was probably the last year it could have been released and been seen as acceptable. This is why the US version is so hated. It came out in 1989 with a pretty generic looking cover especially compared to the nice looking cover Japan got. Stuff like The Legend of Zelda had already come out and even stuff like cartridge batteries existed in games. This release is so baffling, I guess FCI was just desperate to get anything out for the US market? It kind of reminds me of how Dragon Quest and Bomber Man both had late releases on the NES as well and yet Hydlide suffers the most from it. It’s not that US players had context for any of this back then, especially children. It’s hard to really blame anyone for being hateful towards the game, it might be one of the worst ideas a company had made for a localization. It’s barely even different from the Japanese version too with only the name being changed to just being Hydlide and the Luby item being renamed to Ruby. Look, I’m not trying to weave a new narrative like everyone would have appreciated this old game had it not came out here in 1989 because Super Hydlide exists and a lot of people hate that one too. I just think it’s sad it never stood a chance.

The graphics are nothing too special and I’d argue they look worse than the other version I played. The one graphic I noticed the biggest downgrade for was just the poison as it just looks like soiled ground in this version. Then you have the audio, my god the audio. If you know anything about Hydlide, it’s this stupid short loop that sounds like a rip off of the Indiana Jones theme. It actually comes from Hydlide II because the “Music” that played in the original was…certainly noise. Even with this music being added, it gets old fast. Having to hear it too while writing this review doesn’t help. Also they made that amazing sound when you get an item in this version way worse! I always loved hearing those beeps when getting an item, how could you do this to me T&E Soft?!

Some might say this was a waste of time. I felt compelled to review this but probably didn’t add much to the conversation. That’s fine, I still enjoyed writing this and just seeing what this version was like after all of these years. It’s at least very short once you know what to do in it. I still wouldn’t advise you play Hydlide Special, just play it on the computer if possible. Hydlide won’t appeal to most nowadays but it’s a game I think should be worth playing just for how innovative it was for the genre. It’s just a shame the NES version gave it the legacy it has nowadays. Am I overreacting to all of this? Probably, but I don’t have much more to say and I kind of want this music to stop playing so I think I’ll end here. Thanks for reading if you somehow read this whole thing.

White man has been here? How can you tell? shows white people going loco oh wow they really amped up the drama hihihi, ok can you just follow me sir. I don't bite but they do. With one of the most bankruptely creative name in the industry yet, Dead Rising offers a painfully accurate american outbreak with all its quirks. It doesn't even feel that junk in retrospect... Oh i'm soooo lying that AI came out the wazzoo. Does it make some situations more memorable? Also yes, that's one of our realities. Holding hands has reached astronomical tediousness levels.

It's an interesting branch of roguelites. We could even call it a management sim the way you're gonna rewind that clock over and over in an attempt to maximize your PP, hard pause on that one but I done forgor what the letters stood for, I'll go ahead and make this up it means "Cock n' Ball Torture" there, no one's batting an eye because one knows what this game's really about. I'm getting that PP up when some woman zombie is munching on my private parts or when I'm taking a photo of a woman zombie munching on someone's private parts. A serious main story and the silliness we're subjected to outside of it is exactly the Yakuza brand, it's something the japanese really know how to do. They be knowin their silliness frfr.

I'm not even gonna discuss that main story, it's serviceable and survivors ratio + cope seethe. I don't know if survivors really is a good way to put it, they aren't surviving shit until the West comes along. And here I am changing into sneakers wearing a dress that would turn me into the belle of the bal, I'm built different they cannot mimic a fraction of my power. I can eat bullets no problem, chainsaws are a different issue but it's because West is wooden hard baby

shovelware yuck ahh level transitions but it's enough that they exist! That's how I feel mentally rn so Sonic 3 might pave the path to self-acceptance I've been reaching for. If only with a bit of validation. I lied tho it ain't do shit to my mental health anyways they smoked the whole pack last time so Sonic 3 is free of some of these insane levels we had to suffer through in 2. No more 7_7 just >.< on another note these levels fall under a questionable game essence bcuz it feels apparent in hindsight the game's development was rocky and its actually a best-of levels compilation, albeit the veil is thick enough to hide that fact unless you actively knew this fact.

Sonic hit the slay button and got a big makeover! Tails too I suppose. I'm not even sure tbh he might be keeping me company but he ain't even no factor tho he been surprising me hitting the boss in my stead sometimes, this is the cowardly way we know real mfs just hit their bosses with their own hands. um pauuuse that was outta pocket. Have you seen these bosses? Now you have. The well of ideas hasn't run dry yet and you're free to cook some of them to your liking, if you dare try a riskier approach to speed things up.

I wanna have a little break here to mention the music. Now, I'm a great VGM enthuthiast but I keep that shit away from reviews since my list and compendium are enough for me. However, it's understated to say how colossaly fucked Sega got themselves the exact moment the fanboy side of the psyche beat the rational side in a cerebral tug-of-war, yes I'm talking about MJ. He owns his music at any rate, and played a big part in the Sonic Origins fiasco, I aim to be this problematic post-mortem.

Well, for the lack of a better term, that's Sonic in a nutshell. We got a sizeable entry that doesn't outstay its welcome. Is it the first game that needs two "discs"? Whatever the case, it's an awesome hour inside the hedgehog. I mean controlling him. Fuck I mean-

I would hate to be one of the people who refuse to play the game because it doesn't have social links, flashy UI and non first person gameplay just to miss out on what I consider to be a well told story that isn't as drawn out and boring as other persona games. I’m serious too, the first person gameplay really isn't bad and I can't understand what drew me away from this game when I first played it.

I figured I would have hated this game a lot more than I did, and it really isn't even bad at all. I had no trouble with the combat and fusing in this game and found it fun especially near the end of the game when things started opening up, I would even go as far to say that it's my favorite fusion system in the series since every character is able to equip three personas of your choosing. It’s never too overpowered because most of them usually have 4-5 moves max, though the game is really easy so I guess this doesn't really matter much Lol

Should be noted that in the psp version of this game, it's hard to pay attention to anything but the mini map when exploring mazes because the gameplay is too fast, even when you’re not running and toggling skip animations during battle. I'm not exaggerating either you're actually running at mach 5 and getting into constant encounters because for some reason they decided the encounter rate needed to be raised. To that end I wish I listened to my friend @Zotol and played the ps1 version when he told me to, but instead because he hates using the emulator I sent him what’s apparently a “half broken psp” even though it was perfectly fine aside from being smashed with a Warwood Tool 3 lb. Double-Faced Small Sledge Hammer - Tools for Home Improvement - Tools & Home Improvement - Made in the USA and being dropped in the toilet twice (he didn't notice though)

I loathe being called a persona fan so let's just leave it at "persona 1 fan"

I played this just to see what the fishing minigame was like, since people always say it's good. Turns out that you only get the fishing gear together after 5ish hours and the game won't even let you try twice before saying it's time to go home to sleep. I dropped it immediately after that, but I won't give it a rating because it'd be unfair since I'm not interested on those kind of high school teenager drama and stuff. Maybe I'd like it if I played it when I was a pre-teen/teenager. I liked Chie. And the sinister piano theme when something sinister happens.

I and the person I love most are nearly perfectly matched in this and it's brought some of the most raw, unfiltered joy I've experienced playing a video game. There's so much room for natural discovery and the actions are so dead-simple that you cut right through to the multilayered rock paper scissors and personal metagaming that make traditional fighting games so satisfying in their best moments. The levels pulsate and warp and sway in the most hypnotic ways and you're locked together running back and forth and back and forth in a dance that seems to never end and you are wholly consumed by the game and the person you're sharing it with and you approach that kind of momentary inner quiet you thought you'd never have again even as you're involuntarily shouting from impaling yourself again by diving in when your opponent was just standing still.

I'm 100% sure if I go out and look for it I'll find strategies, tech, and optimization which take away from that feeling of discovery and replace it with a tighter grasp on the mechanics bringing you and the opponent closer in a different way, but I'm not gonna let the optimization virus get this one unless I work my way there myself. There's something to be said for the maximum-information environment that is the default for any game nowadays, but there's also something beautiful about the high speed improv of a low information closed system of two players who don't have any idea how other people play it.

Ask yourself: in the past 15 or so years, how many times have you had the opportunity to feel like a multiplayer game is something between you and the people close to you, not really knowing or caring how others play it or what the "right" way to do it is?

Burnout suffers from "first game syndrome". It's easy to overlook for those who wish to go through the highlights of the Burnout, and by extension, arcade racer peak. On the other hand, it's a bland slog that shows points of promise for the more historically inclined. A glorified tech demo, that it's been often described as, is just about sufficient to determine whether you wanna experience these frustrating beginnings.

The RenderWare engine, in it's sixth-gen infancy, still looks quite nice. The cars sheen, and the detailed and tight race corridors are all quite nice to look at... but the game suffers from some emptiness. Perhaps it's the boring music, or the maladjusted audio mixing, but it's hollow, and it makes the racing a bit boring at times.

The rubberband AI here is the worst, it discourages driving like you'd expect from a Burnout game. If you crash often but stay fast, you'll never be able to get to first place. The game contradicts itself by rewarding following racing lines and staying on the right side of the road (or cheesing your way to the end of the opposite end). There may be times where it all clicks together, and you find yourself chaining up Burnouts, but it's too rare to really get you to seek out this title. The hit detection is dumb. A slight nudge and you're done. The lack of damage you can take is such a major oversite. The racing itself, for whatever is worth, is okay at best.

Once you clear all the GPs, you can unlock some additional cars in "Face-Off" but I found myself too bored with the title by then to really go through the tracks again with my new fangled hardware.

Burnout, at this point, is better served as a historical capsule to be observed and maybe lightly played. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone saying the OG was better than the numerous sequels.