Addendum (4/26/24): A 2.1 patch dropped and gave the game another honest try, while there's still some pretty big problems with the overtuned difficulty of the emerald challenges, the kart handling, and very misplaced GP courses (really that first GP is a mess compared to the rest), there is a MARKED improvement as a whole with the way the game plays now.

This still needs some hefty lifting and work on its backend and I'm still not over the moon with it, but its a step in the right direction. I'm at least happy the devs seemed to have gotten over this attitude from older comments I've seen and actually taking the criticism to heart to make it better.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: Between the hour long tutorial with constant info dumping mechanics, a mess of visual components making seeing the tracks difficult, and the mechanics of racing itself being overly complex with both a ring currency system for spending to keep your top speed up...

This game's a complete mess. I really enjoyed Sonic Robo blast 2 Kart for the fact it was heavily skill based but still goofy enough that it was in line with how Mario Kart plays. This is just overkill in the audio/visual department without much of a second thought given to the actual core gameplay of the game. So much focus went into shoving so many mechanics like fast drops, ring spending, tricks off springs, etc. that it feels less like I'm racing and praying to god I do finger gymnastics to even stay on the road.

I hope they strip back some of this game or better balance it because in its current state, it's a frustrating mess that isn't very fun to play and its tutorial is a FUCKING HOUR LONG that I spent that I genuinely didn't enjoy.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom hooked me from the trailer, and I'm glad to say that fully playing the game pleased me more than I thought it would. I ended up falling in love with the gimmick of figuring out how to maneuver through a platformer with no jump button, and I feel really confident in saying how it ended up being some of my favorite controls for a 3D platformer I've played ever. I've said before that I'm not a huge platformer person, and I'm not, but something with Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom hits me just right. Maybe it's my hidden obsession with tiny toy cars, maybe it's the way the bright colors mixed with the polygon graphics and music, maybe it really is those tight controls - all I know is I'm not a platformer person and yet I 100%'ed this game over the past couple of days. I have never had a platformer completely cloud my thoughts in the way Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom has to the point that when I wasn't playing it, I was just thinking about playing it. It's perfect: in control, design, length, story, everything! I finished the entire goddamn thing and I'm still thinking about when I can play it again!

Absolutely a shining star for new releases in 2024. Can't wait to see what else Panik Arcade has up their sleeve, because they have gained a very loyal fan.

5/5

Well, I finally got to play the original OutRun cabinet! The deluxe one to be specific, where the car you sit in physically shakes and turns you to match what's on screen. I thought it was pretty cool, but completely freaked my wife out when she tried it out lol. I've never been a fan of OutRun's premise I'll be honest - with it not being really a racing game, but more of a "beat the timer with a bunch of stuff in your way" kinda game, but OutRun in comparison to other car driving games at the time is GORGEOUS and plays like something we've never seen before this, allowing the player to really feel like they're in control of the car on-screen.

I'm sure if I spent more time with OutRun, I would eventually get a handle on how to play it properly, but when rating the game, I can't not rate it as anything lower than a 4-Star because this is one of those arcade games that completely revolutionized arcade history and became one of Sega's most successful cabinets to date. Gorgeous graphics, amazing music (implementing a radio to add to the immersion of driving - 12 years before GTA!), and unbelievable controls... you can even change gear! Every gamer should check OutRun out at least once in their life.

4/5

"We know that millions of people all over the world just love the PAC-MAN arcade game. PAC-MAN has won the hearts of men, women and children everywhere. We also know that PAC-MAN has traditionally been an arcade game. Well, we at ATARI know all about arcade games. After all, we make some of the greatest arcade games In the world, and we know now to bring the same dynamite game play into your home. Our PAC-MAN has all of the excitement and challenge of the standard arcade game, and you get to play in the comfort and convenience of your own home. This is especially advantageous if you still plan to make an occasional appearance at the arcade to show off your great playing skills. (Little do they know that you've been practicing at home all along.)"
-Page 1 of the Pac-Man Atari Manual

at that point in 1982, you could probably argue that those words in the manual were the biggest lie ever told in gaming. When it comes to converting arcade games to the ol' 2600, obvious compromises need to be made in order to crunch out that game essence. Some games, like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender, Berzerk, etc, make the conversion relatively unscathed. But sometimes you just get some absolute nonsense like Pac-Man. While this game is in literally no means an accurate conversion of the arcade classic, it does show some interesting insight into Atari history both in a cultural and gamedev sense.

So like, the game pretty much shares gameplay similarities with the arcade version and that's kind of it. You eat dots and avoid ghosts that chase you, but compared to the arcade the ghost AI is different, scoring is different, the hitboxes are different, the maze is different, you get the idea. The maze isn't even like a bastardized facsimile of the original, it's just a bunch of circles in a grid. The hitboxes for actually eating the pellets video wafers seem to be a lot smaller and more precise than the hitbox for touching ghosts which makes things feel kind of inconsistent since you gotta be further forward towards pellets video wafers in order for them to actually count as eaten whereas the ghosts touch any pixel of you and pac man dies right then and there. At least on the control front things still feel responsive and snappy. There are only 8 different game variations here, and they just change how fast Pac-Man and the Ghosts can move to somewhat alter difficulty. I found that Game 6 is the fastest for both and even then it's still not that fast, so that's my rec if you want the most engaging Pac-Man gameplay. The slowest ghost speed is designed for younger children apparently, and at that speed the only way the ghosts will ever get you is if you actively try and get yourself killed which is awesome. Also this is probably just a me thing but using the stiff Atari joystick to try and quickly maneuver Pac-Man definitely hurts my hands after a little while. If there are any boomers on this site reading this please let me know of any proper Atari controller holding tech because I still haven't figured out how to use it in both a comfortable and consistently functioning way just yet.

If you look at this game solely through the lens of how accurate of a conversion this is, it's pretty dire. But ngl this game is pretty cool to look at retrospectively. Atari crunched the fuck out of one guy in 6 months to make something they KNEW would sell millions on brand alone (and sell it did, this is the best-selling game on the system), and so within those constraints the guy likely chose to go for preserving what he believed to be the essence of Pac-Man, rather than trying to make a straight conversion with no proper time or resources. Honestly, the essence still comes through pretty well even in this conversion, and there are probably a solid amount of the 8 million copies sold were probably satisfied casual customers just trying to get their fill of eating dots and chasing ghosts without much care towards the details. It's also just that by 1982 the Atari 2600 was already roughly 5 years old, and Pac-Man was already 2, and many other people had understood standards of what they should be expecting from a first-party conversion of an immensely popular arcade title, and this definitely wasn't up to those expectations. Gaming wasn't a fad anymore, the market of core gamermen had bloomed by this point, and if there's anything we know about those guys it's that they have quite high standards for their gamin. As a result, this game (and it's partner in crime that would release at the end of the year, E.T.) could be described as one of the first games known to the general public as a "bad game", and are frequently cited by historians and fans alike as a major cause of the great American video game crash of '83 as well as being touted as some of the worst games ever made in the later internet sphere of things.

Do I think this game really deserves that kind of reputation though? I mean, kind of? It's not nearly as ambitious as something like E.T. and is a pretty blatant result of Atari cutting corners to get as much easy profit on their grubby hands at the cost of making a quality product for their consumers, so it's not exactly like this game is great or misunderstood or anything imo. The Atari could absolutely have done a more direct conversion of Pac-Man, as both the Ms. Pac man port and plenty of 2600 homebrew can prove, so it's not like it was entirely the hardware at fault either. I just think that the end product is such a fascinating result of so many factors that it's hard not to be curious about it. It will obviously never happen, but I do wish Namco would reference this bizarro version of Pac-Man or include it in compilations as a historical curio or something. If they had a 2600 pac-man skin in a championship edition game or something I would absolutely pop the fuck off ngl. I definitely still wouldn't really recommend it to anyone outside of the curious gaming historians out there in this day and age, but an absolute bottom-of-the-barrel irredeemable worst-game-ever-made this game is certainly not.

Oh great, I’m reviewing Final Fantasy. A game that has been talked about for decades. While I do sometimes talk about popular games, it’s stuff like this I’m inexperienced with that makes me feel I shouldn’t really be one talking about the subject. I want to someday talk about a lot of the entries in this series. Besides the spinoff Seiken Densetsu, I’ve never beaten a Final Fantasy game. After all of these years I’ve finally done it and here is my story…

It all started with that blue screen that gives a small amount of story with a nice song to accompany it. I guess to start weirdly would be the music as I wanna get upfront and say the OST as a whole is amazing for the Famicom. It was composed by Nobuo Uematsu and it’s some amazing stuff, probably some of the best of the 1987 catalog of the Famicom. Once you start a new save I got to pick my party. If you’re wondering who I chose and will probably determine if you’ll keep reading or not. I picked a Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. Really wish the letter limit wasn’t four letters so I just ended up using the closest canon names they had. So began the journey of Zest, Puff, Floe, and Teol!

Surprisingly it starts off pretty basic, saving a Princess from a guy named Garland. First I had to get ready and it can feel pretty daunting for me as I’m not really told what’s helpful for my team. Even weirder is you have to buy magic and not get it from level ups so it’s off to grind. Battles seem pretty simple but wow you can fight a lot of them at once, it feels like it can be daunting at times but with enough skill, It’s not too bad. The one nice thing about having mages is I can rely on both offensive and defensive magic. Though this weird spell charges mechanic is something I’m not a fan of and I’ll go over why later.

The first dungeon is short and you can’t even get every treasure in here at first and even the first boss Garland is a joke. So I beat him and save the Princess but obviously that’s just the beginning. A new bridge is constructed and when you cross it, one of the best things happens in the game. You’re given a bit of text as the title of the game and credits are shown, really giving me the feeling of “Yes, I feel so ready to save the day!”

Now I’m off doing things following the plot, going into dungeons, and even getting multiple vehicles to ride in. You get one pretty early which is the ship which is pretty cool. The world isn’t too big but it still feels like a big world especially once you get more into it. Then I eventually found what would be the first main dungeon that wasn’t a floor only dungeon and wow I wasn’t having the most fun. I kept having to leave the place to heal and I began to realize having spell charges really limits what I can do in fights. Though later on you’ll learn Cottages can heal spell charges which is nice. Since I wanted to preserve spells for bosses, I ended up just running away most of the time which isn’t the most fun thing to do in an RPG. It also doesn’t help that the Black and White mages are as frail as a piece of glass. It can be a bit frustrating at times.

Still going through the world, there’s some cool things here and there and beating bosses with relative ease, even ones like the Kraken. I gotta praise the design of monsters too, they really look nice and there’s a nice variety of them and while there are recolors, it’s understandable. The art for stuff like the box is also legendarily great as well and they are unforgettable. Even the player sprites are good looking too. The world also looks pretty nice too and I like how some parts like the Town of Melmond show the decay of the Earth thanks to one of the Chaos Four. I got a little sidetrack there, my bad.

The more I went through the game, I did start to really appreciate all of the magic I could use and even grinding wasn’t too awful as I didn’t do too much of it even for getting Gil. There’s also a cool airship you can ride late into the game and it’s so fast and fun but landing with it can suck sometimes. You even get to upgrade your characters with brand new sprites and abilities and it feels so good to see this happen! There are still some issues that pissed me off. The worst thing in the game has to be the poison status. It’s not even poison being annoying but it screws with your team placement, I hate rearranging it every single time! This is also one of those early RPGs where you can miss if you direct a character to hit an enemy that dies to someone else which can lead to strategy and thought but can be annoying when you feel it’s too RNG at times who dies at what. I wish it was easier to view stats for weapons and armor as it ends up being easier to use a guide for comparisons. I also struggled with inventory management and ended up throwing a lot of weapons and armor away. The game is also known for being buggy but I didn’t really have any issue with this regard.

By the time I got to the end of the game, I was ready but nervous. I was at level 34 and ended at 35. This dungeon isn’t too long but enemies can be dangerous so more running but you have to rematch all of the Chaos 4 again and they’re harder. Oh that reminds me, some might wonder did I fight the Warmech? No, I didn’t. Sorry. Oh yeah I forgot that place also took place in space? That’s really cool. This final place also takes place 2,000 years in the past which is something I would have never expected to see in a FF game. Finally I got to the final boss and wow it’s actually that easy first boss from the beginning but now he’s Chaos. This fight is rough and worse of all he can heal all of his health. I thankfully had a lot of buffs on so I was eventually able to defeat him and the game ends with the world saved. It was weird to see the game end on the characters getting amnesia? Like should I not feel happy it didn’t all end well? Maybe I didn’t read it right, oh well the world is saved!

I feel on and off about this game. I want to think I enjoyed it, regardless of the issues. I could have talked about more moments and I know this feels a little too small of a review but I just don’t want to bore people. In the end, I think it’s a good game. I find it such an interesting game for 1987 especially since it could have failed had Dragon Quest III not receive a delay. FF would become one of Square’s biggest IPs. Two sequels would get made on the Famicom and I’ll play through II sometime this year. FFI also got some remakes which first started on the WonderSwan Color. It also has a MSX2 version with a fan translation. Though I’m sure nowadays the Pixel Remaster is the go-to version for people looking to play the game. It was a good start but I’m wondering how the sequel will fare. Guess I’ll have to wait and see. Thanks for reading!

I genuinely can't think of many other game series that have it as good as the Wonder Boy/Monster World lineage of games. From having every game of the original series be a well-revered classic among those that have played them, their lineage being preserved by M2 in the wonderful Sega Ages 2500 collection, and the Dotemu remaster of Dragons Trap that was made with more love for the source material and attention to detail towards it than most AAA remakes these days, Wonder Boy fans have been and continue to be eating fucking phenomenally. Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is absolutely no different, being a fantastic tribute to a series that's already so respected and beloved among the retro gamermen.

This game continues to evolve the style of open-ended yet still focused and linear design of Dragon's Trap and Monster World. It definitely leans towards the whole "metroidvania"-y style of genre moreso here than in those other games, but it still doesn't really fall in the design conventions of that genre all too well. The animal transformations return from Dragon's Trap (you can now play as the pig!), and unlike that game where most of the transformations were relegated to their own sections of the game, here you can switch between any of the 6 different forms you can earn on the fly whenever you want. There's the Pig that can sniff for secrets and use magic, the Snake that can go in tight passages and climb grass walls, the Frog that can use its tongue as a grappling hook, the Lion which can dash through blocks, the Dragon that can fly and breathe fire, and the Boy that can use a series of air-dashes. Each form has their own time to shine in the various levels, as the level layouts make the most out of each ability that you can use, with plenty of secrets throughout. If anything I do wish that there was more taken from Monster World 4, as I felt like having a changable Pepelogoo companion that could interact with each form in a unique way would have been cool. Designwise, it just feels like the culmination of what would happen if Dragon's Trap and Monster World were freed of their technical limitations, yet still designed in a very old-school traditional way.

The Monster World games are also known for their tight cohesion and continuity with one another, and despite not explicitly carrying the Wonder Boy name in its title, this game continues to have all the callbacks to previous titles as you would expect. The final dungeon from Monster Land is still here, each of the main sacred relics are artifacts from previous games, hell the in-game sanctuary is even adorned with stain-glass windows depicting all the previous heroes from games gone by. It's not so in-your-face that playing the previous games is required reading, but I would say that series familiarity will make this game hit like 10x harder than it would be if you went in blind.

And the music, oh my GOD the music dude. From the goddamn TITLE SCREEN I knew I was in for a fucking good OST. They literally got the whole ass avengers of game composers to make new tunes and arrange existing Wonder Boy tracks. They got Keiki Kobayashi, Yuzo Koshiro, Motoi Sakuraba, Michiru Yamane, and Takeshi Yanagawa in the kitchen to make some absolute bangers for this game alongside the studios in-house composer, Cédric Joder assisting with arrangements. Everyone on the sound team is firing on all cylinders, giving this game one of the best god damn game soundtracks I have ever listened to.

The game is just a banger, through and through. My only real gripes can be with the games length being a bit longer than my personal preferences for a Monster World game, mostly due to some sections having a few more mandatory subsections than was really necessary imo. The haunted house section was also a bit of a low point but that could have just been me being stupid and taking way too long to figure out the puzzles. If you are a fan of the Monster World series, this is such a no-brainer must-play that you've probably already went through this by now lmfao. If you enjoy classic open-ended sidescrollers, the whole Monster World series is seriously worth your time. Most fans of other game series would kill to be able to eat even half as good as Monster World fans do.