I recommend watching Nerrel's video on Super Mario 3D All-Stars as he makes a very interesting case regarding fan-made ports and how current compilations fail to meet them in quality without knocking one or the other. A lot of what he says I feel applies here, I just didn't want to regurgitate points from it verbatim.

Sonic Origins Plus be so good when ya don't got a bitch in ya ear telling you to just download and compile Sonic 1 Absolute and 2 Forever and 3 AIR etc whatever.

Yes, the fan ports are the better selections, but the convenience of having all 4 classic titles in one package here can't really be understated. Being able to play all the titles as one big game with the bonus cutscenes is a great 10 hour package.

Yes, there are elephants in the room: the port job itself is subpar and it's very easy to trigger a glitch you previously couldn't in the originals, Game Gear emulation has input lag and an odd decision to faux stereo that is earbleed inducing, "Classic Mode" are just the shoddy ports on 4:3, Amy's moveset isn't great, yadda yadda.

You know what is great, though? All 4 of these fucking games. Roadblocks aside, they're still very well playable, and the added benefit of widescreen and drop dash (especially in CD onward), make Origins win out as a package.

"But the fan ports are better!" Yeah that's great, I play those too. I love them! I prefer them! You could argue that, historically, fanmade ports of any game have always lead out official compilations and rereleases, unfortunately that's the way of the capitalist gaming world.

I paid for the barebones Mega Man Legacy Collections, Super Mario 3D All-Stars, I even saved up allowance money to get Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis on GBA as a kid and Sonic Classic Collection on DS. I own two copies of Sonic Mega Collection, I bought Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection on PS3 both physically and digitally, alongside SEGA Classic Collection on both PC and Switch. I even saved up $110 in allowance money when I was eleven to buy a copy of Sonic Gems Collection on eBay, used with no manual, way back in 2009, and wayyyyy long after it's been out of print.

While I got this as a birthday gift from user Detchibe, the point remains that, within reason, I support it both ways, and I love game compilations, especially SEGA ones, because I love having updated, modern ways to play classic titles, officially or unofficially, and I don't particularly care that it comes with a few caveats; that has always been my preference. Yes, I agree about its overpricing at $40, it would definitely feel more snug around $30. Yes, I agree it has its problems. Yes, it's still fucking Sonic, and yes, that makes it fucking good to me.

Replayed as part of Sonic Origins Plus.

I am more no longer letting internet weirdo personalities gaslight me into thinking Sonic CD is some kind of poorly-designed Sonic title that hates the player. If anything, this is Sonic 1's philosophy fully realized, more than Sonic 2 and 3&K ever did, even despite my eternal preference to the latter.

Consisted of perfectly-sized gigantuan neonite playgrounds of dreams that beg you to explore every nook and cranny, CD's multilayered treasure hunting approach invites players to really experiment with movement. FUTURE and PAST signs plastered at every avenue give you plenty of chances and opportunities to play with your speed to warp through time, some obvious and some cleverly hidden.

The CD-ROM represented Sonic's potential when unchained from its predecessor's hardware limitations. Its recovery from obscurity opened the floodgates for the uninspired, tepid opinions of influential casuals to classify CD as largely inferior to Sonic 2, reason largely being its "insistance" on hindering Sonic's speed. This is where the hardest pill to swallow comes into play: that Sonic's original core philosophy was always in his physics, not his speed. Sonic was designed as a characteristic pinball. It's why he rolls down slopes. It's why his rounded design and quills can be hunched down into a BALL shape. In reality, as Sonic 2 was developed in America by a largely new team and focused on the occasionally staleing spectacle of going right really fast (with a more modern, uninspired art style I might add,) the passion in Sonic 1's development team effortlessly bled over to CD, evergreen, ever shining. Sonic's speed may be his Americanized ideal, but it was originally an end to a means, a reward for good play that Yuji Naka envisioned. After one more development team split for the development of Sonic 3, Sonic CD was the last and only game to really branch out Sonic 1's pinball-platforming core before transitioning into a high speed platformer, for better or worse, and in a way, no other Sonic game has carried that core philosophy since.

However, if a Grand Judge sentenced me to playing Sonic CD's special stages for 10 minutes as a punishment over a minor misdemeanor, I would ask for the electric chair as a preferable alternative.

Fuck you Nintendo for releasing Pikmin 1+2 while I was in the middle of playing this emulated.

I imagine the biggest internal conversation regarding sequel development is in regards to changes. A sequel is always the best way to really assess what makes an original title work and what doesn't. Pikmin 1 had the benefit of being such a richly produced game I found it hard to imagine what could be done to improve on it while playing it for the first time a while ago.

Weird feeling to find out that Nintendo's answer, in 2004, seemed to be "not much."

Pikmin 2 really wanted to flip the core of Pikmin on its head, by going from a time-limited scramble for ship parts to a slower, methodical treasure hunt. Part of Pikmin's appeal, to me, will always be its ability to pressure the player. Controversial as it was, Pikmin's entire campaign was time-limited for 30 in-game days, each day about 13 minutes in length. So, in short, each Pikmin playthrough will last, at most, about six and a half hours, give or take. To stress it out, the player is put under two constant time limits, that for the day, and that for the 30 total days. On my first playthrough I missed the deadline at the last minute by having the last two crucial parts in separate areas on the last day. It was frustrating, but I still enjoyed Pikmin.

I was aware of how Pikmin 2 removed the 30-day time limit but I also wasn't aware of what else it did to flip up the core game loop.

i.e. fucking dungeons. A lot of this review is gonna be about the caves/dungeons, as they’re the new center of the gameplay in this sequel.

Pikmin 2 decides that, while time ticks away during the day above ground, four different entrances in each area can be found that lead to a unique underground cave. The now-overworld clock freezes as you're now dungeon crawling for the bulk of the game time. Within the first hour, the main essence of Pikmin's design philosophy is contradicted. Pikmin 1's yin-yang of problem solving and time management is disregarded as Pikmin 2 concerns itself more with scanning featureless floors of repeating geometry, relegating the Pikmin to color-coded keys instead of diverse pieces of a toolkit. Red Pikmin are immune to fire and can remove fire traps, Yellow Pikmin are immune to electricity and can remove electric traps, Blue Pikmin can swim and are mostly useless in caves. Every floor, no matter the layout or cave itself, plays out exactly the same: clear out the enemies and traps, bring the treasures back to the landing spot, proceed down. You do this shit for over 100 floors, and all they do is get bigger, more plentiful, and take longer to complete as the game progresses.

Call me jaded or reluctant to change, but I don't find the constant lock-and-key (as Pangburn beautifully put it) gameloop an effective progression from what I previously experienced as such a greatly imaginative strategic puzzle blend.

I think what can be said most about the dungeons is how pointless they are for something that takes center stage. As I stated, pausing the daily time limit for extended dungeon crawling segments completely eviscerates the need for the time limit at all, especially with how barren the above ground sections are now. What used to be the main environment of Pikmin 1, sprawling multi-pathed worlds and labyrinths with puzzles to solve and routes to optimize at every corner have turned into circularly linear gates to these cave entrances with not much to see or do when outside of them. There's some stray treasure out there, but with how little time you spend above ground the time limit may as well not be there. I repaid my debt in 25 days over 10 hours of playtime, twice the time I spent in 30 days within Pikmin 1.

I could write much more, about this game's psychopathic sense of difficulty in the late game, over-reliance on randomized hazards to artificiate difficulty (those fucking bombs that drop from the cave ceilings), the unsubtle requirement to reset the game every time you fuck up on a shitty floor layout to get a new one (as it asks you to save between floors as a loud and obnoxious wink), the timepadding of having to farm the new White and Purple Pikmin, etcetera etcetera. You think all those clips being posted on Twitter of everyone's Pikmin army being completely eviscerated by random hazards all being from Pikmin 2 specifically is just a coincidence? It sure as hell isn't. Sometimes I think Pikmin 2 is a work of pure evil.

Despite all its changes, with all of Pikmin 2's misguided and unthoughtful reimagining, the most subversive thing of all is that I don't flat out hate it. It can be trudging, monotonous, boring, but never completely joyless. It's still a wonder of world and sound design, and there are moments above ground that spark the same light as its predecessor. I think "misguided" really is the key descriptor for Pikmin 2, as the core of a good game is still there and felt. Though I audibly groaned at the return of caves in Pikmin 4, with an explosion of countless indie roguelikes in recent years a-la Enter the Gungeon and Spelunky with their innovative dungeon crawling systems in the name of accessibility and quality of life, I think there's no drought in inspiration Nintendo could take from. Pikmin 2 could be elevated as a footnote in Pikmin 4's potentially successful winning take on Pikmin-meets-dungeon-crawling, but for now, it's a clumsy effort to shake up a successful formula that didn't need to be changed.

An utterly nonsensical pinball racer with a surprisingly tight-knit community back in its day. Logging on for over two years and seeing the same maybe 20-30 people like it was a secret club. A time capsule to the overly loud ironic MLG No-scope Skrillex Bangarang Doritos and Mountain Dew Reddit humor of its time. Every update was a treat as new characters and tracks and more meme bullshit was shoved in without care for balance or quality, and yet there was always a twisted sense of fun to be had. For all its sick and retrospectively embarrassing intents and purposes, it was still a morbidly entertaining experience thanks to how much "Sonic" was intentionally embued in its soul. A seemingly uncapped sense of speed and unmatched flight incentivized every player to try and master each course, perfecting the optimal route so keep your Sanicball rolling faster and faster. Some incredible exploits and shortcuts became commonplace towards the end of its life as everyone gradually learned of its secret physics fundamentals. Pure "you just had to be there" essence.

No-brainer, this is the ultimate Mega Man fanservice package. Unfathomably stuffed with every degree of bonus content imaginable. You have the main MM1 Remix which is already a great game, but added on top are not just various difficulties, but also the option to play with the entire original level design of MM1 with the new chibi art style. Even if you're me who thinks the original Mega Man is some hot boiling diarrhea ass of a game, it's an addition ever the more thoughtful.

That's an already satisfying bundle if you ask me, and if this came out in 2023 this would be a notably content-packed collection, but where Powered Up goes above and beyond is in its bonus content. Defeating Robot Masters with just the Mega Buster unlocks the ability to play as them, in addition to unlocking sets of challenges unique to them, totalling over a hundred unique levels to master.

And that's not even to mention the most impressive offering Powered Up brings to the table: the level creator. Coming way before the time of Mega Man Maker is an entirely, satisfyingly robust stage creator that, for its time, takes incredibly innovative use of the PlayStation Network's online system to share and play created levels with players from around the world. Even today as I cannot fully experience this option in an emulator I am still in awe at its implementation and how this was something fans could do a whole decade before Super Mario Maker and Mega Man Maker would let you.

Even now, as Capcom has been heavily pushing Mega Man's historic legacy titles over a number of collections over the past decade, even in their abundance, none of them have been able to capture the soul and passion for its fans Capcom embued in Powered Up all the way back in 2006. Most impressively, I'd say, is that they made Mega Man 1 fun to play. As a Nintendo-only child who only had a Gamecube with the Anniversary Collection (which by the way, is still a great collection of fully coded ports in comparison to the emulated compilations we have today), seeing this in one of my gaming magazines prior to its release was one of my earliest memories of console envy. In a perfect world this would have sold better and we would have gotten Powered Up 2, and never had I the opportunity to call a hypothetical game a potential favorite until now. What got though is still pretty damn great.

This game took me four years and multiple restarts to finish. I've been going at trying to finish just one story route since RE2R's announcement but I just couldn't adapt for the longest time. Only just now though, after RE4R's release, through a half decade's worth of trial and erroring throwing my head at the wall, did I finally finish Leon A.

I want to stress that I did actually enjoy my time playing the original RE2. I've played some Resident Evil titles before but never finished them, and I want to express how unique these games are and how much of a learning curve it was to play by its rules. Resident Evil 2's distinctive blend of non-linearity, juggling multiple routes of progression simultaneously, inventory management and crushing punishment for death cost me many rage quits and entire restarts for a long, long time. It was only after restarting ten times over was I starting to click with its direction.

Resident Evil 2 strikes an upset to your typical search action fare by layering multiple keys of progression in a single run. This is what confused me for the longest time: your Card Set Keys actually have nothing to do with the Chess Plugs or your Medals or Virgin Hearts, but instead every key item is used to find more key items. It's less unlocking access to big new areas and more slowly unlocking room after room until you've made it out. This, in turn, despite me restarting over and over again due to getting stuck or frustrated over time lost, made every single playthrough of mine different. Every restart I decided to grab things in a different order, and after attempt after attempt did I finally get a grasp on what goes where, and when I finally got out of the Police Station for the first time, I played through the entire rest of the second half in one sitting. I still got a D rank with a time of 5:01, but just completing the game was the bigger victory for me.

Alas, but it wasn't just RE2's non-linearity that stumped me for years, but also its crushing sense of oppression and constantly-dangling-by-a-thread sense of danger. There's never enough bullets to kill everything; I already knew that going in. What I didn't expect was how RE2 turns even saving your progress into a finite resource. Most save points come with 2 Ink Ribbons, one consumed each time to save progress. Surviving Raccoon City isn't just an exercise in reserving ammo for God knows what, you'll only truly survive if you know when to set your checkpoint flags. Only once I made the rule to always have at least one Ink Ribbon on me did I finally make it to the end. What makes the decision to save at points even more crucial is the constant fear of being set back. Dying in Resident Evil 2 can be brutal, even moreso in a game where sometimes you have to just take a hit or two to keep moving forward and health is only identified by a color in your status screen. Being set back ten, twenty, or even thirty or more minutes can be demotivational for anybody, and even moreso when you're lost and you don't even know how much progress you've lost. What makes Resident Evil 2 a truly scary game is how it emphases that you really are surviving. Where even other games in the genre its pioneered make you feel like an unkillable God Swatter amongst zombie flies, Resident Evil 2 takes every moment possible to remind you that you are, (mostly) alone; it's you against the world and the whole world wants you dead.

It's those triumph-over-oppression aspects of Resident Evil 2 that made me really appreciate it in the end. It's confusing and it's punishing, but it wants to be. It's my fault for being a dipshit who couldn't read a map and realize that all the locks and keys were color coded. It's why I could never cope with abandoning it for a half-decade, I had to beat this game at some point, and the relief I got from finally escaping Raccoon City felt as real to me as it did Leon and Claire. That's absolutely why Leon thinks he's such unkillable hot shit in Resident Evil 4; because I would too.

They merged pages and my stinkin review got deleted so here's it re-uploaded.

I bought this as a half-joke to maybe just toy around with and refund it but I ended up keeping it. I expected Classic Oregon Trail with a fresh coat of paint and I got much more than that - it's more mechanical, more random, more incentivized as a whole. I'd almost argue it justifies the $30 price point. (Almost.)

The core of Oregon Trail is maintained throughout: get to Oregon and make tactical and informed decisions on fighting every possible rank of crud and piss the world throws at you on the way. That much hasn't changed, but so many new systems are interwoven into the experience; branching pathways, the ability to start from any camp that has been visited for shorter playstyles, and my favorite being randomized character pools with additional skill building as you progress. What used to be a funny customization aspect of just granting your party funny names and sending them into the wild yonder to get sick and die has turned into a large system of random variables to add differentiating playstyles and new ways to develop adaptability in the player. Oregon Trail has never felt more varied nor more high-stakes. I'd go as far as to call it a roguelite at this point.

The Oregon Trail was the first video game I ever played, using every ounce of my spare computer time in preschool and elementary school trying to get as far as possible on the crustiest and slowest DOS computer you can imagine, and that core game still exists in here. Modernized, complexified, but without losing an ounce of its original essence.

Also the soundtrack is unexpectedly phenomenal and raw.

this game has crack house vibes. blockbuster rental vibes. "at your friends' house and his mom made you play this because she says you were playing Mortal Kombat for too long" vibes.

i hate the lifelessness of it. i hate the character models, expressions unwavering, proportions terrifyingly off-model, simultaneously human-like and not-so. i hate their faces and how most of them are just poorly mapped textures that don't change expression. i hate how the ghosts take up 4 different roster slots but have the same stats. i hate that Butt Ugly Martians looking alien. i hate how the character voices sound like muffled screams coming from inside a mascot costume. i hate the corny music with shoehorned namco melodies. i hate that this is like, the highest rated pac-man world game on this site. most of all, i hate that i had fun with it and there's nothing mechanically or structurally unsound that i can fault it for. great value cheese puffs type game. pool birthday party for your classmate that you aren't really friends with but he invited the whole class anyway type game. this game smells like mcnuggets

God damn did I want to like this one more. It generally just plays better, especially with the new Crazy Hop. The soundtrack is all Offspring this time around which is great if you like that kind of stuff, which I absolutely do.

The new maps are so much, much worse here. The unsung beauty of the OG Crazy Taxi was its brilliant map and road structure, where after the initial downhill descent is a city so easily navigatable. Roads merge and flow into district after district, landmark after landmark, and the navigation arrow seamlessly pointed you into the correct direction without ever getting you lost.

That unfortunately just wasn't the case for me this time around. After 3 hours and doing every map, garnering mountains of E and D licenses did I realize that I just kept getting fucking lost. Roads are bookended by miles of repeating skyscrapers with unremarkable points of interest that just pass you by. So needlessly complicated too is the layout of the roads, which is where all sense of navigation just utterly fail. How am I consistently following the arrow yet it shows I'm getting further from the destination? In addition to the nav arrow seemingly leading me in the wrong direction, too quickly and jarringly will it just suddenly turn the opposite direction down the middle of a road. It snaps so poorly amidst this dreadful web of identical urban sprawl that I, for the life of me, cannot ever trust it 80% of the time. This is all due in part to how absurdly complex some of the road structure is, roads upon roads intersecting, going in pointless loops to nowhere, all the while your navigation is just fucking with you. I did not, even once, find The Hotel. Every passenger that wanted to go to The Hotel was a game ender. Where the fuck was that hotel. I couldn't find it with 3 full minutes.

It's been so long since any game, indie or otherwise, has worn its heart on its sleeve the way Pizza Tower does. Over 5 years of time in the oven and it shows in every screen, every frame, every button press, every bite. Pizza Tower has more than deserved its right to stand amongst the greatest culinary triumphs of the single-chef indie scene alongside Cave Story, Stardew Valley, Hypnospace Outlaw, etc, joining the ranks of my personal 5-star favorite dishes.

There's something truly special about the way Pizza Tower sprinkles its influences to spice up its unique blend of score attack. It's not just the Wario Land heritage, its the way Tour de Pizza has taken its recipe and made a pie so perfectly seasoned and crisped, down to its crust. It's more than just a familiar flavor on a new dish. It's the ultra responsive and gooey momentum that makes combo racking so addictive. It's the undeniably charming SatAM flavor of every frame of animation that makes its slapstick marinate so effortlessly with its gameplay. It's the ear candy soundtrack so infectious and diverse, taking pieces from different cultural dishes like chiptune, new jack swing, tropical house, disco; all appreciated, never appropriated. Every bite culminating in a finale so unexpected, spicy, and cathartic; one of the most memorable last courses I've ever eaten and unlike anything I've ever tasted. Even after a week I still cannot stop thinking about it.

Pizza Tower was a daunting dish for such a small team of chefs to cook, and was something I was watching from outside the oven with such interest that I was genuinely worried it might come out overcooked, or maybe not even come out at all. I'm so glad to say this was not the case.

Bellísimo.

The chokehold this would have had me in if I had a PS2 as a kid.

It's rare to see a game so dead-set adamant on what it is right from the first "Press Start," but Burnout 3 dares not mince a single word: "You're not gonna get by just driving good. You HAVE to be aggressive or you WILL lose."

And I wholly appreciate how hard it goes in enforcing that rule. Your rivals will ALWAYS be on your tail, arguably in a rubber band-ish fashion, but your top speed alone is never going to grant you levity. You need to boost, be constantly boosting, and boost at the right time to slip through at critical split-second situations. You don't get that boost for free, either. Granting boost upon successful risky maneuvers is an absolute genius pull. You HAVE to stay in the oncoming lane. You HAVE to battle, trade paint with, nudge into oncoming traffic, and wall slam your rivals. You gotta drift between civilian cars with just inches of space. Doing everything you can to be drip fed that juuuust enough amount of boost to be able to take the win with. Burnout 3 creates such a moment-to-moment gameplay consistency with such unprecedented frequency it practically struggles to be even remotely boring or tiring to play, and its swelling mass of content ensures you won't be running out of things to do for a long, long time. It strikes an incredibly delicate balance of pure, obscene fun, so delicate that the slightest flaw or nitpick would threaten an immeasurable blow to its enjoyment. Unfortunately I have more than a few nitpicks, and they all seem to play off each other in such a way that it’s hard for me to find a starting point.

The first thing that struck my mind during my playthrough was the game’s visibility being notably low all due to the camera’s ridiculously low placement. Your car is not only practically centered, but the amount of real estate it takes up on-screen is nothing but a detriment to your visibility. It is genuinely hard to see upcoming turns, road islands, dividers, rails, rivals; practically everything oncoming, and that goes double when going uphill. Even after hours of playing and familiarizing myself to a self-satisfactory degree I still end up hitting something that I absolutely did not see, resulting in a crash that felt unfair. Another detracting factor in this game’s readability is its lack of any sort of map UI or camera controls. In addition to not being able to adjust the camera to any comfortable degree, there is no form of display where you can read the road map. No minimap on-screen and not even a map display on pause, just a rough overview of the road lines on the select screen. This makes not only reading the oncoming roads but the spatial awareness of your rivals at any given time much more unreadable and hard to follow, and the occasional “YOU ARE X SECONDS AHEAD/BEHIND” marquee doesn’t help.

I wholly understand the appeal of this franchise despite this being the only title I’ve played. It’s adamantly emphasized on vehicular combat and its impressive destruction physics, and they are indeed impressive. When the spectacle wears off is at the realization that they’re unskippable and sometimes overly long, usually not cutting off until the destroyed car stops moving, which could be at any time. The g-force of going 220 MPH to 0 at an instant feels as real to you as the driver in some cases. Pair this with the low visibility and the muting of the in-game music during crashes and it truly feels as though you are ripped from the game entirely, as technically impressive and sometimes absurdly humorous these trademark crashes are, they are nonetheless jarring and whiplash inducing at the worst times, and at their absolute worst during the Road Rage events. Every crash shortens my patience, and every single time I’ve turned the game off was during a crash I no longer had the patience to sit through.

My slightest nitpick overlays the entire web of issues I have; man, do I hate face button acceleration. I have weak, brittle baby gamer hands; I can’t hold Cross or A for any amount of time before my whole hand begins to cramp. Why are there no rebindable controls? Why should I have to rebind them to the triggers in PCSX2 and make a more awkward game experience for myself?

The strangest issue I have with Burnout 3 is that all my problems with it seem to be personal nitpicks. I’ve never seen anyone, anywhere, at any point in time, similarly bemoan these issues. People blast through it like they’ve lived on these roads with real-life familiarity. Everyone loves the car crashes and wacky physics and have no problem with their obtrusiveness. They can play this shit for hours without discomfort, and I can see why. Burnout 3 is an absolute blast and I ultimately love playing it, but with gameplay so touchy and moment-to-moment, I find that any personal nitpick in its range can be catastrophic and detrimental. Fortunately, as elaborate and specific my issues with it are, Burnout 3 is such a strong title on its own wheels that I can’t find anyone, including myself, taking it to be an actual car wreck of a game. This shit still rocks.