I've been in a bit of a nostalgic mood lately, and I saw they had one copy of this game lefta at the resale mall and picked it up. It's been maaaany years since I last played this game, and while I did beat it when I was a kid, I never got all 120 shines. Well this time I did! With the help of a guide for a few of the most hidden ones as well as 50-some odd blue coins, and after 20 or so hours with the Japanese version, I 100%'d Super Mario Sunshine~.
Mario Sunshine sees Mario & Peach & Co taking a vacation to Dolphic Island (as it's called in Japanese). Mario is framed of painting graffiti all over the whole island, and is ordered by the island government to clean it all up before he can leave. Luckily, he has the aid of his mechanical sidekick Fludd (or "Pomp", as he's called in Japanese) who can spray water to clean stuff up and help Mario with his platforming. It's as lighthearted a story as ever, but it does introduce Bowser Jr. to the cast and also gives us some of the first instances of Bowser just trying to be a good dad, which is super wholesome and I love it ^w^ As in Mario 64, you go around 7 stages doing 8 missions in each (as opposed to the 6 missions in Mario 64) for the reward of a Shine (the collectible here instead of stars). There are additionally two extra hidden shines in each level, which are often just doing a red-coin time trial of a particular stage, but not always (and some are damn deviously hidden). The main plaza of Dolphic Island also has over a dozen shines to collect, hidden all over it, as well as 240 freaking blue coins hidden throughout the game (and you can trade in 10 of for a shine). While the game does have a lot of really fun mission designs, ranging from platforming puzzles you need to complete without Fludd (like Odyssey would replicate later with Cappy-less platforming challenges) to a hotel mystery where you need to find your way through all the secret floors/walls to your objective, the game overall has a weaker mission design than the other 3D Marios. This is what I would say is its biggest flaw, and often 2 or 3 of the missions in each stage do not really feel terribly substantial and the game overall feels like it has a bit less content than Mario 64 did despite having just as many stars. A lot of the hidden blue coins are also really deviously hidden, falling into a trap that Mario Odyssey also falls into in terms of trying to 100% it, but this is way worse. You'll likely appreciate coming across those kinds of minor collectibles in playing the game normally as they'll help you get towards the Shine total you need to beat the game, but it's a real pain trying to find ALL of them without a guide. The blue coins are a fairly minor complaint though unless you're going to try and get every Shine in the game. While I feel the mission design to be overall weaker (although still very good) compared to Mario 64 and the other 3D Marios, the way this game plays is WAY better than Mario 64. Mario starts to control in large part how he would for the rest of his 3D games, particularly in how wall jumps are far less difficult now that you can hug a wall for a bit before jumping off of it. In addition to that, Mario also has Fludd to assist him with its various nozzles. There's the default nozzle for shooting out at enemies and cleaning up spills, but there's also a hover nozzle that lets you hover for a short time in addition to 2 different sub attachments you can find in each level. It really varies up the ways Fludd can help you move around, and it does a great job of varying up the platforming, much like how Mario Galaxy would spice things up with gravity switching. The game holds up aesthetically really well, looking really nice played through the component cables on my Wii. The music is also great, and the main plaza theme is as catchy as ever. The VA in the game curiously is all in English even in the Japanese version, only having Japanese subtitles to aid Japanese players in understanding what's going on. The English VA that's there isn't terribly frequent or of an amazing quality, but it was very interesting to see them continue that after Mario 64: Rumble Edition also had all English VA here in Japan. Verdict: Highly Recommended. Fludd does certainly change up how Mario moves compared to the other games, and the mission design may be all around weaker, but this is still a fantastic 3D platformer. I understand that some people may not like it for how much it changes Mario's basics of moving around, but I still think this game is a blast and is totally worth checking out for fans of the genre who haven't gotten a chance to try this one yet.
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I'm a big Bomberman fan, as my past few reviews might indicate, so I was pretty excited to play some more of the retro games I never got around to when I got my PCE Mini. Bomberman '94 is technically a game I have owned before, as I used to own Mega Bomberman on my Genesis back in the States, but it was never a game I played terribly much of. I'm happy to have finally properly seen what the game has to offer. I beat the Japanese version in one sitting, only using save states on the final boss (because heck that guy XP).
Bomberman '94 has you traveling through 6 worlds trying to piece back the planet after a comet shatters it. You can replay old levels after finishing them before, and certain levels have specific powerups exclusive to them. This is super important if you wanna do something like go back to world 2 to get remote detonating bombs again if you die and lose them. There are technically only a couple dozen levels, but many levels have several rooms you need to travel through, so they feel like several levels over one larger stage. The stages also don't play like most other Bomberman games, as your goal isn't often to destroy all the enemies and reach an exit that's hidden, but you need to destroy several shield generators protecting either the medal piece at the end, or the door leading to the next area. Each of the 6 worlds has a boss, and some of them are quite tough, but their difficulty and hit boxes are far better balanced than what I've played of Bomberman '93. Another very cool addition to this game is the addition of Louies (or Roois in Japanese), the kangaroo companions that frequent in so many other Bomberman games after this. Their special powers and ability to take an extra hit for you, on top of how cute they are, make them a welcome mechanical addition to the game for me. The presentation is very nice, with a vibrant, colorful, and a bit slicker style than Bomberman '93. Bomberman is no longer so chonky, and this is where we start to see a svelter Bomberman. His enemies are also a bit more richly detailed, and despite not being on a CD, Bomberman '94 has some really nice music and boss graphics compared to the game released only a year prior. The final boss is a really massive difficulty spike, and probably the only negative point in the game for me. You only have 5 minutes to beat him, he has 3 stages to his fight, and his mechanics will likely take at least a few deaths to properly decipher, so he adds a LOT of playtime onto the game if you aren't using save states. At the very least you have unlimited continues. Verdict: Recommended. This is an excellent Bomberman game and great fun. It's certainly Bomberman as you've seen it elsewhere, but especially on the PCE Mini, it's a great time alone or with friends. It's not my favorite Bomberman from this era, but it's certainly a good, more balanced Bomberman experience among the 16-bit era of the series. Onto the sequel! Right after finishing the first Neutopia, I fired up the sequel and was really impressed at just how different it is. Maru told me that Neutopia 2 was better but ultimately more of the same, and that's a statement I found to be true. That said, it's so remarkably different that it's something I had a much better time with. I also played this one in English, and since the PCE Mini doesn't keep times like the Nintendo mini consoles do, I don't really know how long I took. I'd say about 8-10 hours at the most. I also used save states a fair bit to keep my progress from being set back by dying, and I'll continue as to why that turned out to be a very good thing a bit later.
Neutopia 2 picks up some time after the first game ends. The main character of Neutopia 1 didn't marry the princess, but he did have a son, and that is your main character (whom you name yourself). Your mother awakes from a dream where your father dies while fighting a monster, and you set off on a quest to rescue your dad. Unlike the first Neutopia, this isn't just a "go get the 8 thingies to fight the final boss" quest. There are 8 dungeons again, sure, but they're more connected to specific goals at each point in the story (like a dungeon hiding a story-important item). The overworld is still more or less divided into several sections of "do everything here, then progress", but it's dressed up in a way to better hide that fact. The story and narrative are still very basic and doesn't really have anything revelatory in either its presentation or flow, but it's a significant upgrade from the first game and feels like a story rather than just the set dressing for an action adventure game. Something else also significantly improved is the combat, at least mostly. The game now has the ability to walk diagonally, and that also means the ability to stab diagonally. Not only this, but you can also effectively "slash" your sword now by quickly turning after stabbing (not unlike 3D Dot Game Heroes would do 20 years later). This turns the sword from a useless joke into something that's actually your primary battle tool throughout the game, like it should be. There's also a very high-range flail you get that's pretty cool, but I never used it much since it's "cursed" so that you lose 10 gold every time you use it XP Unfortunately, this has also come at the expense of the usefulness of the 3 magic wands in the game. The game's knockback system has been drastically altered since the first game. Instead of just always flying away from you, now enemies fly in the direction the character is facing. While you can usually use that to your advantage so enemies don't fly back into you too much (just because you turned to back up after firing a spell at them), some spells explicitly fire directly behind you, meaning if those shots land, you will be hit by the enemy it hits. The wands' damage is also just far weaker than the sword's. It's not inexcusable, but it's not exactly something as significantly better than the first game's combat as it seems to be at first. The dungeons are ultimately the gauntlets of damage-before-the-boss they were the last game, lacking any puzzles beyond trying to conserve your bombs so you can bomb the right wall eventually (bomb conservation sucks and this game relies on it WAY too much). That said, the bosses are FAR better. While they sometimes are bullshit and a bit too hard, they're nowhere near the cake walks they were in the first game, and are a significant improvement. Some enemy types (I'm looking at you weird spiny things in the snow forest) are utterly unfair and horrible, but the enemy variety is also better. Beyond the difficulty and annoyance of conserving bombs, the main thing I'm glad I used save states for is the way that the game uses its stop-time item. The weapons you use to fight things and heal yourself and such are generally exactly the same as the last game, but there is a new item enemies can drop when you kill them: an hourglass. This freezes time in the room you're in for your enemies for what appeared to me to be forever (although maybe it's just a super long time). If it is indeed forever, then you can soft-lock yourself in certain areas, since there are some cloud-like enemies who split into smaller pieces when hit, and when hit during a time freeze, they split in a way that means they can't be killed. Maybe I just didn't wait long enough, but it certainly seemed like I'd managed to lock myself in a dungeon room because I couldn't kill all the enemies in it XP The game's presentation story-wise was improved a bit, and the graphics and music were as well. The graphics feel far less generic and are generally significantly improved. It's still recognizably Neutopia, but these feel far less like they were ripped from some 1990 version of the Unity asset store and fit a larger, more cohesive style. The music is still nothing I ever really noticed to great effect, but it's still a bit better than the first game. Nothing MP3 player-worthy, but overall an improvement worth mentioning. Verdict: Recommended. Neutopia 2 is a game whose peaks and valleys are more extreme than its predecessors, but there are far more peaks than valleys. I felt like I was on auto-pilot for quite a long time in Neutopia 1, just going through the motions of playing videosgame, but Neutopia 2 was something I was actively having a good time playing. It still has some annoying bits lending to its age, but it's a far superior game to its predecessor and one I feel much less uncomfortable recommending to someone looking for a good Zelda-like game. Moving onto the next game Maru recommended, this is the Zelda clone series of the PC Engine. Neutopia is a game I've heard Maru talk about before but I've never tried. He said it was just okay, and that's about the place I'm at if not a bit lower. I played the English version of this and used save states a lot mostly for preserving bombs and making getting through the game a bit less time consuming.
Neutopia is a really shameless Zelda 1 clone with some NPC elements from Zelda 2 thrown in for good measure. You have a top-down perspective with a main character going through 8 dungeons to get 8 power objects to then fight a big bad guy and rescue the princess at the end. It's not a terribly memorable game in regards to anything about its presentation, but it's doesn't really fail at any element of the presentation. It's honestly a really surprisingly well translated game for 1990, with only some minor punctuation errors here and there. The game just isn't terribly ambitious, so it didn't leave much of an impression with me. This is pre-LTTP, so your main character Jazeta's main attack is just sticking his sword out directly in front of him like Link does in Zelda 1. This wouldn't be so bad if Jazeta weren't also taller than his feet are wide, so you have a big problem of your sword hitting a relatively small area in front of you compared to how tall your hitbox is. The sword is borderline useless a lot of the time with how numerous and fast enemies are, and that never improves throughout the game. Your sword only gets more powerful, never wider or larger. This is heavily mitigated, though, by the fire wand that you get relatively early in the game. This is something Neutopia copies from YS moreso than it does from Zelda, but that fire wand is an invaluable tool with how it can not only fire at range, it also gets more powerful the higher your health is (and it gets stronger the higher your max health gets as a result), and it's also a ranged attack that you can fire even diagonally. All that said, the combat is routinely quite frustrating and while the bosses tend to be easy to very easy, the normal enemies swarming you is easily the most difficult thing in the game. Outside of that, the dungeons aren't terribly interesting, and are very derivative from Zelda 1 in how they're mostly just a series of rooms. There aren't really ever any larger puzzles or even rooms bigger than one screen, and dungeons don't even have keys aside from locking the boss room. The dungeons are more exercises in bomb conservation/use to find the increasingly numerous hidden rooms in each successive dungeon, and battle gauntlets as you fight through trying to find the crypt key and the crypt itself to fight the boss in it. There is also one hidden upgrade for either your shield, sword, and armor (to help you block more projectile types, hit harder, and protect against damage better respectively) in each dungeon and sometimes hidden in the overworld. The overworld itself differs a bit from Zelda in that there are basically four of them, and you unlock a new one every time you beat the two dungeons in the previous one (with the last two simply unlocking the path to the final boss). There are NPCs scattered all over the place, either in staircases behind bushes you need to burn down or behind a very obvious wall you need to use a precious bomb on, but most of them simply give a little (often nearly useless) information or yet another potion or bomb shop. It really does suck that there's no overworld map, but none of them are too terribly huge, so it's not so bad. It is a little funny how even the way you talk to NPCs, automatically walking halfway up the screen to them so text can appear on the screen, is also nearly exactly how Zelda 1 does it XD Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This isn't an utterly terrible game or anything, but it's definitely not a good game. It's got a lot of unpolished, unambitious, and uninspired design to it, sure, but it doesn't do anything particularly unforgivably poorly. What this reminds me of more than anything is Blossom Tale on the Switch. A Zelda clone that mostly just reminds you of better Zelda games you could be playing instead. However Neutopia has the added hurdle of not having aged that well in the nearly 30 years since it came out, and also needing to use passwords to save if you're playing on the real hardware. It's not a terrible use of your time, but I don't think I ever would've played it had I not gotten it on the PCE Mini. I asked Maru, the resident PCE super fan, on what games I should start with on my PCE Mini that arrived earlier this week. This was one of the three he recommended as foundational games for the system. A good introductory shmup, he called it. I overall agree with that sentiment, as this was a game I thoroughly enjoyed. I beat it in one sitting, nearly 1CC-ing it, but needing to resort to save states at the final boss (who took me many tries to kill XP).
Blazing Lasers was originally a licensed tie-in for the movie Gunhed in Japan, but had all of the licensing scrubbed out of it for its US release on the Turbografx (which is likely why that's the version included on the PCE/TG16 Mini). You're a space ship going through 9 areas on a mission to save the world, I guess. Aesthetically the game is all over the place, going from inside some sort of horrific meat tunnel to over a rocky desert covered with pyramids and Moai heads in the span of going from one level to the next, but the sound is pretty darn good and the framerate & graphics all look great, een for an early HuCard game. Mechanically it plays VERY similarly to Star Soldier, with 4 main weapons you can upgrade through as well as several sub weapons as well. The main difference between this and Star Soldier that I found was that in Star Soldier is that in Star Soldier your weapon powers down when you get hit (in some games), while in this game you just die XP. I personally preferred weapon 3 (the shield laser) and the shield sub weapon as well. That shield can take a TON of punishment, and even when you get hit, your weapon also provides a shield. Sure, the weapon powers down when you get hit, but the lower rank shield laser weapon is arguably better than the higher ranks in many regards, so that never bothered me much XD. There is also a golden extra life mechanic, where instead of going backwards to a checkpoint, you immediately respawn. While I never figured out how that was activated, it was still nice to get here and there. Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is a very fair shmup, and there were only a time or two (the last level when you die to the final boss, for example) where the place the game respawned me at was just utter trash and I had no chance of possibly surviving. It's a really good balance of quick reactions and diversity of powerups (although weapon 4 kinda sucks). The presentation is good and the length is just right. It's a nice easing into the genre for newer players (especially with that awesome shield) and a good but fair challenge for experienced players as well. It may not be as memorable as something like Star Parodier or Parodius, but it's still a great time and it absolutely deserves its good reputation. This is a game I rented as a kid but got stuck in and never ended up beating. I remembered liking it a fair bit, but when I picked it up a couple years back I bounced off it hard. This time I ended up liking it more than ever, and I completed the main game 100%, even getting all the gold medals in addition to the purple ball thingies. I played through the Japanese version, and the game doesn't keep track of how long you've played it (and neither did I), so I really have no idea how long it took me ^^;
Where Baku Bomberman 1 and 2 are more like "classic Bomberman meets action platformer game", Bomberman Hero is Bomberman staring in a proper action platformer. In an intro that is a delightfully silly homage to Star Wars Episode IV, Princess Mirian is captured by the bad guys while trying to flee them in a tiny escape ship, and gives her robot companion Pibot a very important data disc to escape with to find Bomberman. It's a very lighthearted story that doesn't take itself seriously at all, but it's a delightful framework for the adventure with how campy and colorful it is. The game itself is overall very colorful and nice looking with a good soundtrack to boot (in grand Hudson fashion). The gameplay is much more standard action platformer than either Baku Bomberman game. You can jump with the A button, throw bombs with the B button, kick bombs with down on the C-stick. You can tilt the camera with the other C buttons, but only temporarily. The game is played with a fixed camera going through linear stages one at a time, and for the most part the camera is never really an issue (on the normal final boss it can be a bit awkward, is all). There are point totals to aim for in each level (which are annoyingly only told to you after you beat the stage XP), and getting a 5-rank in all the stages unlocks a secret 6th world after you beat the normal final boss. The point challenges for the boss levels themselves are very cleverly done, with your score starting at 10,000 and counting down to 0, so they're more like time attack challenges. The normal platforming stages rarely outstay their welcomes, even if ultimately they don't have a ton of variety to them. Bomberman controls quite well, but throwing bombs can be a bit of an inexact science at first and takes a bit to get used to, as aiming a shot diagonally is something the game often wants you to do but doesn't make easy XP. There are also many vehicle stages. They're gimmick levels that range from Star Fox-like Bomb Jetpack levels, similar but more controlled (you can go backwards if you want) underwater levels, infrequent but very easy to control Bomb-Copter levels, and the utterly terribly hoverboarding stages (which there are mercifully only two of). The vehicle stages aren't so bad if you're not aiming to hit the point totals on every level, and even then the point totals in them are often very mercifully low compared to the total point totals possible to get in each level. The hoverboarding parts are easily the worst and most difficult parts of the game, but overall the game itself is fairly easy. Verdict: Recommended. It's not gonna set your world on fire, but it's something a bit different and it's a very competently put together game. If you like 3D platformers on the N64 and want something that's a little different from all the collectathons on the platform, this game can be a great way to spend a weekend. It's a bit of an oddball in that it's probably the only console Bomberman game to lack a multiplayer mode of any kind, but it's a good single-player experience that's easily worth $10 at least. Continuing my little Bomberman kick brought on by playing Baku Bomberman 2 a few weeks ago, over the past week I played through the first Baku Bomberman game, or Bomberman 64 as it's known in the West. It's overall a much shorter but much better game than it's sequel, and it only took me 3 or 4 hours in total to complete with the bad ending.
Baku Bomberman is another attempt to make more of an action adventure game out of the Bomberman formula, but with much more DNA of the classic Bomberman style than its sequel. The evil Altair and his four lieutenants have come to planet Bomberman seeking to drain all of its life force for Altair's evil schemes. Bomberman rushes in to beat the four islands and the final lair of Altair himself in 20 stages of action platforming. The story is much lighter than the sequel, and the cast of characters is much more forgettable as a result. Granted, this is Bomberman, so that isn't exactly a huge strike against the game, but it made me appreciate the effort the second game put into the characters with just how little this game has to its writing. There are technically 20 stages in the game, but about half of those are boss fights, with each of the 5 worlds having 4 stages and two of those stages being just boss fights. If you found the remote power in the previous stage and finished the level with it, though, you get to go into the boss fight with remote detonation bombs, which is pretty darn helpful lemee tell ya. The levels aren't super long or difficult, and are all around pretty darn forgiving, as there's a life system and a continue system (much like the American version of Baku Bomberman 2) where losing a life just puts you back to the start of the last room you entered, while using a continue totally restarts a level. Even then, you never lose your fire or bomb powerups even by using a continue (although you do lose remote detonation bombs when you lose even one life, which is unfortunate). There are some light puzzle elements in each stage, but it's mostly just going from one end to the other and following the path in front of you. While there are hidden custom parts to make yourself look snazzy for the battle mode, what are also even more well hidden are the secret golden cards hidden in every stage. Each stage has 5 of them for a total of 100 (and if you get all 100 you get a secret good ending), with three hidden in the stage, one for killing a certain amount of enemies, and one for beating the level in a certain amount of time. I'm fairly sure you don't need to get them all in one go, as the time requirements would make that kinda impossible, but those hidden cards are often REALLY well hidden and even in the earliest levels really require mastering the bomb kicking and throwing mechanics to be able to bounce yourself to far off places and over seemingly impossible pits. I had no patience for that as those mechanics you need to master are pretty finicky and not all that fun to push through, but it's a nice little extra thing you can do if you really wanna sink your teeth into this game. Verdict: Recommended. While I think the second game will last longer in my heart due to the longer time I spent with it, this is easily a better all around product and far easier to recommend. It's far more forgiving, the stage design is tighter, the bosses (while some are still definitely not super intuitive and kinda crap/too easy) are far more consistent in thier difficulty, it's less buggy. This is a far more recommendable game that you'll probably have way more fun with than the sequel, even if it's something you'll probably blow through in an afternoon and not think about too much afterwards. Continuing playing through Metroidvanias I've gotten for free on PC over the past few months, I played through The Messenger this weekend as well as the free DLC pack that was added in a while after release. It's a game that's really fun to play and an excellent addition to the string of retro-inspired action games over the past few years, even if it isn't my favorite out of all of those. It took me around 8.5 hours to 100% the main game with an Xbox One controller on my PC, and another 2 hours to 100% the DLC.
The Messenger is the story of a ninja tasked with carrying a scroll to the top of a glacier on the edge of his island to fulfill a prophecy after his village is destroyed by the Demon King. Only after arriving at the end of the island, however, does it get revealed that The Messenger is only one in a long line of Messengers who have been carrying out this same task throughout time, putting off annihilation by the demons time and again forever, and it's up to your particular Messenger to help defeat that cycle once and for all. The writing is definitely closer to something like Guacamelee 2 than a Hollow Knight or Timespinner (or heck, even Guacamelee 1). There are some solid character traits to the few characters that are there, but most of them just amount to being 4th-wall breaking and quirky. I found the humor in the game, while often clever, was so omnipresent in all the dialogue that it was usually more annoying than actually enjoyable (especially by the greed demon who brings you back to life). The narrative overall has a decent bit of interesting (if a bit gratuitous at times) lore, but isn't really trying to do that much in the end other than give a fairly archetypal story of good triumphing over evil. Not an outright bad thing, but definitely something worth mentioning. The gameplay of The Messenger is where things really shine, at least for the most part. The game starts off in a more 8-bit-inspired graphics style with music to match, and those sections largely compose of linear action-platforming segments. Once you get around the 8th stage or so, you hit a time warp and travel forward in time 500 years and the graphics and music change to a 16-bit style, and then after a few more stages the gameplay also transitions to a Metroidvania instead of being linear. I don't think the game is nearly as solid a Metroidvania as it is an action game, though. The bosses and the stage flow of the linear sections are really great, but once you get to the Metroidvania part, it feels a lot more like backtracking around a lot rather than exploration (due in no small part to how annoying the game's warps are placed). It's luckily not usually too hard to figure out where to go (save for one section about getting through an underwater Lost Woods-type area), but the game slows down a LOT in the Metroidvania section, and that was fairly disappointing. It's still not a bad Metroidvania, but it's a shame the game's main gimmick of "linear action game that becomes a Metroidvania" seems to not really stick the landing very well. The gameplay and bosses really are great though. The game's main gimmick is introduced from the prologue in that you get another jump when you land a hit in the air, and there's no limit to the number of times you can do this. This makes for some really wild platforming potential as you get more upgrades to your moveset, both optional and non-optional. Some of the optional ones (particularly the ability to attack while you do the glide) feel like the break the intended flow of the game a little bit, and A both activating your glide and de-activating it AND jumping can make the precision of some challenge rooms a real pain, but the gameplay still feels really good to go through, especially once you've got some practice at it. The game has a fair amount of challenge rooms and optional content you can go for if you're feeling up for a challenge, and they're usually pretty fair and nice challenges. Sometimes they're maddeningly difficult, and the hardest of them easily make up the most difficult sections in the game. That said, they're totally optional and only unlock a sidegrade (granted it's a very good sidegrade) for your shuriken, and none of them are nearly so hard as the most difficult optional areas of Hollow Knight (to give one example). I loved tracking them down, and it was always super satisfying to finally conquer one. The music and graphics are also great, but I also think that that's an unevenly split level of quality. The 8-bit graphics and music far surpass the 16-bit stuff for various reasons. It may just be down to hearing most all of the 8-bit stuff before you hear the 16-bit versions of it, but I didn't like any of the 16-bit (more Mega Drive-esque) tracks as well as their 8-bit counterparts. I'm also not a huge fan of the 16-bit stage designs largely because of how they force you to relearn the visual language of the game in a fairly hamfisted way. The game is full of wall-mounted objects (usually lanterns of some kind) that you can slash for a jump in mid-air, and the 8-bit sections usually have these hanging in untextured (or lightly textured) backgrounds. The 16-bit sections are much brighter and have much more involved backgrounds, and they make these wall-mounted objects much harder to see, especially going back through areas you've been through once before. The game is still beautiful and very pretty to look at, but the 16-bit sections feel like they prioritized aesthetics over function at some point and the game suffers a little for it. The Picnic Panic DLC is unlocked once you beat the game's main story, and you can access it from the game's shop. In an alternate universe, The Messenger of that world hasn't been doing so hot, so you've gotta step in to go in their stead to a tropical island off the coast. This is a really good add-on to the main game that has another dozen or so collectibles across two new mostly-linear areas. There's a fun new surfing mini-game, as well as what is definitely the hardest proper boss in the game, and even a Punch Out-style final boss battle just for funsies. It flows really well into the rest of the existing content, and the writing is all-around a little tighter and better than the main game (although not by any great margin, I just liked the humor here more). It's definitely worth checking out if you enjoyed the main game, and is an absolutely stellar piece of free content. Verdict: Highly Recommended. For all the small faults I may find with it, I'd be damned if I said I didn't really enjoy my time with The Messenger. It's not quite Shovel Knight, but it's still an amazingly fun action game and a pretty darn good Metroidvania. It's challenging but still forgiving, and it's well worth the purchase if you like either of those genres. This is a game I got for free on Twitch a while back, and I'd been putting off playing it for far too long given how much I love Metroidvanias. And you even get to play as an adorable kitty! I'd heard it was short but sweet, and that's exactly what I got, with it taking me a little over 2 hours to 100% the game.
In Gato Roboto, you play as Kiki, the cat of a galactic security soldier who steps on his console during a landing sequence and causes him to crash land onto the research station he was going to check out. Pinned within his own space ship, he has no choice but to send out Kiki to complete the mission in his sted with the help of a cat-sized suit of mech armor you find on the station! It's a cute, silly story that has "voice acting" very very much like Chibi-Robo. It doesn't take itself too seriously, but still manages to be silly-yet-engaging. The gameplay is a more Metroid-y Metroidvania than a Castlevania-y one. You run around in your mech suit shooting your normal gun and you'll find more power-ups as you go through the game like missiles (which are on a cooldown timer, not a limited thing you need to collect more of, which is awesome), better bullets, better jumps, etc. You can search through 6 areas for both extra health packs as well as palette cartridges, which allow you to change the monochrome-palette of the game to all sorts of colors, from a more soft grey & black, to a harsher (and even fuzzier) Virtual Boy-like red & black, to even an absolutely nauseating Commodore 64-like blue & yellow XD There are also sections where Kiki leaves her suit and is exposed to one-hit kills, and these are easily the most difficult parts of the game for obvious reasons. That said, the game overall is far from the most difficult Metroidvania I've played, while also not exactly being baby's first Metroidvania. The controls are really tight and the game is really fun to explore around and fight things in, even if the boss battles aren't the most exciting thing in the world. Verdict: Highly Recommended. It's a short game, but it's oozing with character and solid gameplay. If you're someone without a lot of money to spend on games, you might not feel you're getting a ton of value for it, but if you just want an excellent time to spend an afternoon, this is a really great way to do it ^w^ This is a game I picked up a while ago for a couple bucks and heard it was neat, and my ability to pick up more Bomberman games has been temporarily interrupted due to renovations at the place I usually buy them at, so I decided to go through this game in the meanwhile. I knew it was short, but I didn't really expect to finish it in just a little over an hour ^^;. Granted, I only did 4 out of 6 stages, but this is a super short game that albeit has a neat gimmick.
Chameleon Twist is a somewhat early N64 game with a very simple (although somewhat baffling) premise. You're a chameleon (the game has 4 different colors to pick from), just chilling out on a log, when a white rabbit right out of Alice in Wonderland hops past you and jumps into a weird, magical pot. You, being a chameleon with nothing better to do, I suppose, jump in after it, and transform into a little humanoid with a long chameleon tongue! The rabbit then proceeds to tell you to more or less get going with the adventure and leaves. You go through a few more stages, with the rabbit unlocking doors or giving you little hints about bosses here and there, but that's it for the story. Even calling it a "story" seems a bit generous. It's more like an incredibly general premise, but that isn't a bad thing. The game is a 3D platformer that goes through 6 worlds of which you need to go through at least 4 (you gotta play at least world 2 or 3, and then again gotta play at least world 4 or 5). There aren't really meaningful secrets, but there are collectible crowns in each stage to do some platforming challenges for. Each world is a series of rooms and your goal is to get to the end and fight a boss. The bosses range in difficulty pretty significantly (I thought the stage 2 boss was pretty darn hard compared to the rest of them that I fought in worlds 1, 5, and 6), but it's far from insurmountable challenge, especially for the N64. The game's main gimmick is your big chameleon tongue, which you can use to grapple onto poles from a distance, spin around on those poles, suck up enemies to then spit them out, or even shoot it directly downward to do a higher jump at somewhat of an angle. The game controls alright, but especially the fancy tongue-jumps take a while to get used to. There are also some timed platforming sections later on that can get pretty brutal, and the combat and platforming overall have a somewhat uneven difficulty curve, but you just restart the current room when you die, so it's not big deal even if you fail. The music is quite good even though the graphics aren't terribly impressive. I suppose the biggest flaw with this game might also be its biggest draw: it's a very simple experience. Sure it controls kinda funky, but there's just not a lot of content here, so if you're into getting all the crowns or getting through the game as fast as you can, there can be a lot to enjoy here, but if you're looking for something to sink your teeth into over the entirety of a weekend (or even a whole afternoon), there just isn't a lot here. Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Despite the fact that Bomberman gave me more frustration overall over a longer period of time, I would still recommend it over this game because at least Bomberman made me feel something XD. This game is just sorta "there," in a way that reminds me a bit of Snake Pass (although this game is way more actually enjoyable to play than Snake Pass is). It's very much just "a video game to be played" in a way that was of a dying breed in 1997, so it's somewhat remarkable in that regard, but it simply isn't my cup of tea at the end of the day. It's not a bad time, but it's so short and simple that I'd have difficulty recommending it if you had to pay more than a couple bucks for it. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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