43 Games I Haven't Reviewed Yet

For years, I've been doing mini-reviews of my video games. I started with the "100 Games" project in January 2013, and since then have done a roundup of everything I beat each year. But that means that some games got left out - ones I didn't include on my initial list.

Not getting on the original 100 Games list doesn't mean these games are bad. On the contrary, I rather enjoyed quite a few of them, and some of them probably deserved to make the list. I never claimed to be good at ranking stuff, as fun as it is.

As usual, only games I cared about enough to see to the end get listed here, and everything I haven't already written about is up for grabs. Sifting through my Backloggery turned up 43 entries' worth of games (a few games are combined into one entry). Instead of trying to rank them, I'll cover them alphabetically.

I've also linked a gameplay video for each game. It's a longplay whenever one is available. Looking at how few games DIDN'T have a complete longplay up on YouTube speaks volumes as to how good longplayers are at doing their job.

Aladdin
System: Genesis
Developer: Virgin
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Platformer
When I was a kid, the concept of licensed games being bad was not something I'd ever heard, and there was virtually no evidence to make me think that way. I may have played a couple licensed clunkers in my childhood, but I also played a lot of licensed games that weren't glitchy, looked and played well, and were perfectly worthy of being in my collection, such as The Jungle Book, Toy Story, and The Great Circus Mystery are three examples. Aladdin, which I rented, was another.

In Aladdin, you play as the street rat himself in a series of levels that vaguely match the events of the film. You've got a sword, and can pick up apples to throw as a ranged attack. There really isn't anything too outstanding about this game (the final boss and ending in particular are pretty weakly presented), but it does most things right and is a treat for early 90s nostalgics who loved the film and love 16-bit games.

Alien Hominid
System: GameCube
Developer: The Behemoth
Publisher: O3 Entertainment
Genre: Run-and-gun
Before Castle Crashers really put them on the map, Alien Hominid was The Behemoth's first foray into console games after cutting their teeth on Newgrounds. As with CC, the flash game influence is extremely obvious, and anyone familiar with early 2000s flash cartoons will feel nostalgic. Alien Hominid is a fairly brief game spanning three worlds, each with multiple levels. As the titular Hominid, you blast your way through each stage in gameplay that is extremely similar to Metal Slug, complete with melee attacks, grenades, and the occasional vehicle to ride. Bolstering the package is a handful of minigames, including the "PDA Game", a simple one-screen platformer that allows you to make your own stages. Thanks to that ingenious feature, I actually played PDA Game more than the main campaign! As for that campaign, though, AH isn't a cakewalk but it's not brutal either, and anyone decent at this genre of game should be able to handle it (though avoid the easiest difficulty - the game ends early if you pick it).

Asterix and the Great Rescue
System: Genesis
Developer: Core Design
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Platformer
Asterix isn't all that popular in the United States, but in parts of Europe, this series has been a big deal for decades. Set in the distant past, Asterix and his best friend Obelix are two Gauls who fight to protect their village from invading, bumbling Romans. This game was my first introduction to them, and on the whole it was... okay.

The first problem is that, while you can choose between Asterix and Obelix for every stage, there's virtually no reason to ever pick Obelix - he's twice Asterix's size, and the game is full of cheap shots and difficult-to-avoid hazards, so willingly taking a bigger hitbox is suicidal. Attacking enemies is harder than it should be - both Asterix and Obelix attack with a swinging fist that moves similar to an uppercut, resulting in very little range. Fortunately, most of your enemies are dumb and just walk back and forth, so you'll see a lot of your gaul standing there swinging his fist repeatedly until the enemy blunders in and lets himself get clocked.

There are also puzzle elements. Scattered through each stage are potions that grant several uses of one of several different abilities when picked up. There are firecrackers that can blow through walls and damage enemies from afar, clouds that can be used as platforms, and a float spell that lets you fly for a brief period. It's extremely important to conserve these spells for when they're needed, because the game isn't shy about making the level impossible to win without a certain special - you can't just go about blowing up all the enemies in your path with firecrackers, lest you encounter a wall you need to break down and find yourself out of ammo. It's not an easy game, nor a particularly fair one, but I DID manage to get to the end on actual Genesis hardware (meaning no savestates) so it's not impossible!

Battlebots: Design and Destroy
System: Game Boy Advance
Developer: Cave Barn Studios, Pipe Dream Interactive
Publisher: Majesco
Genre: Vehicle Combat
The only Battlebots game to be released (the other GBA game, Beyond the Battlebox, is largely identical; this game is a patched version of that one). There was a GameCube/PS2 game in development that was unfortunately never released (although it was so close to being released that Battlebots themselves sold the game on their website last summer after finding they had some copies left).

A good robot fighting game needs a good physics engine. Unfortunately, the GBA wasn't capable of that, and so the action in Design and Destroy is mediocre at best without much strategy involved - you just have to hope your weapon connects better than the other guy, or trick them into hazards. Some power-ups are available, like a health restore, to help you out. You can also make a custom bot, but it's annoyingly limited in that you always have to start from the lightest weight class and fight your way up, and the heavier classes have unique parts you don't get much opportunity to experiment with due to the strict money system and inability to change your chassis. It's an okay game for hardcore robot combat fans, but not as fun as Robot Wars: Arenas of Destruction or Robot Arena 2.

Bionic Commando
System: Arcade
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Run-and-gun
Okay, I don't remember too much about this one, but I played it courtesy of Capcom Classics Collection quite a few years back. This game is notable for being a platformer in which you cannot jump - instead, you have an extendable bionic arm you use to climb and swing through the stages. Unique for its' time, and an alright game today.

Bomberman Generation
System: GameCube
Developer: Hudson
Publisher: Hudson
Genre: Action-Adventure
In the early 2000s, the latest craze overtaking gaming was cel-shaded graphics. This technique made games look like bright, colorful cartoons, and for a couple of years it was considered as an easy way to make your game appear to have very powerful graphics. Bomberman Generation was among the first games released to use this graphical style.

In this game (which is the one that really put Bomberman on the map for me), you navigate stages, solving puzzles with different skills you acquire throughout the levels, on your quest to retrieve the "Bomb Elements", which are your typical macguffins. Gameplay can be a bit tricky and puzzle-y - you have to figure out how to proceed, and if you find you cannot, you have to find the ability you're missing that will let you. Of note are "Charaboms", which are Pokemon-esque helper characters that give you additional abilities. Most of these abilities are vital to progress (control your bomb remotely to drive it through small passages to a target), though others are just helpful (automatically have maximum power without pickups). Charaboms can also be fused via special machines, resulting in a Charabom with two abilities at once, and "Charabom feed" powers up the one you've currently equipped. The power-ups are necessary because every Charabom you meet after your first must be fought in a Pokemon-esque battle.

Also, of course, there's multiplayer! Bomberman is famous for it, and the multiplayer is pretty traditional to keep fans happy. The big winner in my house wasn't standard multi, though - instead, we most often played "Dodge Battle", in which bombs fall from the sky and your characters cannot create any of their own.

Oh, yes, and for those of you who remember RP history - Constructor X, my secondary Season 2 character, hails from this game. Before Regigigas was around to be my big and powerful large ham brute, there was this guy. They should meet sometime, they'd probably hit it off.

Capcom Vs SNK 2 EO
System: GameCube
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Fighting
Long before Lets Plays, I got a kick out of seeing computer opponents face each other in video games. I'd make "tournaments" and keep track on paper of how each character did. Games where you can make a CPU-only battle are few and far between, though. Super Smash Brothers Melee was the only one I had for a long time. Then, for whatever reason, I opted to buy this seemingly random fighting game from Gamestop, and discovered it also allowed for CPU battles. I wound up spending more time watching it play itself than playing on my own, and some of the fights I got out of it were actually really intense! There were some characters that were regularly top-tier, and others that often jobbed out. I remember one very memorable occasion where Nakoruru, a character I was a fan of just for her design, went on a tear and scored multiple upsets to win a tournament. It was awesome.

I did play it "for real", though. I beat the arcade mode with numerous characters, though the endings are pretty weak compared to the high standard set by Super Street Fighter II (Tatsunoko vs Capcom did a good job in that regard, though, to name the other Capcom fighter I've played extensively).

Columns III: Revenge of Columns
System: Genesis
Developer: Vic Tokai
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Puzzle
The Columns series has been around a long time, but its' never really reached the fame or adoration that other classic puzzle series get. Tetris, Puyo Puyo, Dr. Mario, and Puzzle League are all more famous or better-received... or both. This can perhaps be explained by Columns having somewhat stiff gameplay compared to those other games. In the original Columns, you can't even rotate the pieces, they are forever vertical (so... they're columns). Columns III does everything it can to make the formula interesting, but the bulk of the content is in the form of multiplayer modes, so most people won't have too much to play.

The game has an Egyptian theming, which fits with the general ancient history or Asian theme most Columns games have. As a treasure hunter, you explore an ancient pyramid (not for real, it's just a map screen) and every step of the way you're interrupted by a monster of some sort that won't let you pass until you defeat it in a game of Columns. If you can beat all of the monsters (the roster includes a spider, a bat, a skeleton, and Jasper, among others), you can reach the treasure of the pyramid. You'll also earn items with each victory than can be used to give you an edge in future battles. Careful use of your items is necessary to reach the end.

One of the things I'm irritated by the most here is that the soundtrack is pretty good and varied, but the vast majority of songs only play in the multiplayer modes. You'll only hear two different battle themes in the single-player mode, and one of them is reserved for the final boss.

Oh, and don't miss the awkward, Engrishy translation! If the game is to be believed, you're actually exploring a "piramid". There aren't many other typos, but the dialogue of the enemies has that sort of odd feeling you get when you know you're looking at a translation job from someone not comfortable with English.

Contra Rebirth
System: Wii
Developer: M2
Publisher: Konami
Genre: Run-and-gun
Konami's "Rebirth" series for Wiiware was a set of new installments for some of their oldest franchises in the form of what appeared to be "lost" games from the 16-bit era. Contra Rebirth could pass for a 90s game (although the visual effects might be a LITTLE too slick for the SNES or Genesis' capabilities) and is targeted squarely at old-school nostalgia gamers. This is the sort of cool shit Konami did before they mutated into whatever the hell they are now.

It's pure old-school Contra: make your way through several action-packed, miniboss-filled stages, take down a massive boss at the end of the level, and get really good at dodging because one shot kills you. There isn't much of a story, and even though Hard Corps benefited from having a crazy storyline to match the crazy action, it's not really necessary. Rebirth is actually a step back from Hard Corps, featuring only one path of stages and with far fewer weapons, as well as the removal of the slide mechanic. It's still good fun, but they removed a few too many features in their eagerness to step back in time.

Also, thumbs up for including a few remixes of old Hard Corps tracks, but thumbs down for significantly shortening them.

Dig Dug Arrangement, Galaga Arrangement, and Pac-Man Arrangement
System: Arcade
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Genre: Action
The GameCube version of Namco Museum comes packed with several sequel games to Namco's arcade classics. Notably, all three of them share a similar formula. They add a bunch of powerups and features to the old game and make it have a final boss and ending instead of being an endless one-screen game. There's not much to say about them, so I combined their entries. Galaga Arrangement is probably my favorite of the three, turning what was already a good classic shmup into a somewhat more complicated bug-blaster with boss fights.

Donkey Kong
System: NES
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Platformer
Donkey Kong is a game with four levels that somehow was too complicated for the NES, and was therefore reduced to only three. It sounds completely ridiculous considering this same system later birthed massive games like Super Mario Brothers 3, but the truth is that in ye olden cartridge-based days, different games could be different sizes. This is easily illustrated with the Atari 2600, which I'm more familiar with than the NES - the oldest carts were only capable of holding 4 KB of data, but later carts held 8 or even 16, using special techniques to maximize what little power the 2600 had. Modern homebrew games have gone even further, managing to reach at least 64 KB. In all likelihood, considering how crude early NES games were (Balloon Fight and Excitebike are two other examples), the NES had the same problem. Later games had more memory, so a later version of Donkey Kong with a complete set of levels may have been possible, but wasn't ever done.

As for the game itself, you know the deal - this was the game that put Nintendo on the map. Donkey Kong, Mario (as "Jumpman"), and the first building blocks of what would become Super Mario Brothers all got their start here. It's very crude, with falling damage and stiff controls, but considering there really wasn't such a thing as a platformer at the time, it can be forgiven.

Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
System: Genesis
Developer: Compile
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Puzzle
Puyo Puyo has had a long, strange history. The series began as a spinoff of a series of Master System RPGs starring the young mage Arle, taking the characters and enemies from those games and placing them in a puzzle environment. While Puyo Puyo was localized, it was given multiple makeovers for the occasion - the SNES received Kirby's Avalanche based on the Kirby series, while the Genesis got Mean Bean Machine, based on Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, the Sonic cartoon that has become the most beloved of Sonic's four animated series no doubt in part because of Youtube Poop. It wasn't until Puyo Pop Fever released in the mid-2000s that Puyo Puyo was finally allowed to be localized without getting a makeover... just in time for Arle to drastically drop in importance, giving the position of heroine to a new character named Amitie (no relation to ZFRP's Ditto) while Arle languished as a secret bonus character. Poor gal.

You're probably familiar with the Puyo mechanics. There have been changes over the years, but Bean Machine, as one of the oldest games in the series, is pretty basic. Puyos (here called "beans") drop down in pairs, and you must arrange them so that four or more of the same color touch each other. This makes them vanish. Vital to your progress is the ability to create combos to send "garbage" at your opponent - annoying, un-matchable beans that can only be removed by making a match next to them. The goal is to outplay your opponent, using garbage to block their attempted combos so that they cannot do the same to you. Whoever's screen fills up is the loser. It's a simple formula, but one of my favorites for a puzzle game.

Fun fact: This was actually my first puzzle game, and the little triangle on the box that said "Puzzle Game" combined with that to make me think puzzle games were some incredible new innovation, because in my world I'd never seen a game that wasn't a platformer, a fighter, or an Atari-style arcade action game a la Pac-Man and Space Invaders (no, I had never heard of Tetris, and didn't find out about Columns until a year or two later). My world was small back then. Hell, I didn't know what RPGs were until Pokemon, for crying out loud.

Forgotten Worlds
System: Arcade
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Shmup
Another of the numerous Capcom Classics Collection games to make this list. Forgotten Worlds is a standard shmup, though instead of the usual flying machine you're controlling a floating human wielding a gun instead. Another attempt to stand out comes in the form of a currency system, which you can use by visiting shops that occasionally scroll by to purchase power-ups. Lastly, your character can fire in any direction rather than just straight forward, even if they don't have any special weapons. Naturally, the levels are designed with that in mind.

The most memorable visual from this game for me is definitely the disemboweled but still very much alive dragon you face in a boss battle early on.

Ghouls N' Ghosts
System: Genesis
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Platformer
The Ghosts N' Goblins series is famous for three things: high difficulty, the bizarre and ill-thought-out design decision to make the player beat the game twice in a row for the real ending, and heart-print underwear. Ghouls N' Ghosts is a sequel to the original, and is very similar in gameplay - as Arthur, you travel east across a Halloween-flavored landscape of spooks and monsters in an attempt to rescue the princess. One nice thing they did, though, was allow you to continue an infinite number of times. If you can get good enough to reach the next checkpoint of each area, you can eventually beat the game by flinging enough lives at it. This is a good game to try if you like tough platformers like Mega Man.

Glover
System: N64
Developer: Blitz Games
Publisher: Hasbro Interactive
Genre: Platformer
An extremely bizarre 3D platformer with an aesthetic that feels somehow "wrong" or "other". The worlds feel isolated and empty, and some of the enemies are uncanny and creepy. I mean, in pure technical terms, it's not THAT weird - it's a puzzle platformer that revolves around getting yourself and a magical crystal to the level goal. You accomplish this by transforming the crystal into one of several different balls, each of which has its' own abilities - the rubber ball bounces well, making it good for transport, the bowling ball is big and heavy and is ideal for fighting enemies, the ball bearing is small, light, and magnetic, and the original crystal form is very delicate but earns you double points if you collect pickups with it.

Most of the stages are isolated islands in an endless void, and enemies don't respawn upon defeat, so the area quickly becomes desolate if you can't find the exit. There's also a strange bird in the overworld that communicates in burps, farts, hiccups, and squawks - pressing the C buttons on the pause screen makes these same noises, and if you input them in the same order the bird makes the noises, you'll get a cheat code.

I compare this game to Socket, an old Genesis favorite, somewhat - it's following in the footsteps of more famous game series, but there's something unique about the presentation that makes it stick out in my mind.

A sequel to Glover was planned but cancelled, ending the series before it could properly become a series.

Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen
System: SNES
Developer: Alfa System
Publisher: Toho
Genre: Fighting
Yes, back in the day Toho published their own video games! Most of said games didn't leave Japan, and this SNES fighter is no exception. Kaijuu Daikessen (translates to "Monster War") is your average arcade-style 2D fighting game - face every other playable character one at a time before taking on the final boss. I've never been that good at fighting games, but I managed to win here by picking Megalon and abusing his projectile attacks to spam the enemy. :V

The roster is decent (though the lack of Rodan is a glaring omission) and includes Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Mothra, Anguirus, Megalon, Gigan, Biollante, and three variants of MechaGodzilla, as well as one secret boss character - the Atragon, over a decade before it resurfaced as the Gotengo and played a major role in Godzilla: Final Wars!

Planned for release in America under the name "Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters" in the summer of 1995, the localization of Kaijuu Daikessen was cancelled for unknown reasons. It's a shame, really - there's not much text to translate, and the game is pretty well-done, with nice monster graphics and movie-accurate sounds. It's one of the better Godzilla games from the time before Pipeworks began making the 3D fighters. Unfortunately, Godzilla in general was going through a severe drought in the US at this time. You can actually thank the 1998 American film for reviving the series in the US - the vast majority of Godzilla flicks that weren't on home video in the US yet were finally made available as distributors jumped on the movie's hype train. And, funnily enough, it was the US once again saving the franchise when Legendary Pictures' film arrived in 2014 and proved a hit, convincing Toho to finally return to the series after ten long years away. America, fuck yeah.

Kirby: Nightmare In Dreamland
System: Game Boy Advance
Developer: HAL Laboratory
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Platformer
Originally released for the NES as Kirby's Adventure, Nightmare In Dreamland is an upgraded remake. It's a basic, fun game that I would actually say is the "quintessential" Kirby game. It has everything you expect of a Kirby game, and nothing you wouldn't. No weird gimmicks or radically different gameplay, just good old-fashioned power copying and platforming.

Kirby: Squeak Squad
System: DS
Developer: HAL Laboratory
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Platformer
The funny thing is, what helped Nightmare In Dreamland doesn't do as many favors for Squeak Squad. This game came out several years later, but was seen as an unimpressive retread of gameplay from previous games in the series, particularly Amazing Mirror (which was my favorite Kirby until Super Star Ultra). Squeak Squad doesn't do anything wrong, but it didn't quite have the spark of life most Kirby games have, sort of like how New Super Mario Brothers feels so soulless.

Luigi's Mansion
System: GameCube
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: ...Survival horror? :V
Ah, the GameCube, Nintendo's last "normal" console. I still miss it and will always love its' controllers. Luigi's first starring role since Mario Is Missing is an odd one - most obviously because Luigi, the brother who is famous for a massive, mighty jump ("LOOK AT ME KICK MY LEGS LIKE A GANGSTA") - cannot jump at all in this game. He doesn't really need to, but still. Yes, this is definitely not a platformer as some may have expected from a new Mario series game, but rather a puzzle-solving trek through a massive mansion filled with ghosts. Instead of using fireballs or stomps to deal with his foes, Luigi instead uses a souped-up vacuum cleaner to capture ghosts.

Luigi's Mansion is a pretty good game on its' own merits, but it was a weird choice for a launch title. Nintendo is probably lucky that SSBM and Mario Sunshine weren't far off when the 'Cube launched, because it needed the power of some less bizarre games to get a foothold in the console war - even if that small foothold was pretty much all Nintendo got during that generation...

Magical Tetris Challenge
System: N64
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Puzzle
One of Capcom's rare appearances on the N64 was this utterly bizarre concept: a new Tetris game starring classic Disney characters from the Mickey Mouse verse. In the story mode, Donald accidentally fishes up a magic gem, and Pete attempts to get a hold of it for his own use. Interestingly, you can play as Mickey, Donald, Minnie, or Goofy, and all four characters have their own unique perspectives on the storyline, so you'll only see the whole thing if you play through with all of them.

However, Magical Tetris Challenge is more than just normal Tetris dolled up with Mickey Mouse (although if that's all you want, there's a mode for that). The story mode consists of "Magical Tetris", which is a versus variant of the classic puzzler that introduces methods of attacking the opponent, such as making the floor rise from under their playfield to shrink it or forcing them to play with giant, misshapen pieces consisting of five or more blocks instead of the usual four (though, since there's a five-block-long line, it's possible to clear five lines at once if you're lucky!). There are a few other modes too, including of course a 2-player versus version of Magical Tetris.

The N64 was surprisingly a puzzle game hotspot, since Dr. Mario 64 and Pokemon Puzzle League were also on offer in the late days of the system. Those are great fun for puzzle fans, but if Tetris is your bag, you could do a lot worse than Magical Tetris Challenge.

Magic Sword
System: Arcade
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Platformer/Hack-and-slash
This old Capcom arcade game uses a bog-standard fantasy realm setting to depict your warrior character climbing to the top of a giant tower in search of the Magic Sword. The main gimmick is that you can have a partner character follow you around and help fight enemies (think Kirby Super Star - it's kinda like that). While the main character has to be a shirtless dude with a sword and shield, the partners are varied and include an archer, a thief, a wizard, a knight, and so on. A second player can join in, but unlike in Kirby, you can't play as the partners - which means you wind up with four characters all fighting on your side at once!

Mario Vs Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis
System: DS
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Action-Puzzle
Did you like the puzzle-platform gameplay of Game Boy Donkey Kong and Mario Vs Donkey Kong? Well too bad. In one of their series reinventions, Nintendo drastically altered the gameplay of this third game in the series to be touch-screen only with very little control over your characters. It's not bad, just different - you must guide the robotic Mini-Marios to the exit using only your stylus, and they're almost lemming-like in their helplessness. You can at least make them turn, jump, and stay put, but huge point bonuses ride on you using no "stops" - that is, once you activate a Mini-Mario by tapping it, it can't stop moving for any reason or else you miss out on those bonus points. Add in the fact that any damage instantly breaks a Mini-Mario and you have a game that's reasonably easy to beat, but seriously difficult to get 100% on.

I give huge props to Nintendo for including a stage builder, which extended the life of this game by leaps and bounds. You could even swap levels online before the servers were shut down in 2013. Ah, server shutdowns - snuffing out the history of video games one dead server at a time.

Mega Man: The Power Battle and Mega Man: Power Fighters
System: Arcade
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Run-and-gun/Fighting
Here's something a little unique from Capcom - a Mega Man fighting series. In practice, it plays pretty similar to a boss rush, though it has fighting game trappings like assist characters. These are the only Mega Man games I've ever actually beaten, and that's only because they offered unlimited continues that let you return to the exact spot you died - the bosses would be nigh-impossible otherwise.

Power Battle and Power Fighters play almost identically, but PF has a few refinements while both games have exclusive opponents. Unlike most fighting games, the rosters are extremely limited and you can't play as any of the bad guys, which makes it feel more like a boss rush and less like a fighter. I played through them a bunch of times and enjoyed myself, but there's really not a whole lot to these two games.

Mega Twins
System: Arcade
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Platformer
A 2D platformer seems like an odd choice for an arcade game - I was surprised to learn they existed. But they do, and Mega Twins is just one of them. Also called "Chiki Chiki Boys", this game is about two child warriors who go on a quest to rid the world of an evil clown and his army of cartoony minions. Nothing too stand-out here, though it's technically sound and worth playing once.

Metal Slug 7
System: DS
Developer: SNK
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment
Genre: Run-and-gun
After the lovely Metal Slug Anthology, playing Metal Slug Advance and Metal Slug 7 in an attempt to revisit the series ended... not so great. They aren't bad games, but without Anthology's Unlimited Continues option, the series' infamous difficulty returns to the forefront. Especially painful in Metal Slug Advance, to the point it prevented me from finishing the game due to a system that lets you take multiple hits but only lets you have one life - lose it, and it's back to the beginning of the level with no checkpoints, something the other Slugs aren't nearly as cruel about. Metal Slug 7 is more reasonable, and I was able to finish the game, but the extra content - primarily in the form of special missions you're assigned by an anime chick that you can befriend by doing well enough - are far too difficult and mostly consist of recycled content anyway. Aside from that, the main campaign is no longer than the other Metal Slugs, meaning the Anthology offers a lot more bang for the buck. I loved Anthology, but I grew weary of both MS7 and Advance and neither are in my collection any longer.

Metroid Fusion
System: Game Boy Advance
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Metroidvania
The last 100% new 2D Metroid game. Metroid Fusion also marks the end of the Metroid timeline - every game since has jumped around in the years before this game's events, unwilling to go any further into the future. Fusion is unique for the series in that it places more emphasis on dialogue (the first Metroid to have any dialogue in the main game at all, in fact) and is more linear than previous games, especially the labyrinthine Super Metroid.

I was stuck on Fusion for about five years before finally coming back to it, giving it another shot, and finishing it. I was specifically unable to beat Ridley, and upon winning I was kind of amused to see that there was very little game left after that. It's been a long time, and I only ever played this game once, so my memory of the details is pretty weak, especially non-boss segments. I do remember it being a pretty good game, though.

Mortal Kombat 3
System: Arcade
Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway
Genre: Fighting
You probably know MK well enough - as Midway's answer to Street Fighter II, the two series had one heck of a rivalry in the mid-90s. Mortal Kombat was usually the loser from a quality standpoint, but nobody could ever accuse them of skimping on style - MK was made infamous for violence, but the violence was just as often presented in a hilariously goofy way as it was played straight.

You know the drill - take on a tower of opponents, including an endurance match and a miniboss, before facing the big bad at the top. In this case, Shao Khan was the man to beat, and his distinctive helmet, hammer, and spoken insults made him a legendary final boss. Like most arcade fighters, MK3 ain't easy, but if you're able to find chinks in the AI's armor, you can claim victory.

NARC
System: Arcade
Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway
Genre: Shmup
This is one of those Refuge In Audacity, Ow The Edge games that is so "mature" as to be hilarious. Witness the first stage, in which you fight several hundred identical guys who act like drug dealers but look like flashers and drop drugs when killed that you can pick up for points. If you'd prefer, though, you can arrest them instead by getting in close. Later levels introduce more enemies that are more dangerous, some of which are too crazy to be arrested and must be killed. Aside from the killing, guns, and junkies, the scenery includes adult video stores and massive drug warehouses. It all leads to a climactic finish against Mr. Big, a cackling wheelchair-bound crime lord who keeps giant pictures of himself captioned "ME" in his evil lair. And the final battle... good fucking christ, the final battle. NARC is laughably stupid. Big Dumb Vidya Game material for sure.

This game was one of the first to stir controversy for violent games that weren't thinking of the children, though it was far from the last. Let the War On Drugs begin!

Primal Rage
System: Arcade
Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway
Genre: Fighting
A fascinating example of a company ripping off its own hot property, Primal Rage is "Mortal Kombat with dinosaurs". All of the playable characters are animated in a style similar to Goro, and they can perform fatalities. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth that was pretty much literally bombed back to the Stone Age. The remaining population of humans have formed cults worshiping each of the characters, and the game plays out as a fight for the right to become the true god of the human race. It's an okay game, but this one clearly relied more on style than substance to be popular.

Puyo Pop Fever
System: GameCube
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Puzzle
When Puyo Puyo was finally allowed to cast off the masks of localization and appear in a mostly-untouched form, we got this extremely cutesy and stereotypically girly game. But don't let the sparkles and pastel colors fool you - this is the same excellent gameplay of the previous Puyo games, but now with three fantastic additions that seriously enhance the experience.

First, puyos can come in threes and fours now instead of always dropping in pairs, opening up new possibilities and strategies. Secondly, by making matches and pulling off combos when your opponent has garbage puyo ready to send to you results in an "offset" that weakens the incoming garbage, delays it until you can't make a match, and builds a meter. When the meter is full, the third addition comes into play - the devastating "Fever Mode", which presents you with ready-to-go-combos for you to solve, resulting in either a massive offset to erase those garbage puyo, or a gigantic combo your opponent couldn't possibly escape - that is, unless they've managed to go into Fever Mode as well...

Puyo Pop Fever also allows you to save replays of your best matches. A story I've shared before bears repeating - I had an absolutely fantastic match against a CPU opponent once. I was playing as Yu, an energetic ghost who looks suspiciously like a white mage, and my opponent was the Hohow Bird, so named because of his frequent "Ho-ho!" snarky laughter (or, in the English version, 'mm-hmm". I usually played with the Japanese on, since it was mostly less annoying than the English dub). I was stuck at the top of the screen, with the danger music active. Then, just to rub it in, another small combo batters Yu. However, as Hohow Bird readies a finisher, I manage to get Yu into Fever Mode. With Fever active, I erase the incoming garbage and quickly rack up a combo so huge Hohow was certainly doomed. He promptly got Fever Mode. The two of us then both racked up as many combos as possible with Fever active. Our Fevers ended at about the same time, and he was on the losing end. I was amazed I'd managed to come back from that, only to remember that my playfield was still nearly full, and leaving Fever had returned me to it, complete with danger music. I had to desperately survive just a few more precious seconds until Hohow Bird's playfield could be filled with garbage. I managed it, and scored the victory. Unfortunately, a couple years later I accidentally erased the replay file, and so this legendary match has never been able to be seen by anyone else.

Quiz and Dragons
System: Arcade
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Trivia
A game I've mentioned a few times in Chatzy for the express purpose of poking fun at it. Quiz and Dragons has the setting of your average fantasy game - knights, wizards, dragons, and so on. However, it's a trivia game. You begin by choosing one of four characters, each with their own special ability - the wizard, the warrior, the amazon, or the ninja. After choosing your character class, you wind up on a game board. You play by rolling a virtual die that determines how far you can move. The spaces can have nice bonuses and such, but most of the time you'll run into an enemy monster, who will attack you by asking random trivia questions. As an example of just how surreal this game is, in the above-linked longplay, on the first move of the game the ninja lands on a Goblin space and is asked who holds the record for the longest home run in baseball. Upon reaching the end of the first stage, the ninja faces a mighty wyvern that says "Think you can handle MY questions?", asks the ninja questions about various books and television shows, and then says that while the ninja did well, "only hell awaits" in the upcoming stages. The questions are what really make this game funny, since they're utterly clashing with the game's setting, but the dialogue's no slouch either.

Certainly a funny game, and if you like trivia this is a unique way to partake. Just keep in mind the game's age - not only are some bits of trivia dated and little-known nowadays compared to the early 90s, some of the answers aren't even correct now, but were right when Quiz and Dragons was a new release!

Rampage World Tour
System: N64
Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway
Genre: Beat-em-up
I've always had a soft spot for the Rampage series. Dumb, destructive, and repetitive as hell, this is the number one series I think of when I think of that wonderful term I once coined, "Big Dumb Vidya Game".

In World Tour, you pick either George the King Kong ripoff, Lizzie the Godzilla ripoff, or Ralph the... giant werewolf, and set to work destroying the world, one very-similar-city at a time. You stroll down a repeating flat stage, smashing buildings. If you're able to destroy all of the buildings, you win and move on to the next stage. If you take too long, military jets bomb the city in a failed attempt to destroy you, and you still win the level but lose out on point bonuses for total destruction. You can lose for real, though - humans are attacking you while you beat on the buildings, and you have to deal with tanks, helicopters, and soldiers (and, later, bosses in the form of giant robots). The vast majority of attacks are simply impossible to dodge, but you have a pretty hefty health bar and can get your HP back up by eating people and grabbing power-ups found inside buildings, so it's more about just tanking the blows and healing up after you destroy the irritant.

There are well over a hundred levels, and they all play about the same. New enemies and gimmicks are introduced very sparingly. More than anything else, this game tests your patience. But if you can bear the fun-but-limited monotonous smashing for several hours, you'll reach the final few levels, which mix it up by letting you destroy a moon base and the underworld, and then the game finally ends. A very big, very dumb vidya game.

Ren and Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention
System: Genesis
Developer: BlueSky Software
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Platformer
Ren and Stimpy had a reputation in my childhood household as "the one cartoon GB mustn't watch while eating" and it was richly deserved - the show intrigued me, but it was super gross and I could actually become physically ill watching it if I was eating something or was already sick with a cold or something. It definitely stood out amongst Nickelodeon's early to mid-90s cartoon offerings.

This Genesis game based on the show isn't as gross, but the spirit of the cartoon is there. There's some voice samples, bizarre and surreal worlds populated by freakish enemies, and a cameo appearance from Powdered Toast Man, who saves you if you fall into a bottomless pit. There's also a sequence where Ren and Stimpy inflate themselves to use fart propulsion to navigate a bramble patch. So yeah, very in-character for the series.

The game revolves around collecting the parts for Stimpy's invention, which was turned on, brainwashed the city, and then exploded scattering parts everywhere and leaving a lingering influence. It needs to be assembled and then turned off in order to get the city to return to normal. You don't hunt for the pieces - you get them as each level ends, so this is strictly a get-to-the-goal affair. The game DOES have a gimmick, though - you control Ren and Stimpy at the same time, switching between which one is the leader and which is the CPU-controlled follower. Using a suite of special attacks and maneuvers, you can dig holes, attack enemies from different angles, and jump higher than normal. Or you can make Ren slap Stimpy and yell "YOU STUPID EEDIOT", which does nothing, but they had to put that in there, right? You can also play with a second human, each of you controlling a character, and you'll have to synchronize your attacks and work together to reach the goal.

Side Arms Hyper Dyne
System: Arcade
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Shmup
Similar at first glance to Forgotten Worlds, Side Arms has some differences. You play as a mecha suit rather than a human or a ship, and can transform into a more powerful mecha by getting power-ups. You can shoot behind you, but not 360 degrees like in Forgotten Worlds. It's several years older, so the graphics, sound, and gameplay are cruder and simpler, but otherwise it's pretty similar in that it's a Capcom shmup. There's a lot of those.

Despite being finishable in half an hour, heavy reuse of bosses makes the game feel padded. In the second half of the game, you fight the same boss no less than four stages in a row. The final boss, fought immediately after a reused boss from several stages earlier, is a giant version of a normal enemy and only has one attack. Upon destroying it, you get "CONGRATURATIONS THE END" followed by the credits.

The presentation leaves something to be desired, is what I'm saying.

Sonic Advance 2
System: Game Boy Advance
Developer: Dimps
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Platformer
I was suckered into purchasing Sonic Advance 2 via an Electronic Gaming Monthly review that swore up and down that it played and felt just like the old Sega Genesis Sonic games. It doesn't. Not at all. The older Sonic games have a wonderful balance between high-speed excitement and slower-paced platforming, while Dimps' attempts are wild careening over endless bottomless pits, with very few slower segments and entire levels that can be completed by holding Right and jumping. I can't emphasize enough how much bottomless pits ruined Sonic's early-mid-2000s games. Even in the two Adventures, which I quite liked, there were constant bottomless pits to worry about. While these pits weren't absent in Sonic's older games, there weren't as many (save for Sonic 2's Wing Fortress Zone, which gets a pass for being the final stage) and they were easier to see coming.

Much praise though to the boss fights! Easily my favorite part, Sonic Advance 2's high-speed boss battles are awesome and unique. They auto-scroll, so you have to run to keep up with the boss, each of which has a unique pattern to figure out.

Sonic Advance 2 is okay, but I expected better than "okay" from the series, and I stopped paying attention to Sonic entirely around the time the "Sonic Cycle" was becoming famous as a meme and decided I wouldn't fall for it. SA2 wasn't the game that made me give up on the series, though - that was Sonic Heroes.

SonSon
System: Arcade
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Run-and-gun
One of the first Capcom games ever made, this one dates all the way back to 1984. An early platformer-type game with autoscrolling, SonSon sees you play as a monkey boy based on Sun Wukong, the famous Journey to the West character. You hop and shoot your way across a land of near-identical levels on a quest to reach a statue of Buddha. Despite looking for all the world like an endless game, SonSon actually does have an end if you clear enough stages - you'll reach the statue and get a little animation along with a "congratulations". Then it puts you back at the beginning. It's very old and musty, but an interesting title for game historians due to its' place as both an early Capcom title and as part of the pre-Super Mario Brothers breed of platformer.

TaleSpin
System: Genesis
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Platformer
Talespin is a platformer with a couple of tricks up its' sleeves. As Baloo or Kit, you wander through exotic locations across Europe and Asia to collect and deliver cargo. Reaching the goal isn't enough - you must collect ten cargo crates before you can leave, forcing exploration. At first, the choice of playable characters seems to present the same problem Asterix and the Great Rescue had - Kit is smaller than Baloo and more easily able to navigate the levels, and his weapon (a slingshot) offers better range than Baloo's weapon (a damn paddle ball) so there seems to be no reason to choose Baloo. But then the game's other big surprise: between levels (which are composed of a couple different stages) you actually travel to the next location aboard Baloo's plane, the Sea Duck, in a shmup minigame. If you're playing as Kit, you don't get to control the plane - you ride along behind it on a tether like the world's most extreme waterski event, and the CPU controls the plane. This makes the game much more difficult, and it was already full of cheap shots to begin with (the rats in the city stages are hilariously unfair). That means it's actually better to play as Baloo.

Talespin isn't terrible, and younger me was enthused with the simple shmup sequences since I liked shmups but rarely got to play any in my childhood days, but it's definitely not a hidden gem or anything - just a mediocre platformer based on an old cartoon from the early 90s.

Taz In Escape From Mars
System: Genesis
Developer: HeadGames
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Platformer
I was a big Taz fan for a short time in the mid-to-late 90s, probably spurred on by reruns of the Taz-Mania cartoon as well as Space Jam. Recognizing my interest, Goopsmom gave me this game on my birthday. I also wound up with a pair of Taz plushes and a Taz clock, the latter of which managed to remain my bedroom clock all the way up until moving into a new house last summer, whereupon I decided I didn't need a dedicated clock any more at all, what with the PC and tablet and whatnot.

But enough rambling. Taz In Escape From Mars is a pretty good platformer starring the ol' devil. Using his ability to turn into a living tornado and his fondness for eating whatever he finds lying around, you navigate Taz through a series of strange locales. Oddly, Taz escapes from Mars at the end of the first stage... but eventually winds up back on Mars to fight Marvin the Martian in a final throwdown.

Escape From Mars has some fairly unique levels that caught my interest as a kid since they were different from the levels I usually saw in my platformers. A largely-underground planet called Moleworld, a seriously bizarre mazelike world named "Planet X", and a haunted castle were some of the stages on offer, with the usual "happy green hills", "fiery volcano" and "slippery ice world" tropes nowhere to be found.

The Lion King
System: Genesis
Developer: Virgin
Publisher: Disney Interactive
Genre: Platformer
My mom's never been a fan of platformers, but she made something of an exception for The Lion King, which is one of a handful of titles she actually would play all by herself without me being around (others include Ms. Pac-Man, Super Columns, Missile Command, and Street Fighter II). She wasn't very good at it, mind, but The Lion King is one of her favorite movies of all time, so she made the effort anyway.

The second level in particular is burned into our minds - "I Just Can't Wait To Be King", a long and complicated stage that is MUCH too crazy to be only the second level. It includes frantic platforming over instadeath water that requires near-perfect reflexes, plus several tricky puzzles involving roaring at monkeys to make them change which direction they throw you, and caps it all off with not one but two runs through Lion King's version of JUMP JUMP SLIDE SLIDE. In the second level! Suffice it to say that reaching the Elephant Graveyard, level 3, was considered a major achievement in our house. It wasn't until many years later that any of us ever saw the ending.

Also, shout-out to the sequence in level 6 where you jump on logs to climb a waterfall. Goopsmom loves that part. It's her favorite part, in fact.

Toobin
System: Arcade
Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway
Genre: Action
Toobin is a simple, silly game from the olden days of the arcades. You play as a dude in an inner tube, making your way down a series of rivers that enter some very strange locales. While you start out in a reasonable-enough beach stage, things quickly get crazy as the rivers wind through increasingly dangerous and bizarre locations, like the Amazon, a cyberpunk future, and the river Styx, ultimately culminating in a horror-themed river featuring roaming skulls, arms sticking out of the water clutching knives, and Annuit Coeptis shooting lasers at you. Every few location changes, you get a break with the level ending. This is signified by a beach with people partying on it at the end of the river. Naturally, after the horror river there's a completely normal beach party waiting for you.

There's an interesting co-op/competitive aspect to Toobin. Two can play at once, and while you share the goal of reaching the end of the river, players can mess each other up by getting in each others' way, and the many gates scattered throughout the river that offer bonus points will drastically lower in value after one player passes through them, leaving the one lagging behind to get fewer points. You'll get to experience this even if you play single-player, since a CPU-controlled second tuber will occasionally join you.

Total Carnage
System: Arcade
Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway
Genre: Shmup
The successor to Smash TV was named by taking one of the voice samples from that game. Naturally, the sample in question is reused for the title screen.

While Total Carnage doesn't have much in common with Smash TV setting-wise (you're a soldier sent to kill a dictator, not a contestant on a dystopian game show), it's extremely similar gameplay-wise. The dictator you're after, whose name is seriously "General Akhboob", has the enormous army you'd expect, though the giant monster boss seems an odd recruit. Like Smash TV, it's frantic and very difficult in order to guzzle quarters, but the version I played on Midway Arcade Treasures 2 offers infinite continues. Unlike Smash TV, the screen properly scrolls (though it occasionally locks and declares it's time for TOTAL CARNAGE, and then it's near-identical to ol' Smash TV). Lastly, you can once again collect keys in order to access a bonus stage called The Pleasure Dome.

Bonus jerk points to the very end, in which after a grueling final stage and boss, a horde of Akhboob's body doubles come streaming from the wreckage, quickly followed by one more with a flashing arrow pointing it out as the real Akhboob. If you miss your less-than-two-seconds chance to shoot him, you'll miss out on one of the endgame bonuses - a sequence wherein you personally get to execute Akhboob in an electric chair. Yeah, it's that kind of game.

Varth
System: Arcade
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Shmup
Varth is basically "post-apocalyptic 1942". The plot involves a supercomputer named DUO gaining consciousness and setting to work wiping out all of humanity, but it's not able to control a pair of older military planes that are sent in to destroy it. Gameplay is virtually identical to the later games in the 1942 series, with power-ups, lots of enemy planes, and huge bosses with not-quite bullet hell patterns.

World Heroes 2 Jet
System: Game Boy
Developer: SNK
Publisher: SNK/Takara
Genre: Fighting
Last but... well, certainly not MOST, but I guess not least either, is the Game Boy version of World Heroes 2 Jet. I certainly never expected to come into possession of such an obscure old fighting game, but here we are. I found it at a yard sale, along with an original Game Boy, the old four-battery brick with a green, murky screen. It also came with a copy of Space Invaders and a neat plastic case that could hold the Game Boy, games, and even spare AA batteries. I bought the set more for the retro factor than for actual playing, but I decided to try World Heroes anyway.

My copy's label is torn, so although I could see a little of the art I had no idea what game I'd even just bought. I was surprised to see it was an old SNK fighter. When I eventually made a run at trying to beat the game, I picked Maximum, the football player who later appeared in ZFRP as a Society member. He was a jerk in RP and he's a jerk in the source material, too, but I loved the idea of some big ol' football player competing in street fighting, and the "face obscured by the helmet" design choice made me like him. It was like a black mage football player, and that beats koopa football players any day.

It's a pretty standard fighting game, and pretty dumbed down since it's on a system as low-power as the Game Boy. It's not brutally hard like SNK games are famous for, and I was able to clear it the same day I decided to try.

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While I'm going through the records, I figured I'd re-do my old top 100 game list from 2012, and you can see it below. Some games have been reshuffled (I've finally taken care of that Super Mario 64/Sunshine issue, for instance) and all my favorites from the 2013, 2014, and 2015 lists are here. Games I haven't talked about in blogposts yet aren't counted, so nothing I've beaten in 2016 is present. The newly added games are in bold.

1)    Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
2)    Skies of Arcadia Legends
3)    Paper Mario
4)    Super Smash Brothers Melee
5)    The Pokemon Series
6)    Streets of Rage Remake
7)    Sonic 3 and Knuckles
8)    Disgaea DS
9)    Banjo-Kazooie
10)    Sonic the Hedgehog 2
11)    The Ace Attorney Series
12)    Streets of Rage 2
13)    Final Fantasy Tactics
14)    Bravely Default
15)    Banjo-Tooie
16)    Robot Arena 2
17)    Ghost Trick
18)    Animal Crossing
19)    Super Street Fighter II
20)    Super Paper Mario
21)    Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
22)    Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light
23)    Beat Hazard Ultra
24)    Metal Slug Anthology
25)    Space Invaders Get Even
26)    Pokemon Trading Card Game
27)    Super Smash Brothers Brawl
28)    Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
29)    Final Fantasy I Advance (Dawn of Souls)
30)    Super Mario 64/Super Mario 64 DS
31)    Super Mario Sunshine
32)    Super Mario World
33)    Mario Kart 64/Mario Kart Double Dash/Mario Kart DS
34)    WarioWare Inc: Mega Microgames
35)    Ms. Pac-Man
36)    Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga
37)    Wario Land II
38)    Kirby Super Star Ultra
39)    Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy
40)    Lego Star Wars II
41)    Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
42)    Final Fantasy IV Advance
43)    WarioWare: Touched
44)    Mortal Kombat Deception
45)    Kirby and the Amazing Mirror
46)    Contra Hard Corps
47)    Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories
48)    MySims
49)    Kirby’s Air Ride
50)    Metroid Zero Mission
51)    Robot Wars: Arenas of Destruction
52)    Super Mario 3D Land
53)    Super Mario Brothers 3
54)    Pokemon Snap
55)    Castle Crashers
56)    Scott Pilgrim 
57)     La Pucelle Tactics
58)    Vindicators
59)    Seek and Destroy
60)    Vectorman
61)    Yoshi’s Island
62)    Super Mario Galaxy
63)    Drill Dozer
64)    Pokemon Puzzle League
65)    Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut
66)    Space Station Silicon Valley
67)    Socket
68)    Deadly Creatures
69)    Pokemon Stadium/Pokemon Stadium 2
70)    Assault Heroes
71)    Operation Neptune
72)    Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee/Godzilla: Save the Earth/Godzilla Unleashed
73)    Streets Of Rage
74)    Kirby’s Dreamland 3
75)    DecapAttack
76)    Wario Land
77)    Smash TV
78)    Phoenix
79)    Sonic CD
80)    Toy Story
81)    New Super Mario Brothers
82)    Super Mario Land 2
83)    Tatsunoko Vs Capcom
84)    Mortal Kombat Armageddon
85)    Game Boy Donkey Kong
86)    Kirby's Dream Land 2
87)    Metroid II: Return of Samus
88)    The Legendary Starfy
89)    Pokemon Battle Revolution
90)    ECO Fighters
91)    Pokemon Rumble
92)    Custom Robo
93)    Mario Superstar Baseball
94)    Pokemon Colosseum/Pokemon XD
95)    Thrillville: Off the Rails
96)    Space Invaders Infinity Gene
97)    Space Invaders
98)    Wario World
99)    Chuck Rock/Chuck Rock II
100)    The Great Circus Mystery starring Mickey and Minnie