The Atari 2600 was the console that got me started in the world of video games, but the Genesis was the console to truly solidify a lifelong love of the medium in me. Longtime readers know my story with the Genesis already, but to sum it up in one sentence, my mom got one sometime in 1993 after our Atari stopped working, it was my main console for the entirety of the rest of the decade until I became a Game Boy Color owner for Christmas 2000, and I've adored video games ever since. In recent years, our Genesis collection was mostly inaccessible, partly due to the cartridges beginning to fail and partly due to migrating to modern TVs that the Genesis couldn't connect to. I was still able to play some of our old favorites due to them getting modern ports on the Switch, such as the Sonic games, Castlevania Bloodlines, and Streets Of Rage 2, but many others remained off-limits unless I wanted to emulate, and these days I usually only emulate to play things like fan translations and rom hacks that aren't accessible any other way. In February 2026, though, I had some money saved up and decided to splurge on a solution, buying a clone console called the Mega Retron HD that can connect to modern TVs right out of the box and also picking up a flash cart to replace the legions of old cartridges that refuse to boot. I love physical media, but it's not the cure-all to game preservation that some people say it is. Carts fail and die eventually, and they'll only get rarer and rarer as the supply of 35-year-old plastic carts steadily dwindles, making secondhand market prices skyrocket and making old games on cartridges nearly as inaccessible as delisted digital titles. But I do love the feeling of playing games on the TV with a controller, so the flash cart was a happy medium. Plus, the one I bought came with hundreds of games pre-loaded onto the included micro SD card, meaning I was free to try just about any game in the Genesis library, removing the barrier to entry that downloading all that stuff myself presented. With the help of the Mega Retron HD and the flash cart, I began revisiting some old favorites and trying a few new games as well.
But the Mega Retron HD wasn't the only "new" console to join the family this past year. There was also a little indie thing called the Switch 2 that rolled into town. I've played a handful of Switch 2 games in the past year, all of them major releases like Donkey Kong Bananza and Pokemon Legends ZA. I mostly like the Switch 2, with the improved game performance and faster loading being one of my favorite things about it. I'm at the point where I'd much rather have smooth, clean, fast-loading games than ones that look a little prettier in screenshots. That said, I do see why some people complain that it doesn't feel like a huge jump from the Switch 1. This is a simple evolution, not a complete reinvention, and that's okay. I didn't want gimmicks anyway, just games (The Switch 2's mouse mode could not possibly be less exciting to me, and I frequently forget it even exists).
I've also continued the trend I began a couple years ago of replaying old games, even ones I'd already completed. Some of those games were reviewed by me many years ago, others I never reviewed properly, but in every case I wrote something up and added them to the post.
Lastly, I think this year's blog sports the highest average length of a review. I didn't play a ton of different games this last year (there are 28 reviews here in total), but I had plenty to say about most of the ones that I did play, resulting in a very long blog. Enjoy!
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Kirby Star Allies
System: Nintendo Switch
Genre: 2D Platformer
Year of release: 2018
Pokemon Sword and Shield were not alone when it came to fan backlash over Switch versions of successful 3DS franchises. Kirby Star Allies came under similar scrutiny when it was released in 2018, and the reason why is pretty straightforward: Despite having less content than its' predecessors, it retailed for $60 instead of $35-$40 solely because it was a Switch game instead of a 3DS game. One of the perks of the days of Nintendo supporting a TV console and a separate handheld console was that the handheld games were much cheaper. The Switch combined TV and handheld functionality, and of course they opted for the higher prices on games. And yet, despite the nearly 50% price increase, Star Allies did not have a 50% increase in content to match. It certainly looked good - heck, it looks absolutely gorgeous even most of a decade later - but the depth of Kirby's 3DS games, Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot, is not quite here.
Star Allies is a good, solid game, don't get me wrong. Kirby games almost always are, particularly the mainline ones. They are comfy and puzzle-filled platforming romps with lots of secrets in every stage and lots of neat copy abilities Kirby can use to gain new powers. Star Allies goes hard on solving environmental puzzles with copy abilities, something present in most Kirby games but turned up to eleven here with almost every stage featuring multiple copy ability puzzles in succession. There is also a heavy focus on multiplayer, with Kirby able to bring along up to three CPU friends and any of those friends able to be taken over by another human player. The CPU allies are a bit dimwitted but they can usually do what they need to do when a puzzle asks for their ability, and if they are struggling you can use a piggyback maneuver to assume control of one of your allies and do the puzzle for them. The extra collectibles to look out for are puzzle pieces (used to assemble anniversary pictures depicting scenes from older Kirby games) and secret switches that open additional levels.
Star Allies' biggest problem is just that its' peers are notably more robust. Games like Planet Robobot, Forgotten Land, and Return To Dreamland Deluxe all have more content than Star Allies, which presents a short main campaign, a lightly remixed version of that same campaign that you can play as any of the non-Kirby characters after beating the main game once, and a pair of very simplistic minigames. Compare the underwhelming minigames here with the ones available in Planet Robobot (a top-down combo-focused platformer and a fighting game which are meaty enough to feel like their own unique titles, and did in fact get expanded standalone releases on the 3DS eShop) or the ones in Return To Dreamland Deluxe (a far larger selection, plus added challenges and unlockables associated with them). Star Allies did fight back after release with some content updates, though. First they added nine new playable characters from past Kirby titles like Adeleine, Susie, and Magolor. These new characters also get some exclusive new content when they take on the bonus non-Kirby mode. On top of that, an additional campaign was also added that is a significant step up in difficulty compared to the base game which is largely very easy even by the standards of the Kirby series having an easy main story and then keeping all the rough stuff as optional goodies.
Despite its' drawbacks, Kirby Star Allies is far from a bad game, and it will always hold a special place in my heart for a unique reason. You see, once upon a time Kirby was roughly divided into two sub-series: the "Dark Matter Trilogy" and "Super Star Style". The former group of games consisted of Kirby's Dream Land 2, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. They focused on a recurring villain named Dark Matter and its' master Zero. These games seemed fluffier and lighter on the outside, but had dark undertones hiding inside (most infamously the battle with Zero in KDL3, which features stylized animated blood as Kirby wounds Zero). They also tended to focus more on puzzle solving and slow, thoughtful play. On the other side, the Super Star Style games had a different director, emphasized action over puzzles, and were sharper, louder, and more fast-paced. Most importantly, many characters who appeared in the Dark Matter trilogy such as Adeleine, Kirby's animal friends, and Dark Matter itself were largely ignored in the other games. The two "subseries" coexisted for a short time in the late 90s, but after Kirby 64 the Dark Matter games were abandoned and the Super Star Style fully took over, with every mainline Kirby game afterwards taking inspiration from and building on that style of play. In the 2010s, Dark Matter Trilogy characters started making small cameos and getting references, but still were basically footnotes in Kirby's history. Kirby Star Allies, intended as a nostalgic celebration of the series, includes more Kirby 64 fanservice than any game before it, most notably the aforementioned post-launch addition of Adeleine as a playable character but also with a lot of additional stuff, from in-game lore to having a random Kirby 64-exclusive enemy (Plugg) make a surprise return, as well as other enemies from the Dark Matter trilogy like the bone-throwing Gabon and Nruff the boar. ANYWAY the reason any of this matters is because Kirby 64 was my first Kirby game, and I have memories of being disappointed when characters I liked in that game weren't in other games, and at the same time I remember feeling like series regular Meta Knight was weird because he didn't appear in Kirby 64. When I first played through Star Allies with my brother in 2018, we drank up the Kirby 64 references, and every time we saw a Dark Matter Trilogy enemy or heard a Kirby 64 song, we flipped out. For getting us so excited about our first Kirby game, I'll always remember Star Allies.
Mario Kart World
System: Nintendo Switch 2
Genre: Racing
Year of release: 2025
After years of eager anticipation, the Nintendo Switch 2 was finally revealed and its' big launch title is the long-awaited new Mario Kart! So, of course, the Internet responded with a massive firestorm of disgust and complaining. At this point it's become fairly obvious that people are just addicted to negativity. Of course, Mario Kart World isn't perfect, but some folks insist on never being happy. Even if this genuinely was the greatest game ever created, the Internet would find something to be upset about. The most major criticism was undoubtedly the price tag, as unless you got the special bundle that includes Mario Kart World with your new console for just an extra $50, Nintendo's MSRP for Mario Kart World was a hefty $80, making it one of the most expensive non-gimmick (as in, it didn't come with a pricey peripheral like Steel Battalion) video games in a long time. Nintendo claimed it was because of the massive value and amount of content MKW offers, but unsurprisingly this isn't true: MKW does not really offer a great deal more content than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (base game - not fair to compare it with the massive DLC since World's inevitable DLC is yet to come), with fewer tracks to race on, but with more playable characters and the addition of alternate costumes for a bunch of them. There is the open world as the X factor though, and we'll get to that.
There are a lot of complications here, including a certain very powerful politician who enjoys making everything more expensive while pretending the opposite is happening, but I'd say the actual reasons for the price increase, which Nintendo would never show enough candor to admit, are probably these three things in particular:
1) Making AAA games keeps getting more expensive as hardware grows stronger (Nintendo isn't as shackled by this issue as many other devs because they have focused less on "every new game must push the limits", but it's still there)
2) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was a ludicrous money-printer that sold over 77 million copies and is the third-best-selling game in the history of video games (beaten by only Minecraft and GTA V. Wii Sports also moved more copies, but it was a pack-in with the Wii, so I don't feel like that should count.). After selling that many copies (and it is STILL selling well, even now) Nintendo clearly figures they can charge whatever they want for MKW and people will buy it anyway.
3) Offering the $30 discount if you buy the console bundle, and then only making said bundle available for a limited time (the bundle vanished in the fall of 2025) is a way to incentivize people to purchase the console ASAP and give Nintendo a strong launch even though MKW was the only notable Switch 2 game at launch (almost everything else was either a third-party port of a years-old game, a Switch 1 updated release, Survival Kids, or Welcome Tour).
Obviously these reasons don't sit well with some people, but at the end of the day the game industry is a business, one that's become even more cutthroat in recent years, and companies are there to make money, not to be your pal and leave potential money on the table. I may not necessarily like that Nintendo's going full Disney and just seeing how high the price can go before people actually stop paying instead of just complaining and then buying it anyway, but that's just how it is and if you don't want to indulge them then there are a zillion other games to play. Hell, I largely stopped buying full-price games way back when we jumped from $50 to $60, and I mostly keep up with major Nintendo releases via my brother, who has no problem paying the asking price if he wants to play it enough. If he doesn't get it, then unless it's Pokemon I usually just go without, and I imagine these review blogs would look pretty different without his willingness to keep up with new consoles. Without him, I don't think I'd have a Switch 2, and might not ever have gotten one due to the high price of entry, so I'd end up playing mostly older games and PC indies.
Also, you seen Sony's laughable idea of how much their six-year-old console with five exclusive games should cost? Makes Nintendo look downright reasonable.
Anyway, onto the actual game. Mario Kart World is a back-to-basics Mario Kart game in some ways: the racing is pretty straightforward and the closest thing to a "gimmick" is that the ability for the karts to perform tricks has expanded, letting you rail-grind and even drive on walls briefly. The major change is the format, as all of the tracks in the game are placed into a single cohesive continent instead of being separate locations. This is both MKW's greatest strength and its' biggest weakness. Everything being connected in a huge open world is a really cool concept, and does a good job flexing the Switch 2's power over the Switch 1 by providing this vast island with minimal loading times and smooth framerate. I also think it gives cool "road trip" vibes to drive from one course to the next on the open road. But achieving this came with some significant cutbacks, most notably the fact that aside from the first track in a Grand Prix, laps are a thing of the past. You just make one loop around the course and then go to the next one, presumably to cut down on the length of a Grand Prix with those "intermissions" added on. Many people hate this with a passion, and they aren't just raging - they have solid reasoning for their opinion, pointing out that the open road between tracks is generally less interesting and has less going on, and while the tracks themselves are well-designed and fun, you only get one lap on them so they end all too quickly. While I enjoyed the intermissions a lot at first, they did get a little stale over time, and it would have been nice to turn them off and just do traditional three-lap races if desired. It is possible to do three-lap races in online play, but it's not guaranteed - it only happens if a three-lap race happens to be available for voting when players are choosing the next track, and it's Tractor-style random chance, not a popular vote, that determines the track from people's choices. Players have been loudly screaming for the option to just do 3-lap races on demand nonstop since release but Nintendo clearly isn't interested, having instead released an update that makes three-lap races less likely to appear in online matches (though this was walked back a little later).
There's also a free-roam mode that lets you drive around the open world however you like. There are some missions and collectibles scattered around, but they failed to hold my interest, and while I could see an imaginative kid getting lost in here for eons, including myself if this had been a Gamecube or Wii title, it didn't do anything for current old-fart me. Controlling a kart in an open world is so much clunkier than navigating the open worlds of (to compare with what I'm familiar with) recent Pokemon games, especially Scarlet and Violet with the handy Miraidon/Koraidon, and the lack of characters to interact with or indicators for where anything is made it all feel like aimless wandering in a big empty field. I would have much preferred some kind of single-player story mode or other kind of campaign with less wandering and more goal-oriented content.
It's a shame because there's some fantastic stuff here but it's held back by the pushing of the open world as well as some other bizarre and saddening decisions. New tracks like DK Spaceport and Boo Cinema are fantastic and creative, but the space between them is less interesting in comparison even though you have to play through it just as much. I love the promotion of lots of generics like Pokeys and Goombas to playable, though I was of course stupefied when an interview revealed they did this because they "couldn't think of anyone else" to put in the games until realizing the generics were an option, somehow overlooking the hundreds of unique and interesting characters from Mario spinoffs like Mario and Luigi, Paper Mario, and Warioware that still aren't represented. The controls are great and feel good (for racing, that is, not for open world precision platforming).
Overall, Mario Kart World is a solid entry in the series with great racing action, fun character variety, and cool new tracks, but as you can see almost everything great about it comes with an asterisk. More than anything else, it's let down by its' own gimmick. I understand the urge to do something different from Mario Kart 8 after it had been the Mario Kart of choice for two entire console generations in a row, but this might not have been the best angle to take. Does this mean all those raging haters are right? Well, I don't get as riled up about the flaws as many other people do (probably because, while I like Mario Kart well enough, I've never been a super hardcore player), but I can't deny that they are there, and Nintendo's insistence on trying to force people to play the game only one way is damaging to what MKW does right. I still strongly dislike the intense negative aura around everything these days and wish people would focus more on finding things they enjoy rather than loudly yelling about how everything new sucks, but after Mario Kart World failed to hold my interest past playing every cup and Knockout Tour a couple of times each, I gotta admit they at least have a point in this instance.
MySims Kingdom
System: Nintendo Switch (played via MySims Cozy Bundle)
Genre: Casual/Building
Year of release: 2024
MySims Kingdom was not what I thought it would be. It takes a drastically different approach to the peaceful and laid-back gameplay of the original MySims, and while I was initially quite negative on it, I did warm up to it over time - although I still think the first game is superior.
In MySims Kingdom, the action takes place on a bunch of islands that, although separated from one another, are all part of the same country. (Getting some Brothership vibes here.) Your custom-made character becomes a "Wandolier" and is tasked with using your magic wand to solve people's problems. Using the wand, you can build structures like houses and bridges, as well as decorate interiors and apply paints. You'll also be able to make use of windmills to build mechanical creations using pipes and cogs to provide water and power to things. You also get a cute little storyline to go with everything, with the huge cast of characters having plenty of lines as you help them with their various tasks. Most characters are only relevant for one island, but you do have Lyndsay (an adorable pirate-like adventurer) and Buddy (the bellhop from the hotel in MySims 1) as permanent traveling companions. It's cute and funny and reminds me of a kids' cartoon.
This all seems great so far, but one potential sticking point is that MySims Kingdom abandons the open-ended structure of the original game. In the first MySims, you go through some basic tutorials to get things started and have a very small selection of potential Sims to move in at first, but by the time you reach two stars, things open up a lot and you have plenty of freedom to pick and choose who you want to move in and what to build for them to please them, and if you find a mission annoying or difficult you can abandon it or even kick out the Sim entirely. Not so in MySims Kingdom - you must do every task, and you must do them in order, with no opportunity to go do something else unless you need to gather more resources. Your one bit of agency is that you can sometimes choose which island you'd like to visit next, and you can abandon one island mid-quest to start on another if you want, but the structure of the game is geared towards completing all the mainline quests on every island if you want to see the credits.
Don't expect to get too creative with your builds at first, either. When creating certain structures like bridges and towers, you must follow an exact blueprint, and the mission will not mark as complete unless you do exactly as indicated. You may be able to add additional decorations on top of the base, at least, but it will cost you. MySims Kingdom introduces a "Mana" system that requires you to gather energy called Mana to power your magic wand. Placing down blocks uses up mana. Like in the first game, characters will want creations to have certain amounts of interest, such as Cute or Fun, but unlike that game, going over the requested amount of interest does nothing, encouraging you to just make the structures as efficiently and boringly as possible so that you don't run out of Mana on your next job. You can get more freeform with houses and decorations, but again there's no overall interest wheel to work towards filling so the only point in putting effort into a custom house is for the sake of it - something difficult to get excited about when your options are so limited and drain your Mana.
I'm also just going to whine a bit that the voice clips of the characters speaking Simlish can get old in a hurry. If you stay in one spot (inevitable when you're working on building stuff) the NPCs will mill about nearby. They don't really get in the way (if a character is blocking placement of something, place it anyway and it will teleport them off to the side) but since they don't have anything else to do they'll just start repeating the same few lines over and over. Buddy's "Yeah, yeah~" has become embedded in my brain, and Trevor the playwright, star of Trevor Island, is never far when you're working on his tasks and he loves saying the same two or three lines of intentionally overacted babble over and over.
The good news is that MySims Kingdom picks up significantly once you're a ways in. Once you have access to later islands, you'll start earning mana more easily and you'll also have lots of leftover Essences that are of no further use to you and that can be transmuted into mana by speaking with Lyndsay. This lets you do tasks more easily without having to stop and gather resources as often, and if you have a lot of excess you can even afford to get more creative, adding paints and accessories you want instead of just what's asked for.
Overall, MySims Kingdom isn't what I expected, and it's not awful, but it can't match the addictive gameplay loop of the first game for me even though, on paper, it doesn't seem that different. You're still gathering materials, creating stuff to fill requests, and exploring to find new materials, but it's just not the same. And with every other MySims game abandoning the original's formula entirely to explore other genres like racing, this is likely the closest we'll ever get to a proper MySims 2.
Donkey Kong Bananza
System: Nintendo Switch 2
Genre: 3D Platformer
Year of release: 2025
Mario Kart World is nice and all, but it is a primarily multiplayer experience. Even with the big open world to wander around in by yourself, MKW lacks the meat or the hooks to work as a single-player game for most - myself included - so for people who prefer to play alone, the Switch 2 launched with nothing worth the price of admission. A month and a half after the console's launch, though, we got Donkey Kong Bananza, and as far as I'm concerned, this right here was the first killer app for Switch 2, and is an experience you won't find anywhere else.
Donkey Kong Bananza is Super Mario Odyssey 2. I'll just make that clear now. It was developed by the same people and has a lot of Odyssey's DNA, even if it's also very much its' own thing. You roam various environments at your own pace, wandering around in search of collectibles to snag, and follow a main storyline about pursuing a nasty bad guy through a series of themed worlds full of goofy NPCs. However, DKB breaks the mold of a typical platformer with some very interesting abilities it gives DK that would be beyond broken in almost any other game of its' genre: You can climb walls freely, and a large portion of the environment is destructible. DKB is built around these abilities so that they aren't overpowered, and of course you'll find plenty of walls you can't climb and ground you can't dig into, but there's a lot of freedom here to just start tearing things up, and you can often skip puzzles and challenges just by approaching the prize at the end from another angle - sometimes literally.
DKB kicks off with Donkey Kong going mining on the far-away Ingot Isle with nothing but his fists, off in search of Banandium Gems. These are large precious gemstones that resemble bananas - and apparently also taste like them, because while they are a powerful energy source, DK just eats every single one he finds. The trouble starts when a team of evil apes called VoidCo, led by the Gremlinesque Void Kong, destroy Ingot Isle and steal all of their Banandium to power a giant digging machine as it burrows its' way towards the core of the earth. As DK later learns, a legend states that anyone who can reach the core is able to make a wish. Soon running into and befriending Pauline (who is just a child here, instead of her usual sassy adult self), DK begins to make his way to the Core to wish for his bananas back, help Pauline with her own wish to return home, and stop Void Kong from making whatever dastardly wish he has planned. It's a simple enough premise, but it manages to feel a lot more interesting than "Peach is kidnapped #53282", and I like the concept of DK being Pauline's friend instead of her kidnapper as he was in the original Donkey Kong. Or was that Cranky Kong that did that? Considering Mario was stated by Miyamoto to be in his twenties, reconciling that old Cranky Kong tidbit with Mario being Jumpman has always been impossible (Mario's just way too young for Cranky to get so old after the events of Donkey Kong Arcade), so whatever, now Pauline's aging backwards. Sure why not. Doesn't matter.
As you venture deeper into the depths and collect Banandium Gems, DK will acquire Skill Points. These are used to upgrade DK with buffs and new abilities, like enlarging his health bar or being able to dig through tougher materials faster. As you progress the story, you'll also unlock the titular Bananzas, which are super forms for DK that let him use powerful new abilities for a limited time. The Kong Bananza, for instance, makes DK much stronger so that he can punch through the normally-invincible material Concrete, and the Ostrich Bananza turns DK into a gorilla/bird hybrid that can cross large gaps and use updrafts to soar into the air. Bananzas are fueled by gold, which is scattered throughout every layer and also used as currency to buy items, create rest stations called Getaways that let DK heal, and unlock routes to additional Banandium Gems.
You want to know how well Bananza's gameplay works? Despite the focus on them, you do not actually need to collect Banandium Gems. Like, at all. You are never faced with a gate where you need to have collected X number of bananas to proceed. Even the ones that are awarded to you for beating bosses can simply be walked past, and NPCs who give you one can be ignored. Their only actual use is in leveling up DK by getting Skill Points. And yet you will absolutely want to engage with these sprawling levels full of secrets and try to find as many as you can, partly because DK's Skill Point upgrades are really useful but also because it just feels good to collect them. Similarly, another major collectible - Fossils - is also completely optional. Fossils are used as currency to buy clothes for DK and Pauline to wear, and although they are not just cosmetic and have secondary effects like making DK swim faster or boosting the length of time he can stay in Bananza form, they too can simply be ignored. But you'll want to find them, and you'll feel excitement every time you spot one.
I also need to give a shoutout to DKB's amazing ability to set a mood. You'll run the gamut of emotions playing this game, and DKB knows the importance of a good cooldown period. In between periods of heavy action, platforming puzzles, and quick but sometimes tricky boss fights, DKB will dial things back a notch and take it slow. You'll run into a couple tiny "rest stop"-like areas as you delve deeper, and these unique locations have only a few Banandium Gems along with soothing music and a focus on setting a mood over presenting challenge. I loved them, they were so moody and immersive.
There was some controversy when DK got his 'big' redesign, but if Mario Kart World wasn't enough to convince you this was the right direction for the character, Bananza should. DK is so full of life now! He's expressive, appropriately goofy, and full of personality. DK was never really lacking in personality, but this is a big step up after many years of the Rare version of the character, who feels so dull in comparison now that I look back at him. I was never much of a Donkey Kong guy but Bananza has made me a believer. I think he's great now. The big monkey won me over, and so did his video game - it's the best 3D platformer I've played in a long, long time, nailing the collecting-and-exploring vibe that made me love games like Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie. He's even got a spunky, talkative girl on his back just like Banjo! This is probably the closest we'll ever get to another proper Banjo game, sadly (though I have yet to try Yooka-Laylee). While I fell off after the credits despite a postgame quest (there's a difficulty spike and I had no patience for it), DKB was still an excellent experience and one I won't soon forget.
Pac 'N Roll Remix
System: Nintendo Switch (played via Pac-Man Museum Plus)
Genre: Marble
Year of release: 2007
A remake of the 2005 Pac 'N Roll game, Pac 'N Roll Remix is an odd duck. The original game featured a story that went into detail about Pac-Man's past and featured a cast of characters, but this 'Remix' version of the game discards all of the characters besides Pac-Man and the evil Golvis, a rock star ghost. Upon starting the game you are immediately sent to the stage select without even a title screen. With no context, Pac-Man is now just rolling through levels and fighting Golvis for no reason at all.
I called this a 'Marble' game because it plays somewhat similarly to games like Marble Madness or Super Monkey Ball, and that kind of ball-rolling gameplay feels like its' own little genre. Pac-Man rolls to get around and you have to navigate obstacle courses to get to the goal. Pac-Man is difficult to get to grips with and rolls very quickly, so you need to use a light touch on the control stick and make good use of the B button to brake when necessary, though there's also a dash you can perform with the A button that will be necessary for moments when you need even more speed. Later levels practically demand good use of the brake.
To get through each level you have to avoid obstacles (including, of course, ghosts) and eat Pac-Dots. Golvis has set up "Golvis Gates" everywhere that will only let you pass once you've collected enough Pac-Dots, forcing you to collect as many as possible instead of just rushing through the level. You'll also find power-ups that help you get through the levels. One gives Pac-Man armor that makes him slower, sinks him in water, and lets him break metal boxes. The other gives him wings and makes him much faster, making him even more difficult to control but giving you the ability to cross larger gaps in midair via sheer speed.
Pac 'N Roll Remix is kind of annoying but playable for the first few worlds until the difficulty rises significantly in World 3 (particularly that world's boss) and then skyrockets in World 4. World 4-3 was where I threw in the towel - it features incredibly dangerous and fast-moving obstacles that require perfection to pass, and if you run out of lives you have to start the whole level over from the beginning. I probably could have beaten it with persistence but I wasn't having fun any more so I quit. I have no idea how anyone was supposed to beat this junk on the DS with touch controls, I can't begin to imagine navigating these Ninja Warrior courses by awkwardly and imprecisely swiping with a stylus. I commend JRM for not only doing so, but saying it was easy. Doesn't exactly make me feel great about my own skills, but... oh well. I don't like this game.
Sonic Mania
System: Nintendo Switch
Genre: 2D Platformer
Year of release: 2017
Have I seriously never bothered to properly review this game? Might as well fix that!
Sonic Mania is a nostalgic throwback to the classic Sega Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog 2D platformers. These games have a unique mix of speed, momentum, exploration, secrets, and alternate routes that make them stand out among other games in the genre, especially the straightforward obstacle courses of 2D Mario games that, yes, did hide secrets, but were also often played largely the same every time. Sonic, particularly starting with the second game in the series, features sprawling levels with multiple paths that let you play the same level in many different ways. To this day I am somehow still coming across sections in these games that make me double-take and go "wait, I don't remember this!". It's crazy.
Sonic Mania is a straightforward evolution of the concept. The graphics have been spiffed up a bit but are still very reminiscent of the Genesis. Levels are huge, similar in size to the hefty maps offered by Sonic 3 And Knuckles. Many of the levels are remakes of stages from the other games - you'll find locations from 1, 2, CD, and 3K, as well as four unique levels created specifically for this game (though one of those four, Mirage Saloon, was heavily inspired by a scrapped desert level that was considered for Sonic 2). A number of the remake stages keep Act 1 fairly similar to the original version of the zone, with Act 2 drastically changing it up with largely all-new content (Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Flying Battery are all good examples). Gameplay is as you would expect if you're familiar with the games it's evoking. Playing as one of the OGs, Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles, you run through these sprawling levels in search of the goal, and while you can speed through to get done as fast as possible (and there's a time trial mode if you want to focus on that), exploration is rewarded with extra lives, bonus items like protective shields, and the giant rings that warp you to the Special Stages, where you must complete a minigame to earn one of the seven Chaos Emeralds. Here, you need to run around a 3D racetrack to catch up with a fleeing UFO that is carrying the emerald. These tricky minigames are unique to Sonic Mania but feature references to all of the special stage types that came before: the background and decor of the stages is reminiscent of Sonic 1's stages. Sonic CD featured similar style courses and also were about dealing with fleeing UFOs. The stages also feature spiked mines as hazards that are similar to Sonic 2's bombs, and you collect blue spheres to speed up, calling to mind the blue spheres from the S3K special stages. In fact, all sixteen of S3K's special stages are in here too, along with 16 original Blue Spheres levels, and completing those gives you unlockable bonus content. This is a good example of just how packed with love for the classic Sonic games Sonic Mania is, with tons of references throughout the game to almost everything you can think of from early- to mid-90s Sonic, before his redesign and shift to 3D gameplay in the Dreamcast era.
In that regard, there is one small caveat I would offer for what I believe is a fantastic game: It is clearly meant to be played by people already familiar with Sonic's Genesis games. If this is your first Sonic game - and, for a lot of people, it actually was considering its' wide release and low price, especially since it was an early Switch game - then many of the deep cut references it makes will be lost on you. For that reason, I recommend picking up Sonic Origins as your first foray into classic Sonic (or some other collection of the old games, like Sonic Mega Collection, if you have the hardware for it) before playing Mania. Sonic Mania is also a somewhat harder game than the Genesis-era foursome, with the boss fights in particular being more involved and lengthier than most bosses in the older titles. You might even point to this as the Franchise Original Sin for Classic Sonic that led to the much-maligned boss fights in Sonic Superstars, which cranked up their length and difficulty even further to that game's massive detriment. Most Mania bosses aren't that bad, though, and they aren't the slow timesinks Superstars bosses tend to be, with a lot of action and a lot of chances to hit the boss.
There's also DLC! Upgrading to "Sonic Mania Plus" adds two more playable characters (the extremely obscure Mighty the Armadillo and the even more obscure Ray the Flying Squirrel), each with their own unique abilities to make playing through the game with them feel different. There's also an "Encore" mode that recolors the stages and slightly changes up their designs. However, when playing Encore mode you're locked into a strange character relay system where you build a party of all five playable characters, with two available to you at any one time that you can freely swap between (the other one will follow you around like how Tails follows Sonic in some games). Encore Mode also moves around the locations of the Special Stage, mirrors their layouts, and makes them significantly harder (as if they weren't hard enough already). Fortunately you can play the Encore stages in Time Attack after beating them if you want to experience them as one specific character. It's a fairly modest DLC sold for a fairly modest price, and I don't regret picking it up even if I obviously would have wanted some actual new zones to play through instead of just mild remixes of the base game's content.
By the way, while we're on the general subject, I have a few more words to say about Sonic Superstars, which I spent some time revisiting in the fall of 2025. I tried the multiplayer battle mode and did a lot of Time Attack. The battle mode is pretty lame, sort of a weak Sonic version of Fall Guys. Time Attack is great, though - the bosses are removed and you just blast through the levels without any interruptions. You do have to clear the stage without dying, though, since checkpoints are removed in Time Attack, but it's a good way to learn the levels. Divorced from the boss fights, most of these levels are quite enjoyable and feel a lot like the classic games. I maintain that there's a good game in here, held back by tedious and/or difficult boss battles and a bizarre emphasis on shared-screen co-op multiplayer when Sonic games simply aren't built for that. There's a theory that Superstars made its' bosses so lengthy and tough because they would otherwise be utterly trivialized by co-op and Emerald Powers, but they didn't make the bosses have less health or be less deadly if the player is alone, or if they don't have any Chaos Emeralds. As a result, I firmly believe that the devotion to co-op play is what hurt this game, and if we get another Classic Sonic style game, I hope they keep multiplayer to a sideshow like in the classic games and focus instead on delivering an experience that is strong when played by a lone player. Superstars also caught a lot of flack for its' price, and for good reason - it offers roughly the same amount of content as Sonic Mania (a normal mode that takes a few hours to clear, a hard mode, a multiplayer mode, and Time Attack) but on launch it cost over twice as much, offering nothing to explain the massive price difference besides "wow, 3D graphics". However, Superstars has since become quite cheap physically (around $25) and the digital version is on sale often, dropping to around that price or lower several times a year. At less than half its' original asking price of $60, I think Superstars is absolutely worth it for big fans of classic Sonic, particularly if you like to play Time Attack. Play the main campaign once to unlock all the stages and the hidden playable character and see the ending, then race around in Time Attack to your heart's content.
Pokemon Legends Z-A
System: Nintendo Switch 2
Genre: Action RPG
Year of release: 2025
It was an unusual feeling, going so long without a new Pokemon game. When Z-A released, it had been three years since the previous entry, Scarlet/Violet, and two years since the DLC campaign for that game. After a stretch of Pokemon titles being pumped out at a dizzying rate of speed throughout most of the Switch's lifespan - Sword/Shield and their DLC, BDSP, Legends Arceus, Scarlet/Violet - it was probably the right thing to slow down a little, and this slowness appears to be permanent with the next generation finally revealed in 2026 only for it to still be a year or more away. With Z-A, the Legends subseries has solidified itself as the place where Game Freak messes around and experiments with new things, and Z-A has taken itself even further in an Action RPG direction after Arceus dabbled in it but retained a simplified form of the traditional turn-based combat Pokemon is known for.
Z-A does a lot of things differently from a normal Pokemon game, though it does have equivalent concepts that serve similar gameplay roles to classic Pokemon tropes. The biggest change besides the battle system is probably that the entire game takes place in a single city, Lumiose City, which first appeared in Pokemon X and Y. Unsurprisingly, the city has been massively expanded now that it must host an entire game instead of just one story arc and a postgame quest like it did in Gen 6, though the resulting "world map" is still far smaller than the last few Pokemon games have been. While this does cut back on the classic sense of discovery and adventure, Z-A tries to make up for it by making things denser and more cozy. Your mileage will vary on how well this works - I personally have always loved the big cities in Pokemon games, dating all the way back to exploring the likes of Celadon, Saffron, and Goldenrod for secrets back on my Game Boy Color, so getting a gigantic one is pretty cool even if the vibes are drastically different from a standard Pokemon adventure.
The story is different, too. In most Pokemon games, you're a kid who lives with their mom (never the dad, always just the mom) who sets off on a big journey to become the Pokemon League Champion and defeat an evil team of criminals along the way. In this game, your character is already traveling alone and appears to be older and more self-sufficient. In the other games it's implied that acquiring a Pokemon is what allows you to be safe enough to go adventuring, but in this game, your character explicitly does not own any Pokemon and still strikes out on their own to visit Lumiose (though considering how readily you take to becoming a trainer, it's likely you came to Lumiose specifically to get yourself a Pokemon as part of the city's new reconstruction plan, but we never get confirmation of this). No mention is made of your family at all, and you show up to Lumiose City as a tourist who is quickly roped into solving absolutely everyone else's problems because lord, these people are helpless. Instead of gym battles, you enter the Z-A League and battle your way through an alphabet's worth of ranks, from Z to A, with each letter gatekept by a boss who is basically a gym leader equivalent. Instead of routes or the open world, you can visit 'Wild Zones', which are small parks where wild Pokemon roam around and can attack you similarly to Legends Arceus. And the darker, more serious threat this time is centered around wild Pokemon performing Mega Evolution on their own and threatening the city, similar to the Pokemon that entered a crazed state in Legends Arceus. Z-A takes place five years after the events of XY and there are numerous references to Gen 6, including plenty of lore that follows up on what happened in those games that does a great job fleshing out a story I considered weak back in the day. I wouldn't call playing Gen 6 a prerequisite (good thing, since it's not like it's available for purchase at a reasonable price anywhere), but it would certainly help you get more out of the plot and Z-A kind of assumes you already know how X and Y went, so uh, spoilers for X and Y if you play Z-A!!
Game Freak also took the incredibly huge risk of redesigning the Hex Maniac generic NPC, which is a bold move considering how ridiculously, obscenely popular the XY iteration of the character was. The new, more mature-looking one is getting tons of fanart though so their gamble paid off.
But seriously, the biggest change is the battle system. Z-A has completely abandoned the iconic turn-based battling of traditional Pokemon games (which makes Game Freak's insistence that Z-A is a "mainline" game feel very wrong - this new battle system combined with the focus on a single city means I simply can't see this as anything but a spinoff). Battles now happen in real time, and you need to take into account your Pokemon's position when attacking because if there's an obstacle in the way, it'll block your attack, and if your Pokemon isn't in a good spot to launch a move, it'll have to go into position first. Battles are breakneck, with attacks flying out very quickly at the rate of one every few seconds, so you can't stop to strategize because your Pokemon will be taking damage if you aren't constantly acting. On the world map or in a battle with wild Pokemon, the old Legends Arceus dodge roll returns, but the dodge is disabled during trainer battles (probably because you aren't supposed to be getting hit there). You also can't control your Pokemon directly, so positioning is difficult, but you can get your partner to run over to your side if you stop targeting the opponent, so you may be able to dodge some attacks by running in, attacking, and then retreating. Instead of moves having PP, they have cooldowns, with stronger moves having longer cooldowns, which encourages you to use your entire moveset even against foes where one attack is clearly the best choice. It's possible to dodge in certain situations, but for shorter fights or ones in cramped quarters you may be best served playing them as incredibly fast-paced turn-based fights - instead of trying to get clever, just park your Pokemon directly in front of the opponent, move your trainer away so you can see what's happening, and spam moves as fast as possible. If your Pokemon's health is low, use an item or swap to another Pokemon. Otherwise keep clicking attacks until you win. It feels kinda chaotic and sloppy and there's no time to be strategic aside from maybe timing Protect or a switch to dodge powerful moves, but it can be dumb fun once you get used to it. This is fine for a spinoff sideshow, and I do like how easy fights are over in seconds when done this way, AND the longer I played the more I enjoyed this battle style, but I do still prefer the turn-based battle system for it's more relaxed pace and the feeling of control I have over most battles, even if most of the time it is similarly just "click the strongest attack every turn until you win". Due to being rushed, here I make mistakes like clicking the wrong move that I would never make in a regular Pokemon title, and I don't like that. Turn-based is also much better for atmosphere. During some climactic fights it's nice to just soak in the music and the moment, and I enjoy taking a moment to study and admire new Pokemon designs during turn-based fights, something you can't do with Z-A's new Mega forms.
As I kept playing, I got better at the battle system and was a little more capable of dodging enemy attacks in certain situations, but it still feels like strategy gets thrown out the window in tight quarters or when you have to deal with multiple opponents at once, and eventually my strategy became to simply overwhelm the opponent by hitting them with extremely strong attacks from overleveled Pokemon. I've seen this battle system compared to Xenoblade, which made me incredibly nervous before playing since I hated the combat when I tried to play Xenoblade 2, but unlike in that game, if you move out of the way of an attack in Z-A, you will probably actually dodge it. That's already a big improvement. One thing Z-A does that Xenoblade also did, though, is the ability for multiple opponents to wander over to a fight in progress (only during wild encounters, not trainer battles). It even has the same problem Xenoblade did of allowing vastly stronger opponents (in this case, the return of Alpha Pokemon) to join the fight, making the fight unwinnable or at least vastly harder than it was supposed to be. Your odds of escaping a losing situation are much better here than in Xenoblade, though. In Xenoblade if you got caught you were getting wiped, end of story. Here you can just run away.
The boss fights against Rogue Mega Pokemon are different from the regular fights. These feel much more like a proper action game fight, as you're given back your dodge ability and need to work in tandem with your Pokemon to land attacks, dodge incoming blows, and grab items that appear during the fight to activate your own Mega Evolution, letting your Pokemon go on the offensive for a little while. The Rogue Mega Pokemon all have unique special moves that are very powerful, but can be dodged. Your combat roll comes in handy, especially since often the boss will ignore your Pokemon and instead specifically target the trainer!
One thing that can get annoying is the day/night system. There are the occasional plot-mandated or sidequest-related battles, but most trainer battles occur at night inside specially-marked Battle Zones, where you try to sneak up on opponents and ambush them for easier fights but can get ambushed yourself if you're sloppy or unlucky. Every time day changes to night, you're shown the same 'uh-oh, it's night time!!!' cutscene, disrupting your flow and taking you out of whatever you were doing (and disguising some loading, presumably). Were you fighting a wild Pokemon? Not any more you're not - after the cutscene you'll be back where you were before, but your Pokemon is back in its' ball and the wild Pokemon has vanished. At least this doesn't happen with trainer battles, which pause the advance of time until they are over (opening menus, going inside buildings, and viewing cutscenes also pauses time). Extending the same courtesy to wild encounters would have been nice. The cycle encourages you to alternate between doing Wild Zones and sidequests during the day and Battle Zones at night, but if you're focused on accomplishing one specific thing, it can get irritating being interrupted. There is a stopgap solution where you can sit on a bench to fast-forward time, but that won't get you back that time wasted fighting an Alpha or some other wild Pokemon that got interrupted by the change of day. You'll just have to be careful - you are at least given a few warnings that night is approaching, so hold off on any big battles with a tough or rare wild Pokemon if you only have a few minutes of daylight left. (By the way, daytime lasts 16 minutes and nighttime lasts a mere 8 minutes.)
Has to be said - the lack of voice acting in Pokemon games is really starting to look cheap. Donkey Kong Bananza might be a decent comparison, with a fully voice-acted and very talkative Pauline, and other characters using a weird fantasy language (presumably so they didn't have to pay a bunch of voice actors to redo the lines in all the most common spoken languages). Pokemon in contrast remains completely silent aside from your player character letting out little grunts when they get hurt or throw a Pokeball. The lack of voice acting was fine back in the day but has gotten really awkward ever since the Switch games. The darndest thing is that Pokemon characters do get voices elsewhere, like in the mobile game Pokemon Masters EX and of course the anime. If they can do it there, why not here, in what is supposedly the most important part of the franchise that everything else is built upon? It just feels chintzy to still be skimping on this in the HD era, and is an easy target for people who have a vendetta against the series to use as a bludgeon to talk about how Game Freak isn't delivering what should be expected of "the biggest franchise in the history of the world" (even though, looking at other mega-franchises that ARE taking advantage of their popularity, perhaps it's a good thing that Game Freak stays relatively humble). They don't even need to be voiced all the time, just during the major cutscenes. It would legitimately add a lot, I think. (Also, unsurprisingly, we still have our weirdly non-talkative MC who communicates solely in dialogue options instead of text boxes.)
I think there may be a little bit - just a touch - of a "Federation Force effect" here. After a three-year wait for a new Pokemon game, getting a spinoff with a weird battle system, no new Pokemon (new Megas... ehhh, kinda count, but it's not the same), and no big world to explore is a bit of a risky venture. We've got to wait another year for 2027's Winds and Waves, the next more traditional, "proper" Pokemon game for the old fogies like me who love this series and its' basic structure no matter how many times other people complain that they're "all the same", something I don't agree with fully even if I do kind of see what they're talking about. After all, despite people singing its' praises, I thought Super Mario Bros Wonder wasn't all that different from the NSMB series, just with prettier graphics and more gimmicky levels, but it's more of a gradual change with these franchises. SMB1 and Wonder are clearly worlds apart, just as how Red and Blue bear little resemblance to Scarlet and Violet beyond some basic game mechanics and concepts. That's just kind of how video game franchises usually work. I don't want Pokemon to turn into something it's not. If I don't want a Pokemon-type experience, I wouldn't play Pokemon. Z-A is good. I liked it. But nothing can replace a true new generation of monster pocketing with proper turn-based combat.
Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration
System: Nintendo Switch
Genre: Compilation/Documentary
Year of release: 2022
I've mentioned Atari 50 several times over the last few years of these reviews, and I've put up numerous reviews of games I played via the collection, but I never properly reviewed the collection itself, did I? Atari 50 is simply marvelous. There are other compilation games I've gotten more playtime and more enjoyment out of, such as Sonic Mega Collection and Sonic Origins, but Atari 50 is one of the greatest compilations around not so much for what you can play as what you can experience. Atari 50 is essentially an interactive documentary of the history of Atari (specifically, its' original incarnation when it released consoles as well as games, before it was turned into a mere brand name starting in the late 90s). Digital Eclipse digs deep to provide a deeply interesting and historically important look at Atari, which by definition means also including a lot of content about the early history of video games in the 70s and 80s. The birth of gaming as a mass-market medium, the rise of Pong, the arrival of the Atari 2600, the infamous Crash of 1983, Atari's rebirth in the late 80s, and its' final decline with the failed Lynx and Jaguar consoles until, after a long period in the wilderness, it came roaring back once again in the 2020s and even made its' own consoles once again. It's all here.
If you get all the DLC, Atari 50 weighs in with a staggering 167 different games on deck to play, making it one of the biggest compilations ever released. Some of these games are alternate variations of each other (for instance, there are three versions of Centipede in here, and the Namco DLC piles on a whopping five versions of Dig Dug), but it can be quite interesting to compare the different versions of the games and see how the arcade, 2600, 5200, and 7800 stack up against each other. Many players will also likely find a lot of these ancient relics to be lacking in anything to hold their interest (you won't find too many people enraptured by the likes of Basic Math or Atari sports titles), but as said the real value here is for preservationists and historians. Many of the games included in Atari 50 haven't gotten a rerelease in years - or ever. Sure, most of the 2600 games have, but they're better than ever here with improved emulation and presentation (the last Atari collection, the now-delisted Atari Vault, was cool but lacking in some areas like emulation quality and, on PC, controller compatibility). There are also some unreleased prototypes here, some like Save Mary having appeared elsewhere like the Atari Flashback plug-and-play console, but they weren't available for the folks of the 80s to buy and play on their original 2600 consoles.
I don't mean to say the games are entirely lacking in value beyond their historical importance, though. There are some classic score chasers that can still hold up today if you're in the right mood for them, and we've got some golden oldies in here like Centipede, Missile Command, and Yars' Revenge. The Namco DLC in particular has some of the most playable games in the collection, such as the excellent Atari 2600 adaptation of Galaxian. There are even some brand-new games included with somewhat more modern sensibilities, such as a 3D remake of Haunted House, a pretty damn cool vector game called VCTR-SCTR that pulls together gameplay mechanics from classic Atari vector games, and the very long awaited Swordquest Airworld, the missing fourth and final game of a series that only got to the third release before sputtering out. (though... ask JRM how much he loved playing Swordquest's first game.)
What I enjoyed the most was the documentary content. Presented as an interactive timeline, you're able to sift through a huge pile of multimedia as you discover and learn about each game. Many of the games feature historical documents associated with them, such as development notes, magazine advertisements, and promotional flyers. There are video clips too, featuring interviews with the developers and even a few classic television ads. There's hours worth of reading material to enjoy, backed by a soothing and mysterious-sounding musical track that really makes you feel like you're digging into a vault of video game history. (Fret not if you're itching to play something specific ASAP, though - there's also a straightforward game list you can sort by name, console, and year of release so you can quickly find what you want to play without having to hunt for it in the timeline.) One thing I really liked was that Atari 50 tracks your completion of viewing all the timeline material, helping ensure you don't miss anything. Unfortunately, this only works on the base game content - for whatever reason, all of the DLC packs are bugged and will jump from 0% to 100% instantly upon first viewing, so you'll have to go through the timeline in order carefully, avoid jumping around, and make sure you don't miss anything if you want to see it all.
Atari 50 isn't for everyone, but if you're fascinated by the early days of video games - or if you're willing to spend some quiet time learning, reading, and watching videos about it - Atari 50 is a unique and lovable addition to your gaming library.
Pac-Man (2600)
System: Nintendo Switch (played via Atari 50)
Genre: Maze
Year of release: 1982
Pac-Man's Atari 2600 release is a legendary and fascinating historical artifact. Made in a very short time by a single programmer, Pac-Man 2600 was the system's best-selling game, but has also been blamed (alongside ET) for causing the infamous video game crash of 1983, and some go so far as to call it one of the worst games ever released. The truth isn't so simple as that. Why exactly there was a crash in the US video game market in the early to mid 80s before the NES got things going again is a subject that has been studied for four decades. If you ask me, I would point the finger not at Pac-Man specifically, but at a general glut of low-quality titles flooding the market and leading to disillusionment among customers, combined with an unending onslaught of new consoles and unnecessary peripherals. There were simply way too many consoles hanging around at this stage. We're used to a console generation only featuring three or four competitors at a time, but it was pure chaos in the early 80s as Atari not only faced a dozen other competing consoles but was also competing with itself, trying to sell three different systems simultaneously as well as pushing computers and peripherals. There were way too many products and not nearly enough customer interest to sustain them all - when things calmed down and it was essentially just Nintendo, Sega, and Atari, each with their own exclusive games, business improved.
But we're not here to discuss THAT ancient history, we're discussing THIS ancient history. 2600 Pac-Man certainly isn't as good as the arcade original, but an attempt was made. Everything you need for Pac-Man is here in rudimentary form. The dots are now "video wafers" because the Atari couldn't render them as just dots, they had to be small lines instead. Power Pills are square. There are four ghosts, but they flicker because the 2600 can only display one of them at a time. The maze is different, with the shortcut tunnel being placed vertically instead of horizontally (and made less useful in the process). It's clearly, recognizably Pac-Man, just in a lesser form, because even a game as simple as Pac-Man was a major challenge for a machine running on mid-70s hardware.
I think Pac-Man 2600 actually has some merit. One of Pac-Man's biggest problems is that they only provided one single maze to play, and so this version offering a completely new maze is a bit of a selling point. The crudeness is also almost charming, to me. But there's no denying that the original is clearly the better game overall, and that Pac-Man 2600 is one of those many older games that's most valuable today as a museum piece rather than something you sit down with and play all afternoon in search of a high score like some folks did forty-plus years ago.
Pac-Man (Atari 8-Bit)
System: Nintendo Switch (played via Atari 50)
Genre: Maze
Year of release: 1982
Here is a far more accurate rendition of Pac-Man. While it's still not arcade-perfect, this version of Pac-Man's debut is leagues ahead of the 2600 version in terms of both accuracy and presentation. The maze is a 1:1 copy, albeit squashed so that it fits on a standard CRT monitor without scrolling. However, one notable difference is that gameplay is much slower in this version than in the arcade, allowing for easier progress as you'll be better able to avoid the ghosts. Even on high levels of play, the ghosts are still slow, making this a surprisingly good option for beginners playing a Pac-Man game for the first time. The slowness means it might get dull for more advanced players, though - and, of course, since this is the original Pac-Man, there's only one maze, so clear it once and you've seen everything it has to offer.
Dig Dug (Arcade)
System: Nintendo Switch (played via Atari 50)
Genre: Maze
Year of release: 1982
I once considered Dig Dug my favorite classic arcade game. I'm not sure I could tell you why, but if I had to try to interpret the kid version of me I'm guessing it was a mixture of Dig Dug's unique gameplay combined with the initially low difficulty making it accessible for someone new. I'm often hesitant to put any tokens into an arcade game I think will kill me before I get the chance to learn how it even works. Dig Dug starts off nice and easy and only gets rough with you after you've cleared several stages, so it gives you some time to just piddle around and learn how to play.
In Dig Dug, you command Taizo Hori (AKA the titular Dig Dug) with the task of exterminating a group of troublemakers running rogue underground. You're dealing with two enemies: the round red Pooka, which can only run around and try to kill you with collision damage, and the green dragon Fygar, who sports an actual attack in the form of fire breath. Dig Dug digs his way through the earth to get to his opponents who are wandering in small underground tunnels. To exterminate them, Dig Dug has two options. He can either hit them with his air pump and inflate them until they pop, or he can lure them under a boulder and dig all the earth out from underneath it, making it fall down onto them (though Dig Dug will need to be careful not to get squashed himself!). Dropping rocks is worth more points than using the pump, and you also get more points for inflating Fygar from the side than by popping him from above or below. This is specifically because attacking Fygar from the side is riskier as he can only fire his fire breath to the left and right.
Similar to Pac-Man, a bonus item will appear in the middle of the screen as the level progresses. In this case, you need to drop two boulders to make it spawn. As an added complication, Pooka and Fygar can both phase through dirt by transforming into ghosts, though this does slow them down. Lastly, when only one enemy remains on screen, it will try to flee to the surface and run offscreen. You'll want to chase it down to grab those last few points!
Dig Dug is simplistic but fun, though the difficulty spike a few minutes in is pretty serious as it adds multiple enemies per tunnel, making it nearly impossible to kill one with your pump without the other jumping you while you're busy with the first one. High-level play demands making good use of the boulders to kill multiple foes at once.
Kirby Air Riders
System: Nintendo Switch 2
Genre: Racing
Year of release: 2025
Kirby Air Ride finally gets a sequel! After 22 years, an excellent and unique Gamecube game gets the second installment it richly deserves, and if you liked the first one, you'll love this one. Kirby Air Riders takes everything that made the first game great and piles on a bunch more content, resulting in a racer that, IMO, has a much stronger single-player experience than Mario Kart World (which KAR will inevitably be compared to).
Air Riders isn't like most racing games - the traditional style of racing is flipped on its' head. Instead of holding down a button to drive, you accelerate automatically and use the button (either A or B, your choice) to brake instead. But that one button can do a lot of other things, too. Hold the button down to come to a stop and charge up a Boost, then release to rocket forward - this technique is perfect for making sharp corners. The race courses are full of enemies for the riders to attack - tap the button near one and you'll suck them up and either spit them out or copy their ability, if they have one. You usually use copy abilities with the action button as well, aside from a couple that are automatic like Mic and Steel Ball.
Kirby Air Riders also doesn't offer the usual Grand Prix style of single player action, either. Instead you select any course you want and dive right in, similar to a match of Smash Bros (and the menu's sounds, music, and style clearly mark this game as Sakurai's baby - it feels a lot like setting up a Smash match.) The main goal to pursue is the filling of the Checklist. This is a massive list of various tasks to achieve. You'll be asked to do all manner of things in the Checklist, like using a certain machine to accomplish a certain task, doing something X number of times, or performing some kind of feat like achieving a fast time on a course. There's a Checklist for each of Air Riders' four main modes, as well as a fifth Checklist for online play. Completing Checklist tasks earns you oodles of unlockables - new characters to play as, Air Ride vehicles to pilot, tracks to race on, knickknacks to use for your License (basically the Air Riders version of a Pokemon Trainer Card that your online opponents will see), and more.
About those four modes, then. Air Ride is the "normal" mode of play, with standard races across 18 different tracks. Top Ride is a top-down racer with altered gameplay, offering nine miniature courses to play with. In the third mode, City Trial, you're tasked with running around a large map for five minutes collecting upgrades and searching for the perfect vehicle for a special minigame that takes place after time runs out. This mode has had a feverishly devoted fanbase since the first game, which comes as no surprise considering how original and unique it is. The fourth mode, Road Trip, is the only one of the four that wasn't present in the Gamecube game. Road Trip is a single-player story mode in which you take on a variety of challenges based on the other three modes, fight bosses, gather more vehicles to choose from, and upgrade yourself by picking up powerups similar to City Trial. Road Trip also takes care of one little detail that the original Air Ride mostly lacked - it lends Air Riders that infamous dark underbelly the Kirby series is known for, where one of Nintendo's cutest and fluffiest franchises is simultaneously among its' darkest and most high-stakes, right up there with the likes of Metroid for deep lore. Not to say that Air Ride didn't have some deep lore in it, but it was VERY subtle. Like, for instance, foreshadowing a Kirby game that came out years later.
All four modes are great fun, though your mileage will vary with each. For instance, some may dislike City Trial's RNG elements or the centralizing mechanic of the Legendary Machines, insanely overpowered vehicles that spawn in the map in pieces. Should a player gather all three pieces, they are given a machine so strong that they're almost guaranteed to win the minigame. These aspects do make it a great party game though. Air Ride and Top Ride, meanwhile, feel more skill-based than Mario Kart. It's still possible to win by just happening to pop the right item at the right time, but while you can attack other racers, they're only slowed a bit instead of the massive crashes and spinouts seen in Mario Kart and most other kart racers.
Lego Jurassic World
System: Nintendo Switch
Genre: 3D Platformer
Year of release: 2019
I previously played the 3DS version of Lego Jurassic World way back in early 2018 - it was part of a plan of mine to revisit the franchise in anticipation of the then-upcoming film, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. As part of that initiative, my mom and I watched the four existing films in order - it had been many years since I'd seen JP1 or The Lost World, and it was my first time seeing JP3. You all know how this story ended - I fully embraced the franchise and became an enthusiastic Jurassic fan and toy collector after only having a moderate interest in the series prior to then. A year and a half after I played the 3DS game, the Switch got a port of it, and in December 2025 I decided to give it a try since it was on deep discount. I made the right call - this version of Lego Jurassic World is a serious step up from the 3DS' effort.
The 3DS game was decent, if not particularly impressive. It adapts the first four Jurassic films in a playful, kid-friendly way. There's much less death and of course no blood or cussing, and lots of goofy jokes have been added in. The plots are also truncated and rearranged to suit the needs of the gameplay flow, with every movie needing to tell its' story across five levels, no exceptions, though many levels will feature more than one group of characters across a few different scenes - for example, the first JP1 level adapts both the intro scene starring Muldoon ("SHOOOOOT HERRRR") and the dig site in Montana that introduces us to Grant and Sattler. This is fine. Lego Star Wars back in the mid-2000s was much the same, though we have at least advanced to the point that the characters talk (mostly using audio from the films, though there is some new dialogue especially from the JW cast and the original NPCs) instead of miming everything. But the Switch version brought a lot more to the table than I expected.
There is, of course, the co-op, the enhanced graphics, and the bigger screen to more easily see what's happening, which are all nice additions that I was expecting, but the 3DS version of LJW actually left out a huge chunk of the game. While the actual story levels based on the plots of the first four Jurassic films are basically unchanged from what I can recall about their 3DS versions, this version of LJW includes four impressively large 'open worlds' to explore (two based on Isla Nublar and two based on Isla Sorna, each one offering a version of the island tailored to a specific film) that are packed with unlockables, bonus games, and goodies. The 3DS offered only a small hub between levels similar to the old Lego Star Wars games, but on the more powerful hardware, you can roam about the entire island! When you finish a stage, you actually travel to the next one in the open world (you'll get a trail of translucent Lego studs to point the way), and you often get some extra navigation puzzles and other things to do on the way. Once you've played the story missions, you can turn on Free Play and wander as you like, using any character you please and summoning dinosaurs and vehicles from designated summon pads to help you out. Lots of iconic locations from the films appear here in the open world in loving detail - the waterfall where Dennis Nedry met the Dilophosaurus, the raptor cage, Jurassic World's main street with shops and games, the Gyrosphere open plain, the Mosasaurus arena, you name it, it's here. There's hours and hours of content here - puzzles, bonus stages, "drive through the rings" races, missions to save workers in danger (who you can then purchase to make playable) or heal sick dinosaurs, and more. I especially love this because it gives you a place to actually use the vast hoard of characters and other things you can unlock besides just going through the same old levels again in Free Play. The islands also feature an interactive map that lets you see where everything of interest is, though you have to go to the Map Points and activate them first to reveal the surrounding missions. Once you've done that, you can fast travel to an unlocked Map Point and you can mark stuff on your map and follow a trail of translucent Lego studs to reach it. Both of these additions are vital in making the quests in the open world feel doable.
Gameplay mostly consists of platforming and puzzle-solving, with occasional simplistic beat-em-up segments. There's less combat in this game compared to, say, Lego Star Wars, but that makes sense because most Jurassic protagonists focus on running away from danger or dealing with it in less straightforward ways than just "walk up to it and fight it". Lego JP1 has no regular combat at all save for a single blink-and-you-miss-it moment where a single Dilophosaurus attacks Grant and the kids when they're in the deep jungle after Rexy ruins their evening. The other movie adaptations have more combat, though, and in all four films you will occasionally encounter things like a chase scene or a quicktime event, and there are even a few boss battles against opponents like the JP1 raptor known as "The Big One", the mother Stegosaurus from The Lost World, and the Indominus Rex. Many collectibles and puzzles boil down to just "bring X character to this object and have them use their special ability to interact with it" that leads to the sort of "your special skill is just a key for a locked door in practice" thing that JRM has criticized in past Game Hoard reviews of various other games, but there are some sneakily hidden or hard-to-reach collectibles that you actually have to look for or use your head to grab. The simple and safe gameplay is oddly compelling and I always have a strong urge to collect Lego studs even when I'm not trying to get "True Survivor", the bonus challenge every story mission has where you try to collect a certain number of Lego studs. Achieving True Survivor on every level is one of a number of ways you can earn Gold Bricks, which are also collected by completing levels in Story Mode for the first time, finishing missions, and doing quests in the open world. In turn, Gold Bricks are used as progression gates for other stuff around the islands, which in turn will give you stuff you need to finish other missions, which reward you with more Gold Bricks. A classic collect-a-thon treadmill. You can also collect Red Bricks, which unlock various "extras" you can purchase and then toggle on and off. These range from cosmetic, jokey things like giving everyone Nedry's Hawaiian shirt to huge advantages like stud multipliers that make buying everything a trivial task, not to mention making it a breeze to get True Survivor without having to pore over every stage for every destructible item.
It wouldn't be a Traveler's Tales Lego game without the ability to unlock and play as almost everyone who's ever appeared in the franchise. From Amanda Kirby ("ERIC!!!") to Zara, almost everyone is here (with the odd omission of Lewis Dodgson, who only "appears" as a voice over the phone talking to Nedry), including a bunch of extra generic dudes invented just for this game to flesh out the park's staff. Who can forget such iconic Jurassic characters as Dig Site Volunteer, Soldier, or Raptor Handler Jenny? Each character has their own suite of abilities matching their canon talents, allowing them to do things other characters can't. For instance, Ellie Sattler can tend plants and is willing to dig through dinosaur poop for items, while Robert Muldoon has a dart gun to hit out-of-reach targets and can track dinosaur footprints to find hidden items. As a nice bonus for the Switch version, some extra characters (like the Lost World versions of Lex and Tim) are included from the start in Free Play mode to help you if you want to roam early before doing every movie, but you still need to play the story mode for all four films and unlock some characters before you have full run of the place (for instance, the only character in the entire game who can dispel Compy packs is in JP3, and you'll need to play through JP1 to find the Dilophosaurus to deal with obstacles that only its' poison can affect.) You can also make your own custom characters and even custom dinosaurs, though these features take a while to get going as you need to unlock skills and custom parts for human characters by unlocking normal characters with those skills and parts, and you unlock dinosaurs by collecting a hunk of amber hidden in every level in order to use their parts in the creator, and while a few dinosaurs are pretty easy to unlock (the Triceratops for instance is straight-up handed to you as a gift just by progressing the JP1 story), most are tricky and you'll have to go into Free Play with the right characters to track down some of the amber. You also can only use some dinosaurs in designated areas. Small ones like the Velociraptor and Pachycephalosaurus get a lot more freedom and can be taken into the levels, and on the opposite side of things there are of course not many opportunities to play with the gigantic and aquatic Mosasaurus or the free-flying Pteranodon, but they do have designated areas where you can take control of them for a little while and earn a few Gold Bricks.
With the addition of the open worlds, Lego Jurassic World went from a game I considered mediocre to a far better, longer, more satisfying, and surprisingly immersive adventure. Now if we could just get a sequel to cover all the content that's been added to the franchise since this game released...
The Complex: Expedition
System: PC (played via Steam)
Genre: Horror/Exploration
Year of release: 2025
A couple years back I played and reviewed The Complex: Found Footage, a first-person horror game in which you play as a poor anonymous sap who fell into The Backrooms and wanders around in search of an exit. The Complex: Expedition is the successor to the first game, from the same developer, but it's not so much a sequel as it is a reimagining.
Expedition demonstrates its' chops over Found Footage by sporting a better story. The player character is an actual character this time, a male Backrooms researcher who accomplishes the singularly unfortunate feat of somehow managing to fall into The Backrooms while already inside The Backrooms, ending up separated from his fellow researchers. There's a little opening chapter showing what happened leading up to his disappearance, including a brief segment where you get to drive a remote-control rover bot to scout ahead for you. The Complex advertises itself as "a new take on The Backrooms", with inspiration from the Kane Pixels series, though the similarities between the two are more than skin deep. There's also some inspiration here taken from another, similar Kane Pixels horror series, The Oldest View, which I actually liked even more than Kane's Backrooms series and heartily recommend if you like liminal horror, especially if you also have a fondness for shopping malls.
Expedition is kind of a remake of Found Footage. Once you get past the opening chapter and start playing for real, you'll soon realize how similar this game is to the original. Until it diverges later in the game, it features the same environments in the same order as Found Footage: starting in an office-like area similar to the classic yellow wallpaper Backrooms, you eventually come across an elevator that will take you to the white-tiled, watery Poolrooms, and then from there you go to a dingy, scary hotel. The environments have all been totally redone with entirely different maps, though some areas are definitely evocative of the first game. Also similar to the first game, the first level is the largest and will probably take you the longest because it is a genuine maze, with later levels being much more linear and varying in size from very brief to rather fleshed-out. You'll also occasionally get a comment from the main character, though the majority of his lines are at the beginning when he's talking with his coworkers, and once he realizes no one he wants to meet is in earshot, he smartly clams up.
Found Footage only had one true scare in it, at the very end. Expedition cranks up the dread, using sound design and some very creepy props to make you feel much more on edge. This still isn't a typical horror game filled with jumpscares and Game Overs, but it's definitely likely to keep you nervous and dreading every corner. I was especially spooked during the Hotel level, which plays on your fears expertly by making good use of narrow passages and dim lighting to turn a bunch of empty hallways into a nightmare.
Addressing my biggest gripe from the first game, this game has a dedicated section in the main menu to show you the controls. You can crouch, go prone, open doors, and toggle a flashlight. All four skills will be needed as you navigate The Backrooms. Also, some Steam reviews reported crashes or issues with the autosave working. I never got any, but if you want to be safe, every time you arrive in a new level you may want to bring up the pause menu and choose to return to the title screen, which will manually save your progress up to the last level you cleared. Speaking of, I think a level select unlocked upon clearing the game once would have been a good addition, especially since this game has two endings but the choice of which ending you get is determined right near the end of the last level when you have to pick between two paths from a fork in the hallway.
Ultimately, whether or not you like this game will depend on whether you have the patience (and courage) for this kind of slow-burn horror. When done right, the scariest thing about the Backrooms isn't running away from some grody monster - it's about the dread of being lost and alone in an empty world, one that resembles real life buildings but can't quite mimic them perfectly, one that makes you think 'have I been here before, long ago?'.
Octopath Traveler 0
System: PC (played via Steam)
Genre: RPG
Year of release: 2025
With very few exceptions (Block Puzzle and Cubistry come to mind), I ignore mobile games. I despise their usual pricing model of being "free" and yet constantly pushing you to spend money no matter how much you have already spent, and making themselves worse on purpose with artificial wait times or gacha mechanics to try and coerce money from you. For me, the only winning move is not to play. But on rare occasions I can be a little jealous at what comes out on mobile phones, and one such example is Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent. This game adapted the Octopath series to mobile with the expected freemium model, but as I am a big fan of the series, I was disappointed that there was an entry I wouldn't play. Dealing with freemium mechanics wasn't worth it, no matter how tempted I may have been for more Octopath gameplay. But, to my surprise and delight, Square Enix made the lovely decision of bringing COTC to console in the form of a remake that turns it into a proper full-release game instead of a live service with microtransactions. At last, I could play it!
If you have played COTC, Octopath Traveler 0 makes some pretty significant changes, but the main storyline of taking down seven villains, each wrecking havoc on the land with a powerful ring, remains the same. The playable cast is almost entirely new, though, and while some content has been cut, a lot of new stuff has been added. Ultimately it ends up being kind of an alternate-universe take on the events of COTC.
OT0 is comfortably familiar to anyone who's played the previous games - especially the first one, as OT0 is set in Orsterra, the same realm OT1 took place in, and serves as a prequel to that game with it taking place, at most, a couple years before the events of OT1 (and, yes, people who played OT1 will see some familiar faces!). The battle system is essentially identical to previous games (you even get 'Ultimate' moves that work similarly to OT2's Latent Powers, though they need to be unlocked via story progression) and the gameplay loop is similar as well, with a focus on a big open map to uncover and various story quests and sidequests to complete, with you having the freedom to be flexible in what you do next once you get past the prologue. However, unlike previous games that introduce eight characters of equal importance as your heroes, in this game the story starts out following just two characters and you end up assembling a squad of over thirty companions, of which up to eight can adventure together while the others wait in reserve and can be added into your team whenever you visit a tavern (you can later unlock the ability to swap party members anytime without having to visit a tavern, which is very useful). You still fight with only four people at a time like in the first two games, but the other four you bring with you are set as tag partners with your four leaders and each pair of two can swap in and out of a fight when it's their turn to act. The lead hero is a character you create, with the other starting character being your best friend Stia the architect. You're able to determine the protagonist's appearance, their skills, and their main job class. You also get to name them, and can choose from six different voices (three masculine, three feminine) for them. And, while cool, this gets exposed quickly as a double-edged sword.
Remember the issue the first Octopath had? The issue where your playable characters never interacted with each other or appeared together in cutscenes because the developers didn't want to deal with the massive number of possible party combinations they'd have to write out? We've got a similar problem here. Since your character can be named, the voice acting always omits their name even if the text on-screen includes it, and it often feels like your character is being awkwardly excluded as others talk to each other in front of them (some characters will refer to you as "Chosen One" or similar titles to get around this). Worse, your character is the dreaded Heroic Mime, a surefire way to earn an eyeroll from me as I prefer protagonists who speak their minds or at least emote (the lack of emotion or reactions from the player character is one of my biggest pet peeves of Pokemon). One of Octopath's greatest strengths has always been the playable characters' strong personalities, so making the central hero a practical mute with minimal personality and no opportunity for introspection or development is a shame. (If you're wondering - those six voices you choose from are for little clips played when your character uses Path Actions or engages in combat.) This also means the plot revolves around NPCs, who do all the talking while your hero stands nearby and occasionally offers unheard contributions like you're only hearing one half of a telephone conversation. The problem extends to most of your party: Since the game can't guarantee you've met optional party members like the knight Viator or the scholar Alexia, anyone you acquire via sidequest instead of playing through the plot is excluded from the story upon joining you. However, Octo 0 also plays the opposite tactic on occasion, to its' benefit: a few characters who join you in the main story, such as Stia, get to appear in some cutscenes even if you don't have them in your current active party. Party Chats, the little bandaid of talking heads that let the characters interact, are still present, but they've been downgraded - optional party members don't get any Party Chats commenting on the main adventure at all. Instead virtually all of the Party Chats are silly interludes where they interact with each other for the fun of it - the equivalent of the tavern chats from the previous games. Later, when I researched the differences between COTC and 0, I understood why it's like this: The Wishvale plotline and almost all the playable characters are new for 0, so integrating them all into the "god-powered rings" stories would have required extensive rewrites and changes, so ultimately 0 is let down a bit by its' roots and the requirement to tell COTC's story without changing too much.
The battle system, as mentioned, is basically the same as always aside from the new wrinkle of tag teams. You face off with foes in turn-based combat, with the two main gimmicks being the BP system and the Break system. I'll do a quick refresher for both. You get one point of BP per turn and can accumulate up to five. You can spend up to three BP per turn to make your attacks stronger, but you won't get your one free BP the turn after spending some. The Break system assigns a number value to every enemy. Hitting one of your foe's weaknesses drops this number by one. When it hits zero, they lose a turn and their defenses drop, allowing you to unload on them. I still love this system, it's a great way to make turn-based fighting engaging. In tough fights, you'll focus on guarding, healing, and preparing, whittling away at the foe's weaknesses until you're ready to Break them and go all-in for huge damage by spending tons of BP. It can be very satisfying, helped by the great sound design that's been using the same excellent "critical hit" and "enemy broken" sounds for all three games, because they're perfect. And, of course, the soundtrack is a banger as usual - though you'll be hearing some recycled tunes from the first two games in addition to some new tracks. I didn't mind much as the previous soundtracks are excellent, and there's still a host of very good new music to enjoy.
In the previous two Octopath games, eight adventurers of equal importance each get their own story to follow. Here, things are different. After completing the prologue, you're given four stories to tackle. Three are devoted to pursuing the three villains who destroyed Wishvale, the home town where your created character and Stia grew up, and play into the game's themes of Wealth, Power, and Fame - the three villains are the wealthiest (a loathsome billionaire who torments her slaves), most powerful (a former hero who abuses his station to kill anyone he dislikes), and most famous (a playwright who moonlights as a twisted serial killer and murders people to get inspiration for his stories) in the land, respectively. The fourth story is about rebuilding Wishvale. Your protagonist joins Stia in an adventure to bring Wishvale back to glory and take down the three villains to protect the world from their cruelty - and get revenge. As with the previous games, you can take on these four stories in whatever order you like, but realistically you're going to want to shuffle them around and go for whatever is lowest-level instead of pursuing one story at a time. Once you've dealt with the three villains, you get a fake-out 'finale' and then it becomes clear that you've only finished the first of several lengthy plot arcs (as if the largely-uncovered map and your party likely only being around level 20 wasn't enough of a clue). Path Actions are also still a thing, letting you talk to villagers, buy items from them, and recruit them as temporary summons, but this time, any character can use any Path Action (whoever you have in the lead will take charge), and NPCs are categorized with the Wealth/Power/Fame triad. The category of NPC represents what Path Actions work on them. For example, Wealth-based NPCs can have their items purchased, or you can spend money to hire them. A Power-based NPC will instead want you to fight them for their items or their aid, and Fame-based NPCs lean on a percentage chance of success that rises based on your own Fame (which will level up as you complete story missions and sidequests, as do your Wealth and Power). The "reputation" system that will make you spend money at the tavern to restore your rep if you fail too many Path Actions is back again. As usual, it mostly just encourages save-scumming, especially since there's always a save point right there in town you can use before trying to get stuff from the townsfolk (there's also a handy autosave that kicks in every time you walk from one screen to another - heads up, it won't trigger if you fast travel!). It's a little annoying, but I understand why they felt there needed to be some kind of risk instead of just letting you get everything from the NPCs for free. All NPCs that you can use Path Actions on can be Inquired to get the scoop on them, and the ability to knock people out to make them get out of your way has been removed. You can even invite some of them to come to Wishvale, and many characters offer rewards if they live in your town, such as occasionally giving you free items or boosting you with a passive ability like giving you a discount at Wishvale's store (once you finally get the chance to build one, which takes a surprisingly long time). You get to rebuild and customize Wishvale yourself, which is a very fun addition, and although the customization is very limited at first you will eventually unlock a lot of freedom to play around with what Wishvale looks like - though you don't fully and completely open the place up until the postgame.
While I do enjoy this game and happily recommend it, especially if you've played and enjoyed either of the previous two games (especially Octopath 1 since they're connected), a word of warning: This game features a lot of darkness and unpleasantness. Every Octopath game has plenty of dark and grim moments with innocent and/or likable characters meeting terrible fates or suffering in adversity before you can teach the villains a lesson, but it feels to me like 0 goes harder on this than 1 and 2 did, with fewer moments of levity and lightheartedness and more instances of good people suffering terribly because of evil people, as well as some instances where I think other games in the series would have gone in less cruel or more optimistic directions if given a similar plotline. This game isn't grimdark, and in fact it expounds at length about the power of positivity, but it's also quite rough on its' cast so be prepared for that. Often I'd advance the main story with a sense of dread hanging over me as I expected the worst time and again. I was sometimes right, but not always. This dark tone is due to the original COTC being very dark - in fact, most of this game's lighter content such as the Wishvale plot and the sidequests are new to 0 and were not in COTC, so 0 had to put in a lot of work to make this story less brutal, but since they didn't significantly change most of COTC's main story beats, it's still notably darker and sadder than the previous two games, which were themselves not exactly rainbows and sunshine either. The Octopath Traveler Wiki bears this out, with citations of developer interviews that confirm that the dev team was receptive to the head writer offering them darker and sadder stories than was the average for the series. I think it's at its' worst in the first half and for a period during the final arc, but the second half is overall less oppressively dark, and the very end and the grand finale are a great, incredibly triumphant cap on things that help soothe all the pain that's come before.
Also, much like this review, Octopath Traveler 0 is extraordinarily long. Every game in this series is massive, but 0 is the biggest entry yet, and it takes many, many hours of gameplay to see this journey through, to the point I believe this is the longest game I have ever finished. It's up to you on whether this is a positive or a negative. You'll certainly get bang for your buck with this game, especially if you do all the sidequests and other optional content, but it requires a lengthy commitment to complete!
Mega Retron HD
System: Sega Genesis
Genre: Hardware
Year of release: 2018
Here's an unusual situation where I think it makes sense to review a whole entire game console! The Mega Retron HD is a Sega Genesis clone console made by Hyperkin, a company known for catering to retro gamers with hardware that mimics the game consoles of the past. For a long time I've thought clone consoles were neat but not something I needed. The Mega Retron HD, however, does something extremely valuable: it lets you play Sega Genesis games on a modern television with no extra adapters or accessories. Combined with the fact that it's fresh new hardware rater than 35-year-old tech, and you have yourself an elegant and inexpensive (I paid about $60 for it) solution to your Genesis gaming needs.
The Mega Retron works out of the box and is very simple and straightforward. Plug it in, turn it on, play games. It lacks some of the creature comforts of modern gaming systems - it won't automatically turn your TV on if you power it on, the TV won't shut it off if you turn the TV off, there's no sleep mode or additional features or menus. But that simplicity should probably be celebrated in a time when so many game systems make things too complicated for their own good with user accounts, a flurry of apps to use, and constant updates that interrupt you when you just want to play. Playing the Mega Retron is like how playing a Genesis used to be. If you have a collection of old Genesis games that still work, or you have a flash cart, this is a wonderful way to experience them on a budget. Some clones are supposedly better than this, but they cost so much they're out of reach of people who could afford the Mega Retron HD. I experienced no noticeable input lag in any game I tried, and when my old carts managed to fire up, they ran perfectly. The included controller - a six-button with a ten-foot-long cable referred to as the "Squire" - works well, too. The extra four feet of controller length is deeply appreciated. Old Genesis controllers will work on the Retron, but they're only six feet in length. There was a reason I played Genesis games back in the day sitting on the floor in front of the television rather than sitting on the couch...
If you have a flash cart available to you or can afford to include one in your purchase when getting the Mega Retron, I recommend taking that route. Some owners of the Mega Retron have mentioned the tightness of the cartridge slot, likening it to a "death grip", and to avoid wear and tear the ideal solution to this issue is to simply insert a flash cart that never has to be taken out again.
Chuck Rock
System: Sega Genesis
Genre: 2D Platformer
Year of release: 1991
This caveman platformer was one of the first games I rented from the local video store as a kid thanks to both the prehistoric theming and the fact that its' sequel was one of my first Genesis games (see the next entry for more on that). When I got the Mega Retron HD up and running, the second game was the one I did a playthrough of, but later I gave the original another spin as well so it could be reviewed too, and I stuck its' review first so that we look at the two games in order.
Chuck Rock is a simple 2D platformer with very light puzzle elements. As the eponymous caveman, Chuck Rock, you go on a basic adventure across several biomes to win back your kidnapped wife, Ophelia, from the fearsome clutches of a no-good caveman named "Gary Gritter". Funnily enough, you never really see Gary in the Genesis version of the game. While he does appear in the Sega CD version during an introductory cutscene not included on the Genesis, the final boss is instead a T-rex who appeared to take costume inspiration from Punch-Out's King Hippo, and the ending shot shows the defeated dinosaur collapsed on top of Gary in your only glimpse at the guy on Genesis. One little dash of fun to the proceedings, though, is that Chuck is the lead guitarist in a rock band (Ophelia is also a member) and the band plays the title theme music when you first start up a rousing game of Chuck Rock. This rocking tune is one of the most notable things about Chuck Rock, if I'm being completely honest.
The "light puzzle elements" I mentioned come from the fact that rocks Chuck can carry around and throw are scattered all over the levels. You can use these to make platforms to help you progress or grab bonus items. You need to be careful, though - if you jump and throw a rock at the same time, it's possible to toss it onto a ledge you can't reach without the aid of the very same rock you just threw up there, leaving you unable to progress. There are several spots in the game where you can potentially get softlocked by stranding yourself in a pit you can't jump out of because you threw the rocks out of it. If there's no enemies left in there with you to kill you (and you're not playing on an emulator with rewind or an earlier savestate), you'll have to reset the entire game. As long as you're aware of the danger, though, you'll probably be fine. I definitely got softlocked this way at least once as a kid though. I even remember the specific pit that trapped me and regard it with reverence whenever I pass through in a playthrough.
Chuck Rock is a pretty quick experience, over in less than an hour and sporting five different environments - a generic prehistoric mountain/swamp area, a cave, a lake, an Ice Age, and a dinosaur graveyard. Each level is divided into multiple sections, with some sections getting unique appearances - for instance, the cave is three sections in length and the second section has a warmer color palette and a volcanic theme with lava while the other two sections use a cooler palette and lack lava. The bosses are very simplistic. Boss 1 and 4 have easy-to-avoid patterns, Boss 2 can be stunlocked and taken out in seconds, Boss 5 is a complete joke as long as you understand how the fight works, and Boss 3 is the trickiest of the bunch with a pattern that requires very quick and precise dodging and weaving to land a hit. The levels are harder than the bosses, mostly because of the incredibly short range of Chuck's attacks. He can do a belly bump from a standing position or a kick if you attack while in the air, and you'll often be well served by standing in place and hammering the attack button to thrust your fat caveman gut at enemies as they dumbly walk into you. Most enemies just walk back and forth but a few tricky ones have projectiles, fly, or move very quickly, so memorization of enemy placement helps a lot. You can also throw rocks at enemies to take them out, which comes in handy in some situations where they aren't easily struck by your regular moves. Also, take care in levels 3 and 4, the only ones with water - Chuck can drown if he stays under too long!
I love this game, but I admit it's probably mostly because I first played it when I was like six years old. It's a pretty straightforward platformer and I can't imagine it becoming a beloved favorite of anyone who plays it for the first time as an adult rather than it being a formative childhood experience.
Speaking of formative childhood experiences, I can't move on without paying tribute to that dinosaur graveyard, which was one of my first childhood experiences with death in any form. It's a surprisingly morbid and sad final level, partly because of the oddly depressing music but particularly because many of the dinosaurs in the graveyard are not actually dead yet but are clearly only barely clinging to life, with the second half of the level even taking you inside a dying dinosaur to do battle with parasites inside it. Between this level and the "Worthless" sequence in The Brave Little Toaster, little kid me had some very interesting thoughts about mortality.
Chuck Rock
System: Master System
Genre: 2D Platformer
Year of release: 1991
This is just a lower-quality version of the Genesis Chuck Rock. The graphics are surprisingly good, but the backgrounds are entirely absent, replaced by a black void, and many other nice touches from the Genesis are missing here, presumably due to technical limitations. There's also no music while playing, though you do at least still get the great title theme on startup. The levels seem mostly intact in terms of content and play largely the same. Also, the version I played had some emulation issues and was miscolored, making it look far worse than the Genesis version even though checking out a gameplay video on Youtube shows that the colors are actually pretty accurate when emulated correctly.
Chuck Rock II: Son Of Chuck
System: Sega Genesis
Genre: 2D Platformer
Year of release: 1993
Chuck Rock II: Son Of Chuck was one of my family's first acquisitions for the system, selected by almost-four-year-old me purely on the basis of having a dinosaur on the cover (naturally, the dinosaur in question never appears in-game). Thanks to this being one of the first platformers I ever played, my nostalgic feelings and affection for it are high. But is it worth my love, over thirty years later?
Chuck Rock II, like its' predecessor, goes for a simple "rescue the kidnapped character" plot to inspire the adventure. This time, though, Chuck Rock himself has been kidnapped by "Brick Jagger", who is jealous of Chuck's skill in his new career of building cars and kidnaps him to make him work at Jagger's factory. But rather than Ophelia going out to rescue him, the task falls to their infant son, Junior. Literally an infant. He is still in diapers, has one tooth and one hair, and he picks up milk bottles to restore his health. Ouch for Ophelia - inferior at rescuing compared to her own baby.
The gameplay is pretty similar to the first game, though as a kid I always thought they felt quite different from one another. You amble through a cartoony prehistoric world, bashing lots of different kinds of baddies as you move towards the goal in linear levels. Occasionally you might have an opportunity to grab some bonus points by accessing hidden routes and nooks, but there's usually just one main path forward. And while the platforming and enemy-bopping takes center stage, you occasionally have to do a minor bit of puzzle solving involving rocks to make a safe path forward. Junior can't kick, belly-bump, or pick up rocks like his dad at this young age, but he does have a club and he knows how to use it, swinging it at rocks to make them move and at enemies to make them perish. He can also perform a club-stand, laying the club upright and balancing on it, letting danger pass by below in situations where you can't jump over it. This odd maneuver is used in one level halfway through the game to avoid one specific enemy type, but you can also perform the club-stand next to certain friendly animals to ride them for a little while.
Chuck Rock II has the first game's silly sense of humor. The enemies are mostly goofy, and one in particular that likely wouldn't pass muster in today's world is a caveman wearing a big winter jacket who pops up in the snowy mountain stages and has an animation where he exposes himself like a flasher. Obviously nothing untoward is shown, and I didn't understand what this guy was doing when I was a kid, but seeing it now amazes me that they got away with it.
Much like the first game, I imagine people who play Chuck Rock II nowadays with no nostalgia bias will probably see it as just another 16-bit platformer with nothing special about it. There are some tricky parts and cheap shots along the way but, like the first, it's not a super-difficult game and most of the difficulty is neutered if you learn the levels and the boss attack patterns. Once I learned the ropes as a kid, I cleared this game many times. But I do enjoy this game's quirky personality, and growing up with it and playing through it again and again helped to immerse me in its' world and appreciate its' unique charms.
Davis Cup Tennis
System: Sega Genesis
Genre: Sports
Year of release: 1993
Davis Cup Tennis, a straightforward tennis sim, was always an oddity in my Sega Genesis library. It was one of the first two games I owned for the system, purchased by my father to add to the package which already contained the console itself and Sonic 2 as a pack-in. Perhaps he was trying to get his almost-preschool-age son interested in sports. Maybe he just wanted to play it himself. The exact reasons are lost to time, but regardless, there was Davis Cup Tennis, standing out like a sore thumb as my collection grew over the years to include all manner of platformers, a few games from other genres here and there, and exactly zero additional sports games.
When you start Davis Cup Tennis, you're presented with a whole bunch of options for play. There's the expected tournaments against the computer, singles and doubles, multiplayer options, and training modes. You can choose to play as a wide variety of different tennis players who were presumably all famous in the early 90s but that I myself don't know. If they have different stats, nothing in the game or manual indicates as such, and they all look identical on the court anyway. As a kid, the one mode I actually got some enjoyment out of was one of the training modes, where you face off with a ball-throwing machine that launches tennis balls that you must run to and hit. On the easiest setting, this mode features flashing targets on the ground that indicate where to run to be in range to hit the ball.
Firing up Davis Cup Tennis for the first time in many years reminded me of an important truth: I am the world's worst Davis Cup Tennis player. Even on the easiest difficulty, which moves your character for you so all you have to do is time your swings, I still couldn't win a single volley, my opponent coasting to victory almost effortlessly and never failing to hit the ball even when I managed to get a decent back-and-forth going. Davis Cup Tennis will always be a funny little footnote in my history of playing video games, but never anything more.
Fun fact: This game was also released for the SNES in nearly identical form, but that version was called International Tennis Tour instead.
Dinosaurs For Hire
System: Sega Genesis
Genre: Run And Gun
Year of release: 1993
Dinosaurs For Hire is a run-and-gun game based on the comic book series of the same name, which stars three anthropomorphic dinosaurs who fight crime with guns. It's a very early 90s sort of concept, part of the massive flood of goofy anthro crime fighters that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made into an explosively popular genre. You can select from Archie the T Rex, Lorenzo the Triceratops, and Reese the Stegosaurus, and each has a lengthy, detailed bio on the character select screen that's packed full of the sort of cheeky, goofy humor in a writing style that you just don't see anyone doing any more but that was everywhere in the 90s.
Unfortunately, while Dinosaurs For Hire makes a strong first impression and has style, the gameplay ended up pushing me away before long. Your big bulky dinosaur feels a bit clunky, and your sprite is so large that enemies can get in close to avoid your gun. Thankfully you do have a melee attack to get around this, but controlling my hired dinosaur was kind of rough and I had trouble just getting around the levels. You're given a very generous health bar, but when it eventually empties, you're greeted with one of the worst tropes in shooter games: all those powerups you were accumulating to make your gun stronger are taken away and you're told to clear an area with a peashooter when you had just failed to clear it with a bazooka. DFH isn't the worst game ever but I lost my patience with it after that and decided to move on.
Kitten Island
System: Nintendo Switch
Genre: 2D Platformer
Year of release: 2023
Kitten Island is the kind of video game you'd see a child playing in a sitcom 25+ years ago to briefly show that they are a gamer before the plot moves on to something else. Currently available in the Switch's eShop for a single penny and sporting some obvious AI art on its' store page, Kitten Island looks fake, like it will somehow infect your Switch with malware or use it to mine for bitcoin, but the actual video game isn't really bad - just incredibly simplistic and ultimately empty.
Kitten Island sees you take control of a cat (or presumably a kitten) though 15 levels across three worlds - a generic grassland, a generic desert, and a generic snowy mountain. All of the different obstacles in your path are the tried-and-true basic tools in any platformer's kit: spikes, moving platforms, disappearing platforms, and lines of spiked balls swinging around a central core. All of these things get introduced in the first few levels and then nothing new happens for the rest of the adventure. The enemy roster is tiny and consists of a pack of creepy crawlies who wandered out of Walmart's Halloween section - snakes, spiders, scorpions, and bats. The former three move back and forth, the bat flies back and forth while undulating, and all of them take two jumps to defeat except snakes which only take one. They do at least get recolored for each world.
There are collectibles scattered around the levels. The health system is a bizarre fusion of health and lives. If you pick up a heart, which are generously scattered throughout the levels, you'll get an "extra life", but if you get hit, you lose a life but it plays out mechanically how one would take damage in most games, with mercy invincibility and no gameplay interruption. Each level features five crystals to find, purple gems shaped like cat heads that can be hidden surprisingly well, often behind fake walls. However, collecting them does nothing. You can also find coins, which give you 100 points. Defeating enemies also gives you 100 points (except snakes, which give you 50 points). Points also do nothing.
Kitten Island is very easy for any platformer veteran to play. The trickiest part is that you will find a few gaps you can only cross with a running jump, and you can't run from a standstill so you need space to build up speed. Master the run and you're pretty much set. Many stages offer alternate routes and you're free to take the route of least resistance if you like. You can also find special doors in some levels. Entering these doors takes you to optional side routes that crank up to difficulty - still nothing crazy, but you might sweat a bit. There's no reward for completing these tricky side areas, which place you back in the level a short distance from where you originally entered once you complete them. It almost feels like Kitten Island wants to show that playing a video game can be its' own reward, with all these meaningless pickups and sideshows. It's not a bad lesson, but there's a reason video games shower players with rewards for putting more effort into playing them - it releases the endorphins and makes you feel good to get something for the work you put in, even if it's meaningless like finding all the collectible whatevers in a level.
Kitten Island has no bosses and no story. Why is this cat going on this adventure? Who knows - the store description simply says the kitten is on a "daring journey". The goal is a yarn ball you touch to finish the level, so I guess it wants to play with a bunch of yarn? After you beat Level 15, you're just brought back to the map to choose a level. No "congratulations", no credits, you're just out of levels and so that's it.
This game feels half-finished. It's inoffensive, it's kinda cute, the music's not bad, but there's very little of substance here. But hey - it's only one cent! So if you'd trade a penny for forty minutes of extremely straightforward platforming that lets you play as a cat who meows every single time it jumps, knock yourself out.
Mining Mechs: Camel Chaos
System: PC (played via Steam)
Genre: Casual Exploration
Year of release: 2025
Even though Mining Mechs has been succeeded by Super Mining Mechs, new DLC still launched for it last year alongside new DLC for Super Mining Mechs. It's nice to see the dev show some love for players of the original game even now.
I played Mining Mechs' base game and its' first DLC expansion last year, and the new DLC is pretty much just more of the same. If you enjoyed it before, here's more of it for under 2 bucks. This time the adventure takes place in a desert, and believe me, going mining in a desert environment did not fail to trip my #ruined meter. To recap briefly, Mining Mechs is a casual game where you are at no risk of failure and can enjoy danger-free mining with simple gameplay sort of like an idle game you have to actually participate in (but there is an idle component!). Dig into the ground, find precious minerals, dig them up, return to the surface to sell them. Along the way you'll advance a small, silly plot as you discover camels living underground and seek to find out why they're here. The gameplay isn't completely mindless because undiggable rocks and your inability to dig upward or while in flight require some light planning ahead and puzzle-solving as you seek the most efficient way to grab treasure, but you can get around both of those problems by buying explosives from the shop on the surface, which can blast through the stones you can't dig past and can allow you to get a handhold if you need one.
The DLC isn't quite as engaging as the main game due to a lack of goals. The main game features achievements that inspired me to focus harder on digging up new stuff (albeit this is because they were simple things like "dig up 50 of X mineral"). In the DLC, though, you eventually reach the point where you're mostly focused on just digging downward far enough to trigger the next story beat. You do still need money to upgrade your mech, though, so there will be a constant need for additional cash that will motivate you to go for high-value minerals when you see them. There's a fun little diversion at the end of the adventure that wraps things up nicely, and then things end with nothing left to do besides grinding money to max out your mech (which isn't necessary since there's nothing left to accomplish with it). I enjoyed all three quests of Mining Mechs, but I'm hoping Super Mining Mechs features some sort of additional motivation to hunt for goodies besides massive money gates.
Super Mining Mechs
System: PC (played via Steam)
Genre: Casual Exploration
Year of release: 2024
After returning to Mining Mechs to play the Camel Chaos DLC, I decided to finally take the plunge into Super Mining Mechs, the sequel. I expected largely more of the same, and the basic gameplay is still very similar at a glance, but some significant changes have been made to shake things up and I think they work pretty well.
We have a more significant story here, though it's still pretty casual and lighthearted despite dealing with a major environmental crisis. Earth's "natural resources" have run dry (despite the fact that the bit of Earth we get to see is beautiful and filled with greenery, so it's just minerals you can mine that are depleted) and so you and your mining crew team up to travel to other planets and mine resources there to send back to Earth. Notably, while the first game's cast was entirely male, SMM remembered girls exist and several important NPCs are female. You yourself can also play as a lady if you like, thanks to a simple character creator that lets you customize your miner a bit with gender, hair, and skin color options. You can also unlock a variety of goofy hats to wear.
To my surprise, Super Mining Mechs has voice acting! I definitely wasn't expecting it. The VAs do a solid job, no complaints. The sounds are new but still solidly satisfying as they should be, and the music is a bit better this time - it's still a loop of a few different random tracks, but it does change based on which planet you're currently on.
Super Mining Mechs puts in work towards making gameplay feel more interesting. One big change that I think adds a lot is that you now have missions to unlock new parts for your mech, and to complete these missions you must gather specific resources and turn them in to your boss instead of the guy who pays you for selling him treasure and ore. This encourages you to hunt for minerals instead of just focusing on digging as deep as you can, as fast as you can, and de-emphasizes the grind for money (prices for upgrades are lower because you need to use a lot of the stuff you dig up for missions instead of selling it). You also have to use resources to build mines and power plants, which are the main goals of the adventure. In addition to advancing the story, building a mine will have it automatically gather resources for you, but this isn't like the idle money accumulation of the first game - you can only auto-mine a small amount before it has to be collected by visiting your boss and getting the resources from her, so you can't leave SMM open idle for hours and get a constant flow of goodies.
My least favorite change is the power plants. You need to build power plants to make the auto-mines operate, as well as other devices that are required to advance the plot. For instance, the second planet you visit is an icy world where underground storms pop up that can freeze your mech solid and leave it unable to dig. To counteract this, you have to build heating fans and connect them to a power plant. The problem lies in that power plants require being built on top of special energy crystals, and these crystals are hidden randomly around the underground, sometimes a considerable distance from where they are needed. They have large glowing roots to help you find them, but these roots are hidden until you dig up the dirt covering them. if you missed them on your way down and find yourself needing a power source, your only recourse is to randomly dig around the map and hope you find them. You can place poles for the power cable to bridge the gap between the crystal and whatever you need it to power, but as early as the second planet I found a massive gap between the crystal and the mine that required me to traverse half the map and lay down dozens of poles after spending way too long trying to find a power source that was closer. It's annoying and gets in the way.
Super Mining Mechs has some interesting ideas but it might be a little too long for its' own good, with three planets to explore, each with multiple maps. It might be best played over a long period of time, doing a map or two until you've had your fill of this kind of gameplay and coming back later when you want another fix.
Socket
System: Sega Genesis
Genre: 2D Platformer
Year of release: 1993
"It is the year 2902. It has not been a very good year and things appear to be getting worse."
Another childhood GB blorbo game, replaying Socket once I got the Mega Retron HD was an inevitability. And this is a game where I've long felt I'm the only one on Earth flying a flag for it. You won't see Socket getting discussed online, and on the off-chance that you do happen to find a mention of it, it will almost inevitably be derogatory, claiming it's a straight ripoff of Sonic the Hedgehog and hasn't got a single original bone in its' body. I know I have nostalgia bias, but I truly do believe that Socket is more unique and interesting than people give it credit for.
In Socket, you play as the titular hero, a robotic duck with a plug-tipped-cable for a tail who goes on a time-traveling adventure to defeat Time Dominator, a gargoyle-like tycoon who created a time machine to steal treasures from the past. His plundering has accidentally created a time warp that threatens to destabilize time itself. A group called the Time Warp Patrol is formed to study and deal with the warp, and it's determined that the number one priority is to take down Time Dominator. Naturally, the best way to do this is to send a single hero to defeat him. Socket travels throughout several time periods, including modern times, medieval times, ancient times, and prehistoric times before finally returning to the future to infiltrate Time Dominator's castle and take him down once and for all. (And it is "for all", despite the Japanese name of this game being "Time Dominator First". I'm still waiting for Time Dominator Second.)
Of course, I'm not going to sit here and claim that Socket wasn't inspired by Sonic. It came out two years after Sonic's first game, the main character is a blue cartoon animal with a Totally Radical attitude and a name that starts with S, and you run through levels with momentum-based platforming while defeating the robotic creations of an evil scientist who you face off with in a boss fight at the end of every level. Yes, the Sonic inspiration is blatantly clear. But a few distinct changes make Socket play quite differently from Sonic.
The big one is Socket's health system. Unlike Sonic, who is safe from standard enemy damage as long as he has rings, Socket has a health bar that is constantly slowly draining, and getting damaged empties it faster. Since Socket is a robot, he needs a steady supply of energy to maintain himself. Fortunately, lightning bolt pickups are strewn all over the levels, much like Sonic's rings, and Socket can grab these to restore his energy. If you start running low, an annoying warning siren will begin playing, and it will speed up as your energy continues to empty. On the plus side, though, Socket cannot drown and isn't instantly killed by getting crushed, instead just taking damage normally. The only way to OHKO Socket is for him to fall into a pit. In a cute touch, Socket begins every level by plugging his tail into a recharging station, and the goal is a second recharging station.
Another big difference is combat. Socket can't curl up and hurl himself around with impunity like Sonic. Instead he performs a kicking attack that shoots out energy from his foot to increase its' range. It's still a pretty close-range maneuver but he gets better reach than Chuck Rock, at least. He can even kick upward, which really comes in handy against most of the bosses.
Socket's levels are divided into three "areas". The first area of each level is the High Speed Area, which is a course focused on going fast. These are generally easy, light stages without much danger aside from a handful of enemies scattered around. They also all take place in a futuristic city instead of matching the theme of the other two areas of the level, with the sole exception being the third level for some reason, where the High Speed Area actually does match the rest of the level. The second area is called the Athletic Area, and this is a typical platforming stage that introduces the level's main gimmicks to you. Finally, there's the Labyrinth Area. These tend to be more mazelike and require exploration as you try to find a door that will take you to the boss. One-way doors and tricky navigation are common here and these levels are the ones most likely to take your lives. It's fairly easy to earn extra lives and continues, though, so you'll get lots of chances to succeed in Socket.
One interesting thing about Socket are the side challenges. These are additional mini-levels you can find in the Athletic and Labyrinth Areas, accessed via doors much like the boss fights. There are four different kinds of mini-levels: a race where you rush back and forth up a winding path to reach the top of a tower while it sinks into lava, a series of careful platform hops above a bottomless pit, a psychedelic world where you move between the foreground and background by jumping through holes, and a game of chance where you select one of eight paths and follow a moving platform to the top of the level in hopes of reaching the exit and not jumping into a trap. Clearing these mini-levels will warp you to another location in the main level, with this sometimes being a helpful shortcut. I had thought that these mini-levels were required to advance through the game in some places, but as of my most recent playthrough, I'm not so sure, as I skipped some I usually do on this playthrough and in fact only played a few of them, at least one of which was definitely optional (you got an extra life for playing it and it just spawns you back outside the one-way door to the room it's in). I also found a couple of routes I definitely didn't remember from my previous playthroughs, indicating that Socket shares the level design philosophy of classic Sonic by offering multiple paths through levels.
Another interesting bit is that Socket includes a Time Trial mode. This allows you to play any of the seven High Speed Areas. The levels are modified slightly, removing enemies and items and timing you on your speed in conquering them. It's a cute idea, but since this game doesn't have a save function, all your best times are wiped when you turn it off, making it kind of useless. It was a little ahead of its' time - Sonic began tracking your best time as well, once the games were capable of saving your data, but it didn't bother in games that couldn't keep the records.
My favorite thing about Socket is its' style. Something about the graphics and music feels so unique to me, and despite the obvious Sonic copying going on, the environments and the mood this game sets feels so unique and special. I'm certain at least some of that is just nostalgia talking, but I really do think the aesthetic here is underrated and goes a long way to help Socket feel like its' own thing instead of just a clone of the world's most famous hedgehog.
Fun fact: I discovered something new about Socket in my latest playthrough. I defeated the boss of Level 6 with the tiniest possible sliver of health remaining, and the "Energy" bonus, which normally gives you more points the more energy you have left upon level's end, was absolutely enormous! Turns out Socket rewards you handsomely if you're able to clear a level when you're at death's door. Neat... and potentially exploitable if you wait at the goal in a non-boss level and let your health drain to nearly nothing before finally activating it.
Pokemon Peridot
System: Game Boy Color
Genre: RPG
Year of release: 2020
Pokemon Peridot is a new Pokemon game built on top of Pokemon Crystal. Impressive work has been done to add all sorts of features and changes that weren't present in Crystal, including Pokemon stat tweaks, quality-of-life features, a difficulty select, the Fairy type, running shoes, and much more. Some of the cut Pokemon species we became familiar with through various Game Freak leaks are here, too (you can get a Rinrin within the first hour!), and there's an all-new world to explore that has a lot of open-ness to it in terms of where to go next and what to do, though it's not quite a full open-world game.
You can expect a largely standard Pokemon experience here - a friendly professor to get you on your way, a Pokedex to record Pokemon species, a quest for badges, some bad guys to take down, and so on - but Peridot does sport one very notable difference from mainline games: It ain't messing around. Pokemon Peridot is not one of those masochistic hyper-difficult "kaizo" kind of romhacks, but it's significantly, blatantly higher in difficulty from a normal Pokemon game, with a steep level curve and punishing gyms that lock you inside until you either white out or defeat the leader - and whiting out resets all the trainers you beat, so you have to start again. Even on the lowest difficulty, you are blocked from using healing items during fights against gym leaders (and on the highest difficulty, you can't use items against any trainer). It's rough, but it also feels like this game is balanced around the fact that it's going to be played in an emulator instead of real hardware in 99% of cases, where you have certain advantages like savestates and fast-forwarding that make it much easier for you to level up your squad and tilt things in your favor should you wish it. Grinding your team by walloping wild Pokemon while holding down the fast-forward key doesn't take hours - it takes minutes. And since I had to do some grinding just to be able to deal with the very first gym, leaning on emulation tools feels like a necessary step to make Peridot playable instead of a cruel, awful slog.
Peridot isn't awful - you'd really have to try to make a bad game with the bones of something as rock-solid as Pokemon Crystal - but this one's for hardcore Pokemon fans only, the people who crave new content in the franchise but prefer the older games and have nothing else to play. If you aren't that desperate but still love old-school Pokemon, try Pokemon Gold 97 Reforged instead for a less hardcore but still new and fresh experience.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion
System: Nintendo Switch
Genre: Beat-em-up
Year of release: 2025
I've never really had all that much interest in the world of superhero comics. Every now and then they'd come across my radar for one reason or another, especially once the MCU got going and superpowered people punching each other to decide the fate of the planet became THE pop culture thing. For whatever reason, it never grabbed me. There were a bunch of little things I could cite that probably just sound like excuses, but the bottom line is that I just never felt interested enough to get immersed in that world. But... another beat-em-up from the Shredder's Revenge devs? Sure, I'll bite!
Much like Shredder's Revenge, this is a retro-styled sprite-based beat-em-up that looks, sounds, and feels like a product of the 90s, but with modern sensibilities. A hearty roster of fifteen different Marvel characters team up to take down Annihilus, an insectoid tyrant who seeks to assimilate the entire universe with his alien bugs. One thing I like about this game is that the cast of characters, both playable and otherwise, pulls from obscure corners of the Marvel universe instead of just using the most popular guys that everyone knows. Like, yeah, Spider-Man is here, Captain America, Iron Man, Wolverine... there's some characters that are pretty well-known but are surprising pulls considering who ISN'T here (Rocket Raccoon but no Star Lord, She-Hulk but no Hulk), and then you start seeing some deeper cuts like Phyla-Vell and Beta Ray Bill. The antagonists are all over the place too, with Sauron being a particularly fun pull I recognized thanks to the infamous viral comic panel featuring him. "I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs." Great excuse to do a level full of dinosaurs.
The gameplay is pretty standard stuff. Cosmic Invasion is a straightforward belt-scrolling brawler just like Shredder's Revenge and the many classic 90s games that inspired it. Your selection of attacks seems puny when you look at the included moveset list, but you've got a reasonable suite of options for attacking without it being overwhelming or giving you a bunch of moves that aren't any good. You have a standard combo, a jump attack, a running attack, a "heavy" attack that consumes ammo, and a super move that requires a separate meter called Focus. Also central to the gameplay is the Cosmic Swap feature. When selecting your heroes, you get to pick two, not just one. The Cosmic Swap lets you instantly switch one for the other, and each has their own separate health bar and Focus. You can also call in your reserve partner for a quick assist instead of switching to them entirely.
The main campaign lets you play through the whole game at your own pace, with progress saved between levels and a leveling system in play that lets you enhance your characters with stat boosts and unlock a "passive" that gives them an extra edge in battle and is different for each character. There's also an Arcade mode that makes you take on the adventure with limited lives and no save, though to compensate a bit for the length of this undertaking, there are a few pairs of levels where you must play both in Campaign, but only need to do one of the two in Arcade. Playing through Campaign, leveling up characters, and completing the three "Challenges" for each stage will earn you Cosmic Cubes you can spend to unlock bonus content, the most interesting of which are modifiers for Arcade that change the game in various ways, usually by making it harder (but you can also unlock unlimited lives, so it's possible for anyone to make it through Arcade if they can manage to get this). Shredder's Revenge also had Challenges, but they are far less cruel in this game, unlike SR which expected you to clear entire levels without getting hit once whereas CI's are more along the lines of "perform this attack to defeat enemies ten times" or "don't get hit by this one specific kind of hazard". Oh, and the "taunt cheese" from SR that let you easily fill your super meter if you taunted is not present in CI, if that bugged you.
Like most beat-em-ups, Cosmic Invasion is more fun with at least one other player, but it's also a good time when you're on your lonesome. All the references mean Marvel fans should enjoy it for sure, but it's still a solid brawler even when you don't know all that much about Marvel.
Action 52
System: Sega Genesis
Genre: Compilation
Year of release: 1993
Action 52 is one of those games that has long been considered part of an exclusive club: the illustrious group of The Worst Video Games Ever Made. While no doubt a truly objective list of worst games ever would now just be a bunch of predatory asset-flipping microtransaction slop, back in the day, being the worst meant something different, darn it. Games like Superman 64, Bubsy 3D, Big Rigs, and Action 52 put real effort into being as awful as possible. Action 52's NES release is its' most famous incarnation, but it also came out on Genesis. I remember hearing from some sources back in the day that the Genesis game was somewhat better than the NES one... but don't worry, the Genesis version of this shoddy collection of 52 sloppy minigames is still atrocious. This is, however, a very different game from the NES version. Virtually all of the games are different, including games that have the same name in both versions. They are, for all intents and purposes, two completely different games that form an Action 52 "series".
Unbelievably, I know the developer, Farsight Entertainment, quite well. They made a series of pinball games that were fairly well-regarded in the 2000s and 2010s (well, not always so well-regarded actually), but they eventually abandoned their magnum opus, The Pinball Arcade, and nowadays the job of releasing classic pinball tables in digital form on modern hardware has fallen to Zen Pinball and their Pinball FX game, and they only do Williams tables and ignore all the other companies like Stern and Gottlieb. These days, Farsight has given up on pinball and barely does anything, occasionally pushing out a mid title based on second-tier sports like bowling or pickleball. Farsight only worked on the Genesis version of Action 52, explaining why it's so different from the NES version.
Most of the games in Action 52 are similar to the sorts of very simplistic and straightforward games you'd get on the Atari 2600, where you do the same thing over and over forever, except Action 52's versions are usually divided into levels where the objective is to survive or defeat enough enemies to move on, and all the games have definitive endings (though their high difficulty makes reaching those endings a tall order). There are plenty of Atari games with more depth then this sorry bunch, though. Every game uses the same level intro and outro of a woman's voice announcing which level it is or saying "Level complete." Many of the games share mechanics, some of them being clones of each other, but it's at least a step above those scummy "5000 in 1" multicarts in that it's not literally the exact same game over and over, they at least bothered to change the graphics.
You can't review Action 52 without trying all 52 games. So, here we go.
Game 1: Bonkers
Bonkers is an Arkanoid-type game with no paddle. Instead, you control the ball. Your ball is green, and can only break green blocks. Certain special blocks will turn your ball different colors upon touch, letting you break blocks of that color. Once you've broken all the colored blocks, you can break the blocks that are grey and depict a green ball on them. Breaking those clears the level. Not the worst concept for a game, honestly, but the high difficulty is a turnoff, particularly because there seems to be no way to reset your ball's color to green, meaning if you change colors too early, you're screwed.
Game 2: Darksyne
A rotten shooter with bad controls and excruciating difficulty. Play a little bit like Asteroids, if Asteroids hated you. I saw something that looked like a powerup but both shooting it and touching it did nothing. (I later found the manual online and consulted it - you have to use your shield button while on top of a powerup to collect it. I didn't know you had a shield. Still a bad game.)
Game 3: Dyno Tennis
This is a terrible tennis game with extremely crude graphics. You play as a cartoon dinosaur. Swinging your racket in the vague area of the ball, even if it's behind you, is enough to hit it. In a mildly funny touch, the "ball" is a caveman. It's 2-player only, so you can't play with a CPU opponent.
Game 4: Ooze
Truly atrocious. This is a 2D platformer where you play as a cartoony guy with a gun. You have to wander around and collect keys, but since a single touch with almost anything will kill you (there's even fall damage), you'll be lucky to get past the first level.
Game 5: Star Ball
This is a pinball game, so considering Farsight's other releases it's obviously it's the best game in the package. No I'm kidding, it sucks. The table is weird and wide and you get a whole bunch of flippers to control with not many targets to hit. It's pretty easy to lose the ball even with a dozen flippers at your disposal. This is about on par with the Atari 2600's Video Pinball, at best. Farsight would go on to make much better pinball games later.
Game 6: Sidewinder
This is a really unexciting shooter reminiscent of a mix between Battlezone and After Burner. You play as a jet, and you fly around and shoot down other jets. Naturally, they can take multiple hits, but one hit from them kills you. The first few levels are very easy, but enemy missiles suddenly start coming thick and fast around the fourth stage, and Sidewinder promptly swaps from "boring but doable" to "you gotta be kidding".
Game 7: Daytona
This is a series of races, Pole Position style. At first I was baffled, doing a race and seeing virtually zero opponents. Eventually I realized you have to press A to shift gears. Low gear has good acceleration but low top speed, and high gear is the opposite. You need to use low gear to get moving, then swap to high gear to start going faster. If the enemy cars are blocking you, you can swap back to low gear to let them get ahead of you again. You need to perform well in the races to win prize money so you can afford to keep entering races. It has a little more thought put into it than some other games here, but it's still very ugly and not particularly fun.
Game 8: 15 Puzzle
Yes, it's one of those awful sliding tile puzzles. You get five minutes to solve it and your number of moves is tracked. And it doesn't even make a cool picture, it's just 15 tiles numbered 1 through 15. The filleriest of filler trash.
Game 9: Sketch
This is a very simplistic doodle app. The A button changes the color of your pencil, the B button changes its' width, and holding down C lets you draw. There's no eraser tool, but you can press Start to return to the Action 52 title screen. Obviously a drawing app for a console that can't save or print your work is completely useless.
Game 10: Star Duel
This is a two-player game made using Darksyne as a base. Same thrust mechanics, same shield, but now it's a duel against another ship for nine rounds. There are no obstacles, but some rounds add gravity pulling you in a certain direction or grant both ships a spread shot.
Game 11: Haunted Hill
It's called "Haunted Hills" instead on its' title screen. Very similar to Ooze, but you play as an adventurer fella with more realistic proportions, and instead of a gun, he has a torch he swings around to attack. Reaching the end of the level isn't enough to claim victory - you need to pick up all the lavender-colored diamond-shaped items strewn about. It's only four levels long and a successful run is over in ten minutes, but the one-hit kills, stiff jumping, fall damage, and the fast and numerous enemies ensure your run will almost certainly end in failure.
Game 12: Alfredo
Alfredo is a small Italian man holding a bucket. In his kitchen, anthropomorphic ingredients are leaping wildly out of a cauldron and bouncing around. Your goal is to catch the pale yellow characters, who come in a few different designs and represent noodles. The other characters, a wiener and a meatball, are deadly to the touch. The main problem here is the violent speed with which the ingredients spawn. They're sometimes much more reasonable, but even on Level 2 it can quickly descend into madness as wildly bouncing hot dog men fill the screen.
Game 13: Cheetahmen
The Cheetahmen were the headliners of the NES Action 52, with an iconic title screen theme and even an opening cutscene that showed they were the big stars of this trash heap. Not so in the Genesis version, which gives us a very poor platformer similar to Haunted Hill and Ooze with its' "collect all the items, die in one hit" gameplay. Cheetahmen is three levels long and it's the same level three times, just with slightly reshuffled enemy placement and three different playable Cheetahmen. The first and third Cheetahmen, Hercules and Aries, use melee attacks. Apollo, the Level 2 Cheetahman, gets to use a crossbow, but his shots are weak and he needs three hits to do what his buddies accomplish with one. Cheetahmen is really, really bad and it's interesting that they made no attempt to push their mascots here and instead just cast them into the middle of the list as filler.
Watch footage of this garbage in action and then recall that Active Enterprises, the folks behind Action 52, seriously had plans for Cheetahmen cartoons, comics, and action figures. They actually thought this was good enough to launch a franchise.
Game 14: Skirmish
Skirmish feels like it got more love than almost anything else in the collection. It has a fancy scrolling title screen, complete with a dramatic quote: "Only the dead have seen the end of war", which is attributed ingame to General Douglas MacArthur, though my research tells me that this sad-but-true statement was first coined by George Santayana. Skirmish is a two-player tactics game where you move military units around one of several maps while your human opponent does the same. Your goal is to invade the enemy HQ. If two units meet, a real-time battle begins with the two units squaring off, the winner eliminating the loser from the board. It seems like a solid idea, but I can't properly judge this one because of its' depth combined with its' two-player requirement, unlike other super-simplistic 2-player games like Dyno Tennis where it's obvious very quickly what's on offer.
Game 15: Depth Charge
In this shooter, you play as a patrol boat that can move freely along the surface of the water, dropping the titular depth charges into the water to attack submarines. They return fire with missiles. The enemy subs are randomly placed, and some of them can spawn very close to the surface. Combine this with their erratic, pattern-free missiles, and you're likely to lose most of your lives from attacks that are impossible to anticipate and dodge. Overall, almost half-decent.
Game 16: Minds Eye
This is literally just MineSweeper. It doesn't have the little emoji guy who puts on shades if you win, but they actually did add an interesting new mechanic: You get five "guesses" that you can use to prod a square that you suspect is a mine but aren't sure about. Using a "guess" will reveal the square safely even if it's a mine, protecting you from harm. Thanks to ripping off a decent game and even trying to improve on it a little, Minds Eye is probably the best game in Action 52, though its' actual utility these days is pretty questionable. I guess it's kind of a funny novelty to have MineSweeper of all games on your Genesis?
Game 17: Alien Attack
This is a shooter that wants to pretend it's a beat-em-up. Your little dude with a gun can move on a plane like in most beat-em-ups, and your goal is to travel through a series of levels, avoiding and shooting monstrous aliens. Unlike a lot of these games, you don't have to collect items or kill enemies, just reach the end of the level. All of the levels are just long straight lines with randomly-appearing enemies, some of which move so quickly you almost certainly won't be able to react in time, especially because the screen only scrolls if you're right near the edge (a problem shared by many of these games). One small point in its' favor is that there are actually several different backgrounds to run through, unlike most of these games which settle for regurgitating the same backdrop over and over.
Game 18: Billy Bob
A yawn-inducingly dull shooting gallery. You play as a cowboy who stands in the middle of town and shoots everyone else, ideally before they shoot him. Your slow-moving cursor guarantees some of your opponents will get shots off as you try to deal with others, and the cowboys who lurk in the far-away buildings are tricky to see compared to the ones that swagger out in front of you.
Game 19: Sharks
Almost decent. You play a diver who shoots sharks (and jellyfish, if you get far enough) with spears as they come in on either side of the screen. You have to kill a certain number of enemies to advance. As usual, one hit kills you. The difficulty is very low early on, but the third level introduces a new kind of shark that moves much faster, making things a lot more hectic.
Game 20: Knockout
A VERY basic fighting game with no CPU opponent. Two boxers, identical except for the color of their shorts, go head to head in nine rounds of violence. You have one attack, a jab. You can also jump for some reason. Like other Action 52 games, you can't attack in mid-air, so the jump feels kinda pointless, but the manual says you can use it to escape if your opponent is comboing you. Punch your opponent 15 times for a knockdown. Whoever scores more knockdowns after 9 excruciatingly boring rounds will win.
Game 21: Intruder
An extremely poorly-thought-out game. You play as a guy in some kind of advanced facility, navigating a maze of electric walls and fending off robots with your laser gun. The hitboxes destroy what little possible fun there is to be had: the electric fences zap you if the top of your head brushes them, and the robots kill you if they touch your feet. The biggest problem is the latter, since there will be situations where you have to take the top path to advance and a robot will charge in that's too low on the screen to be shot but high enough that it will touch you, leading to an unavoidable defeat.
Game 22: Echo
This is a memory game similar to Simon. You'll see four large diamonds on the screen that light up in sequence, each one getting its' own sound effect. After they play, you must select them in the order they went off. That's the entire game.
Game 23: Freeway
This one is among the more decent games here, but it's also pretty distressing in a way unrelated to its' gameplay, the reason for which will be clear about one sentence from now. You play as a dog (named Spike in the manual) and your objective is to cross a busy highway, similar to Frogger. However, unlike Frogger, you have free movement... which means you can't rely on grid-based positioning to keep you safe from traffic. Also unlike Frogger, you must cross the road to pick up items (bones, balls, and Frisbees) and then cross back the way you came to place them on the other side, one at a time. The manual explains that Spike's family moved to a new home but didn't bring his toys, so he has to go get them himself. A level is completed if you can retrieve every item. A cute touch is that the C button makes Spike bark. This doesn't do anything, it's just in there for fun. A much less cute touch is that getting hit by a car will instantly reduce poor Spike to a bloody pile of dismembered body parts. What the fuck, Farsight. Between that and the story, I'm sad now. Justice for Spike.
Game 24: Mousetrap
Mousetrap is an item-gathering game. You're a cartoon mouse reminiscent of Jerry from Tom and Jerry fame. Random cartoony cats (that don't look like Tom very much) run across the screen while you try to pick up all of the cheese in the room. Interestingly, if you die, the remaining cheese in the level is rearranged. There are other item-gathering games in this collection with the same mechanic.
Out of all the games in Action 52, this was the one I came the closest to beating. I was one cheese pickup away from victory on Level 9 when a cat got me.
Game 25: Ninja
Ninja is an agonizing walk across a long stage with no platforms or points of interest. You play as a black ninja and run to the right while red ninjas attack you. Some just run around, others throw ninja stars. You can jump over their stars and attack back with stars of your own. To my surprise, there doesn't seem to be any collision damage - touching enemy ninjas won't kill you, but their stars of course will. Like all the freely side-scrolling games in Action 52, you have to go right up to the far right of the screen to advance it, making it extremely difficult to anticipate incoming threats.
Game 26: Slalom
Viewed from above, you're a skier hurtling down a mountain, trying to avoid hitting trees. To my surprise, the trees have correct collision - you only die if you hit their lower area, and can pass through their tops okay.
Game 27: Dauntless
A "side-scrolling" shmup where you pilot a plane through the clouds, firing upon enemy planes. Very basic and has nothing significant to offer.
Game 28: Force One
A vertical space shooter. Also very basic, also nothing significant of interest. Most of the shmups in this game have nigh-identical gameplay, they just scroll in different directions and have different graphics and music. If you've played one, you've played them all.
Game 29: Spidey
This is basically just Mousetrap again, but the enemies move in multiple directions instead of just horizontally. Here you play as a spider running around its' web to scoop up all the flies it has caught. Enemy bugs like ants and rival spiders come running across the web, their touch deadly. You have to collect all the flies without getting killed. Kind of okay for a minute, but very bland and shallow, and like Mousetrap the randomly-appearing enemies lend a touch of unfairness to having to go to the edge of the screen to pick up some of the flies.
Game 30: Appleseed
In Appleseed you play as a farmer trying to catch apples that are falling from the sky. Only red apples, though. There are also faster-falling green apples, and if the farmer catches one he drops the basket and throws a tantrum. How dare that apple be green! Another ridiculously simplistic nothingburger of a game that would make the Atari 2600 roll its' eyes.
Game 31: Skater
The raddest game in the collection has you play as a classic late 80s/early 90s Cool Kid On A Skateboard, picking up stereos that are strewn over the road and avoiding beach balls and what the manual calls "small animals" (they look like cats, maybe?). You have a jump to help you dodge stuff.
Game 32: Sunday Drive
No shooting here, just drive your car down a top-down road and don't hit any other vehicles. Easier said than done, of course, as they start sliding all over the road and coming in thick clusters.
Game 33: Star Evil
Hard and boring at the same time, this vertical shmup has you guide your ship up through winding deadly corridors and dealing with randomly-spawning enemies that drop in from above. The blue beams with hooks dangling from them are surprisingly safe to touch. There are no powerups, and of course one hit kills you.
Game 34: Air Command
Yet another shmup, this one a downward vertical scroller for a change of pace. There is nothing here.
Game 35: Shootout
A timing-based shooting gallery. Goofy cartoon animals run across the screen in rows and you must shoot them all with limited bullets. You can take your time and time your shot. One of the better games here, if I'm being honest. It's still ridiculously simple and pretty lame, but it's not offensively bad, just crude and dull.
Game 36: Bombs Away
In this one you play as a soldier running through a village, dodging bombs. You have a jump button but I'm not sure why. Getting hit with a bomb makes your character scream and violently explode (while the bomb just keeps on falling, untouched, of course).
Game 37: Speedboat
You're a boat and you dodge stuff as the screen scrolls vertically. This is basically just Sunday Drive again but with static obstacles in addition to moving ones.
Game 38: Dedant
Another shmup. You play as an ant spewing red globs to attack your opponents. One of the enemy types, which resembles a black widow, is immune to your fire. More and more of them will spawn in as gameplay goes on, making the battlefield increasingly dangerous. A vaguely interesting way to mix it up, but Dedant still sucks.
Game 39: G Fighter
ANOTHER shmup. This is a space-themed one that scrolls left to right. It does nothing different from all the other shmups.
Game 40: Man At Arms
In this top-down shooter, you're an archer defending a castle as swordsmen approach from below. If any of them reach the castle to bonk its' walls with their sword, your archer instantly drops his weapon and waves a white flag. COWARD!!
Game 41: Norman
You play as a tank, so is 'Norman' a riff on 'Sherman'? Like Sherman tanks? The manual says this is Operation Desert Storm. It's a really weird war, though. It's a top-down shooter and your opponents spawn in randomly from the edges of the screen. You take on enemy tanks and human soldiers. The soldiers walk around randomly and don't even have weapons. The tanks don't shoot at you. Kill enough enemies and you advance a level. What I find funniest about this one is that the soldiers go up in flames when shot, but if a tank is defeated (yours or an enemy), it erupts with blood. Yes, a weaponless soldier waddling into your tank will kill it instantly.
Game 42: Armor Battle
Clearly inspired by Atari 2600's Combat, this game reuses Norman's tanks for a one-vs-one shooter. Even-numbered rounds will angle your shot diagonally so you have to think more about your position, whereas the ones where you can shoot straight are presumably decided by both players mashing the fire button the instant the round begins, since there's no cover or obstacles.
Game 43: Magic Bean
In Magic Bean you play as some guy, presumably Jack from the classic fairy tale, as he climbs the beanstalk to the giant's house. The giant clearly doesn't want you here, though, as he's dumping tons of crap to stop you. Move Jack to dodge the rain of boots, cups, horseshoes, swords, and bottles. Once he reaches the giant's house, the level ends and you climb the beanstalk again with higher difficulty. This goes on for 9 levels, and that's the whole game. One of the more playable titles, but still pretty trash. However, shoutout to the music used in odd-numbered levels, which became an instant meme when my brother was watching me play. Jammin'.
Game 44: Apache
Another shmup. This one is vertical and has obstacles on the ground that are somehow able to hit and destroy your helicopter. Otherwise it plays just like all the others.
Game 45: Paratrooper
You play as a soldier wandering around in a field, picking up difficult-to-identify items. According to the manual, these are parts for a supercomputer. Enemies are numerous and move rapidly once you're a few levels in. You have a gun and you can fire rapidly by mashing the C button. Another really basic, low-effort game. Are you surprised?
Game 46: Sky Avenger
ANOTHER shmup. Sidescrolling from right to left this time, because that makes it different, right? You're a helicopter and you shoot other helicopters, jets, and zeppelins. Worthless, it's just the same game we've seen ten times reskinned with nothing new.
Game 47: Sharpshooter
ANOTHER shmup. This one probably should have swapped names with Shootout. It uses the same "rustic carnival shooting gallery" theming, but your character's entire body is on the screen this time, a cowboy that does a ridiculous shuffle from side to side to line up his shots. Frantic, surprisingly intense music plays as enemies spawn in above and move around randomly, eventually making their way to the lowest level of the screen where they can touch you and kill you. I was able to accomplish a shocking amount here by just moving from side to side and mashing the C button, making it all the way to the 8th (of 9) levels before the enemies finally figured out they could just zip down to the bottom level instantly and move across the bottom of the screen for a guaranteed kill.
Game 48: Meteor
ANOTHER shmup. You're supposedly defending a city from falling meteors, but you can freely let them fall past you. Bizarrely, unlike every other shmup in the collection, this one lets you auto-fire by holding down the C button instead of mashing it.
Game 49: Black Hole
ANOTHER shmup. Vertical, space-themed. The player ship is enormous for some reason. Nice blue gradient background. The enemy ships look kind of cool too, but this is just the same game as all the other flying vehicle shmups, regurgitated a tenth time as if we wouldn't notice.
Game 50: The Boss
In this one you're a reptilian gangster (the titular Boss) climbing up and down ladders and walking across platforms to pick up money while frog cops and other reptile people try to stop you. It's extremely difficult to get off of a ladder, so basically all of your deaths will be because you couldn't get off the damn ladder before one of the enemies bumped your foot and killed you. One of the absolute worst games in the bunch.
Game 51: 1st Game
It's Pong. That's what they mean by "1st Game". It's literally just Pong. They even call it Pong in the manual. And like Pong, it's a 2-player game with no AI. The ball is very, very fast, but the paddles are sizable.
Game 52: Challenge
Challenge is right. You know how almost all of these games get ridiculously hard either right away or several levels in? The Action 52 Challenge is a massive boss rush of every compatible game's final level, randomly served up. As with all the other games in the collection, you only get four lives and there are no opportunities to earn more. Yeah, good luck with that.
While I didn't play it, the NES version of Action 52 probably does deserve to be called worse than the Genesis version. From what I've read, the NES version is full of bugs and glitches, and some of the games suffer from fatal flaws, including games that are literally impossible to complete (such as Fuzz Power, which features a hill on Level 3 that your character cannot jump over, and looking into the data shows that this was likely intentional as the level designer simply stopped making the game shortly after that) or that crash on startup (Alfredo and Jigsaw, though this error was surprisingly fixed with a revised release). The games on offer here on the Genesis version all boot without issue and are playable. It's not surprising, considering that according to Wikipedia the Genesis version of Action 52 had a year of development time while the NES version got a whopping three months before it was forced out the door. But saying that the NES version of Action 52 is worse than the Genesis version is kind of like saying getting squashed by a 100-ton weight is worse than getting squashed by a 50-ton weight: it's not enough of an improvement to matter. These games aren't fun. They are sloppy and repetitive and basic. A lot of them have random elements that make them exercises in luck. The platformer-type games like Ooze and Cheetahmen are especially awful. Many of the shmups are so similar to each other that to consider them separate games feels like a cheat. And the best game on the cartridge is a ripoff of a game that's normally offered for free. A few of the games may provide some basic enjoyment for a short time in a sort of mindless way, but that simply doesn't matter when there are thousands of other games that do it better. Unsurprisingly, Action 52 serves no purpose except as a historical curiosity... and a joke for reviewers like me to tear apart.
And so, I give Action 52 for Sega Genesis...
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