GB's Game Reviews: 2024-2025 Edition

2024, or at least the first half of it in particular, was the year of playing games I'd played already.

I love Backloggery. I've talked about it before. It's a really cool website that lets you compile a database of your video game collection and track your progress with them, referring to the games you own but haven't beaten yet as "your backlog". It's a great idea, but admittedly I think it's given me a bit of tunnel vision. Sometimes I think a little too much about how next to enhance how my collection looks on Backloggery, choosing what to play on the basis of needing to beat more games. This is fine, but it can go too far when I'm reluctant to play something I've already 100% completed, or have beaten but can't realistically 100%, just for the fun of playing it. When I was a kid I didn't have this problem - even if I'd beaten a game a dozen times over, if it was fun enough I'd pop it in the system and do it again. Playing a game you've already finished isn't a "waste of time" - it basically accomplishes just as much as playing something you haven't played before, as long as you still get entertainment out of it. Games are meant to be fun, after all, and trying new ones is a good idea, but I shouldn't be casting old favorites into a "never touch again" box if they can still bring me joy.

Anyway, that preamble is because in 2024 I placed an unusual amount of focus on playing older games, many of which I'd beaten before. This started out as getting 100% completion on games I'd played thoroughly but had never managed to do everything in. This was seen in my reviews last year, where I finally 100%'d a number of games I consider absolute classics, such as the original Sonic games and Banjo-Kazooie. That mindset continues into this year's reviews, with the likes of Super Mario 64 crossed off the list, but then I also spent a lot of time with Vampire Survivors, which I had started in 2023 but didn't finish. However, eventually I even started playing games I'd finished a long time ago, such as Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Trading Card Game. Since it's been over a decade since I've reviewed some of these old games, though, I will be taking another look at them here in this edition of the blog, marking the first time in this blog series I've ever re-reviewed anything. As summer became fall, I started playing more new games (though Banjo-Tooie joined the replay fun after its' surprise NSO release), and you'll see that reflected in the reviews as I start tackling a number of small indie titles as well as a few bigger games I'd never played before this year - but I do still finish the blog off with a review of a game I first played over fifteen years ago. I also end up playing a whole lot of Sonic games here as I became re-invested in the franchise that got me hooked on video games. I tried out both Sonic's newest games and some popular fangames as well as going back and taking care of some older titles I never beat. If you read my January blogpost about my history with the Sonic series and still want to read more words about that darn blue hedgehog, he's all over this blogpost.

I hope you enjoy this especially retro-flavored look at what I've been playing since April 2024!

GB's Game Reviews, 2023-2024 Edition

What a year for gaming it's been for me! I'm used to playing games only in limited fits and starts during the warmer months of the year, as ZFRP ends up consuming a lot of the time I'd otherwise be using to play. However, things were different this time. For the first time in a long time, I found the energy and motivation to keep playing new games continuously throughout Season 13 of RP, and as a result of that (plus other factors like continued trips to Funspot and playing several compilations full of quick new additions to the blog) I played dozens of games this year. In fact, this might be an all-time record for me!

It felt good to get my bad experience with Mechstermination Force out of my system in last year's post, so I will be including a few more reviews in this post of games I played but didn't finish if I have something to say about the experience, positive or otherwise. (Xenoblade fans, I am sorry.) This time the reviews are in roughly the order I played the games, so things kind of hop around at times, but at other times you'll see a bunch of Mario, Sonic, or TMNT games clustered together as I stuck with a franchise for a bit.

With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy the largest GB game review blogpost ever!

43 Games I Haven't Reviewed Yet

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

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

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

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

GB's 100 Games: 5-1

I cannot believe I wrote this whole thing nonstop every day (save the one-day Chatzy Madness break). But it's finally over. We've seen good games, bad games, and so-bad-they're-good games. Games I cribbed characters from to make RP characters, games I played in my early childhood, games I played last year. Games I played in an arcade, games I played on compilations, games I played on Virtual Console, games I found at garage sales, at Wal-Mart, at GameStop, got as Christmas presents, the works. Shooting games, fighting games, role-playing games, platform games and beat-em-up games.

In short, a freakin' truckload of vidya, representing the last twenty years of my life.

And now it's time to finally finish it. My favorite five games ever made. Suffice it to say, if anything ever beats these juggernauts I will be so hyped and you will never hear the end of it.

GB's 100 Games: 10-6

We're no longer talking about games that were just fun, or engrossing. We're talking about games that had significant influence on my childhood and teen years. Games I bonded with people over, games that I've memorized up and down, games that have implanted themselves into my subconscious. These are THE video games.

It's the first half of the final ten.

GB's 100 Games: 16-11

We've now reached the games I consider permanent classics. Two are from my childhood and early teen years, but the other three are all relatively recent. Two of them I just played last year. Even though I sometimes feel concerned that I'm losing touch with video games and sometimes go long periods without playing one, games like these remind me that there's no getting off this train I'm on.

Today's update is brought to you by Saralex and Liberty Medical.

GB's 100 Games: 40-36

The list continues its' unstoppable march towards the mighty final ten games. As for todays' batch, one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong.

GB's 100 Games: 50-46

Poop jokes, tanooki tails, robot deathmatches and the best damn photography game ever await you as we return to GB's 100 Games!

Additionally, I think a much better spot to place Mario 64 and Sunshine would be somewhere around here, maybe a tad higher.

GB's 100 Games: 60-56

A pretty motley crew in today's installment. We've got a couple obscure titles, a spinoff, and a port/remake up for evaluation, plus a company famous for doing only one thing finally deciding to make a game that did something else.

GB's 100 Games: 80-76

I should probably mention at this point that from here until around 35th place I had very little idea of where to rank what, so it's just gonna be sort of a flood of "GB liked this" rather than any definitive ranking. I know I said when we started this wasn't a straight ranking, but it's especially evident here. I have no idea why some games are in one place and some are in another, so let's just take them as they come and when we near the end things should get less muddled as the true giants begin to emerge.

So! With that said, away we go with the next batch of five games. With Mario and Pokemon returning for the second batch in a row, it's mostly Nintendo here again with one exception: Ariel's favorite shmup!

Gaming Retrospective (Part 4)

Shortly after getting the Game Boy Color (or perhaps before - my memory is extremely fuzzy on this point), my family also got a Nintendo 64 (OH MY GOOOOD). Now that I think about it, it was probably the fall before we got the Game Boy Color - so, Fall 2000. Anyway, it was very late in the N64's lifespan, so we were able to buy it pretty cheaply. My brother and I had saved up money together for it, and we each got to pick out a game to go with the system. My brother's choice was Bio Freaks, a pretty crappy Mortal Kombat ripoff (but it was made by Midway, so I don't know why it wasn't just another installment of Mortal Kombat). My pick was the complete opposite - Kirby 64. In retrospect, Kirby was a great first N64 game because of the 2D controls - it helped ease me into 3D gaming and the insanity that is the N64 controller.

The majority of our N64 games were rentals, not purchases - we didn't have much money to spare on gaming at this time. We picked up a few more games here and there, mostly lesser-known ones, while all the big names in N64 were rental-only, like Pokemon Stadium, Mario 64, Mario Kart, and the two Banjo-Kazooie games.

One day we visited our rental store to find they were offering a game I'd never seen before. It was called Paper Mario. Intrigued, we checked it out. And I could not stop playing. I had never played an RPG that wasn't Pokemon at this point, and Paper Mario's length and epic feel blew me away. We wound up keeping the game for nearly a week (you were supposed to return game rentals two days after paying) because I had to see the end, and I did. The whole thing was spectacular and cemented Paper Mario as one of my all-time favorite games. I love everything about it - the gameplay, the music, the art style, the dialogue, the atmosphere, it's all amazing and I love it to pieces.

In direct contrast to the N64 and Game Boy, we got right on the GBA train when that came out. Well, almost - my brother has a birthday in August, and we were going to give him a GBA with Super Mario Advance, but although we found the game, we didn't find the system! They were simply out of stock. Rather than hold onto Mario Advance until the system was available, my mom opted to return it. That Christmas we each got a GBA and a game: I got a white one with Mario Kart Super Circuit, and my brother got a purply see-through one with Earthworm Jim. Neither game made much of an impression on me, and it wasn't until Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire released that I really got into the GBA. The best times of the GBA's life for me were actually well after I'd replaced it with a DS, as a number of GBA games came into my possession for cheap as the system began to die out. Even as recently as 2010 I found new-to-me GBA games I liked, like Drill Dozer.

GB's Nintendo 64 Favorites:
Paper Mario
Banjo-Kazooie
Banjo-Tooie
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2
Mario Kart 64
Super Mario 64
Space Station Silicon Valley

GB's Game Boy Advance Favorites:
Pokemon RSE
Pokemon FRLG
Final Fantasy I (Dawn of Souls)
Final Fantasy IV
Super Mario Advance series
Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland
Kirby and the Amazing Mirror
Metroid Zero Mission
WarioWare: Mega Microgames
Drill Dozer