GB's Game Reviews: 2025-2026 Edition

This year's top story in GB video gaming: The return of the Sega Genesis.

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!

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!

GB's Game Reviews, 2022-2023 Edition

Here we go again! This time I've got two different types of reviews. My usual review style where I go over a game once I've seen the credits will be here as expected, but I also will be including a bunch of what I'm calling Quick Impressions. This review type is for arcade games I played in compilations or at Funspot. I only tried many of these games briefly, and they usually don't have an ending, but I'll still share my thoughts on what I saw, and I'll also have a "Insert Token?" rating, where I decide whether or not I would give up a shiny Funspot token to drop in the machine to play it again - either "No", "Maybe", "Sure", or "Absolutely".

Another Batch Of Unsolicited Game Opinions

Since my April 2021 video game review blog got such a warm reception, I figured I'd do it again with some of the games I've played in the year since that post went up. Not as many games this time due to the smaller timeframe, but I've got plenty to talk about...

A Flood Of Quickie Game Reviews

It's been a long time since I last posted any opinions of video games I've played on this blog. Funnily enough, I stopped not long before Jumpropeman launched The Game Hoard and became the de facto game reviewer of the community. He does a fantastic job at it and I couldn't compare... but after four years, I've decided to dig through the games I've beaten since the beginning of 2017 and share my thoughts on them. As a caveat, some of these memories are quite old, and I also skipped some games I just don't have much to say about. Let's get right to it.

GB's Vidya 2013: Year In Review

Last year I made the twenty-one post series "GB's 100 Games", wherein I gave short writeups of 100 games I had beaten that I considered to be good or better. Since then, I've beaten over a dozen more video games. I've decided to make a sequel of sorts to 100 Games in the form of a "Year In Review" that gives writeups on every game I beat this year. In addition to that, I'll be putting the games in a rough ranking. Remember, the game can be released in any year, and I can first acquire the game in any year - as long as I first finished the game in 2013, it qualifies for the list.

First, however, to get them out of the way...

Unranked: A Horde of Atari Games
Trying to place all the new Atari 2600 games I played this year would be far too difficult. It's hard enough ranking such old games alongside modern ones as it is - with this many, it'd just be a pain and the list would be littered with them, so they all get shoved here.

Games in bold were played on an actual Atari 2600 with a cartridge. Games in italics were played on my Atari Flashback plug-and-play system.

Atari Climber - A game similar in some respects to Donkey Kong. You must climb from the bottom of the stage to the top, avoiding hazards and scoring points.

Atlantis - You control three cannons and try to shoot down flying ships that want to bomb your city. The cannons cannot aim or move, so timing is literally everything. Nice graphics for the 2600.

Demon Attack - A very similar game to Phoenix. Demon Attack is a static shooter in which you fight wave after wave of "demons". They come in many shapes, but they mostly behave the same.

Dragonfire - In this medieval quest, you alternate between two screens. The first screen is about jumping over and ducking under fireballs to reach a castle. Once there, you gather treasure for points while dodging the attacks of an angry dragon.

Off the Wall - I've never been good at Breakout-type games. Off the Wall is not an exception.

Secret Quest - One of the rare games on Atari that cries out for instructions. I can't give this Zeldaesque game a fair shake because I didn't know what to do a few levels in.

Space Jockey - Space Jockey is hurt by technical limitations - only three enemies are onscreen at once, making the game far too dull. A difficulty option to make the enemies move randomly may help your experience somewhat.

Video Checkers - Not sure how I'm supposed to win. The computer seems to counter my every move. Then again, I don't play much checkers.

Video Chess - Same problem - the computer consistently outfoxed me even on the lowest difficulty. I played chess a lot back in elementary school, and I don't remember being this bad at it.

Yar's Revenge - One of the strongest Atari games I've played. Yar's is more complicated than most Atari games, but it can be figured out pretty quickly, and it's a lot of fun. Once upon a time I had a Game Boy Color version of this game, but I wasn't any good at it and wound up selling the cartridge in a yard sale.