Media Videogame Thread

[CryoGyro]

Cryo's Mega Man: Dual Override Robot Master Design Contest Review

We're looking for designs of a Robot Master who has a right arm with immense suction powers!

Twenty finalists are in, and as a classic Mega Man superfan with a small audience, I have thoughts to share on all of them in a place more permanent than Discord. View the designs here.

Hide

A: Sanitize Man
He's not much to look at from a distance, but that humble orange and ivory color scheme calls to mind classic electronics like the Famicom and NES Zapper, fitting a more tired-looking and utilitarian guy. The supplemental sketches show a lot of thought into making him a workable boss fight, and little 'breaks' from the Robot Master template in the feet scrubbers and head light give him identity that fits modern Mega Man design.

B: Vortex Man
DemNikoArt is a masterful 3D artist I already knew from YouTube, and Vortex Man exemplifies that mastery. The main render exudes aura without forgetting that classic Mega Man needs to be comical or charming, thanks to the huge torso and thin limbs. The black and yellow is a fairy unique scheme that, alongside the tubes, calls to mind older Lego Technic and Blacktron. My only complaint is that making the feet smaller than the standard boot design makes little sense for such a big guy.

C: Battle Man
I'm a big fan of when Robot Masters combine concepts that don't necessarily mesh in the abstract. Burst Man combines bubbles and bombs, Clown Man combines electricity and grappling, and Nitro Man combines motorcycles and saws, all of them making for some of the more memorable cast members in their respective games. So I'm all for a hardened warrior type who inexplicably leverages a vacuum. However, I'm not seeing much of a vision beyond the 'suck em in and bop em' described in the text. Some more sketches conceptualizing the actual fight would have done wonders.

D: Spiral Woman
Mega Man isn't beating the misogyny allegations with these Woman contestants, though Spiral here is easily the least offensive. The color scheme and pattern motifs are very respectable; the skirt and visible hair, less so. The idea that a female Robot Master has to scream feminine is holding us back.

E: Osoji Man
Yellow and purple make Osoji leap off the webpage compared to his rivals, but the design doesn't quite follow through on grabbing your attention. He's big, and he's clean, but he's not much more than that.

F: Dredge Man
The upper arm tank and design flourishes are a bit excessive, but I love the core idea and colors here. We could use another shot at a wood-based design, and a more aquatic angle is a great excuse for it.

G: Flex Man
This art sheet is rather difficult to parse, and Flex is a bit too faithful to the contest template for my tastes, but I love the idea of a gentlemanly scrap thief, if I'm interpreting this right.

H: "Tube Man"
I'm glad to see a 'visor eyes' design get represented. However, too many details are concentrated on the upper body, and the inflation gimmick feels like retreading Block and Bounce from the last game.

I: Vacuum Man
It's easy to tune out after hearing that name, but I really like this one for feeling closest to pre-11 design conventions. The color scheme and roomba angle give identity without feeling too high-concept.

J: Cleaner Man
Meanwhile, this one absolutely nails 11's style. He could use a bolder concept and a color scheme that isn't literally Block Man's, but I'd sign off on putting him into a game the fastest.

K: Vac Woman
Vac should have gone the Design C route and fully leaned into the punk rock angle, leaving the embarrassing maid stuff behind and making the suction a point of intrigue. What's with the feet!? If you aren't doing something radical and the focal point of your design, you gotta have those boots! Are we so afraid of women with substance? Alongside the eye rolling lore on the right, this was clearly a waifu first, good Robot Master second.

L: Cleanser Man
I see the vision, and I respect it. However, I think Mega Man needs to keep flamboyance on a tight leash. I favor classic Mega Man for its chunkier, humbler robot designs. Stuff like this is more the realm of X and Zero series. Tundra Man has taken up that budget for at least another game.

M: Maestro Man
Easily the most creative take on the suction arm, and he gets huge points for that. He's just a bit hard to look at, unfortunately. The head has too much going on between the mustache, note flourish, stripe of keys, and neon eyeliner.

N: Sweeper Woman
Only the face feels particularly 'Mega Man', and even then it's just another Splash Woman. The rest is a mix of unsightly technogreeble and the most basic 'maid' interpretation imaginable. Another Woman who seems designed with less-than-pure intentions; don't think I don't see Mega Man's ass getting grabbed there!

O: Recycle Man
I like the colors, but you can't get away with mostly just making another Dust Man by making him Recycle's brother. This feels self indulgent in a way I'm surprised made it to the finalists. Recycling is such a broad concept, surely we can be bolder.

P: Vacuum Man
I only just realized there are two Vacuum Men. Oh well. I love the 'brainiac' angle and the CWU-01P looking device in his head, but there aren't any supplements showing WHY the suction should be going to his head over anywhere else, if that's indeed the intent. A design this simple needs to do more work to sell me.

Q: Cactus Man
I'd love to see a Cactus Man someday, but this is way too involved. It reminds me of modern Pokemon design, where Pokemon look busy or strange in still images in service of a very narrow, game context sensitive payoff. The imposing body and transformation mechanics would make him a standout fortress boss, but it's too much for a Robot Master.

R: Veldt Man
Now here's how you do a context sensitive design. The default body still has a standalone 'point' to it, as an elephant abstraction that may take a few moments to parse, but the capacity to expand solves the minor mystery of those cracks on his torso. It enhances, rather than compromises. Holy yap on the lore, though.

S: Juggle Man
Juggle Man is very creative and well considered for gameplay. So why don't I like him more? I think it's the fairly generic body combined with the disembodied head. The package ends up feeling incomplete, insubstantial, in a way most Robot Masters are not.

T: Valve Man
Did they know they were saving the best for last? Valve Man has it all: a resonant concept, thorough gameplay consideration, and the perfect amount of detail. My only nitpick is that he's cheating a bit on the 'suction' concept, focusing on expelling water.

With all the comments out of the way, here are my design power rankings:
Capcom, Hire This Man: Vortex, Valve
One Step from Greatness: Sanitize, Dredge, Flex, Vacuum (I), Cleaner, Vacuum (P), Veldt, Juggle
Needs Another Pass: Battle, Spiral, Osoji, "Tube," Cleanser, Maestro, Recycle, Cactus
Get Outta Here: Vac, Sweeper

 

[AnimeGeekTM]

Well, now the new tomodachi life's release date is revealed and let me tell you, it looks awesome! I have some friends on Twitter who, like me, are excited as heck for this game. It will be... absolute cinema and peak fiction at the same time.
(On another note btw, I found this funny ahh meme template). :)

 

[Ironmage]

View attachment 804613
Cryo's Mega Man: Dual Override Robot Master Design Contest Review

We're looking for designs of a Robot Master who has a right arm with immense suction powers!

Twenty finalists are in, and as a classic Mega Man superfan with a small audience, I have thoughts to share on all of them in a place more permanent than Discord. View the designs here.

Hide

A: Sanitize Man
He's not much to look at from a distance, but that humble orange and ivory color scheme calls to mind classic electronics like the Famicom and NES Zapper, fitting a more tired-looking and utilitarian guy. The supplemental sketches show a lot of thought into making him a workable boss fight, and little 'breaks' from the Robot Master template in the feet scrubbers and head light give him identity that fits modern Mega Man design.

B: Vortex Man
DemNikoArt is a masterful 3D artist I already knew from YouTube, and Vortex Man exemplifies that mastery. The main render exudes aura without forgetting that classic Mega Man needs to be comical or charming, thanks to the huge torso and thin limbs. The black and yellow is a fairy unique scheme that, alongside the tubes, calls to mind older Lego Technic and Blacktron. My only complaint is that making the feet smaller than the standard boot design makes little sense for such a big guy.

C: Battle Man
I'm a big fan of when Robot Masters combine concepts that don't necessarily mesh in the abstract. Burst Man combines bubbles and bombs, Clown Man combines electricity and grappling, and Nitro Man combines motorcycles and saws, all of them making for some of the more memorable cast members in their respective games. So I'm all for a hardened warrior type who inexplicably leverages a vacuum. However, I'm not seeing much of a vision beyond the 'suck em in and bop em' described in the text. Some more sketches conceptualizing the actual fight would have done wonders.

D: Spiral Woman
Mega Man isn't beating the misogyny allegations with these Woman contestants, though Spiral here is easily the least offensive. The color scheme and pattern motifs are very respectable; the skirt and visible hair, less so. The idea that a female Robot Master has to scream feminine is holding us back.

E: Osoji Man
Yellow and purple make Osoji leap off the webpage compared to his rivals, but the design doesn't quite follow through on grabbing your attention. He's big, and he's clean, but he's not much more than that.

F: Dredge Man
The upper arm tank and design flourishes are a bit excessive, but I love the core idea and colors here. We could use another shot at a wood-based design, and a more aquatic angle is a great excuse for it.

G: Flex Man
This art sheet is rather difficult to parse, and Flex is a bit too faithful to the contest template for my tastes, but I love the idea of a gentlemanly scrap thief, if I'm interpreting this right.

H: "Tube Man"
I'm glad to see a 'visor eyes' design get represented. However, too many details are concentrated on the upper body, and the inflation gimmick feels like retreading Block and Bounce from the last game.

I: Vacuum Man
It's easy to tune out after hearing that name, but I really like this one for feeling closest to pre-11 design conventions. The color scheme and roomba angle give identity without feeling too high-concept.

J: Cleaner Man
Meanwhile, this one absolutely nails 11's style. He could use a bolder concept and a color scheme that isn't literally Block Man's, but I'd sign off on putting him into a game the fastest.

K: Vac Woman
Vac should have gone the Design C route and fully leaned into the punk rock angle, leaving the embarrassing maid stuff behind and making the suction a point of intrigue. What's with the feet!? If you aren't doing something radical and the focal point of your design, you gotta have those boots! Are we so afraid of women with substance? Alongside the eye rolling lore on the right, this was clearly a waifu first, good Robot Master second.

L: Cleanser Man
I see the vision, and I respect it. However, I think Mega Man needs to keep flamboyance on a tight leash. I favor classic Mega Man for its chunkier, humbler robot designs. Stuff like this is more the realm of X and Zero series. Tundra Man has taken up that budget for at least another game.

M: Maestro Man
Easily the most creative take on the suction arm, and he gets huge points for that. He's just a bit hard to look at, unfortunately. The head has too much going on between the mustache, note flourish, stripe of keys, and neon eyeliner.

N: Sweeper Woman
Only the face feels particularly 'Mega Man', and even then it's just another Splash Woman. The rest is a mix of unsightly technogreeble and the most basic 'maid' interpretation imaginable. Another Woman who seems designed with less-than-pure intentions; don't think I don't see Mega Man's ass getting grabbed there!

O: Recycle Man
I like the colors, but you can't get away with mostly just making another Dust Man by making him Recycle's brother. This feels self indulgent in a way I'm surprised made it to the finalists. Recycling is such a broad concept, surely we can be bolder.

P: Vacuum Man
I only just realized there are two Vacuum Men. Oh well. I love the 'brainiac' angle and the CWU-01P looking device in his head, but there aren't any supplements showing WHY the suction should be going to his head over anywhere else, if that's indeed the intent. A design this simple needs to do more work to sell me.

Q: Cactus Man
I'd love to see a Cactus Man someday, but this is way too involved. It reminds me of modern Pokemon design, where Pokemon look busy or strange in still images in service of a very narrow, game context sensitive payoff. The imposing body and transformation mechanics would make him a standout fortress boss, but it's too much for a Robot Master.

R: Veldt Man
Now here's how you do a context sensitive design. The default body still has a standalone 'point' to it, as an elephant abstraction that may take a few moments to parse, but the capacity to expand solves the minor mystery of those cracks on his torso. It enhances, rather than compromises. Holy yap on the lore, though.

S: Juggle Man
Juggle Man is very creative and well considered for gameplay. So why don't I like him more? I think it's the fairly generic body combined with the disembodied head. The package ends up feeling incomplete, insubstantial, in a way most Robot Masters are not.

T: Valve Man
Did they know they were saving the best for last? Valve Man has it all: a resonant concept, thorough gameplay consideration, and the perfect amount of detail. My only nitpick is that he's cheating a bit on the 'suction' concept, focusing on expelling water.

With all the comments out of the way, here are my design power rankings:
Capcom, Hire This Man: Vortex, Valve
One Step from Greatness: Sanitize, Dredge, Flex, Vacuum (I), Cleaner, Vacuum (P), Veldt, Juggle
Needs Another Pass: Battle, Spiral, Osoji, "Tube," Cleanser, Maestro, Recycle, Cactus
Get Outta Here: Vac, Sweeper

My thoughts on the finalists:

Hide

A: Not really much to comment on, in either direction

B: I actually don't like how the art handles the airflow. It comes off as a bit messy with the current transparency, but I also don't think there's much room for a solid white on top of the existing colour set.

C: I never got interested in any of the elephant trunk designs. Probably just my usual biases.

D: I'm not sure how well the full concept comes together. I usually think of spirals in the context of suction/cleaning as rigid cyclone separators rather than brushes.

E: feels like it can't decide whether to go for a warrior or animal theme, ended up with a somewhat awkward mix. Particularly bad since I don't seem to like animal designs.

F: Not quite sure whether the design is supposed to be wood or pottery, but it works well for both.

G: The most obviously a costume over the template, but I do have to give it some credit for having one of the legs be wildly different to go with the asymmetric arms of the prompt

H: The interesting thing here is the valves, but they feel pushed aside in favour of the inflatable gimmick. Maybe he just needs to be left-handed so the big valve is facing forwards in the default position.

I: Design is pretty basic, seems pretty reliant on the companion being a prominent enemy in that stage.

J: Gasmask is nice, but it's obscured by the rest of the uniform. Not much else to talk about.

K: Probably should have stuck with one theme and committed to it. As-is, kind of reads as an existing design quickly refit for the prompt rather than something wholly designed around it.

L: Can't complain about the design being showy on its own, though. Seems like a decent continuity nod to have pink tubing, since Strike and Bounce both associate pink with rubber.

M: I think it missed the "fancy conductor" point on that mustache and kept going. Leave the cartoon villainy to Wily. Other than that, pretty good. I like the woodwind valves on the legs.

N: With how much I eye-rolled at the maid designs before this stage of the contest (including this one, to be honest), I'm surprised to be ranking this one relatively highly. I think the much heavier mechanical parts give the design something else to focus on besides the inherent horniness.

O: Continuity's a bit shaky here. Dude's a Cossack robot so he can be close to Dust Man, but then has Wily's emblem stamped on him when most Wily bots don't? Other than that, it's fine I guess.

P: While I appreciate switching to left-handed, the design does probably need more than that.

Q: It would definitely be funny to have, of all the later-game bosses, a prototype of Glacier Le Cactank running around. Not sure if Capcom would actually implement the multi-route stage concept, which a lot of the design hinges around.

R: Still not sold on the elephant trunk. At least has other aspects.

S: Particularly since it directly mentions Air Man, I wonder if a squatter design without a distinct head piece might have worked better. Probably still works better with a similar concept than any of the capsule machines I've seen.

T: hard to find anything to complain about.

My rankings:

Accept: T, L, F
Accept with Minor Revisions: B, H, M, S, N, G, Q
Accept with Major Revisions/ no comment: A, D, I, J, O, P, R
Reject: C, K, E

 

[ChaosNinjaGaming]

Earlier this week, my dad texted me and let me know that he found a whole bunch of old consoles that we had no clue where they had been.

These include: Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, NES, and SNES.

He's getting cords for some of the consoles. Hopefully they all still work (it has been years since I touched the NES and SNES, and I do not recall touching the Sega consoles)

 

[Karxrida]

Earlier this week, my dad texted me and let me know that he found a whole bunch of old consoles that we had no clue where they had been.

These include: Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, NES, and SNES.

He's getting cords for some of the consoles. Hopefully they all still work (it has been years since I touched the NES and SNES, and I do not recall touching the Sega consoles)

Did he also find any games or did you already have them? Regardless, lots of classics on each system to play.

 

[ChaosNinjaGaming]

Did he also find any games or did you already have them? Regardless, lots of classics on each system to play.

Well, we do have games somewhere, though we already knew where some of those were. For extra clarification, we live in the same house, I was just off at my college dorm for the weekdays.

The Dreamcast has Sonic Adventure 2, some wrestling games, and a demo disc, among other things. The Saturn has a good chunk of games, one being UMK3 (I can't remember everything we have). The Genesis tmk has no cartridges.

I have yet to manually review the NES and SNES stuff, but my dad did just tell me while we're riding home that apparently it's two NESes. Sweet.

 

[Yung Dramps]

If I could vote in the robot master contest and it was ranked-choice I'd go Sweeper Woman first, Vac Woman second and one of Battle or Valve Man third. I really do love Sweeper's sharp, battle armor-looking maid costume and the vacuum bag bun is peak, also the obvious "we need more female robot masters" angle. Vac Woman's similar, I just like the design less. Battle Man is the most out there interpretation of the prompt and hits my preferred aesthetic niche of Robot/Sci-Fi Armor Guy With A Cape. Valve Man just looks rad and a firefighter robot is a great way to tie back into the original idea of these robots being originally designed to help in day to day life. Vortex Man gets an honorable mention for putting in the effort to do a 3D render

Actually on second thought swap Battle Man and Vac Woman

 

[CryoGyro]

Cryo's Retro Games of the Month (Jan '26)

Final Fantasy Origins (PS1)
Week 1: [FF1] Defeat the dark elf Astos

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FF1 is one of few RPGs I jive with. Much like early Pokemon gens, it's mechanically fairly simple but with just enough interesting decision space to make the game your own. Forming a party that can be as lopsided as you want in a small-scope game makes it ripe for self-imposed challenges. Plot is minimal and easily ignored. The raw essence of turn-based RPG gameplay is good and does not need to be tied at the hip to delivering stories and aesthetics largely divorced from said gameplay. That's what other mediums are for, and consistently do better.

To illustrate the modest but elegant party building, let's go over my process knowing I just have to reach Astos, the boss right after the infamous early-game hurdle, Swamp Cave. For my first slot, a Warrior. It's frankly an overpowered class, but that makes it an anchor from which you can play around with your other three slots, taking the brunt of attacks and dealing consistently huge melee damage. There's still progression fun to be had in seeing it multi-hit as soon as level 5. For my second and third, two Red Mages. The Red Mage shines early-game, offering competent melee and tanking on top of all the most important white and black magic. They can't match the late-game peaks of any other class, but that matters even less than usual here. Finally, a Black Mage. My plan was to focus on obtaining tier 3 magic, which offers huge spread damage, for the real boss of this stretch, the 2-4 Piscodemons guarding the critical Swamp Cave chest. While Black and White Mages get more spell casts faster than Reds, it turned out by the time I could afford the magic for all three, they were equally capable of casting it, so this should have been another Red. Either way, we love casting spells.

Preparing for and overcoming the Swamp Cave is like a game experience in itself. Your experience centers around Elfland, which is full of shops with expensive spells and equipment to strive for; gold is even more of a progress gate than XP. You'll spend enough time grinding in the vicinity that you'll gain an intimate understanding with all of the superficially generic enemies. Ogres are the prize you're after, having enough HP to be satisfying to beat on and dropping hundreds of gold when you usually get dozens. Other enemies take risk and time assessment; Cobras are flimsy but inflict expensive-to-cure poison, and Wolves are evasive and attack in huge packs, so they're best run from before tier 3 magic, just to name two. You might instead try your luck at sea, where you may run into even more lucrative pirates and flex your Lighting spells against all the watery enemies, but risk getting paralyzed by eye monsters. Or, you can go further west, where poison is more common but you may find Ogre Chiefs and loot the dwarf cave for even more gold. On this Origins version, the grind isn't even much of a grind so much as thoughtful gameplay centered around a small area. I'm soft on "grinds" in general coming off of so many Pokemon solo runs and Runescape gameplay; there is mastery in executing long-term plans with some degree of uncertainty.

While this Origins version makes battles better paced and improves menuing, it takes some measures to feel 'more like a real RPG' that I don't care for. Creating mandatory cutscenes for a very cut and dry setup and sequence of story events only highlights their shallowness, and town facilities cancel out the pacing improvements elsewhere. Instead of cutting right to cozy little shop menus upon entering buildings, you have to take one performative step toward the counter and speak to the keeper. 'Real' RPGs have designed interiors, so we must force the players to exist in them, however little they matter or better sell an abstraction. Staying at an inn similarly forces you to watch your party get in and out of bed between a slow prompt to save your game, hurting what was previously a snappy but potentially expensive game action that supported your grind. FF1 thrives on its gameplay-first approach, not the simple fact that it was the first in a franchise that would come to define its genre very differently, putting superficial flourishes and production value first. I still consider the NES version the preferable first exposure to this game for its rawness.

Metroid Fusion (GBA)
Week 2: Regain the Speed Booster power

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As a Metroid game, the only thing I think Fusion does outright wrong is subjecting you to so many slow, unskippable monologues followed by chains of three utility rooms with slow transitions. Fusion's perception is a demonstration of how framing matters so much more than reality of experience to a lot of gamers.

Prime 4's structure has a lot of people saying they turned Metroid into Zelda. Here's the brutal truth: Metroid was always Zelda. Even Super; Zelda's early games similarly flirted with openness that millennials yearn for. All Metroid does is more consistently sell the feeling of freedom and exploration. They're both built on offering large spaces full of things you can do, but only one thing you have to do at a given time. Zelda developers have framed this as puzzle box design. While game critique talking heads love to fetishize the idea of games putting player freedom first, you almost inevitably lose punch. The game can't estimate your capabilities with nearly as much accuracy, so challenges and setpieces become flatter. Super Metroid is flat. It only ever outright requires a few items at a given time, and the level design is that much less special for it. Enemies and bosses are present almost out of obligation for spectacle than because they thoughtfully interact with the player's abilities.

I say all this because Fusion is known as the 'linear' one. It puts you in a small area, 'shows you where to go', and you go. This is the 'opposite' of Metroid. While this is a more reasonable perspective when Super Metroid is your only point of reference, examining its sister release of the time, Prime 1, as well as every release after, shows that restricting possibility space was the way forward for Metroid. Fusion did not forget the 'Metroid essence'; it condensed it. It made it a little friendlier, a little more sensible for a handheld experience.

The conceit of being shown 'where to go' gets subverted almost immediately; Sector 1 tells you there are five stabilizers to fix but not where they are. The path is pretty straightforward, but winding and full of side rooms with expansions to discover as well as introductory Metroid problem solving, mainly finding destructible or interactive blocks. Outside of briefings, your agency is fully intact. Sector 2 takes this a step further; the location of the Data Room is marked, but you must find the unmarked Security Room first to unlock it. Once you have, granting you Bombs, the way back is destroyed and you must use your Bombs to delve into a massive, unmapped basement and find your way to the next boss, which holds the Hi-Jump necessary to escape. This whole sequence feels more deliberate and tense than a majority of the Super Metroid experience. You can't tell a story through map design when the player knows they can wall jump up any surface they please. By making the Metroid essence episodic, you avoid stretching the experience too thin.

If you're interested in seeing Fusion with fresh eyes, I cannot recommend the Randovania randomizer enough. You'll notice that the game world is put together incredibly well when you get Screw Attack for shortcuts early, and moving efficiently is a nice balance of engaging and approachable. A run only takes one to two hours; it's the perfect balance of substance and convenience.

Dark Cloud (PS2)
Week 3: Get Xiao as an ally

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I was damn scared when I realized Dark Cloud's structure. Procedurally generated dungeon crawling to enable city building is a marriage of formats I broadly dislike. However, the game takes many appreciated steps to keep things approachable and stress-minimal without eliminating dungeon crawling's core, crucial tension, at least in this first stretch.

Most critically, progress is saved between floors. This keeps the scope of your resource management crystal clear: unlock the next floor. Resources are freely given aboveground but minimal to match, forcing the player to reckon with whether they can handle another floor so the next surface visit is more lucrative. Exploring each floor is more meaningful than the likes of Mystery Dungeon: you must find a key dropped by a random enemy, and to help with exploration you can find a map and a 'compass' stone that locates all objects and enemies, clearly inspired by Zelda. Combat doesn't feel amazing thanks to your sword's tiny reach, but enemies are respectably distinguishable: there are bats that evade with ease, skeletons that sidestep you, golems with super armor, and terrifyingly huge whales on legs that can attack in an area to match. 'Mildly terrifying' describes dungeon crawling well, with how enemies slowly stomp toward you out of the darkness or out of sight.

Town building is fueled by objects and characters you find in capsules in the dungeon. Thankfully, you don't have to SimCity it up; you just have to place a building and find the two-to-six things that belong to it for a reward. There is a specific capsule count on each floor, and you won't be completing a building with just one floor's capsules, encouraging you to push yourself much further than just finding the key and leaving for the surface every time.

I wouldn't have minded playing more; there were training wheels that had yet to come off, and I'm curious to see how the game escalates its difficulty.

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (DS)
Week 4: Earn 500,000 Lifetime Miles and achieve the amber license.

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Kart racing is one of those genres subject to 'monopolized incuriosity.' Mario Kart exists, and Mario Kart is amazing to good-enough for the vast majority of gamers, so every other kart racer is automatically framed as a 'Mario Kart knockoff,' and incredible mechanical space is consigned to living at the hip with cynical IP marketing. In the abstract, this is ridiculous, right? Imagine if Mario was the only platformer on the block for a decade, and games like Metroid, Kirby, and Sonic were lumped as 'Mariolikes' because they have a good number of similarities. Mechanical details matter so much, and kart racing is no different. If you need any evidence that games as an art form have decades yet to grow and be understood, especially divorced from profit incentives, just keep an eye out for genres whose discussion and offerings are stunted because someone got there first and proceeded to dominate the conversation.

So, as you are probably now assuming, S&SASR is superficially 'just a Mario Kart' but has enough going on under the hood to be well worth playing. It's a 2011 game compared to MKDS's 2005, and the technical advancements are loud and clear. Environments are rich, and it all runs perfectly. Item sets are a design space that I wish got more analysis, and this game does things interestingly different: your most reliable offense comes as missiles that are only a speed bump compared to a Red Shell but land unconditionally. First place is incentivized to keep laying hazard items, cycling through until they find the one shield item that can block missiles. In the process, they're contributing to track chaos in a way you wouldn't see from Mario Kart, where you're expected to hold on to your first substantial item for defensive purposes and just hope the unconditional Blue Shell doesn't show up. The last huge difference, and one that seems understated and emergent, is that drift boosts keep charging if you straighten out. This opens routing options way up, and is a mechanic I would have loved to further explore for time trialing if I had more time this week.

As for elements to beware: voice clips are constant and repetitive, a lot of tracks are longer than they need to be, and I hear harder difficulties get unfair, though that may be skill issue on others' part, if the ignorance around Mario Kart strategy is any indication. Still, check it out if you're in the mood for a different flavor of pick-up-and-play racing.

Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
January: Beat the "Sayonara Salvatore" mission

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It's a bit retrospectively silly to say, but GTA is a driving game. As part of the 2010s YouTube kid generation, my impression from GTAV content farm channels was that it sold itself as a general realistic sim for whatever minigames tickled the limited fancy of gaming's lowest common denominator audiences. I didn't know exactly what to expect from III, but I was mildly impressed at its stylized loading screen art, brisk introduction, and first block of missions, which focused on efficient driving. Controls are simple, physics are appropriately weighty, and vehicle types come with the advantages and disadvantages you'd expect. Weaving through traffic, managing sharp corners, and recovering when things inevitably go off the rails are where GTAIII feels most timeless.

Aiding the driving experience are a few bold design choices that could easily be dismissed as 'dated,' but fostered a greater connection than I would otherwise build with such an aesthetically and thematically cynical game. Firstly, your only navigation tool is your minimap. No map screen. Navigation icons are limited to north, your safehouse, and mission starts. During a mission, the latter two disappear and your critical objective is shown. If you're looking for any shop or useful pickup, your only resource most of the time is your own knowledge. Those features can be the difference between a mission being easy or impossible, so you're encouraged to scout out the streets and form a plan like an actual criminal. Liberty City is painfully drab and samey, but the zones are small enough that you start to get a feel for the layout, even without a bird's eye view. Landmarks and cues are subtle, but there. Being restricted to a minimap keeps your focus on the action and roads in your immediate surroundings. There's no room for autopilot on these streets.

Ultimately, though, I'm feeling mixed. Missions quickly become a first-timer's slog, mainly thanks to what happens when you fail. You have to go back to the mission giver to try again; they're usually way on the opposite side of the city. If you die to boot, you're dumped in front of the hospital, where jacking a car can be a pain thanks to the wide highway, fast taxis, and heavy cop presence. It's not like failing is difficult enough to justify the punishment factor either, between how easily mobs of thugs can shred you on foot and how fail conditions are seldom telegraphed or clearly communicated. I've been both too reckless and too cautious in response to what characters tell me. The game quickly became a loop of me spending several minutes on a mission setup, failing spectacularly, sighing heavily, and looking up a playthrough so I wouldn't have to waste another couple minutes of runback over and over. GTA's simulation sandbox nature means there are plenty of interesting emergent solutions, but the overwhelming best one was often one I wouldn't have thought of based on how my mind and the game framed the situation. If you get jumped by a gang in a back alley, you shouldn't shoot your way out with the clumsy camera and lock-on system, you should preemptively squeeze a taxi in there and run them all over. If you're set up for a car chase across the city, you should actually buy a sniper rifle from the next district over and cap the guy as he leaves a building. I wouldn't mind this so much if failure weren't so punishing. When I'm investing a meaningful chunk of time into each attempt, I'm not going to send harebrained experiments.

However, when you engage with old games, you have to accept some amount of learning curve. My understanding is that GTAIII is full of secrets and overpowered options, and my own experience with series like Pokemon and Mega Man has told me that to really stick with you and be worth revisiting over and over again, there needs to be some number of 'gotchas'. They encourage you to come back better and take pride in your ability to get through things faster and faster. So, I'm not going to hold my problems with GTA against it much. I get the feeling the experience gets way better once you've unlocked the full game world, and the missions are just the 'early-game' that vets can tear through. The demand for games to be totally smooth the first time is borne from modern context, where games need to compete for attention more than ever and players are coming in with internet-informed, shackling notions of what 'good game design' looks like.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

Fusion's perception is a demonstration of how framing matters so much more than reality of experience to a lot of gamers.

I really don't know what people think they want out of Metroid as a franchise. The base opinion by a majority of superfans seems to just be that super is a perfect game (or certainly the best game), and in that light every other game is just not good enough because it isn't super metroid.

But what is it that people are looking for? Is it an 'open' map structure where you can wander to your heart's content? Super metroid is praised for this 'open' structure but the game has a defined, ABCD path that you are intended to follow. And in fact one that the vast majority of players ARE going to follow. This is no different than...EVERY metroid game, ever. There is always an 'intended path' to progress the game though unlocking progress checkers.

After dread had been around for a few months, I found my own rhythm with the item order (involving a couple 'sequence breaks') that I know naturally and I use for my replays of the game. I've honestly forgot how I'm supposed to get the items in the 'intended order' in that game. With Super Metroid I also use a couple sequence breaks to speed up my playthroughs, but I still have the 'real' game memorized.

I swear, people discussing Dread talk about 'sequence breaks' like they're a BAD thing. Once news about them being built into the game design came to light, with the developers talking about how they designed the map with these ideas from the start, it's like people didn't think it was interesting any more. Fusion has the same "problem". The sole "sequence break" in the game has an acknowledged cutscene. It's also pretty difficult to pull off. People really enjoy FEELING like they outsmarted the game in some way. But if you go back and analyze super metroid, are you REALLY that smart for figuring out you can wall jump before the game teaches you? Every game is filled with gameplay nudges to teach you how to play. That's how basically every video game works.

I saw some critique from Dunkey on fusion that 'people' say fusion is too linear, but he can't figure out the map. And then talks about how fusion is filled with rooms where you have to puzzle solve to find the "one block that lets you out" or whatever, deeming these "metroid moments". The comments are full of people saying they despise metroid for the inclusion of these things.

So what is it that you want? I'm sure if super metroid came out today you'd have the same bunches of complaining. In fact we DID see complaining by a game reviewer getting stuck progressing through early dread, who served as an excellent target for gamers to feel like they accomplished a task said reviewer could not, thus making them very smart. But you can't have 'feel smart' moments without intentionally designing linear checkpoints into your puzzle game!

It's like people can't decide whether they want metroid to be a puzzle game or a platforming game. Fusion somehow manages to make both of these camps angry simultaneously. I think Fusion is probably my least favorite of the 'good' metroid games (I hate samus returns and metroid 1) but it's still phenomenal to play. It still has the needed metroid elements (exploration, isolation, equipment expansion). Come to think of it a couple of those elements are why I think I never got too much into zelda. But anyway my first metroid game was hunters on the DS, which has some pretty big differences from the rest of the metroid games. And yet still manages to incorporate metroid game design, in my opinion...? So again what is it that people are looking for?

Here's the brutal truth: Metroid was always Zelda

Until BOTW changed the zelda formula, right?

 

[GatoDelFuego]

I think I'm only supposed to vote for 1 so cleanser man takes my pick. One eye covered makes it seem not as flamboyant as others might think. I think they just look cool. I really like the color balances and making a "cleaning robot" have eye-catching bright colors lines up way better than having it be a grey / yellow generic hoseman design.

I think a lot of the designs are pretty solid after giving a good in-depth read through. I think dredgeman is the best use of a suction arm that isn't strictly "suck up trash". I think having some level of creativity is important at this point of mega man boss design. We just don't need designs that offer only one idea on first glance. Valve man is a likely top contender and it looks great.

I really hate Maestro Man; it feels like they had a design idea waiting and tried as hard as possible to make "suction arm" work with what they had. What the hell is "maestro spike". I also think the creator of Vac Woman needs to be placed in an asylum.

 

[CryoGyro]

I swear, people discussing Dread talk about 'sequence breaks' like they're a BAD thing. Once news about them being built into the game design came to light, with the developers talking about how they designed the map with these ideas from the start, it's like people didn't think it was interesting any more.

A lot of modern semicasual game critique comes down to this: players want to dominate a game. They care (or at least think they do) about what they can do to a game, and not what the game can do to them. Climbing up nearly any wall in the game with a very forgiving set of inputs trivializes things in a way that feels organic to the player, unlike 'we put a launcher here because we know you can get Bombs before Kraid, wink wink'. The game blatantly beat you to the punch on that one. Nominal resistance, maximum payoff. That's the standard of current mainstream game design.

It still has the needed metroid elements (exploration, isolation, equipment expansion).

I just wanna remark on 'isolation' because that's another talking point Prime 4 brought to the forefront that I think was always an ideal, not a reality. Metroid feeling lonely is the exception, not the rule. Even when you don't have a CO or an encyclopedia at your fingertips, you have lively worlds filled with creatures you build a relationship with over the game. They're your neighbors, and you learn to live with them or ignore them. The tension between Samus's preference for independence and the necessity of cooperation is even a core theme in multiple games. Lifelines are plenty. True danger is rare. Metroid is immersive, but a connection to the greater world is rarely far.

 

[Karxrida]

I would like to extend an ironic congrats to Octopath Traveler II for finally pissing me off enough to make me ragequit, which hasn't happened to me in years. And at the final boss!

Fucking garbage game and waste of 70 hours.

 

[Karxrida]

Needed a break from RPGs so I started Super Mario Galaxy as a palate cleanser. While I played the game before back during the Wii days my family somehow never got around to owing it, so I didn't get a chance to beat it.

I'm enjoying it so far, but it's just weird to play with a standard controller. Only complaints are that Mario feels like he has no horizontal speed and isn't super snappy to control. Maybe I'm too used to Sunshine and Odyssey.

 

[lilyhollow]

https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxfHOVbxysiQYgjBfT7e7Tk4CtzErlkPUH

A cool UNI clip. Seth is just the best, I feel that his gameplay captures the 'spirit of what it is to be an assassin' better than any other fighting game character I know of.

 

[Karxrida]

Just beat Super Mario Galaxy. Didn't expect to be done so soon lol. Regardless, good game with a top-tier soundtrack. Not gonna go for 100% so I can move on to something else, plus I still think the movement is too sluggish to find enjoyment out of that kind of run.

 

[RainWaiv]

https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxfHOVbxysiQYgjBfT7e7Tk4CtzErlkPUH

A cool UNI clip. Seth is just the best, I feel that his gameplay captures the 'spirit of what it is to be an assassin' better than any other fighting game character I know of.

FACT: the average seth player has had to apply carpal tunnel cream the exact same amount of times as they have whiffed j.623b

 

[Karxrida]

Konami is having a wholeass redemption arc between a new Castlevania and MGS4 finally being freed from PS3.

 

[Mr. Uncompetitive]

Konami is having a wholeass redemption arc between a new Castlevania and MGS4 finally being freed from PS3.

Me Gato and Cryo were talking about it, but I'm honestly pretty ehhh on the Castlevania announcement.

Curse of Belmont looks good as a game, but it does not look like a Castlevania game. It's got way too many particle effects, and an overreliance on the SoulsLike style of exaggerated attack wind-ups and roll dodges, neither of which are really a thing in IGA's Castlevania games let alone Classic. Same goes for this angular stylized 3D art. Castlevania has always been about intense spritework or at least, when it goes 3D, a darker and moody gothic imagry (think the PS2 games or even Bloodstained). I don't really get any of that from this. In fact, this game feels more like Dead Cells 2 than a new Castlevania, and hey, I like Dead Cells well enough, but Castlevania it is not.

To be clear, I'm not like disappointed or anything, because I seem to be the only person who remembers Haunted Castle Revisited, the actual comeback Castlevania game, and that game was very fun and way more faithful to Castlevania even if it was very short. So when I hear people say "NEW CASTLEVANIA GAME WE'RE SO BACK!!!" I'm just like "We? Castlevania's been back. Who's we? Like Nintendo Wii?"

Actually you know what, the new Legacy of Kain game that got announced looks more Castlevania than Curse of Belmont with its more conservative artstyle, use of pixel art, and simpler gameplay, like what are we doing man.

(yes i am working on game reviews, i'm just lazy and they're getting pretty long, one of them is pretty much gonna be a giant essay and analysis piece)

 

[Chico the Parakeet]

There are so many players and even developers that have detracted from Konami for their shenanigans. The independent scene has put out so many good alternatives including from said developers. The pain and scorn Konami spawned is still present.

Having spent too much time on social media, I’ve seen more people want Konami to shrivel up and die as opposed to win back their fans.

 

[Sugarbear]

I recently bought Sonic Racing Crossworlds.

I like the graphics, I like that it feels more arcade-y and hardcore than Mario Kart, and I like the look of the cars - most look like they came from Mad Max. As with most Sonic games the music is amazing, some of the best in the series. The jukebox is another great feature.

However, the item stuff is just so unbalanced. I haven’t had 1 race where I haven’t been hit by something, and online if one thing hits you you can drop from 2nd to 9th with one item hitting you, which does make it feel really unfair. The Silver Surfer build is broken. It would be fine if the invincibility either a: didn’t happen, b: consumed rings or c: didn’t work in the straights. But invincibility in any big corner or long straight is way too OP.

Overall I’d give it 7/10

 

[RainWaiv]

Me Gato and Cryo were talking about it, but I'm honestly pretty ehhh on the Castlevania announcement.

Curse of Belmont looks good as a game, but it does not look like a Castlevania game. It's got way too many particle effects, and an overreliance on the SoulsLike style of exaggerated attack wind-ups and roll dodges, neither of which are really a thing in IGA's Castlevania games let alone Classic. Same goes for this angular stylized 3D art. Castlevania has always been about intense spritework or at least, when it goes 3D, a darker and moody gothic imagry (think the PS2 games or even Bloodstained). I don't really get any of that from this. In fact, this game feels more like Dead Cells 2 than a new Castlevania, and hey, I like Dead Cells well enough, but Castlevania it is not.

To be clear, I'm not like disappointed or anything, because I seem to be the only person who remembers Haunted Castle Revisited, the actual comeback Castlevania game, and that game was very fun and way more faithful to Castlevania even if it was very short. So when I hear people say "NEW CASTLEVANIA GAME WE'RE SO BACK!!!" I'm just like "We? Castlevania's been back. Who's we? Like Nintendo Wii?"

Actually you know what, the new Legacy of Kain game that got announced looks more Castlevania than Curse of Belmont with its more conservative artstyle, use of pixel art, and simpler gameplay, like what are we doing man.

(yes i am working on game reviews, i'm just lazy and they're getting pretty long, one of them is pretty much gonna be a giant essay and analysis piece)

Part of the issue a lot of people have with modern Castlevania is that for 99% of people, their frame of reference regarding "What makes a Castlevania game", let alone "What makes a GOOD Castlevania game?", is comprised of 2 games: Symphony of the Night, and Aria of Sorrow. This is, of course, a very reasonable standpoint to have, seeing as they are both more or less the undisputed peak of the franchise and some of the best games to come out on their respective consoles (the PS1 had a LOT of good games, SOTN being one of them, but i'm really hard pressed to think of a GBA game as good as aria).

The reason this causes an issue with the perception of Castlevania as a franchise is that they won't make a better game; more specifically Konami is too unwilling to experiment with anything new that whatever they release is either going to have the public reception of "cool gimmick I guess" or "oh hey it's just SOTN with a different map how original". In essence, every Castlevania game is going to fall flat because even if it's a good game compared to AAA projects nowadays, it's always going to be compared directly to some of the greatest games ever made.

The degree of experimentation necessary to make a new and good vania is far more common in the indie scene, anyways. You get stuff like ender lilies, which although I haven't played, seems like a pretty fun game, and Hollow Knight, which is one of the best selling indie games of all time, and for good reason.

 

[Yung Dramps]

Looked at a screenshot of Dragon Quest VII Reimagined and it got me thinking about how awesome a videogame made to look like rankin-bass stop motion would be. It'd be a great art style for a turn-based RPG or cozy farming sim

 

[CryoGyro]

Part of the issue a lot of people have with modern Castlevania is that for 99% of people, their frame of reference regarding "What makes a Castlevania game", let alone "What makes a GOOD Castlevania game?", is comprised of 2 games: Symphony of the Night, and Aria of Sorrow. This is, of course, a very reasonable standpoint to have, seeing as they are both more or less the undisputed peak of the franchise and some of the best games to come out on their respective consoles (the PS1 had a LOT of good games, SOTN being one of them, but i'm really hard pressed to think of a GBA game as good as aria).

The reason this causes an issue with the perception of Castlevania as a franchise is that they won't make a better game; more specifically Konami is too unwilling to experiment with anything new that whatever they release is either going to have the public reception of "cool gimmick I guess" or "oh hey it's just SOTN with a different map how original". In essence, every Castlevania game is going to fall flat because even if it's a good game compared to AAA projects nowadays, it's always going to be compared directly to some of the greatest games ever made.

The degree of experimentation necessary to make a new and good vania is far more common in the indie scene, anyways. You get stuff like ender lilies, which although I haven't played, seems like a pretty fun game, and Hollow Knight, which is one of the best selling indie games of all time, and for good reason.

It doesn't have to be the best Castlevania game ever, but it has to recognize what made Vania special, and all I'm seeing is a game struggling to distinguish itself from the stagnant crowd. You have this bungee whip mechanic, which looks engineered to skip enemy and level design interactions in the name of 'domination' (maximum reward for nominal effort) on top of enabling finicky spike wall platforming, haven't seen enough of that right guys. You see next to nothing from the enemies in general, other than a couple dead simple skeleton archers avoided by simply continuing to move the way you already were. You see a painfully bland map screen that's afraid to both be abstract (players hate having to do some of the navigational work) and give too much detail away (players love to feel smart). You see an emphasis on ''''epic'''' boss fights, a reflection of an epidemic of fight design that needs to blast to the player 'this is the cool part you gush about on Reddit' the first time over having lasting fun on repeat after repeat by knowing when to reign in the scope and theatrics.

Castlevania has been a tight platformer where limitations breed intrigue. Castlevania has been a lite-RPG playground of weapon options. All this Castlevania looks to be is digestible for Steam Gamer expectations. It's more afraid of being rejected than it is of failing to live up to the name.

 

[Mr. Uncompetitive]

Guess who's back for more GAME REVIEWS!!!!!!

I didn't finish that many games in 2025 (around a dozen give or take a few depending on what we want to count as "beating a game") but it turns out I have a lot I want to say about the games I did finish, and many of them were pretty long and meaty games (got back into JRPGs this year!). I have plenty of reviews in the drafts, but I really like to yap about games and give my thoughts! So I'm going to gradually release reviews for the games I finished in 2025 (and maybe 2026 as I play them) when I get time and feel comfortable with posting them.

Unfortunately, I'm going to start with the games that I enjoyed the least out of the ones I finished (finished being the keyword, there is another game that came out in 2025 that I haven't yet but I outright dislike...we'll get to it when we get to it). Be aware that the next reviews will be a lot more glowing and positively passionate, there is one game in particular I'm REALLY excited to talk about, but...this was what I finished first, and I want to start somewhere.

Without further ado...

---

NUNCHUCK FUCK! ​

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Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (1993)
Developer / Publisher: Sega
System: Genesis; has been ported to just about every console from the last two decades (I'm playing on an original cart)
Completion Notes: Beat the game on default settings (1CC; did some live grinding on Stage 6 for my own sanity)

To get some context on the Sega Genesis's place in gaming, I would suggest reading my preamble on the console in my Phantasy Star IV review (still very proud of this one :3c)

The Sega Genesis is a really underrated system, which sucks since it ends up getting easily buried in greater gaming discourse, but it results in the Genesis being IMO the best retro system to collect for when it comes to price vs game quality. All of the "really desirable games that didn't sell millions of copies" are in that somewhat reasonable $45-70 range, any Sega published game outside that group (of which there are a LOT) is like $10-30, and there's maybe 10 games that go for $100+ (all of which you can live without) while the SNES has like 60 of them (which includes Lufia 2, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and every Mega Man besides X1).

The Genesis was very much a console in the right place at the right time. With arcades still booming, the Genesis tried to focus more on bringing the Arcade experience home, a philosophy that also reflected in the kinds of games on the system. While the SNES focused more on making more expansive and content-rich games, which obviously aged better consider how gaming tastes have developed since then, the Genesis was the cheaper console that focused on shorter games that were much flashier, intense, and often harder; many of the killer apps on the Genesis don't even have unlimited continues, let alone a save system.

Sure, the SNES was the stronger system in most aspects: Colors, music that used samples, and complex graphical effects possible through Mode 7, but the Genesis had a much faster processor, hence the slogan "Blast Processing". This actually worked well to the Genesis ideologies: They want fast, hard, and flashy games, and a fast processor that minimizes slowdown is extremely helpful to have. A prime example of the Genesis's advantage can be seen in Shmups. The limited scope of these games already makes them a poor fit for the types of games that fit the SNES ideologies, but then you combine it with a much slower processor that resulted in far slower and laggier gameplay. Meanwhile, Shmups absolutely flourished on the Genesis. Similar stuff happened with Run n Guns and arguably even sports games. Hell, even the Genesis sound chip fit into this ideology. It was far less intuitive than the SNES's, but when used properly, it could actually do rock and electronic music a lot better than the SNES; genres that, surprise surprise, go really well with intense action games.

Hailed as one of the best action games on the Genesis (a system well known for its 2D action), there's no denying that Shinobi is a fantastic game aesthetically for 1993. I didn't even think too hard about the graphics when I was playing it or writing much of this review, because it just feels so natural, with colors that find a great balance between "realism" and "brightness", detailed background, and intricate and large spritework. The soundtrack too is pretty good. Far and away the best song in the game is also the most popular, Whirlwind; for as short as the song is, that gorgeous square wave sound backed by some excellent Genesis Guitars make for a song that is equal parts beautiful and kickass.

The levels early on are a lot of fun, focusing on you blitzing through them with your speed and quickly taking out enemies. And there is no denying that Shinobi III has fantastic game feel. Attack-wise you can use your limited ammo shurikens or your surprisingly good melee options. There's a sword attack which automatically gets used in place of the shuriken if you're within a close enough range of an enemy, and a dive kick that hits hard and bounces you on it, making it a pretty fun and safe move. The jump and running feel appropriately weighty to match those big sprites, and while it is very laggy and not particularly useful, there's a charging dash slash you use whenever you get close to an enemy's range during a run. All of these attacks also have fantastic sound design, so even if the shuriken is a smart option, you always want to mess around with the other attacks just from how satisfying they are to land.

And of course the bosses are good. Sure, they can get repetitive and bulky, but the spritework is as excellent as ever, the boss attacks are big but very readable, and the fact that they have very particular hitboxes means you still get plenty of opportunity to experiment with your movement and attack options. Finally, while the game is challenging and having limited continues and no saving is a shame...that's just the style of the Genesis, and honestly this game is pretty managable; if you're okay with losing all your progress anyways whenever you shut off a game without saving, then you will eventually work your way towards being able to clear this one.

But damnit dude, this game just doesn't come together in the end.

To begin my uh...exploration of the issues I have with this game, you know how I said that the jump is cool and weighty and epic? I was a bit misleading, because this game also features a double jump.

Unfortunately, this double jump BARELY FUCKING WORKS AT ALL.

There is a very specific window in which you can input the double jump (it's a good number of frames after you leave the ground, but BEFORE the top of your jump arc so it just feels really awkward) and missing the window will lock you out of it until you land, not to mention its pretty floaty and it sometimes doesn't give you horizontal momentum if you mess up the input. The input timing and overall feel of the jump is kinda like that of the Space Jump (or Walljumping in general) in Super Metroid? I'm admittedly not big on the Space Jump either, but the difference is that Super Metroid is an exploratory MetroidVania set in space with pretty large margins for error and very few, if any, instant death areas. So floaty and weird jumps are fine enough to throw off the player's sense of weight, and using the space jump to struggle up through a tall area really makes you FEEEEEL like Batman (specifically the part when he has to climb out of the cell in Dark Knight Rises). But Shinobi 3 is supposed is to be a fast-paced 2D action game with higher action difficulty, precise movement, and instant-death hazards ala Ninja Gaiden, or something out of the Inti Creates or Treasure catalogue, or, hell, many other Sega games, so this style of double jump just doesn't work at all. Even still, this isn't really a big deal at first because most of the game doesn't really expect you to use the double jump...that is until Stage 6.

Suddenly, the game has a setpiece of you navigating a collapsing ravine by climbing up rocks (for another movie reference, it's like that one scene in Kung Fu Panda when Tai Lung has to climb out of a pit by jumping on falling stalactites). The screen is autoscrolling downwards, so if you take too long or miss a jump and find yourself stranded at the bottom, you instantly die. In an Inti Creates game, this setpiece would be pretty hype (if maybe a smidge frustrating from screen inevitable screen crunch), but it sucks total fucking balls here because, for the first time, you absolutely need the double jump due to how wide the jumps you have to make are (lest you get insta-killed) and it's just not reliable at all.

Hell, the quality of the level design in general just dives off a cliff at this point. Sure, there were some early warning signs and the flaws really start to seep in as you keep having to repeat the levels upon getting a Game Over: Stage 2 is mostly autoscrollers, half of Stage 3 is still pretty empty lab outside of some brain enemies that love to hop around, Stage 4 (seen above) is a very long platforming section that takes place at a boring waterworks with some pretty annoying screen crunch and enemy placement that can careen you into pits. Stage 5 starts off with a cool section where you have to fight through a horde of enemies, but it then has you wandering and waiting around while setting off bombs to break platforms so you can progress through these big walled-off screens. (which feels a bit too slow and gimmicky for an action game that clearly wants you to play fast and loose). Like, idk, is there really a point to level variety when the quality base gameplay gets shafted and the gimmicks are clearly inferior? But while all of those levels seem annoying on paper and are, admittedly, pretty unremarkable when you have to keep replaying them, in practice they were all still fun enough in the moment because there were still lotsa enemies to fight and lots of area to do fun movement, climb on walls, kill enemies, and so on.

The rest of Stage 6 is...yiiiiiiiiikes. It's a door maze ala a Bowser Castle in a Mario game that can easily send you into loops if you take the wrong one, and the level is filled with spike hazards, tight corridors, and tricky platforming, but not nearly as many enemies as one would hope. There are tons of stupid "gotcha" doors that sent you allll the way back to the beginning, a lot of the traps are basically unavoidable so you find yourself constantly taking damage, and theres even a few instant kill hazards to boot. It's not particularly hard, especially once you know where to go, but it is blatantly unfun since the whole time you're just bumping into spikes and barely engaing in combat.

​

And then the finale Stage 7 is somehow even worse? It's pretty much devoid of enemies and is largely a platforming gauntlet, again in some very tight hazard-filled spaces that don't give you a lot of room to just mash your movement for fun and instead require very precise platforming in a game with a double jump that hardly works. This includes a ton of leaps of faith, tough last minute jumps on crumbling platforms right before you hit a checkpoint, floors and walls covered in electricity that damage you and can mess you up...seriously, why on earth is THIS the way you want to end the game? What happened to the enemy hordes and combat? What happened to balancing between shurikens, sword attacks, and divekicks? The fact that I'm talking about the earlier levels as "warning signs" despite the fact that I still found them fun should clue you in on how bad these last two levels are: They're so bad I start to question if the rest of the game was any good.

Even so, you might be wondering, with all of my whining and with all the supposed difficulty I am saying I had with the final two levels, how exactly did I beat them? Well, the answer is twofold.

Firstly, this game implements the most tried and true way to patch up annoying frustrating difficulty in a game

INFINITELY RESPAWNING EXTRA LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!​

All of the most really annoying segments in Stage 6 and 7 feature a 1-up that you can get pretty easily, meaning you can't really lose all of your lives and then finally be given the permission to shut off the game. But why stop there!? Stage 6's 1up is not only easy to access and respawns upon death, it respawns...WHENEVER YOU ENTER THE FUCKING ROOM! Remember, this is a door maze. So screw it, give this game the finger and just mindlessly grind lives right before the finale. The segments of Stage 6 you have to go through to pull this off are honestly pretty trivial since you also get health items on this route to cover any damage you will take, not because it's particularly hard, but because it's such a mindless affair in such a tight space that you will inevitably get yourself hit but never come close to dying. After grinding up to like, idk, 15 lives, I figured I'd be set for Stage 7 (Shinobi 3 does not have infinite continues).

The second piece is one last combat item I haven't mentioned yet: The ninjitsu techniques. These are special moves for which ammo is extremely scarce; you automatically refill your ammo to 1 upon respawning from death or from starting a new stage, but getting any more ammo is very rare, even rarer than 1-ups. You can only use each ammo on one of these special techniques. There are four techniques that you can swap between on the pause screen, and two of them are just very powerful attacks, absolutely not worth wasting ammo on. What really matters are the other two options.

The first of these is called Ikazuchi, which gives you an electric shield that prevents you from taking damage. This shield is based on damage taken rather than on a timer, so it effectively serves as a means to extend your health bar and is very handy for boss fights and segments where you get swarmed with enemies...oh right, that never happens because the final levels barely have any enemies :/

Where this art really gets to shine is the final boss, who is atrociously difficult and bulky. A big problem with this boss is that you are simply not nimble enough to be able to dodge the aggressive attack patterns that this boss throws at you, especially given how long this fight goes on for. And for some insane reason, this fight only has one really long phase. Like, technically it's multi-phased in that boss switches up attacks halfway through? But nothing else changes about the fight aesthetically or in offensive strategy, the whole time you basically have to barely dodge/space out of the boss's attacks or tank the hit, after which you can get some hits in of your own. So when you do finally beat him, it just doesn't feel remotely satisfying, because it's just a slugfest against the same enemy for a few minutes and then suddenly the game ends. But that's assuming if you beat him, which is nigh impossible as is given how much health he's packing; I've come into this fight with a dozen lives, and I've lost every single one.

So what if we throw Ikazuchi in the mix? There's a power-up that gives you a more powerful shuriken you can get right before the final boss, but you lose the powerup if you take any damage. With Ikazuchi enabled, you can actually keep the powerup for as long as the shield is and deal massive damage to the boss, enough that you should be able to comfortably finish the job once Ikazuchi wears off. Now of course, the power up goes away permanently when you die and you don't get another chance to pick it up, so if I managed to fuck up and die on this attempt I would have been stuck on the boss and feel like I wasted two hours of my life when I inevitably ran out of lives and continues (though I guess in that case I could've tried the powerful attack ninjitsus), but that's just how it is man. In fact at that point, since you don't really get healed before the final boss, I'd recommend just intentionally dying in that final screen (which, to reiterate, is a lame hazard-filled autoscroller with no enemies) until you're able to enter with full health and the powerup. You grinded all those lives earlier after all.

Oh, and the second ninjitsu art? It's called Fushin, the manual says this ninjitsu "lightens the body and drastically improves your jump height."

This ninjitsu makes your default jump go as high as a double jump (while still letting you double jump if you want)

This ninjitsu is AN ITEM THAT FIXES THE BROKEN-ASS DOUBLE JUMP

No words.

I still can't deny I sorta enjoyed my time with this game when it wasn't actively frustrating me and when I wasn't thinking too hard about the bullshit it was throwing my way? It sits in the same boat as Link to the Past for me: A game that is great for much of its runtime, but it just has such a fuck-awful endgame where all of its issues to a head that it ultimately leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I still hesitate to call this game good, and by no means is it one of the best games in the Genesis's action library. If you're new to the Genesis and looking for a kickass 2D action game, go play Castlevania Bloodlines instead; Alien Soldier, Gunstar Heroes, X-Men 2, and any of the Sonic games should also do you good. I haven't played much of it yet so it could also have a terrible endgame for all I know, but Rocket Knight Adventures might also be a better option when it comes to "fast-paced 2D Action Platformers with a mix of melee and ranged combat" on the Genesis

5.5/10 (Alright)
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And yes, I did buy Art of Vengeance, hoping to play it at some point this year even if I find the gameplay trailers as bit questionable.

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Actually, some of the games will have short reviews. So I'll tag them onto the end of each of these longer posts as a BONUS REVIEW!!!

Today on "Wait, I Played That Game?"

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Die Hard Arcade (1996)
Developer / Publisher: Sega
System: Arcade, Sega Saturn (Played the Arcade version with my brother at PAX East)
Completion Notes: Credit fed through the game on co-op

This game is actually not a Die Hard game in Japan and was instead an original title called Dynamite Deka, making it the predecessor to the Dreamcast game Dynamite Cop.

Did you read my Dynamite Cop review? Yes? Well, this is the same fuckin game.

It's not bad and is kinda fun in the moment, and certainly has some charm in the silly shit the game throws at you and the awful voice acting, but man is it mindless and surprisingly forgettable once you're done. Like a Dinnertime Youtube Video.

5/10 (Alright)​