AJ's Games Beaten 2021:1. Machinarium
Switch eShop2. Pikuniku
Switch eShop3. Sonic Generations
XBox 3604. Neutopia
Wii VC5. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
PS46. Coca-Cola Kid
Game Gear7. Gunstar Heroes
Game Gear8. The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey & Minnie
SNES9. Sonic Mania Plus
Switch10. Mickey No Tokyo Disneyland Daibōken
SFC11. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky
DS12. Yakuza 0
PS413. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Switch14. Soleil
Mega Drive15. Stranded Kids
GBC16. Great Greed
Game Boy17. Crystal Warriors
Game Gear18. Madou Monogatari I: Mittsu No Madō-kyū
Game Gear19. Biomotor Unitron
NGPC20. New Pokémon Snap
Switch21. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
PS322. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
PS323. Command & Conquer: Red Alert
PS124. Ape Escape
PS125. Ys Seven
PSN Vita26. Shinobi SMS *NEW*27. Probotector
NES28. Tetris Attack
SNES29. Magical Pop’n
SFC30. Bubble Symphony
Saturn31. Sexy Parodius
Saturn32. Toree 3D
Switch eShop33. SEGA AGES Herzog Zwei
Switch eShop34. Lego Builder’s Journey
Switch eShop35. Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
Switch eShop36. Later Alligator
Switch eShop37. Mario Party 2
N6438. Gate of Thunder
PC Engine CD39. Mushihimesama
Switch eShop40. Toejam & Earl: Back In The Groove
Switch41. Shining Force III
Saturn42. Rayman
Saturn43. Panzer Dragoon Saga
Saturn44. Mother 3
GBA45. Drill Dozer
GBA46. bit Generations: Boundish
GBA47. bit Generations: Soundvoyager
GBA48. bit Generations: Digidrive
GBA49. bit Generations: Dialhex
GBA50. Densetsu No Stafy 2
GBA51. Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire
GBA52. Manx TT Superbike
Saturn53. Klonoa: Empire of Dreams
GBA54. Shining Wisdom
Saturn55. Layer Section
Saturn56. Shining The Holy Ark Saturn *NEW*
57. Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak GBA *NEW*
58. Christmas Nights Into Dreams... Saturn *NEW*
59. Burning Rangers Saturn *NEW*
60. Capcom Arcade Stadium: Progear Switch eShop *NEW*
61. Pokémon Brilliant Diamond Switch *NEW*Shinobi
This is a very late review, as I actually beat Shinobi in July – I just accidentally missed it from my list until now. Shinobi is the Master System version of the famous Sega arcade game, but like many games of the era, it’s not a port but rather it’s own thing. Gameplay is still similar – you move through levels throwing shuriken to defeat enemies and rescuing children held hostage. You can leap to higher ground on some levels – sometimes this is a background layer, sometimes it’s a higher floor you need to go to to progress. Gone though are the one hit deaths – you now have a health bar to work with. Level designs are also different, and rescued hostages now give you rewards in the forms of power ups or point bonuses. Learning which hostages give what rewards can be key as any weapons they grant overwrite what you currently have – even if they’re worse
The game is considered a classic on the system and I get why as it’s challenging and ambitious, but I didn’t love it. It sets up nicely for the superior Mega Drive sequels but this entry still feels rather clunky to play. Bosses are very challenging too, especially the very tough final boss. It’s worth a play if you have the system, but there’s better games for Master System in my eyes.
Shining The Holy Ark
I’ve been working through many of the Saturn Shining games this year, and Shining The Holy Ark was the last English language release I got to. A follow up of sorts to the Mega Drive game Shining In The Darkness, this is a first person dungeon crawler. The game is more ambitious than it’s predecessor though, with a more involved story and multiple locations to explore rather than one long dungeon. You start with a party of 3 characters (which is how many Darkness had) but eventually build up to 8 team members who can be swapped in and out freely in battle, which gives you a lot of options.
The game has a very distinct graphical style which works but definitely feels dated, with prerendered characters and enemies over 3D environments. As a Golden Sun fan, I really enjoyed seeing how these earlier games led to that games style and this game really embodies that the most, with similar party set-ups, graphic styles, instrumentation and HUD elements.
The game is challenging without being frustrating, but you will need to make multiple dives into dungeons early on as your resources deplete over time – your MP pool in particular is very limited for healing until a good way into the game. This I think is one of the games biggest flaws – you’re limited to 3 party members for a good half of the game, and then the 4th party member is your only addition for quite some time too. The later party members come a bit too late I think, and the benefit of their MP, inventory space and attack power would have been felt more early on. I also think characters are poorly balanced – Melody is objectively worse than Akane when you get her because she learns mass healing spells far too late, and Forte is underwhelming due to joining very underlevelled and being multi-target magic focused in a game where MP resources are limited and most enemy encounters feature one high health enemy – physical attacks are just better.
Still, whilst it’s not perfect I did enjoy my time with the game. I personally prefer the simplicity of Shining In The Darkness overall, but this is a solid follow up and a nice RPG option on a system that wasn’t particularly flush with them. Worth a play. As a side note, this was game 7 on my mission to beat 10 of my unfinished Saturn games.
Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak
As I wrote last time I updated, I’m working through one console and one handheld library at a time trying to beat 10 unfinished games for each (or all of them if I have less!). Hamtaro Ham-Ham Heartbreak was my 10th and final GBA game for this goal, and I feel like I finished with a pretty solid option. Hamtaro Ham-Ham Heartbreak is a sequel to the excellent GBC game Hamtaro: Ham-Ham’s Unite, and is an adventure game based on the Hamtaro anime series. You might expect the quality of these games to be low, but you’d be incorrect as they’re excellent little adventures. They were actually published by Nintendo, which is a surprising but worthy endorsement of their quality.
In the game you play as Hamtaro, a hamster who must stop an evil Hamster named Spat who is attempting to ruin everyone’s happy relationships by generating misunderstandings. To achieve this you must solve puzzles by communicating with many other hamsters and learning ham-chat, words and actions that can be utilised to gain new outcomes. Sometimes the meaning of the word will unlock different dialogue options – you might tell someone they look ‘dazzlie’ to compliment them) which give other new terms, and sometimes the accompanying action will allow you to do something – such as ‘Gogo’ which allows you to ride on vehicles. Finding the words and utilising them in the right place is the main game mechanic.
Hamtaro and his friend Bijou team up this time to try and reunite the hamsters whose relationship has been torn apart – these range from couples who think the other doesn’t like them any more, siblings who are annoyed at each other, or even just friends who feel they’ve been lied to. Each time you reunite couples in an area, you drive away spat to somewhere new, or earn new phrases that will help you progress elsewhere. The game has a pretty good hint system you can use when stuck in the form of a sleeping hamster at your home base who gives hints what to do next.
The game isn’t perfect – the actions can be quite time consuming to try, and some actions need repeated a lot and can be annoying to pull up from a menu each time. The game is slow paced and there definitely could be some streamlining – I don’t need to select ‘hif-hif’ from a menu and watch a sniffing animation everytime I want to pick an item up.
But the game is super charming, the puzzles are fun and it looks fantastic. I think this is a great game for GBA and would happily recommend it, but the GBC release probably just edges this one out as it’s less linear. Why not play both?
Christmas Nights Into Dreams…
This title isn’t one of my 10 saturn games to beat, but I decided to play it anyway because hey, it’s was Christmas. I’ve beaten Christmas Nights in the past, but my save file was long since lost, so I played through it again to unlock all the ‘presents’ in the game, which comprise of bonus features and modes such as art galleries, a karaoke version of the Nights song, and a playable Sonic the Hedgehog mode.
Christmas Nights is mainly a demo, it features the first stage of the main game playable but with the aforementioned unlockables. Depending on the date when you play, different stuff happens, with snow in the winter, hearts for Valentines Day and a playable Reala (the bad Nights) on April Fools day, but obviously, the main draw is the Christmas mode in December, which replaces graphics elements with Christmas items – stars, trees, santa in the background and more. It also adds a (god awful) story with (god awful) narration that is quite charming. Beating the level as both characters gives an ending and a new a cappella version of the Nights theme too.
After each play, you get to open presents – this is a pair matching game where getting 2 of the same item unlocks it, with the number of guesses depending on your ranking. Unfortunately some Reala icons are in the mix and instantly end the mini-game and I had terrible luck with these and got them first time every time. Luckily, cleared icons remain removed in future, so by playing enough you will eventually get them all!
Christmas Nights is a fun little bonus that is better remembered perhaps thenthe content would justify. However, as a free demo there’s no denying it offered a lot more than you’d expect, with all sorts of cool features that didn’t even make it into the main Nights title. It’s worth a quick play each year to get in the Christmas spirit, but maybe don’t try and get all the presents at once like I did. Spring Valley gets a bit tiresome on your 20th play in a row!
Burning Rangers
Burning Rangers is a game where you play as a firefighter in the future, one fo the titular Burning Rangers. The Burning Rangers job is to go into facilities on fire and rescue civilians inside, as you would expect for firefighters, but the tools they use for the job are much more high-tech. As well as a jet packs they can use to hover, boost and double jump, they also use laser cannons which trap fire in the form of energy crystals. These crystals are used to power the transporter tech you use to rescue survivors, as well as serving as your health. Burning Rangers is developed by Sonic Team and uses the sonic health system – getting hit whilst you have crystals will make you drop them all as they scatter everywhere, but you won’t die as long as you have at least one crystal left.
Burning Rangers is 3D game on Saturn, which means it has a lot of technical hurdles to overcome. It’s a pretty nice looking game for the system, although there’s definitely still technical issues with quads disappearing if they overlap the edge of the screen and seams showing between them. That said, the game has some nice transparency effects and similar which show off the Saturn in ways that it’s reputation would suggest weren’t possible. Navigating with the d-pad isn’t too bad, but the floaty jumps in combination can make platforming fiddly. Luckily, this is rarely going to cost you health or life, with the exception of one brutal platforming sequence in the final stage that you should take very very carefully, as one drop will likely cause you to die and send you back to the beginning of the very long section.
Burning Rangers main gimmick is the voice navigation – despite some excellent music in cutscenes and menus, the actual levels contain no music – just ambient sound to create atmosphere. Your navigator, Kris, directs you around the level, telling you where to go. You can dial in for directions at any time too. Sometimes it’s good to ignore Kris though, as going the wrong direction often leads to hidden survivors to save.
The game only contains 4 levels, but it wants you to replay them for better ranks. Ranking is based on speed of clearing the level, speed clearing the boss, the number of energy crystals collected, the number of survivors rescued, and the % damage to the facility (based on how quickly you put out fires). Upon beating the game for the first time, you can replay levels and some of the routes through the stage may change, meaning navigation will be important. Rescued survivors will send letters to you, sometimes containing passwords you can use to play as different Burning Rangers on other levels which is a fun bonus.
Burning Rangers is objectively not amazing. It’s mechanics are interesting but unpolished, the game is way too short at about 1.5 hours long (especially for the current asking prices only of well over £100) and it’s all just a little bit janky. But dammit, I really liked it. I can’t in good faith recommend it for the price, but I don’t regret buying or playing it myself, it’s really unique and fun.
Progear
ProGear is a game I first played in an arcade in London. The arcade has long since shut down (I wrote a thread about it way back when I first discovered it though!) but this was my favourite game I played there. I’d never heard of it before then, but this is actually a side scrolling bullet hell shooter by Cave, one of their earliest titles, which was published by Capcom for arcades. I’ve played the game once or twice since then at other arcades, but until recently, this hasn’t been possible to play on home consoles. When it was launched on Switch as part of the Capcom Arcade Stadium on eShop, I was glad to finally be able to pick it up and play it whenever I like.
I credit fed my way through this one before Christmas, and I had a good time. The game is a real visual spectacle, a nice looking game with lots of waves of colourful bullets to boot. What I didn’t remember about the game is how bloomin’ hard it is though. I might have been playing on different settings in the arcade version, but I went in on Normal on switch and got my ass very thoroughly kicked. This one would take me a while to beat legit, for sure.
Still, I love the game and it’s one I’ll come back to play frequently. If you’ve not played it and you enjoy bullet hells, I’d definitely give it a play. The pacing and design just feels so right to me, and it’s stuck with me far longer than other similar games. Progear is great.
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond
I don’t really know how to review this game. I’m a big Pokémon fan, and I guess I should start by saying I had a good time with Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and I enjoyed working through it. Like all Pokémon games it’s fun to build your team, the music is great and it just has a nice relaxing feel to playing it. This is not a bad game.
But it is a very disappointing game that I feel represents a lot of mis-steps for the series. As a remake of Diamond and Pearl (aka the worst games in the main series) it doesn’t do enough to build on or improve on the originals. This is a ridiculously faithful remake – the wild pokemon are the same (only 150, making options feel very limited), no pokemon from later generations are usable, no items from later generations are here, the artstyle tries to represent the originals accurately. This is Diamond and Pearl, again. The question is…why? We already have Diamond and Pearl. In fact, we also have Platinum, a game which already fixed many of the issues of the originals 15 years ago, and whose improvements have not been adapted into these remakes for no good reason.
That’s not all though. Ignoring bugs from the game being rushed, the art-style is very divisive. Personally, I think it looks OK in-game but bad in cutscenes – but I also would have liked to see the world of Sinnoh from a new perspective, not the same as before. They also incorporated a handful of mechanics from Sword and Shield in a frustrating and non-optional way which I hate – the exp.share item is always turned on and results in your team being overlevelled as the game isn’t balanced for all the extra experience it offers. Affection mechanics are unavoidable and cause your pokemon to avoid attacks, survive hits that would KO and shake off status effects, giving you unfair advantages that feel like they remove some skill and challenge. To counteract these I used 2 teams of pokemon who I alternated each gym to ensure I didn’t overlevel, and I used bitter healing items only to make my pokemon hate me, but both were imperfect solutions and I ended up overlevelled several times and had affection mechanics impact me on multiple occasions.
Brilliant Diamond is a fun game and I like it. But it represents a growing feeling that Pokémon is a series that needs to be given more time and more effort – a franchise this big shouldn’t feel like it’s regressing in quality, but it very much does. I hope Legends Arceus in January represents some big steps forward, because the lack of options for players, the lack of recognition that many of the fans are older and want more challenge, and the lack of ambition in scope and design of the games is starting to show, and fan feedback represents that.
