First 50:
1. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Switch
2. Alex Kidd in The Enchanted Castle Switch
3. Streets of Rage Switch
4. Vectorman Switch
5. Galaxy Force II Switch
6. Flicky Switch
7. Phantasy Star 2 Switch
8. Sonic the Hedgehog Switch
9. Altered Beast Switch
10. ESWAT: City Under Siege Switch
11. Columns Switch
12. Virtua Fighter 2 Switch
13. Kirby Star Allies Switch
14. Katamari Damacy Reroll Switch eShop
15. Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee! Switch
16. Octodad: Dadliest Catch Switch eShop
17. Sword of Vermilion Switch
18. Decap Attack Switch
19. Golden Axe Switch
20. The Revenge of Shinobi Switch
21. Beyond Oasis Switch
22. WarioWare Gold 3DS
23. Shining in the Darkness Switch
24. Kid Chameleon Switch
25. Streets of Rage 2 Switch
26. Bio-Hazard Battle Switch
27. Super Thunder Blade Switch
28. Gain Ground Switch
29. Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom Switch
30. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Switch
31. Comix Zone Switch
32. Vectorman 2 Switch
33. Light Crusader Switch
34. Crack Down Switch
35. ToeJam and Earl Switch
36. Dynamite Headdy Switch
37. Golden Axe II Switch
38. Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi Switch
39. Columns III: Revenge of Columns Switch
40. Shining Force: The Legacy of Great Intention Switch
41. Kirby No Kirakira Kizzu Game Boy
42. Klonoa Wii
43. Looney Tunes Collector: Martian Alert! GBC
44. Mario Tennis N64
45. Fire Emblem Warriors Switch
46. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [Randomiser] N64
47. The New Zealand Story SMS
48. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana Switch
49. Shenmue 2 Dreamcast
50. Castlevania GBA
2. Alex Kidd in The Enchanted Castle Switch
3. Streets of Rage Switch
4. Vectorman Switch
5. Galaxy Force II Switch
6. Flicky Switch
7. Phantasy Star 2 Switch
8. Sonic the Hedgehog Switch
9. Altered Beast Switch
10. ESWAT: City Under Siege Switch
11. Columns Switch
12. Virtua Fighter 2 Switch
13. Kirby Star Allies Switch
14. Katamari Damacy Reroll Switch eShop
15. Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee! Switch
16. Octodad: Dadliest Catch Switch eShop
17. Sword of Vermilion Switch
18. Decap Attack Switch
19. Golden Axe Switch
20. The Revenge of Shinobi Switch
21. Beyond Oasis Switch
22. WarioWare Gold 3DS
23. Shining in the Darkness Switch
24. Kid Chameleon Switch
25. Streets of Rage 2 Switch
26. Bio-Hazard Battle Switch
27. Super Thunder Blade Switch
28. Gain Ground Switch
29. Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom Switch
30. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Switch
31. Comix Zone Switch
32. Vectorman 2 Switch
33. Light Crusader Switch
34. Crack Down Switch
35. ToeJam and Earl Switch
36. Dynamite Headdy Switch
37. Golden Axe II Switch
38. Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi Switch
39. Columns III: Revenge of Columns Switch
40. Shining Force: The Legacy of Great Intention Switch
41. Kirby No Kirakira Kizzu Game Boy
42. Klonoa Wii
43. Looney Tunes Collector: Martian Alert! GBC
44. Mario Tennis N64
45. Fire Emblem Warriors Switch
46. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [Randomiser] N64
47. The New Zealand Story SMS
48. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana Switch
49. Shenmue 2 Dreamcast
50. Castlevania GBA
51. Mario Party N64
52. ActRaiser SNES
53. GoldenEye 007 N64
54. Mom Hid My Game Switch eShop
55. Money Puzzle Exchanger Switch eShop
56. Gunbird Switch eShop
57. Tokyo School Life Switch eShop
58. Musynx Switch
59. Gremlins 2: The New Batch NES
60. Subsurface Circular Switch eShop
61. Yoshi's Woolly World Wii U
62. ToeJam & Earl: Panic on Funkotron Switch
63. Bare Knuckle III Switch
64. Gunstar Heroes Switch
65. Space Harrier II Switch
66. Sonic Spinball Switch
67. Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium Switch
68. Sonic 3D Blast Switch
69. Rabbids Go Home Wii
70. Alien Storm Switch
71. Alien Soldier Switch
72. Untitled Goose Game Switch eShop
73. Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole Switch
74. Fatal Labyrinth Switch
Bare Knuckle III
Streets of Rage 3 is a game I’ve had since I was a kid, and whilst I’ve always liked it OK, It’s definitely my least favourite game in the series. The reasons for this are fairly well known I think – a change in style for the soundtrack, weird recoloured sprites and more importantly, overly difficult gameplay. But a few years ago I finally sat down and played Bare Knuckle III, the Japanese version of the game, which resolved many of my issues. Honestly, the soundtrack has never bothered me too much, despite liking the first 2 games far more, but Bare Knuckle 3 was a much easier game, with a more coherent plot, and no weirdly recoloured sprites. I actually said in my review at the time that I found the game much more satisfying and rated it very highly based on that version.
And so when it came time to play the game again for the Mega Drive Classics collection, I decided to take advantage of the fact the collection has selectable regions for this game and play through the Japanese version again. But this time, I didn’t come away feeling quite as positive as before. Don’t get me wrong, the game is still far superior in it’s original form, but a second playthrough had me picking up flaws I hadn’t noticed before.
First of all, the game somehow lacks impact compared to the first 2 games. I think it’s partially to do with the speed – Bare Knuckle 3 is far faster than the previous 2 games, even accounting for the fact I’m used to playing them at 50hz. Your punches combo much quicker than before, and that results in a few changes – enemies react quicker out of being hit to accommodate for the increased speed. But this means that there’s less of a pause both between you throwing punches and enemies reacting them – it makes it feel like you’re slapping them with a feather because they don’t seem to flinch from impact. The sound effects too seem to be a bit weaker, less bone crunching than before. This might be compounded by some audio lag I noticed. I suspect this is actually throughout the collection, but this game was one of the few where I noticed that sounds weren’t matching up accurately with actions – a common emulation issue, but I wonder if this game was more impacted than others for some reason.
Secondly, the fact remains that even with the improvements, Streets of Rage 3’s level design isn’t the best. It’s not bad per se, but it often relies too much on level gimmicks that are fun first time round, but become irritating the more you encounter them – stuff like the trains coming along on one stage – fine when you can move between tracks, but annoying on the section where there’s only one track and you have to halt momentum to duck for cover every time a train comes. Other examples include the animal traps in stage 6, the bulldozer in stage 3 – these things come up a lot. The bosses also all have similar annoying traits of not being that different – they all seem different but fundamentally have the same challenge – they’re hard to hit because they move faster than you, and they have ways to throw you off when you do start comboing – Shiva, the samurai clones, Mona & Lisa and the robots in the final stage all suffer from this. Even Roo and Bruce the clown, the mini boss from stage 2, have elements of this.
So overall, I don’t feel quite as positive about Bare Knuckle 3 as before. It’s still a revelation if you’re only used to playing the western version of the game, but the fact remains that SoR2 is a much stronger title regardless. It’s fun, and a classic of the genre, but it still lives in the shadow of it’s predecessor a little too much.
Gunstar Heroes
Gunstar Heroes is a game I have played to death before, so I know it’s a high quality title already. So I was looking forward to sitting down with it once again as part of the Sega Mega Drive Classics collection.
And unlike Streets of Rage 3, I don’t have any new insights or perspective on the game. Gunstar Heroes remains the fantastic experience it has always been – fast paced, frantic and eclectic, with exciting setpieces, challenging bosses, fun changes of pace and so many options of ways to play – even if I do tend to fall back to my old standby of double flame fairly often.
It truly is amazing how much of a masterclass of game design Gunstar Heroes feels all of these years later. It’s a game that truly shows off it’s systems hardware, without compromising the gameplay experience or feeling too gimmicky. Each stage offers up something new and different whilst again not distracting from the fun of it’s core run ‘n’ gun gameplay. It’s also reasonably challenging whilst offering it’s players lots of leeway due to lots of health (which increases the further into the game you are) and options of which level to take on next for the first 4 stages.
No game is perfect of course, and I always found the spaceship stage to be a bit underwhelming, especially as it can throw you for a loop depending on weapon type – for example, my favoured flame/flame is verstatile at hitting all around me in run n gun mode, but very inflexible and short range in the shmup stage, as are most of my other favourites - meaning I normally end up swapping weapons before and after that one stage to prepare appropriately. I also feel like some boss fights are better than others, and the final boss isn’t one of the good ones.
But overall, it’s hard to deny that Gunstar Heroes is still phenomenal. It’s one of the best games on Mega Drive (certainly top 5 material for me), my favourite run n gunner of all time and one of Treasure’s very best – and that’s a high watermark indeed.
Space Harrier II
Spacer Harrier is often regarded as a true Sega Classic. One of Sega’s line of super popular super scroller arcade games, it’s lauded for its music, graphics and fast paced gameplay. Sega clearly has a love for it too, and I’m sure many a Sega fan feels a beautiful nostalgic rush when that familiar voice of ‘Welcome to the Fantasy Zone. Get Ready!’ plays out. And so, as someone who regards themselves as a huge Sega fan, I of course am a huge fan of the game too.
Except actually, no, I’m not. I can’t stand it. I think it’s cheap, repetitive and not much fun to play. I respect it for it’s place in time, and I think it’s better than other similar titles (Afterburner is a dire experience, fight me), but I also think it’s a flawed genre that wouldn’t actually become fun until 3D games took over and made it easier to actually see how far away things were and not have your vision be blocked by your character (aka Starfox good, Space Harrier bad). I also think Space Harrier has even been surpassed by other games of a similar vein by Sega themselves – the Arcade versions of Thunder Blade and Galaxy Force II are much better for example.
However, the Mega Drive ports of both of those games were supremely lacking, with the 16 bit hardware unable to match the sprite scaling depths of those much more ambitious titles, and so, whilst not expecting much, I chose to leave Space Harrier 2 until last of the 3 to beat for the Mega Drive collection. Surely the Mega Drive could offer up something more comparable to such an early arcade title, as opposed to the more complex Galaxy Force or Thunder Blade.
And, to be fair, I was right. Space Harrier II is still far from matching it’s arcade predecessor, but it is a much closer match than the other rail shooters on the collection. The sprite scaling is still very choppy, but the lack of 3d effects, shifting speeds or changing depths makes it much more approximate overall. It’s a shame then, that I still just don’t really think the gameplay holds up. You fly through 13 levels, shooting enemies whilst dodging obstacles – the enemies, their projectiles and also environmental hazards.
Environmental hazards remain the sticking point – due to the shoddy scaling and their large size, sometimes they flick up to the next size sprite and hit you in a place that you had no real way to tell was safe. I fundamentally think the flawed scrolling makes an already flawed premise worse. The music is utterly forgettable in this mega drive sequel too, which takes away the one thing I kinda liked about the original.
The game has 13 levels, but you can play the first 12 in any order. However, you must finish all 12 in one run to unlock level 13, and I wasn’t going to play for days to achieve this, so I have to admit to making use of the save state and rewind features of the collection for this one. I have no regrets, because I have no intention of every playing this one again. I actually think I slightly preferred the much maligned Galaxy Force port more, and I would rate this game near the bottom of the collection alongside such dirge as Super Thunder Blade and Kid Chameleon (and please, lets not start that debate again!).
Absolutely pass on this game, it’s not worth it at all. Play one of the myriad ports of the arcade game if you absolutely must play Space Harrier, but my recommendation is just to sack it off, listen to the soundtrack of the arcade game on Youtube, and play a good game instead.
Sonic Spinball
Back in the day, as a kid, I was a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan. I owned Sonic 1, Sonic 2 and Sonic & Knuckles, but I was always curious to try out the other games in the series – however, my game purchasing was very limited – all my games came from a local market stall, and most of them were within a tight price range that meant I often couldn’t afford some games I wanted. I remember at various times turning down games like A Link to the Past for some other rubbish because it was too pricy. Anyway, as a Sonic fan, I was keen to play other games in the series too – Sonic 3 especially, obviously (always just out of my price range when it was there), but also Sonic Spinball and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. I was very close to buying Spinball a few times, but it was always unavailable when I had the money to spend, so I actually never bought it.
To this day, I still don’t own a physical copy of the game for original hardware – the reasons have changed though. Back when, it was about money and availability, but I’ve long since had the means now. However, as an adult and with access to the internet, I have had a lot more access to information about the games quality, or lack thereof. I’ve also had the ability to try the game a few times over the years, which suggested that those opinions were accurate. And so I’ve not been looking forward to getting to this game on the collection.
Sonic Spinball takes Sonic and throws him into a pinball game of sorts. It aims to combine elements of the Sonic games with pinball, which in theory should work pretty well – after all, springs, bumpers and pinball flippers have been recurring elements of Sonic stages since the very first game, so it’s not much of a stretch to essentially make whole levels out of the mechanics. And that’s what they do – each of the game’s stages features you exploring the multiple sections of the level searching for chaos emeralds. Once you have found enough emeralds in each stage, you can advance to the boss area and take on Dr. Robotnik to beat the stage and move on. At some areas of the table, you’ll be able to interact in a different way – for example, you may be able to move around on foot as sonic briefly, steer a minecart down a track or propel sonic upwards with air by pressing the button. The concept of this is all pretty neat, and I could imagine it being a lot of fun.
I say imagine, because ultimately the game’s flaws are not in concept, but execution. It’s weird to me that this game both manages to feel like a flawed pinball game, with heavy, awkward physics and angles that are too hard to hit reliably, but that it also manages to feel like a flawed sonic game too – sonic’s movement is INCREDIBLY stiff and his jumping is atrocious when on foot too. Honestly, the pinball physics in the actual sonic titles are far superior despite not being made for a pinball game, and it’s beyond me why they didn’t use those in the first place. It really hampers the enjoyability of the game.
And wow, you sure can tell this is an American Mega Drive game! I’ve heard a lot of American’s online recently talk about euro-jank – the recurring weirdness seen in lots of European games of the era – stuff like shmups with enemies taking way too many hits, and games with one hit deaths and deadly water drips – and I actually think some of that is fair (although there’s plenty of amazing Euro games from the era too that I feel get unfairly sidelined in those discussions) but as a counterpoint, this sure is American jank. You know what I mean I’m sure. Everything is heavy in movement, stiff to control and covered in a 90s comic book filter of looking way too edgy and dark. This doesn’t feel like the world of Sonic the Hedgehog -it’s nothing like the tone, atmosphere or environments we’ve seen in the other games up to this point (and yes, I know those were developed in America too sometimes – but US-jank is equally not across all games of the region in the same way as Euro-jank.) And as the final nail in the US-jank coffin, it of course uses the atrocious GEMS engine for music. Admittedly, it’s one of the better uses of the engine out there, but it still feels a bit like if you played the legend of Zelda theme using only the ‘meow’ cat noise from Mario Paint – the instrument holds back the composition regardless.
Overall, I didn’t hate Sonic Spinball. Some of the ideas in the mechanics and the levels were decent, and the music managed to be decent despite the GEMS engine. But it was held back by flawed execution, mediocre physics, and a tone and atmosphere that just didn’t fit Sonic the Hedgehog at all. Probably one to pass on in my opinion, but I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who does enjoy it.
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium
Phantasy Star is a series that I’ve not had the greatest time with on this collection. It’s never been truly awful (although 2 came close…) but it’s been consistently underwhelming compared to the quality of the first game. 2 was grindy and lacking in meaningful story or character development, with twisty, frustrating dungeons full of tedious dead ends. 3 was unpolished and felt a little rushed – it never really utilised it’s core concept very well, and it was a but mindless, and easy. And so, I wasn’t super excited to get stuck into the 4th game, despite many people telling me that it’s not only the best in the series, but one of the best RPGs of it’s era, able to stand toe-to-toe with the competition on Super Nintendo. But it was next on the list, so I gave the game the benefit of a doubt, and jumped in. Hopefully the positive opinions were right on this one.
The first thing I noticed in the game was an improved focus on story. We meet Chaz and Alys, our heroes, and are introduced to their occupation as hunters, fighters who help people by solving problems and defeating monsters. We get introduced to the quest they’re currently on to investigate a university basement full of monsters, and get an insight into their characters. In the first 3 minutes of the game we learn more about Alys and Chaz than we learned about almost the entire part of 2 and 3 in 20-40 hours. The cutscenes play out with comic book style pop up pictures and they look pretty great for the system. The graphics in gameplay aren’t quite as impressive, but it’s still a step up from what came before and it’s appreciated.
The improved story continues throughout – we get introduced to our various characters with enough time for them to develop a motive for joining us, and these are often called back instead of promptly forgotten like in PS2 and PS3. If there’s one thing the game gets right compared to it’s predecessors, it’s this. The game includes some emotional moments and some surprises, even some callbacks to earlier games, including the black sheep of Phantasy Star 3.
Gameplay wise, there’s so new battle mechanics, although the core principles are generally the same. However, the new mechanics are interesting – aswell as the usual techs which use TP to cast (aka magic) each character also now has skills, battle abilities which can be used a limited number of times between healing at inns. These often offer more powerful battle abilities or character specific healing or support abilities and become your main tool for boss battles. As you level up, you get more and more uses, and later in the game you will use these way more than spells. You can also set up auto-battle macros, which can be utilised to instantly cast a set of skills without having to manually input them – you can set up 8 of these to save time in bosses, although you’ll sometimes get irritated resetting them when your party swaps out. Casting certain spells in combination one after another can also combine them into a single powerful spell, but this mechanic was not used much by me – I found that it was normally easier to use skills, as the combo spells could be disrupted if an enemy moved between them, often resulting in a handful of weaker abilities being used instead.
I had a great time playing through Phantasy Star 4, and compared to it’s predecessors it’s a big step up. The story is much improved and feels more crucial to the experience now, and the gameplay is more interesting and involved too. Some characters felt a little over or under powered (Gryz for example was useless…) but it never felt too problematic. Dungeon designs weren’t super exciting but they also weren’t packed with dead ends like 2 or super short like 3, and the game was not overly grindy. It also manages to nicely tie up some of the story elements from the previous 3 games to make the series feel more unified. So overall, I agree with a lot of people’s thoughts that Phantasy Star 4 is a pretty great game, and potentially the best in the series (I still think PS1 might be the more impressive entry for it’s time, but 4 has definitely aged better.
What I don’t agree with though, is that this game rivals the best the SNES has to offer. Apologies if you think otherwise, but I think this opinion is delusional. Phantasy Star 4 is a solid game with improvements to plot, gameplay, graphics and music, but compared to the stuff Squaresoft was putting out at the time, it’s still feels outdated. Even a game like Final Fantasy V, which is often regarded as quite weak storywise, has, I feel, more developed characters and more frequently steers the plot, whilst also having a much more interesting and in-depth battle system, and much superior graphics and sound for gameplay (if not cutscenes). Phantasy Star 4 is good, but it feels like a game that’s finally caught up to what it’s predecessors should have been – and in the meantime, it’s competition has long surpassed that.
Phantasy Star 4 is a game I enjoyed, and I’d recommend it to people to play. However, it can be a bit pricy these days, and if you’re going to spend that money on an old RPG, there’s plenty I’d recommend first. If you’ve played the likes of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy already though, and want another great RPG to fill your time with, you could do a lot worse than this.
Sonic 3D Blast
Here’s another game I’ve beaten before. Sonic 3D: Flickie’s Island was a game I had as a kid but never really got far into it. I played through the first couple worlds, but always had problems with the perspective by the time I reached the more challenging levels from world 3 onwards. I beat the game years later though, and at the time I commented that it was better than it gets credit for. So going into it again for the collection, I figured it’d be enjoyable enough.
Sonic 3D Blast (the collection includes US roms, so I’ll use the US name) is an isometric platformer starring Sonic. Now, that instantly presents problems right away, with basic each part of the description. First off, Isometric is a bit of a dirty word in general, but it becomes worse when you remember I played this portably on the switch – a console with no true d-pad, just 4 buttons that serve that function. This caused a few issues on occasion as it made hitting diagonals a little tricker than it should have been. Secondly, platformer – isometric platformers can be a nightmare with it hard to interpret your movement in the space accurately. Luckily, this is one of those isometric games where up actually moves you upwards, not diagonally, so it wasn’t as confusing as it can often be. There’s also fairly decent signalling of platform positions with shadows, although some later levels still caused problems, especially in areas with vertical wall climbing. Lastly, of course, this game stars Sonic, a character who moves fast, which makes for some challenging when trying to navigate the isometric space. This one, whilst not completely debilitating, is definitely something the game never quite manages to overcome.
See, Sonic 3D is quite a slippy game – sonic moves at speed, and with the 8 way movement he can slide about quite a bit. The game requires precision when jumping on platforms, yes, but even more so when trying to jump on enemies or power up monitors – I ended up making far more use of the roll manoeuvre to roll into enemies rather than narrowly missing my jumps over and over. There is a power up that helps with this by granting Sonic his now standard homing attack, but this is a temporary shield and isn’t reliable, so it can be a real problem to keep. This lack of precision is especially frustrating in boss fights, where it can feel a bit janky whether you hit the boss or not.
The lack of precision can also be a pain when dealing with the titular (in Europe at least) Flickies – birds you must rescue to progress, with up to 5 in each section. These act like the Flickie’s in..er.. Flicky, in that they tail behind you in a line. The line can be used to help grab power ups in springs as it stretched above you, but otherwise they are a liability – if a bird gets hit, that bird and any following it will scatter requiring you to gather them up again, which can be a pain as they often run into hazards, off cliffs and more. If Sonic himself gets hit, all of the birds scatter, as well as all of your rings – which disappear way too quickly, meaning you could potentially lose your birds, your rings and your life all in quick succession.
But despite it’s flaws, Sonic 3D Blast just about pulls it off. It’s far from a perfect game, but it’s playable and fun in it’s own way too. It’s not a bad looking game by any means, but it’s a bit basic due to the pre-rendered enemy look and the basic gridlike environment reinforcing the isometric aspect. However, it’s soundtrack is excellent, and clearly I’m not the only one to think that because parts of it are reused in later games such as Sonic Adventure.
I’d never suggest that Sonic 3D Blast is a must play game, but for the price it goes for these days, it’s worth a punt to see what you make of it. I think it’s a flawed title, but not a bad one. I enjoyed replaying it well enough.
Rabbids Go Home
Here’s a bit of a combo breaker, with a game that’s not part of the Sega Mega Drive Classics collection. Rabbids Go Home is a game in the Raving Rabbids series for the Wii, and it seems like it’s a game that has been utterly forgotten over time – or perhaps just outright ignored since the beginning. See, when Mario & Rabbids: Kingdom Battle came out, there were a lot of people exclaiming in surprise that this was the first ‘good’ Rabbids game. Now, regardless of whether you agree on the opinions about the Rabbids mini-game collections being bad, that seems a little unfair to this title, which got pretty good reviews across the board back when it came out in 2009 – in fact, it has a solidly respectable 78% on Metacritic, with a notable number of 80%+ reviews too.
Rabbids Go Home has a very different premise to the mini game collections that came before it. The Rabbids are all living in a dump, where they live out their days playing music, dancing and shouting BWAAA. They seem to be building a tower out of the rubbish, and it becomes clear that their goal is to use this tower to get to the moon, where, based on the title, I guess they’re from? Maybe? It’s not really clear. But anyway, it becomes clear that you don’t have enough stuff to pile up to get to the moon, and so the rabbids go on a quest to gather more stuff and increase the pile. You play as 2 rabbids, one in boxer shorts and one in a thong, with a shopping trolley. Thong rabbid pushes the trolley around whilst boxer bunny screams at stuff and throws stuff into the trolley. You’re assisted by the cannon rabbid, a y-front wearing rabbid you can shoot at stuff out of the wii remote, and the rabbid band, a group of musician rabbids who help you gather stuff up and provide a music accompaniment.
The gameplay is hard to describe, but it’s somewhat of a combination between a driving obstacle course and Katamari Damacy – you drive the trolley through the level, crashing into objects which then get thrown into the trolley as you go. Later in the game you get the ability to drift, granting boosts Mario akrt style which you can use to jump gaps, as well as the ability to drive on water. Boosting also can be used to attack things, but shaking the wiimote also makes you shout BWAAA which serves the same purpose. This can be used to break some things to make ramps, find other items inside, or blast the clothes off of people to add to the pile. As you progress, you’ll also come against forces out to stop you which equire you to beat them in battle, normally by hitting them in the back but sometimes via other means. The game is linear – it’s not open and freefrom like Katamari.
The game likes to mix things up between stages – levels feature unique gimmicks which are sometimes revisited, but help keep things fresh. Examples include a level where I road a jet engine through an airport sucking up people and obstacles – luckily this is a silly game so people just got spat back out in their underwear instead of vaporised. There was also a level where I needed to keep up with a moving truck so I could steal the cow in the back, a level where I used a critically ill patient in a breathing capsule to float through the air, and a level where I chased an intern on a moped through security pass sections before the time ran out. It’s some nice variety, and it keeps things interesting, although by the end of the game things had started to get a little repetitive, even though it was still fun. There’s a surprising amount of content here, and the game lasted me a good 14 hours or so.
The game has a really bizarre style to it that was both endearing and baffling. There was obviously some toilet humour and silliness, but also some things which felt surprisingly off in terms of tone, although enjoyably so – some of which I already mentioned. First of all, your main rabbid wearing a g-string is already rather odd for a kids game, but considering you basically strip every character you encounter in game down to their underwear too, it still feels oddly inappropriate. There’s some dark turns too, like the terminally ill patient you keep kidnapping in his breathing machine to add to the pile, as well as some dark humour – I laughed out loud when I screamed BWAAA at a man investigating a lift shaft and he tumbled down it head first. There’s definitely some humour aimed at adults too, with the people in the environments commenting some amusing stuff when being chased or stripped, a favourite of mine being ‘my pass was in thereeeeee….now how am I gonna sign out to go home!’ in an office.
The game is visually pretty nice for Wii – models are simple but this is to accommodate there often being a lot on screen, and the environments still look clean and colourful besides. The soundtrack is a massive unexpected treat though, with a bizarre mixed of licensed elevator music (Rivers of Babylon for example…?!) and the rabbids own band music, which is a wonderfully eclectic Balkan swing which I HIGHLY recommend listening to – check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2yRBCvgWgM&list=PLduYc1zY4gJVC5ix4woa2pykJA7m_l4nt&index=4&t=0s
Overall, it can be a bit repetitive, and a few moments later in the game were a bit frustrating, mainly when too many jumps were needed in a row, but Rabbids Go Home is a pretty great little title for the Wii that is unfairly forgotten in my eyes. It’s fun, eccentric and pretty unique, and considering how stupendously cheap it goes for now (I got my copy for £1.50) it really should be a must own for any Wii collection.
Alien Storm
Now we’ve had our break for Rabbids, it’s straight back to the Mega Drive collection for Alien Storm. Alien Storm is a beat-em-up for the Mega Drive with a sci-fi setting – the earth has been set upon by an alien menace, and it’s up to you to stop them. Somehow, this is a game I’ve ended up playing a few times over the last few years, but that’s not too big a problem, as it’s a fun enough title.
Alien Storm is a very simple feeling beat-em-up. It kind of reminds me of Golden Axe but sci-fi in a way, but in actuality, the gameplay is perhaps even more simplistic. There’s far less combos to utilise here, no jumping attacks or animal to ride or anything like that. Just a few simple attack strings, a roll button which can be used for quick escapes or for running tackles, and a bomb button which uses some of your energy bar in return for a screen filling attack. Energy also powers your weapon, so running out is a real hazard.
The most interesting thing about Alien Storm is the way it changes up gameplay every so often, either via a running section or a shooting section. The former are less frequent and less interesting – essentially you sprint forwards and can hammer the shoot button to defeat enemies in your pass. A later boss fight uses this mechanic and is interesting for it as it asks you dodge by jumping too. The shooting sections are far more interesting, set up like shooting galleries where you can destroy not just the aliens but the environment too, revealing health pickups and extra energy. These are not super indepth either, but the balance of the shooting and beat em up sections ends up making the game better than the sum of it’s fairly mediocre parts.
The difficulty of the game is pretty high, and it honestly feels like it goes on a bit too long for what it has to offer, but Alien Storm is generally a pretty fun title. It’s not something that should be played too regularly (I’ve definitely had enough of it after beating it for the 3rd time in about 18 months) but it’s a pretty harmless good time to break out now and again. And the credits sequence features some really goofy animation that I love too. Worth a try.
Alien Soldier
I’m a big fan of Treasure games, as I’ve said on multiple occasions before. I have played and adored Gunstar Heroes, Guardian Heroes, Bangai-O, Ikaruga and many others, and I find them to be unique and interesting and of high quality in general. However, of their Mega Drive output, there’s a few games I hadn’t really tried – McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure, and Yu Yu Hakusho for example, but also another notable non-licensed title – Alien Soldier.
I’d given Alien Soldier a brief try once before, and I was very confused, and I died instantly. It’s not a game that fucks about, that’s for sure, and I actually would recommend looking up a bit about how to play before diving into this one – there’s so much to learn here and it takes a while to click – but it’s easier if you go in knowing some of the tricks ahead of time.
The game has a really long and complicated story involving cybernetic animal mutants and psychic children being murdered and clones and it’s very complicated. But then, this is trying to be a complicated game too. Alien Soldier is a game made by Treasure and aimed at really hardcore gamers. It features intense actions sequences, complex multi-part bosses and some complicated mechanics and it’s really out to impress. As it says on the title screen: “Visualshock! Speedshock! Soundshock! Now is the time to the 68000 heart on fire!”. And it’s out to burn you too, with it’s 2 difficult levels – SuperEasy (read: hard) and SuperHard (read: incredibly hard). They’re similar but have key differences – health recovery is lower on hard for one, which makes a fundamental mechanic very different functionally (I’ll cover this later) but more importantly, SuperEasy has infinite continues whereas SuperHard has no continues and only one life. Also, you don’t heal between levels in this game, just so you know. I played on SuperEasy
You play as Epsilon Eagle (sort of – the story is complicated and mostly irrelevant), an eagle man who can shoot projectiles from his hand. At the start of the game you can choose from up to 6 weapons, gunstar heroes style, but the difference here is you can choose any 4 of them (including the same one multiple times). These can’t be mixed like in Gunstar, but can be switched between in game by pressing A – careful though, as gameplay doesn’t stop whilst you switch weapons. Weapons have energy which is used up when shooting them, but it replenishes over time when not in use – so you can’t spam one weapon endlessly unless you equip it multiple times.
You can jump too, and pressing jump again in midair makes you hover in place. You can then jump again to double jump out of this hover. If a ceiling is above you, up and jump will flip your gravity so you can walk on the ceiling. You can also switch between fixed shot mode, where you stand still and can aim all around when shooting, and free shot mode, where you can move whilst shooting on the fly – fixed shot being the preferred option here for most encounters.
Pressing shoot twice quickly performs a counter – a small burst appears, and if you use this on enemy bullets they turn into health. This is crucial for some bosses, and also helps power up the phoenix attack, a crucial mechanic. Pressing down and jump makes you teleport ahead whilst invulnerable, useful for doging attacks. However, if you have full health when doing this, you set on fire and charge forward in the shape of a phoenix. This can do tons od damage, but injures you slightly so you need to replenish health to do it again. On SuperEasy, one counter gives 50 health points, enough to max out from a phoenix tackle. On hard, it gives 20, so replenishing it is way tougher.
The game is essentially a boss rush, and the bosses are super inventive and interesting. Learning which weapons work best is essential – they both shoot differently and have different effectiveness – biological enemies are weaker to the flamethrower but mechanic ones hate the laser more. It’s also key to make effective use of the counter and the phoenix tackle in order to really master the game and make solid progress – the game expects both to be used by the end. In between bosses you’ll get short segments of run n gun gameplay which often feature health or weapon energy power ups and also weapon capsules allowing you to swap a weapon out for another. I stuck with my starting set throughout though.
Alien Soldier is a game that has a lot to learn and a lot to remember, but once it clicks, it’s a ton of fun. I’d recommend this in a heartbeat to any fan of Treasure or fun run n gun games, but with a caveat. I’m sure most of you know, but Alien Soldier is one of the rarest and priciest Mega Drive titles out there – this is a game that would probably be best experienced on some kind of collection like this, unless you have £300+ and a lot of time and patience on hand. It’s a shame the original copy is so pricy, because I’d love to own this. For now, the collection will have to do. Play it however you can.
Untitled Goose Game
Untitled Goose Game is a game where you play as a horrible goose and terrorise the people of a small village community. It’s become super popular online for a while, with lots of memes and the likes coming off the back of it. But regardless of that, the premise interested me. It’s essentially a puzzle/stealth title where you play as a goose, and you have a checklist of chaos to cause using the objects around you. You’re a fairly realistic goose too – you only have a few actions you can do. You can waddle around on land or swim through water. Pressing X lets you honk, which can startle people or scare some of them. Holding ZR makes you raise up and flap your wings, which is almost useless. Pressing ZL lets you duck down your head which allows you to pass through gaps and also causes you to waddle faster. Lastly, you can pick things up and carry them about, which is the key to most puzzles.
Each section of the game has you in an area of the village, terrorising a different set of residents. You have some preassigned tasks to complete in each – some of which are obvious (‘rake in the lake’ speaks for itself) and some more cryptic on how to achieve them (‘make someone buy back their own stuff’ for example). One of the tasks will also involve collecting certain objects and bringing them to a certain place – the first involves making a picnic by stealing all of the necessary stuff for example. The reason for your actions isn’t really made clear as such, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just fun being a horrible goose.
Untitled Goose Game is a short game, with only really 4 major areas of the game – the allotments, the high streets, the back gardens of some houses, and a pub. Playing through each area will take a few hours – you don’t have to complete every challenge in an area to move on, but you do need to accomplish a fair few – which unlocks one last task to access the next area. After beating the game, additional challenges are unlocked for fun, but it’s still a quick experience overall.
I had a few issues with Goose Game, as the turning circle for the goose is surprisingly wide, and the final section of the game was occasionally frustrating, but overall I had a decent time. It’s not an amazing game, and it’s a little overhyped and pricy for what it is, but I think it’s worth a playthrough. Pick it up on a sale ideally, but either way it’s a nice weekend afternoon game. And you get to be a horrible goose.
Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole
Landstalker is an isometric action adventure game for the Mega Drive. It’s often pretty highly regarded, and I get why. It’s an ambitious game with lots to see and do, and it takes inspiration from some of the best action adventure games of it’s time. But unfortunately, I really didn’t enjoy Landstalker, and this review is mostly going to be me trying explain why.
So lets start with the fundamentals – the controls. This is probably the biggest obstacle there is to enjoying Landstalker, and that’s a problem. It’s really hard to explain just how bad the controls are, but I’ll do my best. So with isometric games, there tends to be one of 3 approaches to movement. Option A is fairly common, and it has you moving diagonally when you press any cardinal direction – thus, up moves you up right, left moves you up-left etc. In this option, the diagonal directions don’t do anything or they replicate the cardinal direction functionality – thus, quarter of the d-pad moves you in one direction each. Option B is the same as option A, only now the diagonals move you in the cardinal directions. This is needlessly confusing, but still results in an equal 1/8th of the d-pad moving you in each direction. Option C, which both the enjoyable Light Crusader and Sonic 3D Blast use, is to have the directions move you as expected – up is up, up-right is up-right etc. Again, 1/8th of the d-pad moves you in each direction. Which option does Landstalker use? None of the above!
Landstalker goes for Option D, which I hadn’t even entertained as an option. See, you’re restricted to 4 planes of movement, like option A. But the diagonals work. The problem is how they work. So if you press up, you’ll move up-right. Pressing Up-right also moves you up right. But bizarrely, so does right. Pressing down, left or down-left will all move you down-left. So in this scenario, 2 of the directions use up 3/8ths of the d-pad each. To move on the other axis, (up-left and down-right) you need to press diagonally in these directions, only 1/8th of the d-pad each. But if you do that, then THE FUNCTION OF THE OTHER DIRECTIONS CHANGES! Once you’re moving on that axis, the up and left buttons no longer move you up-right and down-left respectively – they now both move you up-left. This means 4 of the direction keys NEVER CONSISTENTLY MOVE YOU IN THE SAME DIRECTION. This caused me constant frustrations throughout play, and I never got over it.
This is then compounded by the platforming. Now, in both my reviews of Light Crusader and Sonic 3D, I noted that those games really help with platforming by showing clear shadows and helping you understand the positioning of platformers. Landstalker is one of those other games – not only does it not offer any assistance in isometric platformers, it utterly revels in deceiving you with platforms that look like they’re in one place but turn out to be in another. This causes constantly and frustrating trial and error.
Unfortunately, it’s not the only adventuring mechanic in the game that sucks – the game also loves to put in INCREDIBLY strictly timed puzzles and pixel perfect precision that cause you to reattempt rooms over and over again. One particularly gruelling puzzle towards the end required you to position Nigel in 10 different pixel perfect spots with milliseconds of time in precision in a row to solve a puzzle. I used the rewind function for this, and no joke, it still took me upwards of 15 minutes to compelte this 8 second sequence, a 10th of a second at a time. It was ridiculous. I dread to think what this was like for people playing on console.
And it’s a shame that all this is what I mainly remember of Landstalker, because the game has much to recommend it otherwise. It’s quite a pretty game, and the characters are memorable. Some of the game’s puzzles are a lot of fun, and I loved exploring the world, diving into dungeons and expanding my health as I progressed. The problem is, what I wanted to play was a Landstalker, but without all the bullshit. Landstalker minus the ultra precision skills tests, without the terrible isometric platforming, and without the bullshit control schemes. Maybe if they made it top down, let you explore at your own pace. Yes, basically, I want to play Zelda. And that’s why Landstalker is bad. Everything that’s good about the game exists elsewhere in a much better title. Everything that makes it stand out as unique is unbearably bad. I can’t recommend this game to anyone. If you were thinking about it, play Zelda instead.
Fatal Labyrinth
Fatal Labyrinth is a very hard game to review, because it is a game that made very little impact on me. It’s a roguelike game where you venture into a tower to defeat the evil dragon at the top and rescue the town. Cue 30 floors or randomised dungeon layouts filled with monsters to defeat and treasures to find to reach the top.
In some ways, Fatal Labyrinth is an unforgiving game – enemies on the very first floor are capable of inflicting sleep and killing you before you wake up, and it’s entirely possible to find yourself starting in a room with several of these enemies – as I did on my first, very short run. The game also features cursed weapons which lower your strength to 0 and are impossible to remove, and a hunger mechanic which punishes you both for not eating enough and for eating too much. Did I mention food pickups don’t indicate how big they are, so it’s entirely possible to go from as low as 45/99 hunger to overstuff in one pickup, halving your movement speed?
But in many other ways, Fatal Labyrinth is fairly forgiving for the genre. Although potions and spells have randomised effects in each run, you’ll often be able to identify many early on and then they stay the same throughout the game – meaning not knowing what a potion does stops being a problem fairly early on. The game also upgrades weapons and armour fairly often and has a levelling system to power you up even if you don’t find any good upgrades. Most importantly, it has a checkpoint every 5 stages, so if you die you’ll continue from there. This is mainly useful early on, as the later parts of the dungeon tend to be much easier with your higher level, armour and better line up of spells, rings and potions.
One thing that is clear about Fatal Labyrinth, after discussion with some our resident roguelike aficionados on Slack, is that it’s a really, really basic game in the genre. They seemed shocked at just how little options if offered – no character customisation, custom levelling mechanics, limited environmental traps and honestly, not a lot beyond the very basics of the genre in play.
And maybe that’s why it doesn’t leave much of an impression. It does very little to stand out as unique. Mechanically it’s bland, and this is matched by it’s very basic presentation – even for an early Mega Drive title, Fatal Labyrinth is subpar. The music doesn’t sound wonderful either, although it has it’s charms. They do tend to wear away after a while though, as you’ll be hearing the same tracks a lot throughout the game.
Overall, Fatal Labyrinth was fine. It’s weak points are mostly about what it doesn’t do at all rather than what it does badly. It’s a perfectly functional game, just a very simple one. There’s not really a reason to rush out and buy it, but I didn’t hate it either. It’s an OK time killer if you’re desperate, but I imagine most people on here have a ton of better options to play instead.
Please read my obnoxious number of reviews despite the spoiler tags, it took me a very, very, very long time to write all of this...
