Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
* indicates a repeat
1~50
1. Arc Rise Fantasia (Wii)
2. Return of the Obra Dinn (PC)
3. Battlefield: Hardline (PS3)
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops (PS3)
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (PS3)
6. Dead Nation (PS3)
7. Kileak, The Blood 2: Reason in Madness (PS1)
8. Paro Wars (PS1)
9. in Stars and Time (Steam)
10. Tetris Battle Gaiden (SFC)
11. Super Tetris 3 (SFC)
12. Battlefield 4 (PS3)
13. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3)
14. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (PS3)
15. Call of Duty: Black Ops III (PS4)
16. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (PS4)
17. Call of Duty: WWII (PS4)
18. Resistance 3 (PS3)
19. Tearaway: Unfolded (PS4)
20. Grow Home (PS4)
21. Grow Up (PS4)
22. Ratchet & Clank (2016) (PS4)
23. Dark Sector (Steam)
24. Nagano Winter Olympics '98 (N64)
25. Multi-Racing Championship (N64)
26. Super Smash Bros. (N64)
27. Puyo Puyo Sun 64 (N64)
28. Shin Nippon Pro Wrestling: Toukon Road - Brave Spirits (N64)
29. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 6 (N64)
30. Let's Smash (N64)
31. Mario Tennis 64 (N64)
32. Ucchannanchan no Honō no Challenger: Denryū Iraira Bō (N64)
33. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 4 (N64)
34. FIFA: Road to the World Cup 98 (N64)
35. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 2000 (N64)
36. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 5 (N64)
37. Time and Eternity (PS3)
38. Pokemon Red (GB)
39. Dr. Mario 64 (N64)
40. Shining Force Neo (PS2)
41. Chou Kuukan Nighter: King of Pro Baseball (N64)
42. Tales of Destiny 2 (PS2)
43. Star Wars: Episode I - Racer (N64)
44. ChoroQ 64 (N64)
45. F-Zero X (N64)
46. Homefront (PS3)
47. Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed (PS2)
48. F-Zero (SNES)
49. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (PS2)
50. Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (PS2)
2. Return of the Obra Dinn (PC)
3. Battlefield: Hardline (PS3)
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops (PS3)
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (PS3)
6. Dead Nation (PS3)
7. Kileak, The Blood 2: Reason in Madness (PS1)
8. Paro Wars (PS1)
9. in Stars and Time (Steam)
10. Tetris Battle Gaiden (SFC)
11. Super Tetris 3 (SFC)
12. Battlefield 4 (PS3)
13. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3)
14. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (PS3)
15. Call of Duty: Black Ops III (PS4)
16. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (PS4)
17. Call of Duty: WWII (PS4)
18. Resistance 3 (PS3)
19. Tearaway: Unfolded (PS4)
20. Grow Home (PS4)
21. Grow Up (PS4)
22. Ratchet & Clank (2016) (PS4)
23. Dark Sector (Steam)
24. Nagano Winter Olympics '98 (N64)
25. Multi-Racing Championship (N64)
26. Super Smash Bros. (N64)
27. Puyo Puyo Sun 64 (N64)
28. Shin Nippon Pro Wrestling: Toukon Road - Brave Spirits (N64)
29. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 6 (N64)
30. Let's Smash (N64)
31. Mario Tennis 64 (N64)
32. Ucchannanchan no Honō no Challenger: Denryū Iraira Bō (N64)
33. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 4 (N64)
34. FIFA: Road to the World Cup 98 (N64)
35. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 2000 (N64)
36. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 5 (N64)
37. Time and Eternity (PS3)
38. Pokemon Red (GB)
39. Dr. Mario 64 (N64)
40. Shining Force Neo (PS2)
41. Chou Kuukan Nighter: King of Pro Baseball (N64)
42. Tales of Destiny 2 (PS2)
43. Star Wars: Episode I - Racer (N64)
44. ChoroQ 64 (N64)
45. F-Zero X (N64)
46. Homefront (PS3)
47. Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed (PS2)
48. F-Zero (SNES)
49. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (PS2)
50. Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (PS2)
52. Bakushou Jinsei 64: Mezase! Resort-ou (N64)
53. Mother (Famicom)
54. Famista 64 (N64)
55. Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening (PC)
56. Kirby and the Rainbow Curse (Wii U)
57. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
58. Wario Land: Shake it! (Wii) *
59. Mario Party 8 (Wii) *
60. Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure (Wii)
61. SimCity 2000 (N64)
62. Prototype (PS3)
63. Prototype 2 (PS3)
64. Final Fantasy X (PS2) *
65. Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2)
66. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2)
67. Crackdown (Xbox 360)
68. Crackdown 2 (Xbox 360)
69. Alan Wake (Xbox 360) *
70. Dead to Rights (Xbox)
71. Medal of Honor (PS3)
72. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)
73. Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii) *
This most recent re-completion would be my third time finishing this game, if I remember correctly. However, neither of the previous playthroughs were ever done when I was writing reviews for games, so now it’s finally getting one! I’d been meaning to pick this game back up for a while, but I’d foolishly ignored it the previous times I’d seen it around locally for cheap. Well, I wasn’t making that mistake a third time! 300 yen is an incredibly right price for such a great game, and I snatched it up at once. It took me around 9 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game and also doing all the secret levels.
Donkey Kong Country Returns (or just “Donkey Kong Returns”, in Japan, since the old DKC games were just called “Super Donkey Kong” over here) is a real throw back to basics for DK and friends. DK and Diddy are relaxing on DK isle when suddenly the island’s volcano erupts! Evil tiki monsters begin pouring out of it, hypnotizing all the animals, and stealing all the bananas on the island! DK is far too smart for their mind-bending tricks, and he starts pounding the stuffing out of them as soon as he sees them making off with his precious bananas. With Cranky giving advice and running the shop for them, it’s one of the smallest casts ever in a Donkey Kong Country game, but it makes for a great and silly set up for an action platformer. The tiki designs are, predictably, less than culturally sensitive, but if you can deal with that (which some understandably wouldn’t want to), then there’s a lot of fun to be had on this adventure.
That adventure is made up of 8 worlds of action platforming goodness. DK can run, jump, and roll (even jump after rolling off a cliff!) just like the old games, but there’s a bit more here too. This game improves on the old DKC games by not only being two-player, but actually having proper co-op play as well. A player 2 can jump and bop around as Diddy, and he’s even got a hover jetpack to help make platforming just that much easier for him. In a very cool touch, if you’re playing by yourself, DK wears Diddy on his back like a living power up. Diddy’s two hearts of HP act as an expansion of DK’s own 2-hit HP bar, and as long as you’ve got Diddy, you can use his hover pack abilities as DK as well. You can even hop on and off of DK’s back while you’re playing co-op to make getting past tricky platforming bits that much easier. DK is the real star of the show in either single or two-player mode. If DK dies, then it’s back to the last checkpoint, so prioritizing his safety only makes sense even if you’re with a buddy (who respawns from anywhere if DK is still alive). This *does* mean playing co-op makes you go through extra lives like a house on fire, because this game is far from easy, but it’s nice to have the option for this sort of play even if the game should probably just have infinite lives to begin with.
DK and Diddy actually have their base attacks expanded a bit as well. First of all, if you’ve got Diddy with you, then not only can you roll attack at enemies, but you can also infinitely roll as Diddy runs on DK’s back to propel him forward as long as you want. It’s dangerous, but it’s a life saver for if you’ve gotta cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. Additionally, you can also slam the ground to stun enemies as well as crouch down to blow at things like propellers or dandelions for extra items and such in levels. While this game doesn’t have hidden stage exits or warps, each level still has a lot of secrets to uncover. There are anywhere from 5 to 9 hidden puzzle pieces in each stage (some of which are *very* hidden), and finding them all just unlocks concept art to view from a sub-menu. Nothing mandatory, but it’s fun to root around levels for goodies like that. Apart from those, each level also has four letters that spell out “KONG”. Getting all of these in every level in a world will unlock a secret challenge level for that world. Completing all of those challenge levels unlocks an even more brutal challenge difficulty for the game, so if you’re a real sicko for DKCR, there’s a LOT of challenge to throw yourself at here.
The game in general is quite hard in general. It’s not *quite* as hard as the older DKC games, but it’s certainly one of the hardest platformers Nintendo has published in the past 20 years as far as I’m concerned. Thankfully, you’ve got a lot of helping hands available to you if you’re struggling. First of all, this game doesn’t restrict save points like older DKC games did. Completing a level once means it’s done forever, so no need to worry about dying before you make it to a save spot or anything. You’ve also got a LOT more extra lives given to you as you normally play stages, so running out of lives is a lot harder than it ever used to be in the older games.
Beyond those general improvements in polish, collecting banana coins in stages allows you to buy things at Cranky’s shop. You can not only buy big piles of extra lives there, but you can also buy items to directly help you in stages you’re struggling with. You’ve got an extra heart container that’ll give you a third heart of HP for a stage, you’ve got a toughness elixir that’ll give you a bunch of extra hits before you go down, and you’ve even got helpful Squawks the parrot to help point out areas where yet undiscovered puzzle pieces lie if you’re keen to try and beat the whole game without using a guide for that stuff. These aren’t going to help you for harder platforming challenges, of course, but it’s still nice to see options like this available for anyone who’d be struggling with the game’s quite steep difficulty.
Aesthetically, the game is absolutely excellent too. It’s a relatively late Wii game, and it really looks like it. Animations are detailed and wonderfully expressive for DK and pals. Levels all have a ton of personality to their designs, and they manage to be colorful and memorable without confusing what’s actually in the play area (and not a part of the background or foreground). The soundtrack is full of absolute bangers as well. Tons of reimaginings of old tracks live alongside excellent completely new tracks, and it makes the experience that much more Donkey Kong-tastic.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. This game is still as excellent as when it was new 15 years ago. The presentation is great, the stage design is smooth and fun, and it controls fantastically too. If you’re a fan of 2D platformers, then this is an absolute must play (and with the old version being quite cheap and the new Switch remaster being so widely available, then there’s no better time to go out there and give it a try yourself~)
Donkey Kong Country Returns (or just “Donkey Kong Returns”, in Japan, since the old DKC games were just called “Super Donkey Kong” over here) is a real throw back to basics for DK and friends. DK and Diddy are relaxing on DK isle when suddenly the island’s volcano erupts! Evil tiki monsters begin pouring out of it, hypnotizing all the animals, and stealing all the bananas on the island! DK is far too smart for their mind-bending tricks, and he starts pounding the stuffing out of them as soon as he sees them making off with his precious bananas. With Cranky giving advice and running the shop for them, it’s one of the smallest casts ever in a Donkey Kong Country game, but it makes for a great and silly set up for an action platformer. The tiki designs are, predictably, less than culturally sensitive, but if you can deal with that (which some understandably wouldn’t want to), then there’s a lot of fun to be had on this adventure.
That adventure is made up of 8 worlds of action platforming goodness. DK can run, jump, and roll (even jump after rolling off a cliff!) just like the old games, but there’s a bit more here too. This game improves on the old DKC games by not only being two-player, but actually having proper co-op play as well. A player 2 can jump and bop around as Diddy, and he’s even got a hover jetpack to help make platforming just that much easier for him. In a very cool touch, if you’re playing by yourself, DK wears Diddy on his back like a living power up. Diddy’s two hearts of HP act as an expansion of DK’s own 2-hit HP bar, and as long as you’ve got Diddy, you can use his hover pack abilities as DK as well. You can even hop on and off of DK’s back while you’re playing co-op to make getting past tricky platforming bits that much easier. DK is the real star of the show in either single or two-player mode. If DK dies, then it’s back to the last checkpoint, so prioritizing his safety only makes sense even if you’re with a buddy (who respawns from anywhere if DK is still alive). This *does* mean playing co-op makes you go through extra lives like a house on fire, because this game is far from easy, but it’s nice to have the option for this sort of play even if the game should probably just have infinite lives to begin with.
DK and Diddy actually have their base attacks expanded a bit as well. First of all, if you’ve got Diddy with you, then not only can you roll attack at enemies, but you can also infinitely roll as Diddy runs on DK’s back to propel him forward as long as you want. It’s dangerous, but it’s a life saver for if you’ve gotta cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. Additionally, you can also slam the ground to stun enemies as well as crouch down to blow at things like propellers or dandelions for extra items and such in levels. While this game doesn’t have hidden stage exits or warps, each level still has a lot of secrets to uncover. There are anywhere from 5 to 9 hidden puzzle pieces in each stage (some of which are *very* hidden), and finding them all just unlocks concept art to view from a sub-menu. Nothing mandatory, but it’s fun to root around levels for goodies like that. Apart from those, each level also has four letters that spell out “KONG”. Getting all of these in every level in a world will unlock a secret challenge level for that world. Completing all of those challenge levels unlocks an even more brutal challenge difficulty for the game, so if you’re a real sicko for DKCR, there’s a LOT of challenge to throw yourself at here.
The game in general is quite hard in general. It’s not *quite* as hard as the older DKC games, but it’s certainly one of the hardest platformers Nintendo has published in the past 20 years as far as I’m concerned. Thankfully, you’ve got a lot of helping hands available to you if you’re struggling. First of all, this game doesn’t restrict save points like older DKC games did. Completing a level once means it’s done forever, so no need to worry about dying before you make it to a save spot or anything. You’ve also got a LOT more extra lives given to you as you normally play stages, so running out of lives is a lot harder than it ever used to be in the older games.
Beyond those general improvements in polish, collecting banana coins in stages allows you to buy things at Cranky’s shop. You can not only buy big piles of extra lives there, but you can also buy items to directly help you in stages you’re struggling with. You’ve got an extra heart container that’ll give you a third heart of HP for a stage, you’ve got a toughness elixir that’ll give you a bunch of extra hits before you go down, and you’ve even got helpful Squawks the parrot to help point out areas where yet undiscovered puzzle pieces lie if you’re keen to try and beat the whole game without using a guide for that stuff. These aren’t going to help you for harder platforming challenges, of course, but it’s still nice to see options like this available for anyone who’d be struggling with the game’s quite steep difficulty.
Aesthetically, the game is absolutely excellent too. It’s a relatively late Wii game, and it really looks like it. Animations are detailed and wonderfully expressive for DK and pals. Levels all have a ton of personality to their designs, and they manage to be colorful and memorable without confusing what’s actually in the play area (and not a part of the background or foreground). The soundtrack is full of absolute bangers as well. Tons of reimaginings of old tracks live alongside excellent completely new tracks, and it makes the experience that much more Donkey Kong-tastic.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. This game is still as excellent as when it was new 15 years ago. The presentation is great, the stage design is smooth and fun, and it controls fantastically too. If you’re a fan of 2D platformers, then this is an absolute must play (and with the old version being quite cheap and the new Switch remaster being so widely available, then there’s no better time to go out there and give it a try yourself~)
74. Mario Party 9 (Wii) *
This is another Wii game that I played a fair bit back when it was new, but I never played much since. I’m a huge Mario Party fan, so when I recently found this locally for nearly half of the price it usually goes for, it was a no-brainer to grab it right away. After recently playing through Mario Party 8, I’d wanted to play through this again that much more, so this was a double-lucky find. Playing the Japanese version of the game, it took me around 6-ish hours to play through both the entirety of the single-player mode and then a round of the special DK map afterwards.
The conceit of Mario Party 9 is stars, but these aren’t the stars we’re usually going after in Mario games. As Mario and the gang admire how pretty the night sky is when it’s full of beautiful twinkling stars, they suddenly start to disappear! It turns out Bowser is stealing all of those mini-stars all for himself, and it’s up to Mario and the gang to get them back from him. How would they do that? Why, by throwing a party of course! It’s a weird conceit as ever, but it’s honestly only the tip of the iceberg for just how strange this game ends up being compared to its predecessors.
Both this and Mario Party 10 (another game I’ve played through and enjoyed in years past) enjoy very infamous reputations because of their radical reimagining of the base Mario Party formula. No longer do all four players go along the board at their own respective paces trying to fulfill various objectives to get stars, no longer do mini-games get played at the end of turns, and no longer do your dice even have the numbers 1~10 on them! Instead, it’s all aboard the Mario Party car! Rather than requiring four players, Mario Party 9 boards can be played with anywhere from 2 to 4 players. These players all share the same vehicle that goes along a track bringing you along the board. Each player has a turn in the front driver’s seat, and they rotate along a set order for who’s the one making decisions at the front. This driver, or “captain” as the game refers to it, gets the bonus from whatever space they land on in addition to being in charge for various captain events placed throughout each board.
It’s a huge change, and I absolutely don’t blame people for bouncing off of it, but I do think that it’s a really big improvement in one very important way: Mario Party is, for the first time in over a decade of its history, finally a good party game. Rather than trying to collect coins to buy stars, Mario Party 9 has you only chasing one currency: mini-stars. All sorts of events along each board can take and give mini-stars, from mini-games gotten from landing on spaces to even special “boss battle” mini-games done at two specific points on each board. While the mini-game design is frankly some of the strongest they’ve ever had, the quality of the activities and mini-games isn’t really the decisive change here from past games.
For the first time in the series, mini-games are *never* winner takes all format anymore. Now first, second, third, and fourth place have a sliding scale of rewards given. This is a HUGE change because it means the person best at the mini-games can no longer run the table and shut out all the other players from getting stars simply by winning every mini-game. You can get special die to roll as items in Mario Party 9, and that risk management combined with the greater division of points means being good at the game’s strategy is just as much if not even more important than getting first place in every mini-game. Before, the person who owned the Mario Party game was always going to dominate any game where the other players weren’t very familiar with this particular version’s mini-games (such as in a party setting).
Mario Party 9’s design has required some sacrifices in some areas, but finally being a game that casual players can have a meaningful chance of winning and enjoying is SUCH a big prize in exchange that I have a very hard time viewing this game as negatively as so many other people do. Admittedly, this game has since been eclipsed pretty thoroughly by games like Super Mario Party in this regard, but I think that it does deserve credit where credit is due for being the first to make serious efforts in making this such a better party experience.
The game is aesthetically very nice as well. Being such a late Wii game, it’s a very pretty game with a lot of great animations too. Each stage has a ton of character and life to its design, and Mario and the gang all look great as they ever have as well. The music is great as well, which you’d only expect at this point. The guys at ND Cube have been making Mario Party since they were all back at HudsonSoft, and you can really tell that they’ve got a great handle on putting these games together in a way that impresses the eyes and ears if nothing else X3
Verdict: Recommended. While I will not deny that the single-player experience of Mario Party 9 has suffered as a result of all of the changes they’ve made, it’s really hard for me to care that much about it for what’s very straightforwardly a party game. A lot of people were frankly far too harsh on this game by judging it for what it wasn’t rather than judging it for what it actually is. While I think it’s perfectly fair to prefer the traditional Mario Party formula over what MP9 brings to the table, this is still a great party game that succeeds where previous Mario Partys had failed badly for over a decade. Even though I still prefer the Switch Mario Party games for this style of thing these days, this is still a really good game and a really good time if you’re up for the type of experience that it’s putting down~.
The conceit of Mario Party 9 is stars, but these aren’t the stars we’re usually going after in Mario games. As Mario and the gang admire how pretty the night sky is when it’s full of beautiful twinkling stars, they suddenly start to disappear! It turns out Bowser is stealing all of those mini-stars all for himself, and it’s up to Mario and the gang to get them back from him. How would they do that? Why, by throwing a party of course! It’s a weird conceit as ever, but it’s honestly only the tip of the iceberg for just how strange this game ends up being compared to its predecessors.
Both this and Mario Party 10 (another game I’ve played through and enjoyed in years past) enjoy very infamous reputations because of their radical reimagining of the base Mario Party formula. No longer do all four players go along the board at their own respective paces trying to fulfill various objectives to get stars, no longer do mini-games get played at the end of turns, and no longer do your dice even have the numbers 1~10 on them! Instead, it’s all aboard the Mario Party car! Rather than requiring four players, Mario Party 9 boards can be played with anywhere from 2 to 4 players. These players all share the same vehicle that goes along a track bringing you along the board. Each player has a turn in the front driver’s seat, and they rotate along a set order for who’s the one making decisions at the front. This driver, or “captain” as the game refers to it, gets the bonus from whatever space they land on in addition to being in charge for various captain events placed throughout each board.
It’s a huge change, and I absolutely don’t blame people for bouncing off of it, but I do think that it’s a really big improvement in one very important way: Mario Party is, for the first time in over a decade of its history, finally a good party game. Rather than trying to collect coins to buy stars, Mario Party 9 has you only chasing one currency: mini-stars. All sorts of events along each board can take and give mini-stars, from mini-games gotten from landing on spaces to even special “boss battle” mini-games done at two specific points on each board. While the mini-game design is frankly some of the strongest they’ve ever had, the quality of the activities and mini-games isn’t really the decisive change here from past games.
For the first time in the series, mini-games are *never* winner takes all format anymore. Now first, second, third, and fourth place have a sliding scale of rewards given. This is a HUGE change because it means the person best at the mini-games can no longer run the table and shut out all the other players from getting stars simply by winning every mini-game. You can get special die to roll as items in Mario Party 9, and that risk management combined with the greater division of points means being good at the game’s strategy is just as much if not even more important than getting first place in every mini-game. Before, the person who owned the Mario Party game was always going to dominate any game where the other players weren’t very familiar with this particular version’s mini-games (such as in a party setting).
Mario Party 9’s design has required some sacrifices in some areas, but finally being a game that casual players can have a meaningful chance of winning and enjoying is SUCH a big prize in exchange that I have a very hard time viewing this game as negatively as so many other people do. Admittedly, this game has since been eclipsed pretty thoroughly by games like Super Mario Party in this regard, but I think that it does deserve credit where credit is due for being the first to make serious efforts in making this such a better party experience.
The game is aesthetically very nice as well. Being such a late Wii game, it’s a very pretty game with a lot of great animations too. Each stage has a ton of character and life to its design, and Mario and the gang all look great as they ever have as well. The music is great as well, which you’d only expect at this point. The guys at ND Cube have been making Mario Party since they were all back at HudsonSoft, and you can really tell that they’ve got a great handle on putting these games together in a way that impresses the eyes and ears if nothing else X3
Verdict: Recommended. While I will not deny that the single-player experience of Mario Party 9 has suffered as a result of all of the changes they’ve made, it’s really hard for me to care that much about it for what’s very straightforwardly a party game. A lot of people were frankly far too harsh on this game by judging it for what it wasn’t rather than judging it for what it actually is. While I think it’s perfectly fair to prefer the traditional Mario Party formula over what MP9 brings to the table, this is still a great party game that succeeds where previous Mario Partys had failed badly for over a decade. Even though I still prefer the Switch Mario Party games for this style of thing these days, this is still a really good game and a really good time if you’re up for the type of experience that it’s putting down~.
75. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 (PS2)
When I was much younger, I remember playing both the first Budokai game as well as this one a lot with a friend of mine. It was so long ago that I actually can’t even remember which friend it was, but that’s beside the point X3. Despite never really watching all that much DBZ when I was little, I still really loved the character designs, and games like the first Budokai were very hard, but I still liked playing them because DBZ was so aesthetically appealing to me. However, where baby me *did* manage to button-mash my way to victory in Budokai 1, such was never the case with Budokai 2. I couldn’t tell you exactly what the choke point that did me in was, but that memory of leaving this game unfinished has lingered in my brain for over 20 years at this point.
Flash forward to now, and my partner and I have been watching through the Dragon Ball anime and liking it a lot. This was a perfect excuse to finally pick this game up again and try to actually beat it once we finished watching DBZ. While I’m a lot better at games now than I was in elementary school, I am still very much not a fighting game player. The prospect of trying to beat a fighting game I recalled being quite difficult was rather daunting, but I sucked it up and gave it a shot anyway! Playing the Japanese version of the game, I got all the way to the final stage playing on the default difficulty of easy mode, but the final boss was just so above my skill level that I had to bump it down to very easy in the end. Still! It took me a bit under 7 hours to do it, but I finished the Dragon Road story mode and rolled credits on a game that little me could never fathom being decent enough at to beat on any difficulty.
DBZ 1’s story mode focused on fairly faithfully recreating the big fights from the DBZ anime up through the Cell Saga (i.e. the first 2/3rds of the anime). It used in-engine cutscenes to recreate a lot of the anime’s iconic moments, and it’s a pretty good primer for those parts of DBZ for those who wouldn’t want to commit the time to reading the manga or watching the show. Budokai 2, however, takes a very different approach. While it does have the entire DBZ story up through the end of the Buu Saga (as the last 1/3rd is referred to), its Dragon Road story mode has a VERY weird and wacky version of it. Across Dragon Road’s 9 stages, they truncate the entire story very significantly with the Saiyan and Freeza Sagas being 3 stages, the entirety of the Cell Saga being 1 whole stage, and then the Buu Saga taking place over those last 5 stages. The shortcuts they make to do this were incredibly funny to someone who’s just finished watching the anime like me, but it made for a really entertaining alternate universe version of the DBZ story. It’ll probably be pretty hard to appreciate for someone unfamiliar with DBZ’s narrative, but for someone like myself who is, I found it to be great fun and a great excuse for a lot of silliness.
The nuts and bolts of the Budokai games’ mechanics is a 3D fighting game made by Dimps. Dragon Road is a sort of turn-based board game thing where your allied characters move around the board as well as enemy characters. Each of the 9 stages have some main objective to complete, but it’s rarely anything more complicated than “beat the big bad guy”. Any time you move onto an enemy or they move onto you, a fight initiates between those two characters. Exploring around the board can get you special power ups that increase your base defense and offense stats for that stage, but you can also find whole new moves to buff yourself up with too. Each character has a certain number of slots available to be filled in either passive buffs or new special moves that can be unleashed in battle, and picking the loadout that’s right for you is often the key to victory just as much as playing well is.
The Dragon Road mode is a fun, weird way to experience the story in a fashion that allows for several different encounters between characters within the same maps, which is something I appreciate even if it also leads to there being a lot of really arcane nonsense ways to unlock playable characters as a result. The main thing I don’t really like about this approach is just how many special moves have a limited number of uses. For example, the super iconic Super Saiyan mode for Goku and his Saiyan buddies not only has to be unlocked before you can even use it, but you only have a very limited number of uses before you need to find that rare unlock again. I understand that this is a way to incentivize you to play and replay Dragon Road mode to unlock more moves, characters, and goodies (none of which are gated by difficulty played on, thankfully), but it’s a lot harder to forgive when this stuff carries over to the other multiplayer modes as well.
If I haven’t unlocked the Super Saiyan transformation in Dragon Road mode, then I can’t use it in the 1v1 versus mode either. These modes all pull from the same pool of moves, characters, and items, and that may be a neat gimmick, but it gates off *way* too many fun toys and abilities for what is still, at the end of the day, a fighting game. Dragon Road mode really should’ve lived in its own gated community while the versus modes were just “here are all the toys to play with” head-to-head modes, and I cannot fathom the reason why that was not done. Having so many characters unlocked only through the story mode is something I can forgive pretty easily. Even if the ways to unlock some characters are a bit difficult, nearly all of them are “beat X enemy with Y ally whom it’d make most sense to fight them with by the rules of the story of the show” that it’s far from unintuitive. Tons of fighting games (both good and bad) from the time had similar unlock systems to this for their rosters, so I have a hard time begrudging the game for that even if it’s a bit old fashioned by today’s standards. The thing I much more confidently begrudge is making the *moves* for those characters so thoroughly locked behind random pickups in the Dragon Road mode that it heavily compromises what’s already not a brilliant fighting game.
This is a fairly simplified 3D fighting game if you’re comparing it to something like Virtua Fighter or Tekken. You’ve got the four face buttons for punch, kick, energy, and block, and then pressing punch & kick together does a chargeable guard break attack, and pressing block & punch together executes a grab. You’ve even got the button combos for grab and guard break bound to your two R shoulder buttons by default. Special moves are executed by doing the correct sequence of directionally-aided punches and kicks followed by the energy button. You can move forward and back as well as rotationally around your opponent, and you can also just stand and charge up your power to have more ability to dish out special moves if you want. There’s a reasonable bit to keep track of (especially for a novice like me), but it’s far from impossible to get a handle on if you’re already comfortable with this sort of 3D fighting game.
The bigger issues come into play when you consider things like balance. While it can be kind of daunting to think of remembering special move sequences for a roster of over 20 characters (a really good amount of representation for the series, even if they’re missing a few more minor characters who were present in Budokai 1), most special move sequences are actually the exact same between characters. The effects of those moves are even quite similar a lot of the time, so you’ve not actually got *that* much to relearn if you’ve already mastered how one character works. However, these are complicated a lot by both character size and flight. Characters in DBZ can fly in the original property, so they can fly in this as well. The only thing is that you can get combo’d in the air WAY more easily and viciously than you can on the ground. Combine this with some characters being so short that larger characters (even one as relatively medium-sized as Goku) have normal punches and kicks go over their head entirely, and you have a recipe for frustration.
This also can really make the game a nightmare with just how fast the game can go when you’re fighting the CPU. Even against the last stage’s stronger enemies on normal mode, they were already nearly touch-of-death-ing me because they’d just start combo-ing me and never stop until I was nearly already dead. The similarities between characters ultimately means many are just flat-out better than others because their natural combos are just that much harder to break out of. Fighting any stronger opponent, either AI or human, largely comes down to “who can totally overwhelm the other one the most the fastest”. These rocket tag mechanics make for particularly frustrating experiences when you’re fighting against AI who are just *that* perfect at rolling away from your attacks and blocking all of your stuff that would otherwise connect. Making fights against AI opponents in fighting games is something difficult for most games to do well, but it’s extra annoying in a game with *so* many additional annoying modifiers as this one has (both mechanically intended and otherwise). I had always heard that the DBZ fighting games (before the newer FighterZ, at least) suffered a lot from the flying and generally less than stellar control decisions. After playing this, I am now very keenly aware of just what those fighting game fans were talking about.
At the very least, DBZ B2 has things going for it in the aesthetics department. The graphics are pretty good for a relatively early PS2 game. Most of the characters’ cell-shaded 3D models are quite good representations of their 2D counterparts even if the talking animations look a bit funky for some of them. The VA is all done by the official voice actors who voice them in the anime, and all of the alternate universe nonsense is that much more fun when you’ve got the proper voices bringing them to life too. The real star here, though, the music. It’s got some music and sound effects that are classics from the show, but the large majority of the soundtrack are entirely original new songs, and they’re REALLY good. It’s like swing music meets butt-rock, and I absolutely loved it X3. The main vocal theme for the game was something I was already familiar with, but I had no idea just how deep the well went of absolute bangers that fill this game’s OST.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This isn’t a bad-bad game, but I also would hardly call it a terribly great game either. More than that, though, with the large amount of DBZ games since this game, I’d have a really hard time picking a really compelling reason to go back and play *this* game in particular. For newer games, games like the DBZ Xenoverse or FighterZ are basically the peak of their respective genres for DBZ stuff, and even for stuff back on the PS2 you’ve got Eighting’s 3D fighting games which are put together a good bit better than Dimps’s stuff. That said, this game is still decent at what it does. Sure, it doesn’t play the best and it doesn’t have anywhere close to the biggest roster for a DBZ PS2 game, but what it does have are totally serviceable and fulfill their required roles adequately. The Dragon Road story mode’s story is also silly and fun in a novel way, and the OST is a great bonus too. While I’d have a pretty hard time explaining why you should pick this game over most other 3D-era DBZ fighting games, if you *do* for some reason decide to pick up Budokai 2 again, I can say that it’s a pretty decent time that you’ll probably have a good bit of fun with~.
Flash forward to now, and my partner and I have been watching through the Dragon Ball anime and liking it a lot. This was a perfect excuse to finally pick this game up again and try to actually beat it once we finished watching DBZ. While I’m a lot better at games now than I was in elementary school, I am still very much not a fighting game player. The prospect of trying to beat a fighting game I recalled being quite difficult was rather daunting, but I sucked it up and gave it a shot anyway! Playing the Japanese version of the game, I got all the way to the final stage playing on the default difficulty of easy mode, but the final boss was just so above my skill level that I had to bump it down to very easy in the end. Still! It took me a bit under 7 hours to do it, but I finished the Dragon Road story mode and rolled credits on a game that little me could never fathom being decent enough at to beat on any difficulty.
DBZ 1’s story mode focused on fairly faithfully recreating the big fights from the DBZ anime up through the Cell Saga (i.e. the first 2/3rds of the anime). It used in-engine cutscenes to recreate a lot of the anime’s iconic moments, and it’s a pretty good primer for those parts of DBZ for those who wouldn’t want to commit the time to reading the manga or watching the show. Budokai 2, however, takes a very different approach. While it does have the entire DBZ story up through the end of the Buu Saga (as the last 1/3rd is referred to), its Dragon Road story mode has a VERY weird and wacky version of it. Across Dragon Road’s 9 stages, they truncate the entire story very significantly with the Saiyan and Freeza Sagas being 3 stages, the entirety of the Cell Saga being 1 whole stage, and then the Buu Saga taking place over those last 5 stages. The shortcuts they make to do this were incredibly funny to someone who’s just finished watching the anime like me, but it made for a really entertaining alternate universe version of the DBZ story. It’ll probably be pretty hard to appreciate for someone unfamiliar with DBZ’s narrative, but for someone like myself who is, I found it to be great fun and a great excuse for a lot of silliness.
The nuts and bolts of the Budokai games’ mechanics is a 3D fighting game made by Dimps. Dragon Road is a sort of turn-based board game thing where your allied characters move around the board as well as enemy characters. Each of the 9 stages have some main objective to complete, but it’s rarely anything more complicated than “beat the big bad guy”. Any time you move onto an enemy or they move onto you, a fight initiates between those two characters. Exploring around the board can get you special power ups that increase your base defense and offense stats for that stage, but you can also find whole new moves to buff yourself up with too. Each character has a certain number of slots available to be filled in either passive buffs or new special moves that can be unleashed in battle, and picking the loadout that’s right for you is often the key to victory just as much as playing well is.
The Dragon Road mode is a fun, weird way to experience the story in a fashion that allows for several different encounters between characters within the same maps, which is something I appreciate even if it also leads to there being a lot of really arcane nonsense ways to unlock playable characters as a result. The main thing I don’t really like about this approach is just how many special moves have a limited number of uses. For example, the super iconic Super Saiyan mode for Goku and his Saiyan buddies not only has to be unlocked before you can even use it, but you only have a very limited number of uses before you need to find that rare unlock again. I understand that this is a way to incentivize you to play and replay Dragon Road mode to unlock more moves, characters, and goodies (none of which are gated by difficulty played on, thankfully), but it’s a lot harder to forgive when this stuff carries over to the other multiplayer modes as well.
If I haven’t unlocked the Super Saiyan transformation in Dragon Road mode, then I can’t use it in the 1v1 versus mode either. These modes all pull from the same pool of moves, characters, and items, and that may be a neat gimmick, but it gates off *way* too many fun toys and abilities for what is still, at the end of the day, a fighting game. Dragon Road mode really should’ve lived in its own gated community while the versus modes were just “here are all the toys to play with” head-to-head modes, and I cannot fathom the reason why that was not done. Having so many characters unlocked only through the story mode is something I can forgive pretty easily. Even if the ways to unlock some characters are a bit difficult, nearly all of them are “beat X enemy with Y ally whom it’d make most sense to fight them with by the rules of the story of the show” that it’s far from unintuitive. Tons of fighting games (both good and bad) from the time had similar unlock systems to this for their rosters, so I have a hard time begrudging the game for that even if it’s a bit old fashioned by today’s standards. The thing I much more confidently begrudge is making the *moves* for those characters so thoroughly locked behind random pickups in the Dragon Road mode that it heavily compromises what’s already not a brilliant fighting game.
This is a fairly simplified 3D fighting game if you’re comparing it to something like Virtua Fighter or Tekken. You’ve got the four face buttons for punch, kick, energy, and block, and then pressing punch & kick together does a chargeable guard break attack, and pressing block & punch together executes a grab. You’ve even got the button combos for grab and guard break bound to your two R shoulder buttons by default. Special moves are executed by doing the correct sequence of directionally-aided punches and kicks followed by the energy button. You can move forward and back as well as rotationally around your opponent, and you can also just stand and charge up your power to have more ability to dish out special moves if you want. There’s a reasonable bit to keep track of (especially for a novice like me), but it’s far from impossible to get a handle on if you’re already comfortable with this sort of 3D fighting game.
The bigger issues come into play when you consider things like balance. While it can be kind of daunting to think of remembering special move sequences for a roster of over 20 characters (a really good amount of representation for the series, even if they’re missing a few more minor characters who were present in Budokai 1), most special move sequences are actually the exact same between characters. The effects of those moves are even quite similar a lot of the time, so you’ve not actually got *that* much to relearn if you’ve already mastered how one character works. However, these are complicated a lot by both character size and flight. Characters in DBZ can fly in the original property, so they can fly in this as well. The only thing is that you can get combo’d in the air WAY more easily and viciously than you can on the ground. Combine this with some characters being so short that larger characters (even one as relatively medium-sized as Goku) have normal punches and kicks go over their head entirely, and you have a recipe for frustration.
This also can really make the game a nightmare with just how fast the game can go when you’re fighting the CPU. Even against the last stage’s stronger enemies on normal mode, they were already nearly touch-of-death-ing me because they’d just start combo-ing me and never stop until I was nearly already dead. The similarities between characters ultimately means many are just flat-out better than others because their natural combos are just that much harder to break out of. Fighting any stronger opponent, either AI or human, largely comes down to “who can totally overwhelm the other one the most the fastest”. These rocket tag mechanics make for particularly frustrating experiences when you’re fighting against AI who are just *that* perfect at rolling away from your attacks and blocking all of your stuff that would otherwise connect. Making fights against AI opponents in fighting games is something difficult for most games to do well, but it’s extra annoying in a game with *so* many additional annoying modifiers as this one has (both mechanically intended and otherwise). I had always heard that the DBZ fighting games (before the newer FighterZ, at least) suffered a lot from the flying and generally less than stellar control decisions. After playing this, I am now very keenly aware of just what those fighting game fans were talking about.
At the very least, DBZ B2 has things going for it in the aesthetics department. The graphics are pretty good for a relatively early PS2 game. Most of the characters’ cell-shaded 3D models are quite good representations of their 2D counterparts even if the talking animations look a bit funky for some of them. The VA is all done by the official voice actors who voice them in the anime, and all of the alternate universe nonsense is that much more fun when you’ve got the proper voices bringing them to life too. The real star here, though, the music. It’s got some music and sound effects that are classics from the show, but the large majority of the soundtrack are entirely original new songs, and they’re REALLY good. It’s like swing music meets butt-rock, and I absolutely loved it X3. The main vocal theme for the game was something I was already familiar with, but I had no idea just how deep the well went of absolute bangers that fill this game’s OST.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This isn’t a bad-bad game, but I also would hardly call it a terribly great game either. More than that, though, with the large amount of DBZ games since this game, I’d have a really hard time picking a really compelling reason to go back and play *this* game in particular. For newer games, games like the DBZ Xenoverse or FighterZ are basically the peak of their respective genres for DBZ stuff, and even for stuff back on the PS2 you’ve got Eighting’s 3D fighting games which are put together a good bit better than Dimps’s stuff. That said, this game is still decent at what it does. Sure, it doesn’t play the best and it doesn’t have anywhere close to the biggest roster for a DBZ PS2 game, but what it does have are totally serviceable and fulfill their required roles adequately. The Dragon Road story mode’s story is also silly and fun in a novel way, and the OST is a great bonus too. While I’d have a pretty hard time explaining why you should pick this game over most other 3D-era DBZ fighting games, if you *do* for some reason decide to pick up Budokai 2 again, I can say that it’s a pretty decent time that you’ll probably have a good bit of fun with~.
76. Splashdown (PS2)
This is a game I’d never heard of until my partner mentioned it. It’s one of her childhood favorite games, and one day she asked out of idle curiosity if it’d come out in Japan. It turns out it *did*, but just barely. We were able to find one whole copy on Yahoo Auctions, and I told her it’d be her Christmas present this year if I picked it up. She happily agreed, so here we are writing a review for it one Splashdown-ing later X3. It took me about 2 hours to do the training and then beat the game on easy mode for the Japanese version of the game.
Splashdown does have a sort of conceit about being part of some big Sea-Doo racing championship, but there’s really not much story to speak of. It’s got a versus mode and an arcade mode, but the biggest thing (and where you unlock basically everything) is the career mode. You pick your racer, your difficulty, and then you race in a big grand prix which is longer depending on which difficulty you picked. It’s not a small difference either. Easy mode is only 12 races (10 normal ones and 2 challenge races) whereas normal mode has a whopping 20 races in total. I opted only to do easy mode because the game wasn’t really gripping me (for reasons I’ll get into later), but I can at least confirm that those higher difficulties are indeed a LOT tougher, and easy mode isn’t that easy to begin with.
There aren’t *that* many totally unique tracks in the game, however. Splashdown bares a LOT of similarities to Nintendo’s Wave Race 64, and one of the many ways it that manifests is how different difficulties will reuse the same map but move the actual bounds of the race. It’s a very clever way to get a lot more mileage out of fewer actual tracks, though I will say that the actual track quality does suffer at least a little for this. I don’t think any of the tracks I played were particularly poor, but I also wouldn’t say they were particularly good either. Tracks tend to be quite long (3~4+ minutes each), and especially when you bundle that in with the 3-lap qualifier you can (and should) do before each grand prix race, even one playthrough of easy mode has you playing each map quite a bit before you even start hitting any repeats (as normal and above are just the previous career grand prix track lists with progressively more added on to the end each time).
You’re really feeling the length of these tracks too with just how little down time you ever realistically have with each race. For starters, much like in Wave Race 64, you can not only turn your craft by holding left and right, but you can also lean forward and back to angle it as you zoom along the water too. Different leaning angles can let you take turns more tightly and even hydroplane across the water for lots of extra speed on straightaways, so even casual racing has a lot of nuances to it. You can also do some pretty cool technical feats with your Sea-Doo as well, with bunny hopping over obstacles or diving under them being a much more encouraged part of the gameplay loop than it was in Wave Race 64 (at least comparatively in terms of how many boring collectibles and high-level shortcuts can be found doing those in Splashdown). However, a big difference between this and Wave Race 64, however, is that tricks actually do something outside of a dedicated trick mode.
As you race, you’ve got a “performance meter” to the lower right of your speedometer. All those jumps scattered around stages aren’t just because getting big air is sick. They’re for doing tricks to boost that performance meter. There are a lot of tricks you can do (a shocking amount, quite frankly), but doing repeat tricks will give you a lower boost than they did the first time, so remembering what you have and haven’t done is important at least for those earlier boosts. Your performance meter slowly drops with time, so it’s important to keep those tricks up and to not cut too many corners. Heck, if you do a dive deep enough, you can get launched high enough to then lean back and do a 360-degree flip for some extra performance meter if you’re feeling brave enough on a straightaway!
In another note similar to Wave Race 64, Splashdown has directional arrow buoys in some parts of maps where if you don’t slalom around them the right way your speed will drop. However, unlike in Wave Race 64 where missing a buoy is a death sentence with just how badly it slows you down, missing a buoy in Splashdown only drops your performance meter a bit, but taking the turn properly will give you a slight increase in performance meter. This means there’s a cool risk/reward system with a lot of tracks where you need to choose between racing better or keeping that performance meter boosted. Do you dive under this barricade to save a lot of time, or do you take the buoy properly and keep your boost up? Do you do a sick, long trick in the air here for a BIG performance boost, or do you tilt your nose down and angle the craft better so you can take the next turn perfectly once you land? It’s a neat approach to a racing game, and while it’s not executed perfectly here (aside from just not being my preferred style of racing game in the first place), it makes for an experience that you can very rarely divert your attention from for even a moment with just how many options you have to keep in mind at any given time.
There are different racers in the game, and Splashdown unfortunately does the thing where racers not only have different stat spreads but also are often just objectively better than one another. All of the locked racers at the start have straight up better stats than the default four racers you can select. The only way to unlock these better racers is to play harder difficulties of career mode to beat them on challenge maps (which are bizarre, one-on-one indoor races against an opponent whom you choose) to add them to your team. After that, they’ll be available for you to play too, but this is still a style of racing design I don’t really care for.
I understand that it’s hard to just make the AI better at racing in a game like this, but for there to be characters who are objectively better than others that the player can also pick takes so much personality out of the choice of character for a player. It’s no longer about expressing yourself through a character you like (and maybe even having to learn a particular way of playing to accommodate their specific stat spread). Now it’s just about picking the best character because they’re literally the best and not choosing them is putting yourself at a direct disadvantage.
Additionally, compared to Wave Race 64, the actual riders operate with a very annoying lack of realism when it comes to wiping out. If you mess up a trick or slam into something head-on really hard, you’ll fall off your Sea-Doo and respawn, but those are the only two things that do that. You ride up on another racer so hard that your Sea-Doo literally pushes them under the water because you’re on top of them? They won’t fall off! You can even have someone land on your head after a jump and you still don’t fall off. Compared to even an N64 launch game 5 years older than this like Wave Race 64, it was so wild to see the actual handling of the players be so relaxed in this way. I don’t complain about this because I’m some stickler for realism in my games, but it just makes the game more annoying to play. If they’re meant to be other racers, let them act like it! Let me mess them up, cut them off, or wipe them out in a way that feels like it matters rather than just have it feel like this is all a glorified time trial with human-shaped decorations mixed in for flavor. Given the realism of the rest of the game, it was a really weird and disappointing aspect of a game from 2001 to feel more primitive and cartoony in how its racers interact with one another than they do in the most famous example of this kind of game from the previous generation.
The aesthetics are a very mixed bag, but they’re also very of the time this was released. The graphics of the land around you that you’re racing between is very low-polygon and often looks pretty darn ugly with the texture work on it. However, the water effects are really good looking, by contrast. The human models also look quite nice, and the animations for their tricks and such look very nice for the time. It’s hardly gonna knock your socks off in 2025, but it still holds up pretty well for what it is.
The soundtrack is, as was very common at the time, a bunch of licensed songs (punk-pop, in this case) rather than original tracks. However, they’re not put on specific tracks that they fit or anything like that. Instead, they just play randomly and just change to a new song when the old one ends like it’s your radio in GTAIII or something. I generally like a lot of the songs here (and it was extremely funny when Smash Mouth’s “All Star” began playing as I started my first proper race), but there are just nowhere near enough of them for how much racing you’ll be doing on even a short, causal playthrough like mine. Even a 12-track easy career mode will have you listening to the same songs over and over constantly far before you hit the championship. Given that you can’t switch certain songs out of the rotation or just switch to the next song, I can’t imagine how annoying a lot of these would get if you intended to play this game a ton (or even just play it enough to beat the normal and hard career modes), because they were already beginning to annoy the people watching me play, and they weren’t even the ones playing XD
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This is far from a bad game, and it honestly holds up pretty well when it comes to the fundamentals of its design and how the watercraft handle, but I don’t think it’s a particularly stand-out racing experience. The track design is good, but none of it is particularly memorable. They’ve gone for quantity over quality, and while I don’t think that’s bad, and it was almost certainly the right choice at the time, I’d be very hard pressed to say that it manages to shine brighter than something like Wave Race 64. If you’re into racing games and want something a bit technical and a bit different, then this is a great place to look for it, but if you’re not particularly interested by the sound of a trick-focused Sea-Doo racing game, then you’re much better off sticking with the “less is more” greater polish of Wave Race 64 than hunting down a copy of this.
Splashdown does have a sort of conceit about being part of some big Sea-Doo racing championship, but there’s really not much story to speak of. It’s got a versus mode and an arcade mode, but the biggest thing (and where you unlock basically everything) is the career mode. You pick your racer, your difficulty, and then you race in a big grand prix which is longer depending on which difficulty you picked. It’s not a small difference either. Easy mode is only 12 races (10 normal ones and 2 challenge races) whereas normal mode has a whopping 20 races in total. I opted only to do easy mode because the game wasn’t really gripping me (for reasons I’ll get into later), but I can at least confirm that those higher difficulties are indeed a LOT tougher, and easy mode isn’t that easy to begin with.
There aren’t *that* many totally unique tracks in the game, however. Splashdown bares a LOT of similarities to Nintendo’s Wave Race 64, and one of the many ways it that manifests is how different difficulties will reuse the same map but move the actual bounds of the race. It’s a very clever way to get a lot more mileage out of fewer actual tracks, though I will say that the actual track quality does suffer at least a little for this. I don’t think any of the tracks I played were particularly poor, but I also wouldn’t say they were particularly good either. Tracks tend to be quite long (3~4+ minutes each), and especially when you bundle that in with the 3-lap qualifier you can (and should) do before each grand prix race, even one playthrough of easy mode has you playing each map quite a bit before you even start hitting any repeats (as normal and above are just the previous career grand prix track lists with progressively more added on to the end each time).
You’re really feeling the length of these tracks too with just how little down time you ever realistically have with each race. For starters, much like in Wave Race 64, you can not only turn your craft by holding left and right, but you can also lean forward and back to angle it as you zoom along the water too. Different leaning angles can let you take turns more tightly and even hydroplane across the water for lots of extra speed on straightaways, so even casual racing has a lot of nuances to it. You can also do some pretty cool technical feats with your Sea-Doo as well, with bunny hopping over obstacles or diving under them being a much more encouraged part of the gameplay loop than it was in Wave Race 64 (at least comparatively in terms of how many boring collectibles and high-level shortcuts can be found doing those in Splashdown). However, a big difference between this and Wave Race 64, however, is that tricks actually do something outside of a dedicated trick mode.
As you race, you’ve got a “performance meter” to the lower right of your speedometer. All those jumps scattered around stages aren’t just because getting big air is sick. They’re for doing tricks to boost that performance meter. There are a lot of tricks you can do (a shocking amount, quite frankly), but doing repeat tricks will give you a lower boost than they did the first time, so remembering what you have and haven’t done is important at least for those earlier boosts. Your performance meter slowly drops with time, so it’s important to keep those tricks up and to not cut too many corners. Heck, if you do a dive deep enough, you can get launched high enough to then lean back and do a 360-degree flip for some extra performance meter if you’re feeling brave enough on a straightaway!
In another note similar to Wave Race 64, Splashdown has directional arrow buoys in some parts of maps where if you don’t slalom around them the right way your speed will drop. However, unlike in Wave Race 64 where missing a buoy is a death sentence with just how badly it slows you down, missing a buoy in Splashdown only drops your performance meter a bit, but taking the turn properly will give you a slight increase in performance meter. This means there’s a cool risk/reward system with a lot of tracks where you need to choose between racing better or keeping that performance meter boosted. Do you dive under this barricade to save a lot of time, or do you take the buoy properly and keep your boost up? Do you do a sick, long trick in the air here for a BIG performance boost, or do you tilt your nose down and angle the craft better so you can take the next turn perfectly once you land? It’s a neat approach to a racing game, and while it’s not executed perfectly here (aside from just not being my preferred style of racing game in the first place), it makes for an experience that you can very rarely divert your attention from for even a moment with just how many options you have to keep in mind at any given time.
There are different racers in the game, and Splashdown unfortunately does the thing where racers not only have different stat spreads but also are often just objectively better than one another. All of the locked racers at the start have straight up better stats than the default four racers you can select. The only way to unlock these better racers is to play harder difficulties of career mode to beat them on challenge maps (which are bizarre, one-on-one indoor races against an opponent whom you choose) to add them to your team. After that, they’ll be available for you to play too, but this is still a style of racing design I don’t really care for.
I understand that it’s hard to just make the AI better at racing in a game like this, but for there to be characters who are objectively better than others that the player can also pick takes so much personality out of the choice of character for a player. It’s no longer about expressing yourself through a character you like (and maybe even having to learn a particular way of playing to accommodate their specific stat spread). Now it’s just about picking the best character because they’re literally the best and not choosing them is putting yourself at a direct disadvantage.
Additionally, compared to Wave Race 64, the actual riders operate with a very annoying lack of realism when it comes to wiping out. If you mess up a trick or slam into something head-on really hard, you’ll fall off your Sea-Doo and respawn, but those are the only two things that do that. You ride up on another racer so hard that your Sea-Doo literally pushes them under the water because you’re on top of them? They won’t fall off! You can even have someone land on your head after a jump and you still don’t fall off. Compared to even an N64 launch game 5 years older than this like Wave Race 64, it was so wild to see the actual handling of the players be so relaxed in this way. I don’t complain about this because I’m some stickler for realism in my games, but it just makes the game more annoying to play. If they’re meant to be other racers, let them act like it! Let me mess them up, cut them off, or wipe them out in a way that feels like it matters rather than just have it feel like this is all a glorified time trial with human-shaped decorations mixed in for flavor. Given the realism of the rest of the game, it was a really weird and disappointing aspect of a game from 2001 to feel more primitive and cartoony in how its racers interact with one another than they do in the most famous example of this kind of game from the previous generation.
The aesthetics are a very mixed bag, but they’re also very of the time this was released. The graphics of the land around you that you’re racing between is very low-polygon and often looks pretty darn ugly with the texture work on it. However, the water effects are really good looking, by contrast. The human models also look quite nice, and the animations for their tricks and such look very nice for the time. It’s hardly gonna knock your socks off in 2025, but it still holds up pretty well for what it is.
The soundtrack is, as was very common at the time, a bunch of licensed songs (punk-pop, in this case) rather than original tracks. However, they’re not put on specific tracks that they fit or anything like that. Instead, they just play randomly and just change to a new song when the old one ends like it’s your radio in GTAIII or something. I generally like a lot of the songs here (and it was extremely funny when Smash Mouth’s “All Star” began playing as I started my first proper race), but there are just nowhere near enough of them for how much racing you’ll be doing on even a short, causal playthrough like mine. Even a 12-track easy career mode will have you listening to the same songs over and over constantly far before you hit the championship. Given that you can’t switch certain songs out of the rotation or just switch to the next song, I can’t imagine how annoying a lot of these would get if you intended to play this game a ton (or even just play it enough to beat the normal and hard career modes), because they were already beginning to annoy the people watching me play, and they weren’t even the ones playing XD
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This is far from a bad game, and it honestly holds up pretty well when it comes to the fundamentals of its design and how the watercraft handle, but I don’t think it’s a particularly stand-out racing experience. The track design is good, but none of it is particularly memorable. They’ve gone for quantity over quality, and while I don’t think that’s bad, and it was almost certainly the right choice at the time, I’d be very hard pressed to say that it manages to shine brighter than something like Wave Race 64. If you’re into racing games and want something a bit technical and a bit different, then this is a great place to look for it, but if you’re not particularly interested by the sound of a trick-focused Sea-Doo racing game, then you’re much better off sticking with the “less is more” greater polish of Wave Race 64 than hunting down a copy of this.
77. R4 Ridge Racer Type 4 (PS1)
This is another favorite of my partner who likes Splashdown. Since her and I were already hanging out, I figured it only made sense to move on to what’s the last yet unbeaten racing game I have in my backlog. I’ve had this game to play with her for a while, but the last time I booted it up, I ended up so enthused with the demo disc (complete with remaster of the original Ridge Racer!) that it came with that I never ended up getting to R4 at all XD. After keeping my messing around with the demo disc to a minimum this time, I found what is indeed quite a fun racing game! It certainly hasn’t replaced F-Zero X in my heart as my favorite racing game ever, but I’ll definitely admit that all the people who’ve told me how good R4 is over the years were certainly on to something. Playing the Japanese version of the game, it took me around 2 hours to beat the game with the French company (easy mode) and the Italian (drift) car with only two losses on the grand prix.
Unlike a lot of racing games of the time, there’s a remarkably in-depth story for R4’s grand prix mode. You’re racing in the Real Racing Roots ’99 Grand Prix, and as a new driver in this whole business, there are four racing companies you can join and try to lead to victory. Each team is associated with a different difficulty level (such as the French team that I picked being the easy mode and the Japanese team being Normal mode), but each also has a different manager too. The manager talks to you before and after each race, and I was honestly shocked at just how much personality each of them has. Not only are they very loud personalities and very distinct from one another (to the kinda flirty but rebellious woman leading the French team to the comically and constantly rude guy leading the Japanese team), but there’s even a remarkable amount of reaction to how you place in each race. Sure, there’s no voice acting for these, so it’s not like it was a huge use of development time to do this, but I found it really fun that they have entirely different scripts depending on how you place in a race and how you have been placing in races. Your driver is just a faceless newbie who has no personality, so the grand prix actually having this much character to it was a really fun surprise when I’m so used to 0 story of any kind in racing games this old.
The game itself is, well, it’s Ridge Racer! You’ve got a choice between more grip-focused cars or drift-focused cars, and there are two companies making each to choose from in the grand prix mode (which will be unlocked for time trial and versus modes once you get them in a grand prix), and the handling is SO fun. I’d always heard so much about how wild the drifting is to learn and get used to in RR, and it definitely was a bit of a learning process (and a thankfully much shorter one with my partner there to coach me through it), but once I got it, it was SO fun drifting around corners and learning each track. The game only has 8 tracks, which isn’t a ton, but it’s a pretty fair number for an arcade-y racer like this from back then.
In regards to more miscellaneous stuff about the game’s design, you can pick from manual or automatic transmission, but I chose automatic and was perfectly fine, thankfully. I’m already unfamiliar enough with these non-kart racer racing games, so I don’t need yet another handicap to my performance <w>. It’s also annoying how they always default you to a first-person view within the cab, but at least you can press triangle to get a more normal third-person view right away (even if the only way to look behind you is the rear-view mirror present in the first-person view :/ ). Probably my main issue with how the game controls and is designed isn’t how your own car handles so much as it is the other cars you’re racing against.
Like a lot of arcade racing games, you always start in last place and need to claw your way to the front by the end of the last lap. Even if it makes things harder, I really prefer when the other cars in a racing game feel like other racers. They make mistakes, they fight with each other, they’ve got some impact when you hit them, and you can mess them up just as bad as they can mess with you. Unfortunately, R4 is of the type of racing game where things feel more like a glorified time trial with car-shaped decorations to avoid rather than a true race against other competitors. There is zero impact at all when you bump or crash into other cars. Even bumping into walls makes you just bounce off like a bumper car, but while I’m quite okay with that (as it keeps the pace of the race better), it’s a lot more disappointing when bumping into other cars has the same effect. With that in mind, I do appreciate that this lets the game be more about the handling, first and foremost. You don’t need to worry about other racers in the grand prix getting in the way of your sick drifts in your quest for first prize, and that does make for a good feeling racing experience. It’s not how I prefer my racing games to be designed, but I can definitely respect this kind of design philosophy no matter how much it just isn’t for me (not to mention it’s easily one of the best games in this style that I’ve played, hands down).
Aesthetically, the game is a pretty darn good racing game for ’98 on the PS1. It runs fantastically, and the cars and environments are quite well detailed. They’re hardly going to look photo-realistic these days, of course, but they regardless do provide a great sense of speed while driving while also being distinct enough that you’re very rarely going to be caught off guard by any part of the scenery unless you just weren’t paying attention (or, like me, had the brightness down so low on one track that you just mistake the upcoming embankment for the entrance to a tunnel <w> ). The real human portraits used for the managers’ expressions were also great I really didn’t expect a little touch like that, but it blends with their well written dialogue really well to give them a feeling of real-ness that I’d never expect from an arcade racer like this. The music is also really good. I’m not nearly as familiar with “jungle” music, as my partner calls this genre, but when she compared it to Ape Escape 1’s soundtrack, she was really correct! It’s fun, pumping techno tunes, and it compliments the speed of the races wonderfully.
Verdict: Recommended. This is a great game that deserves its reputation. It’s not an all-time great game for me in particular if only because it doesn’t align to my tastes as much as I’d like, but I’m not gonna just ignore how well put together something like this is solely because I prefer different stuff. If you’re into arcade racers with speed as a focus, then you’ve probably honestly already played this, but if you haven’t, then you really should! It may show its age in some places, but it’s still got a lot of polish and charm to its execution and presentation that have withstood the test of time very well. Ridge Racer may’ve gone the way of the dodo these days, but games like this show why it’s still such a well-remembered and beloved classic Namco series.
Unlike a lot of racing games of the time, there’s a remarkably in-depth story for R4’s grand prix mode. You’re racing in the Real Racing Roots ’99 Grand Prix, and as a new driver in this whole business, there are four racing companies you can join and try to lead to victory. Each team is associated with a different difficulty level (such as the French team that I picked being the easy mode and the Japanese team being Normal mode), but each also has a different manager too. The manager talks to you before and after each race, and I was honestly shocked at just how much personality each of them has. Not only are they very loud personalities and very distinct from one another (to the kinda flirty but rebellious woman leading the French team to the comically and constantly rude guy leading the Japanese team), but there’s even a remarkable amount of reaction to how you place in each race. Sure, there’s no voice acting for these, so it’s not like it was a huge use of development time to do this, but I found it really fun that they have entirely different scripts depending on how you place in a race and how you have been placing in races. Your driver is just a faceless newbie who has no personality, so the grand prix actually having this much character to it was a really fun surprise when I’m so used to 0 story of any kind in racing games this old.
The game itself is, well, it’s Ridge Racer! You’ve got a choice between more grip-focused cars or drift-focused cars, and there are two companies making each to choose from in the grand prix mode (which will be unlocked for time trial and versus modes once you get them in a grand prix), and the handling is SO fun. I’d always heard so much about how wild the drifting is to learn and get used to in RR, and it definitely was a bit of a learning process (and a thankfully much shorter one with my partner there to coach me through it), but once I got it, it was SO fun drifting around corners and learning each track. The game only has 8 tracks, which isn’t a ton, but it’s a pretty fair number for an arcade-y racer like this from back then.
In regards to more miscellaneous stuff about the game’s design, you can pick from manual or automatic transmission, but I chose automatic and was perfectly fine, thankfully. I’m already unfamiliar enough with these non-kart racer racing games, so I don’t need yet another handicap to my performance <w>. It’s also annoying how they always default you to a first-person view within the cab, but at least you can press triangle to get a more normal third-person view right away (even if the only way to look behind you is the rear-view mirror present in the first-person view :/ ). Probably my main issue with how the game controls and is designed isn’t how your own car handles so much as it is the other cars you’re racing against.
Like a lot of arcade racing games, you always start in last place and need to claw your way to the front by the end of the last lap. Even if it makes things harder, I really prefer when the other cars in a racing game feel like other racers. They make mistakes, they fight with each other, they’ve got some impact when you hit them, and you can mess them up just as bad as they can mess with you. Unfortunately, R4 is of the type of racing game where things feel more like a glorified time trial with car-shaped decorations to avoid rather than a true race against other competitors. There is zero impact at all when you bump or crash into other cars. Even bumping into walls makes you just bounce off like a bumper car, but while I’m quite okay with that (as it keeps the pace of the race better), it’s a lot more disappointing when bumping into other cars has the same effect. With that in mind, I do appreciate that this lets the game be more about the handling, first and foremost. You don’t need to worry about other racers in the grand prix getting in the way of your sick drifts in your quest for first prize, and that does make for a good feeling racing experience. It’s not how I prefer my racing games to be designed, but I can definitely respect this kind of design philosophy no matter how much it just isn’t for me (not to mention it’s easily one of the best games in this style that I’ve played, hands down).
Aesthetically, the game is a pretty darn good racing game for ’98 on the PS1. It runs fantastically, and the cars and environments are quite well detailed. They’re hardly going to look photo-realistic these days, of course, but they regardless do provide a great sense of speed while driving while also being distinct enough that you’re very rarely going to be caught off guard by any part of the scenery unless you just weren’t paying attention (or, like me, had the brightness down so low on one track that you just mistake the upcoming embankment for the entrance to a tunnel <w> ). The real human portraits used for the managers’ expressions were also great I really didn’t expect a little touch like that, but it blends with their well written dialogue really well to give them a feeling of real-ness that I’d never expect from an arcade racer like this. The music is also really good. I’m not nearly as familiar with “jungle” music, as my partner calls this genre, but when she compared it to Ape Escape 1’s soundtrack, she was really correct! It’s fun, pumping techno tunes, and it compliments the speed of the races wonderfully.
Verdict: Recommended. This is a great game that deserves its reputation. It’s not an all-time great game for me in particular if only because it doesn’t align to my tastes as much as I’d like, but I’m not gonna just ignore how well put together something like this is solely because I prefer different stuff. If you’re into arcade racers with speed as a focus, then you’ve probably honestly already played this, but if you haven’t, then you really should! It may show its age in some places, but it’s still got a lot of polish and charm to its execution and presentation that have withstood the test of time very well. Ridge Racer may’ve gone the way of the dodo these days, but games like this show why it’s still such a well-remembered and beloved classic Namco series.
