Games Beaten 2025

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Fri Oct 31, 2025 4:01 am

Partridge Senpai's 2025 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
* indicates a repeat

1~50

51~100

101. Rayman 2: The Great Escape (N64)
102. Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa (Famicom)
103. Panic Restaurant (NES)
104. Mr. Gimmick (NES)
105. Bucky O'Hare (NES)
106. Wheel of Fortune (N64)
107. Resident Evil 2 (PS1)
108. Dragon Quest VI (SFC)
109. Ninja Gaiden (NES)
110. StarTropics (NES)
111. Parody World: Monster Party (Famicom)

112. Super Mario Bros 2 (NES)

This is a game I’ve beaten plenty of times on other platforms, but I’d never beaten it on the original NES! I’ve beaten Mario 1 and 3 plenty of times on the original hardware, but Mario 2 is one I was just never able to best in its original form. I’d always get stuck and start running out of lives in the back half of the game, and I’d never even make it to level 7-2, let alone to the Wart fight. I resolved to finally solve this problem recently though! I realize that my failed attempts up until now were almost definitely down to trying to use Luigi instead of Peach for this game, and as anyone who’s played Mario 2 knows, not using Peach is a fantastic way to make the game far, far harder than it needs to be XD. (my partner, who also loves this game, filling me in on exactly how the health recovery mechanic in this game works also helped a lot X3). Actually finally using Peach for the whole thing meant that I was finally able to clear it just fine. Playing via my NES Classic with my Wii Classic Controller Pro, I was able to clear the game without using a single continue in just about 1.5 hours.

I hesitate to really write too much about Mario 2 here, treating it like a normal one of my reviews, since people will undoubtedly already be quite familiar with it, and I’ve also already played it a ton in other versions, so it’s not like I’m going in with an unbiased perspective. As such, I’ll try to keep this one brief. I really love this game! I’ve always loved the style and character that Mario 2 has compared to so many other Mario games. The level design is great, the bosses are really novel and varied, and the music is awesome too. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I still gotta say that Mario 2 is a great action platformer that’s held up fantastically throughout the years, and that’s probably why I’ve continued to be drawn to it over and over (just like so many other great classic Mario games).

My only real complaint, if you can call it that, is that it’s definitely the hardest of the 3 English-released main Mario titles on the NES. It’s certainly easier than its Doki Doki Panic counterpart (not to mention a hell of a lot easier than what Japan calls “Mario 2”), but it’s still a really tough game with just how many technical skill challenges it throws at you immediately. I have very specific memories of having to jump on Birdo’s eggs that she fires being something baby me had a very hard time with, and that’s something they expect you to do from the very first stage! On top of tricky jumps like that, acquisition of health being hearts gained by number of enemies killed is already odd, but just how well the mushrooms are hidden is also another big addition to the challenge factor. You’ve basically just gotta find them through trial and error (and educated guesses) after a certain point, which doesn’t feel very nice for a game that’s otherwise so good about letting your reflexes and observational power carry you to victory. These aren’t massive issues by any means, but they’re definitely things that’d make me probably recommend Mario 1 or 3 to someone before this if they weren’t someone already quite comfortable with retro platformers.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. As I said before, I’m preaching to the choir here when I’m talking about how damn good this game is. I’m probably not in the majority with how I’d say I love this game just as much as Mario 3, but it’s still a classic game that’s beloved for very good reasons, and I’m glad I finally saw through completing it in its original iteration like this~.

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113. Kamen No Ninja Hanamaru (Famicom)

Much like Monster Party which I played a few days back, Yo! Noid and this, its Japanese counterpart, has been an 8-bit game I’ve been vaguely aware of due to watching a Let’s Play many years ago. It’s another one of those old 8-bit platformers that’s been filed in my head as almost certainly something that’s hated on for the meme of its design rather than how bad it actually is, so it’s naturally another one that I put on my “to play” list while I’m going through so many old platformers lately. Unfortunately for me, this is a game that’s hated on for reasons much better than just memes, and I ended up using rewinds quite a lot to beat it in the end because I just couldn’t be bothered to redo its tedious content so frequently XD. It ended up taking me about 1.5 hours to beat it while rewinding like crazy whenever I died, because there was no way I was spending any more time with this than I needed to after the impression the first few levels made on me.

Hanamaru’s story is pretty simple, but I’ll also admit that I didn’t pay much attention to it, as it’s only in the post-title intro sequence that I didn’t even realize was there until I’d already beaten the game <w>. There’s a theme park island where a bunch of children go to have fun, but then stuff goes bad and it’s up to Hanamaru to save them. It’s pretty clearly tongue-in-cheek in what little writing it has, but there’s genuinely no other story between the beginning of the game and the ending ^^;. Even still, it’s a fine enough excuse for what we’re up to, or at least it *would* be if what we were up to was actually fun XP

Hanamaru is a late-era Famicom game that makes a lot of very bizarre (unfun) design choices at once. Before we get into detail on those, however, let’s cover the basics. This is a pretty straightforward left-to-right platformer. You’ve got some gimmick/vehicle levels here and there, but you use your hawk to attack things, and you’ve got scrolls to collect in each level to power up your sub-weapon super attacks (which are mostly some variant of a screen-clear). The level design is usually inoffensively uninspired, but the gimmick levels often crank things pretty hard in the direction of “very irritating” Xp.

There are some specific things like the hit detection for jumping on enemies like the skateboard level is awful or the ice physics in the ice level (which is the second stage!!) being really wonky, but the biggest factor comes from two places: Levels have no checkpoints, and you die in 1 hit. This game also has limited continues as well as a fair few very tricky jumps, so the general feeling upon failure is decidedly on the side of “that was BS” rather than feeling like you might’ve survived that if you’d just been a bit more careful. Not only was that indeed probably actually BS, but you’ve also gotta now re-trudge through the entire stage to actually get back to where you were. Stages aren’t terribly long, at least, but they nearly always outstay their welcome with the aforementioned BS that they’re never a pleasure to have to go all the way back through from the start.

The cherry on the sundae is the boss battles. They’re awful, yes, but in a very unconventional way for an old 8-bit game. Rather than anything action-based, they’re simple card battles. They play a random card with a number on it from their pile of 16, and you play one of yours too. The difference between the two numbers is deducted from the loser’s health pool, and the first one two zero loses (or the one with the least at the end once you both run out of cards to play, though ties thankfully default to you winning). The actual assortment of cards you and they have seems procedurally determined at the moment you start the level they’re on, but it’s such a simple card game that there’s no strategy beyond just “play big cards when you can” basically.

The only catch to these fights is that once you hit the third one or so, they become mathematically impossible to win normally. There are x2 multiplier cards you can find in stages as well as some other special cards for defense and healing, but just the cards you can see in the stages will almost never be enough to win these fights (and the math is too simple to employ any kind of special strategies to cheat death). There are certainly times where you’ll just need to get lucky that the boss happens to play poorer cards sooner, but that won’t make up for the power difference between you in the lion’s share of cases.

Why are these fights so impossible? It’s because there are actually extra hidden cards (additional special defense ones, loads of x2 cards, and even some x3 ones) in every stage! They’re put in set places, and attacking the completely unindicated air where they are will reveal them for you to collect. I had no idea this was the case until I happened upon it by accident, and it changed my perspective on the bosses, but it still made me believe they’re quite definitively poor fights. If you’re just attacking all over the place like a maniac, you’ll probably have 6+ x2 cards by the boss fight, and for pretty much any boss, that should be more than enough to totally wallop them. All this does is flip the problem with the bosses on its head: Rather than being impossibly difficult to win, now you’d actually have to actively try to lose. Now, instead of defeat being a sure-fire thing, you’re either definitely going to win, or you’re going to get too unlucky on their card draw and they’ll beat you despite the overwhelming odds. The boss battles feel awful and unfair no matter what you do because they are, indeed, both awful and unfair, and they make an already tedious and boring game all that much more of a chore to play.

The weird asterisk to the whole experience is that, because this is a 1990 Capcom game, this game actually has pretty solid music. The graphics are fine. There’s not much animation to them, but they’re quite fun and detailed as you’d expect for a later-life Famicom game. The music also isn’t incredible, but it’s remarkably nice given the shoddy quality of the rest of the play experience <w>

Verdict: Not Recommended. This is a game that is definitely thought of poorly for good reasons. I’ll admit that it’s hardly the worst platformer on the system, sure, but that’s such a phenomenally low bar to clear that it’s certainly nothing worth bragging about. Simply put, your time is worth far more than trudging through this sub-mediocre NES platformer, and that should be more than enough reason to give this game a wide berth in favor of one of the dozens of better action platformers available on this system.

Post by **MrPopo** » Sat Nov 01, 2025 7:09 pm

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

First 50:

51. Galactic Civilizations II - PC
52. Alan Wake 2: The Lake House - PC
53. Rogue Flight - Switch
54. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 - Gamecube
55. System Shock 2 Remastered - PC
56. Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries: Shadow of Kerensky - PC
57. Hollow Knight: Silksong - Switch
58. Borderlands 4 - PC
59. Daemon x Machina: Titanic Scion - Switch 2
60. Cats Organized Neatly - PC
61. Cultic: Chapter Two - PC
62. Moros Protocol - PC
63. Tormented Souls 2 - PS5

Tormented Souls 2 is the follow up to the first game, once again bringing us old school fixed-camera survival horror. Like Resident Evil before it, this game moves beyond the confines of a single mansion and explores a remote town, where creepy things are afoot. Combat has also been updated a bit, again, like RE, where you tend to have to throw down a bit more.

The game begins with Caroline bringing her sister Anna to a remote village that she hopes will be able to help Anna deal with the horrific visions she keeps having. Naturally, the village ends up being evil, and the sisters are captured by an evil convent. Caroline is separated from Anna and knocked out, later awakening alone in a room with a large number of weird needles stuck into her, like acupuncture from hell. The convent is seemingly deserted, though you can hear sounds of SOMETHING prowling around. Caroline needs to find her sister and figure out what all is going on here.

Like the first game, the game is an homage to the survival horror titles of yore. The game uses tank controls with fixed camera angles, though it will sometimes pan around a corner for atmosphere, as it isn't using prerendered backgrounds. You move from room to room, looking for supplies and key items so you can get past the various locks and puzzles. Sometimes you'll encounter monsters who you'll need to take out with a variety of weaponry, both melee and ranged. Melee is definitely viable in this game, at least as a way to conserve ammo. Most enemies will go into a stagger or knockdown state after taking enough damage, and running in with a melee weapon is a great way to finish them off. Like before, the darkness isn't just a way to creep you out; it's a hostile force that needs to be held back with light. Since the beginning of the game requires you to use a lighter for illumination, you sometimes need to maintain the presence of mind to know where environmental light sources are, as you can't juggle a lighter and a gun at the same time.

While the first game was confined to one mansion, this game involves a large number of smaller areas. After you get through the initial convent you will hit the village streets proper. These serve as a sort of hub that you will keep revisiting as you hit up the other creepy areas in the game. Each area is gated by some sort of gate requiring a tool, and each area gives you the tool to get into the next area. These tools are not just keys; they are all useful gadgets that you will regularly use, so it doesn't just feel like a key hunt. You'll also get to dig more into the hows and whys of what's going on in this town. Like the RE games, much is contained in documents you can pick up, and some are quite critical for solving puzzles.

Overall, it is mostly an expansion of the first game; it goes bigger, but not necessarily deeper in any real way. Which isn't a bad thing, mind you. The RE series has attempted to change things up over time, and the results have been mixed over the course of the series. It seems the Tormented Souls IP has wisely decided to make the stories on the small end of scope, which should allow them to keep from having to go through the escalation RE felt it needed to do. If you enjoy the gameplay loop of survival horrors, this game is a modern stand out, with fun puzzles that can really tease the brain.

Post by **REPO Man** » Sat Nov 01, 2025 9:06 pm

I hope it gets a port to Switch 2, much like the Switch 1 port of the first one.

Last night, I beat Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, a love letter to the... "less than stellar" Zelda games for the CD-i. The developer of Arzette clearly showed what they learned on their remastered versions of said Zelda titles, serving as an excellent tribute to said games.

And yes, I linked to the patched versions, on the off chance one might prefer them. Or just want Android versions.

Post by **SamuraiMegas** » Mon Nov 03, 2025 2:08 pm

I "beat" Noita for the first time a few months ago and never talked about it on here. I just got to the bottom (and now have a half dozen or so wins like that) and haven't done the full 33 orb run yet.

I don't think I saw anyone mention this game on here before, and I'm a little surprised, because it's got a gorgeous pixel art style - it definitely has a "retro" vibe.

At it's core, it's a run and gun game. You build increasingly powerful wands that can eventually obliterate screens, teleport you across the map, heal you, or all of the above at once if you want. Enemies generally die pretty fast, but so do you. Everything can kill you at any time, and half the fun of the game is learning how to not get killed immediately.

It's learning curve is huge, and it usually takes people like 10+ hours minimum to get skilled enough to "win" by reaching the bottom. If you get a really good run going though, there's hidden quests and you can get a different ending by doing them all.

10/10 probably one of the best indie games I've played.

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Tue Nov 04, 2025 2:11 am

Partridge Senpai's 2025 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
* indicates a repeat

1~50

51~100

101. Rayman 2: The Great Escape (N64)
102. Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa (Famicom)
103. Panic Restaurant (NES)
104. Mr. Gimmick (NES)
105. Bucky O'Hare (NES)
106. Wheel of Fortune (N64)
107. Resident Evil 2 (PS1)
108. Dragon Quest VI (SFC)
109. Ninja Gaiden (NES)
110. StarTropics (NES)
111. Parody World: Monster Party (Famicom)
112. Super Mario Bros 2 (NES)
113. Kamen No Ninja Hanamaru (Famicom)

114. Power Blade (NES)

In my continuing spree of playing through a bunch of old 8-bit games, this was the next one on my hit list that caught my eye. This is yet another game that I saw played in a Let’s Play many years ago but have never thought about a ton since. This is also yet another game that I figured was probably at least pretty good, so where could the harm be in trying it out? Thankfully, unlike the last several games that fell into this category, I was pleasantly surprised for a change! XD. It took me about 1 hour and 10 minutes to beat the English version of the game without using save states or rewinds.

Power Blade’s cover is incredibly evocative of 80’s action movies (comically so), and the plot is too. In the late 22nd century, humanity lives in peace and tranquility under the governance of their master computer. However, one day the computer goes totally awry (attacked by aliens?), and everything is thrown into chaos! The world’s military knows that there’s only one man for the job: Nova. Sporting the titular “ancient weapon”, the power blade (which is a boomerang(s)), this Duke Nukem look alike is tasked with shutting down all six major security centers protecting the main computer and then shutting the main computer itself down for good. It’s a big job, some might even say impossible, but what kind of man or machine could possibly hope to stand in the way of a guy sporting such a sick set of aviators? XD. Power Blade’s story is delightfully absurd in its seriousness, and it makes for a great excuse for the action at hand X3

And the action at hand heckin’ rocks! All I knew about this game going in was that it was some kind of action platformer where your main weapon was a boomerang, but I had my expectations totally blown away once I actually played it. You’ve got six main stages that you can play in any order and a seventh final stage once they’re all done. In the six main stages, Nova has to find the ally agent to get the code to the boss’s door and then make his way to the door to fight them. Levels aren’t Metroid-levels of nonlinear, but this “lock and key” system with the boss’s door makes for some rather large levels that still aren’t overwhelming, and the stage design is overall really well done. Nova’s play control and movement are really good, and they do a great job of making it feel rewarding to throw around the boomerangs.

This is in no small part due to just how many sick as heck powerups you can acquire along your mission. You can throw boomerangs farther with more power upgrades, get up to three boomerangs to throw, and even get special upgrades to make them hit harder in the first place. It really sucks to lose some powerups when you die, but thankfully it’s only some and not all of them. On top of that, Nova can also throw his boomerangs in *eight* directions right from the get go, which is such a crazy power trip on a console generation where most heroes only ever get to fire left and right.

Your health bar means you’re fairly durable, but life pickups are also relatively common if you start running low. You thankfully never get powerups you can’t use, so if you’re already maxed out on your boomerang upgrades, you’ll start getting health pickups very quickly. There’s even a special power suit you can find that gives you a super powered penetrating shot, and an additional three hits before you lose the power suit that doesn’t count against your health bar. The bosses end up being a bit easy due to just how much Nova has at his disposal, but the good feeling action, well designed stages, and nice enemy variety overall make for a really solid and satisfying action platformer nonetheless.

For a 1990 NES game, Power Blade manages to both walk the walk and talk the talk. Action that feels good is followed up with a game that looks good too. The campy 80’s action movie aesthetic is complimented with a bunch of big sci-fi enemies and big scary robot bosses that are really nice to look at (and basically never make the game slow down either). The soundtrack is also really solid too. Not every track is an all timer, but there were still quite a few songs I found myself bopping my head along to as I played.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. I went in to Power Blade with very middling expectations, and I was totally blown away by the end of it. It may not change your life, as this is still just an NES action platformer, but speaking as a big fan of that genre, this is a genuinely really great hidden gem on the console. If you’re a big Mega Man fan like I am, then this is absolutely not one to pass up on, because you will likely have just as awesome a time as I did as long as you don’t mind the lack of boss powers to steal X3

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115. Power Blazer (Famicom)

After playing and loving Power Blade, I was very interested to learn that it actually doesn’t have a Famicom version. Instead, Power Blade is a very significantly altered version of this original Famicom release. Despite having mostly the same bosses and enemies, Power Blazer is much more than a simple change of graphics (Power Blade is much more sci-fi rather than cutesy and cartoony like this game). Though everything I read very heavily implied Power Blade to be the far superior game to this, I enjoyed that game so much that I just had to check out this Famicom progenitor as well. It overall took me a little over 1 hour to beat this game using rewinds a little bit on some very tricky end game platforming as well as on the final boss.

Where Power Blade has its Terminator look alike get a big dramatic intro and ending cutscene to show off its story, Power Blazer has no such flashiness. Its story is basically entirely in the manual, and there are basically no cutscenes in the game at all. Short version is that our little Mega Man wannabee (Power Blazer Fella, as I call him, or PBF for short) is on a mission behind enemy lines, and he’s the only one who can stop these nasty evil robots. It’s a Famicom action platformer, so it’s hardly like it needs big cutscenes or anything, and it’s all more than enough for setting up the action at hand even if it’s underwhelming compared to its English-language cousin.

That’s not all that’s underwhelming compared to Power Blade, though. What I’d read online really undersold just how much weaker a game Power Blazer is comparatively to the hell of a glow up that gave birth to Power Blade. Much like Power Blade, you’ve got six main stages that you can play in any order before you take on the final seventh stage. Very annoyingly, however, Power Blazer has no UI indication of which stages you’ve already completed (something Power Blade does actually have). On the topic of UI, Power Blazer’s is also worse than Power Blade because the latter displays a health bar for bosses where the former does not. And hoo boy, I really wish I could say that those shortcomings were the worst of Power Blazer’s problems.

In short, Power Blazer is the intensely mediocre game that I had first expected Power Blade to be. PBF can only fire boomerangs left and right rather than in 8 directions. He can also only ever fire one at a time, and he charges the longer-range throws far more slowly than Nova does in Power Blade. That’s if you ever get longer range in the first place, though. Compared to Power Blade, Power Blazer’s drop rate for enemy pickups is laughably low, and you can grind enemies for ages without ever finding a single one. Health is also far harder to farm than in Power Blade too, as this game lacks that one’s protections against redundant powerup drops. There are two passive upgrades for PBF’s boomerang that are mutually exclusive too, so a lot of pickups you’ll get effectively just do nothing or make your make your shots effectively worse. The action in this game feels incredibly unforgiving and mean as a result, and you lose way more powerups upon death than you do in Power Blade. A lot of enemies effectively cannot be fought without powerups unless you take a ton of damage in the process, so the pacing and balancing of the action is generally just quite rough even leaving comparisons to Power Blade out of the conversation.

PBF also jumps less high than Nova does in Power Blade. This wouldn’t normally be a huge problem, but Power Blazer *loves* really tight, pixel-perfect jumps. The one section I ended up having to use rewinds on was an utterly diabolical section that combined platforms with larger than usual hitboxes that also fell after standing on them for a moment. The hit detection on platforms is already fairly rough in this game, so that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me in a game I’d otherwise just patiently done the runbacks after death in up to that point. The platforming ends up feeling just as merciless and crummy as the action does, and the whole game ends up being a real fight against the odds as you use your pitiful default arsenal against a slew of enemies far more mobile and powerful than you. This goes for the bosses as well, who are largely far too spongy as well as really weirdly mobile compared to you. I ended up having to use rewinds on the final boss too. While his first form is just a real test of reflexes, the second form seems to spit very fast moving projectiles out at random. These are often just completely impossible to dodge without taking damage, and it made for a really nasty note to end a game I already wasn’t terribly enjoying. Overall, Power Blazer is a pretty sub-par action game on the Famicom with just how pixel perfect so much of its jumps are and how weak your main character constantly feels.

The aesthetics of the game are pretty decent, at the very least. The cartoony, anime approach to the graphics definitely gives things a less cohesive art style than a Mega Man game or even Power Blade’s 80’s sci-fi, but they’re at least colorful and neat to look at without much affecting the performance of the game. The music is also largely the same as Power Blade’s quite strong OST, so that’s one strong point they share in common without any real caveats.

Verdict: Not Recommended. Where Power Blade is an underappreciated hidden gem on the NES, Power Blazer is a thoroughly disappointing and frustrating time best left forgotten on the Famicom. Pixel perfect jumps and poorly balanced, punishing combat make for a game that really consistently struggles to be fun. It may not be the worst Famicom action game I’ve played, but that’s such a low bar it couldn’t possibly be anything to brag about <w>

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Wed Nov 05, 2025 4:40 am

Partridge Senpai's 2025 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
* indicates a repeat

1~50

51~100

101. Rayman 2: The Great Escape (N64)
102. Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa (Famicom)
103. Panic Restaurant (NES)
104. Mr. Gimmick (NES)
105. Bucky O'Hare (NES)
106. Wheel of Fortune (N64)
107. Resident Evil 2 (PS1)
108. Dragon Quest VI (SFC)
109. Ninja Gaiden (NES)
110. StarTropics (NES)
111. Parody World: Monster Party (Famicom)
112. Super Mario Bros 2 (NES)
113. Kamen No Ninja Hanamaru (Famicom)
114. Power Blade (NES)
115. Power Blazer (Famicom)

116. Metroid (NES)

While I had the NES Classic out for Ninja Gaiden a day or two earlier, I decided to try my hand at another game that I’d actively avoided for years because it was just always too hard for me to want to give it a decent try. Things were all going well for a while, but then my hand was cramping so badly from button mashing after 10 or so minutes that I had to transfer to another platform where I could bind a turbo button to take care of that for me ^^;. I tried to do as much of the game as I could without guides, but I got stuck looking for the ice beam after about an hour and started using a map I found online <w>. Along with some rewinds to eliminate needing to waste tons of time on LONG walkbacks due to missing tiny but very consequential jumps, it overall took me about 3.5 hours to beat the English version of the game.

The original Metroid is Samus’s first outing as a space bounty hunter. On the hunt for the leader of the Space Pirates, the nefarious Mother Brain, she’ll have to fight metroids, Kraid, and Ridley if she wants to see this mission through. It’s a brief and relatively simple story (especially as it’s presented through the game), but it’s more than enough for what it is (especially for such a relatively early Famicom game).

Metroid is a pretty impressive game for mid-’86, even if I don’t find it to be a very fun one. With 30 health to your name, you start out in Zebes and need to find your way through the planet’s various locations to find both power ups and the bosses you’ve got to take down before the way to Mother Brain opens up. Just finding your way around is SUCH a massive part of the experience, imo, that that’s why I only started to use rewinds after I’d abdicated to the point of using a simple map to find where the powerups were. If I wasn’t going to scour the entire map looking for the new abilities I needed to advance, then why waste time doing long runbacks due to missed jumps and such?

I think that’s really my main issue with this game as a whole. The gameplay loop just struggles to be very fun unless you really get enthralled by the desolate emptiness of it all. If you’re not someone who finds that “exploration with the odds stacked against you” thing fun (which I readily admit is something absolutely true for plenty of people), then there just isn’t much to enjoy here. The action isn’t terribly fun in and of itself. The beam is fairly weak and enemies take far too long to kill even with a turbo controller. The only reasonable way to kill harder enemies is with missiles (which instantly vaporize them), and the only thing keeping you from missiling everything in your path is that you have a limited amount of them. Therefore, as long as you’re willing to grind for more health and missiles every now and again, the game’s action never really needs to be all that hard. Even the bosses aren’t that difficult if you know where the max health and max missile upgrades are so you can just tank and missile the heck out of them after you’ve gotten as much of each as you can manage.

Grinding really is just what too much of the gameplay loop comes down to, frankly. There are way more max health upgrades hidden in the world than you can actually use to expand your health (which is nice because a lot of them are VERY well hidden), but even still, your max health caps out at 699. However, every time you die, you spawn at the start of the area you’re in with only 30 health. Health drops are relatively frequent, but they only drop in units of 5 and 20, and even weak enemies deal far more than 5 health with a single hit. Even if you hunt down the Varia suit that halves incoming damage, grinding for health in later areas is still very often a terribly dangerous prospect with many steps forward as well as steps back. This makes grinding health a terrible, very time-consuming chore that you’ll need to do every time you die unless you want to track down one of the yet uncollected max health upgrades to do nothing but just get a full health restore. Your missiles max out at over 250, which is WAY more than enough for just about anything, really, but they only drop in packs of 2. You’ll have plenty of time to grind up more missiles if you’re grinding for health as often as you’ll likely need to, but it still takes an incredible amount of time to get back to full fighting strength if you happen to really mess up in a hard section.

With the stage design quite simple and full of a lot of repeated area layouts and relatively few enemy types, the only things left to do after that are exploring every wall, ceiling, and floor for secrets that might lead you to a necessary area or powerup, and grinding back to a respectable amount of health when you die during exploration. Later Metroid games, even as soon as the second one, do a much better job of making grinding health back a far less tedious process on top of being far better about signposting the next place you’re meant to go. It’s hard for me to be too brutal for such an early and ambitious Famicom game for having poor signposting, but just because it’s an understandable limitation of the time it was made doesn’t mean that it makes dealing with it any more fun or tolerable in the current year.

The presentation of the game is pretty good for ’86, even if it’s nothing super impressive these days. The area and enemy sprites are pretty cool and sci-fi, and the only thing that really lets them down is just how sick of seeing them you’ll get with just how unnecessarily long, repetitive, and packed with enemies so many of the game’s corridors and vertical shafts are. The music is also pretty good. Metroid’s classic songs are iconic for a reason, and they do a good job of complimenting the desolate, isolated atmosphere that goes along with so much of the exploration.

Verdict: Not Recommended. I never expected my overall opinion on Metroid 1 to change after a full playthrough, and that is exactly what came to pass. While I can certainly appreciate that a death doesn’t erase any progress of collected powerups, the overall pace of the action and gameplay is far too ponderous and plodding for me to be able to find much fun in it. I think this was a really cool and ambitious game when it came out, but it just really has not stood the test of time when it comes to what makes a Metroid-style game fun. These games are all about both the exploration as well as the action, and both are far too weak in this game for anyone to really have much point in going back to this game in the current year. Experiencing Samus’s first adventure through Metroid Zero Mission has and continues to be the right choice for just about everyone, as that game has been and continues to be absolutely great~.

Wed Nov 05, 2025 7:07 am

Glad to hear Noita is getting some appreciation here!

Oh, and, can a game be a hidden gem if it was on the cover of Nintendo Power? Can it even be a hidden gem if it got an article in Nintendo Power? Personally, I feel not, but perhaps people are forgetting about what they read when they were 13?

Post by **MrPopo** » Thu Nov 06, 2025 12:42 am

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

First 50:

51. Galactic Civilizations II - PC
52. Alan Wake 2: The Lake House - PC
53. Rogue Flight - Switch
54. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 - Gamecube
55. System Shock 2 Remastered - PC
56. Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries: Shadow of Kerensky - PC
57. Hollow Knight: Silksong - Switch
58. Borderlands 4 - PC
59. Daemon x Machina: Titanic Scion - Switch 2
60. Cats Organized Neatly - PC
61. Cultic: Chapter Two - PC
62. Moros Protocol - PC
63. Tormented Souls 2 - PS5
64. Dragon Quest I HD-2D Remake - Switch

After the success of Dragon Quest III HD-2D, a remake of the other two games in the Loto trilogy were a sure thing. Because of their smaller size, I and II get bundled together in every single rerelease, dating back to the SFC, and here is no different. Generally, the remakes adjust the difficulty through changing battle rewards, to make it less grindy. This, on the other hand, is a proper remake that really fleshes out the original.

Dragon Quest I begins with our hero coming to Tantagel Castle. The land of Alefgard is under siege by the forces of the Dragon Lord, the princess has been kidnapped, and hope is fleeting. But our hero is a descendent of mighty Loto (Erdrick in the US localization), the hero who once banished the darkness in ages past. You must reclaim that legacy for yourself and bring peace to the land once again.

Now, since the original game was basically THE prototypical JRPG, it was quite bare bones. You had one character, you fought one monster in a given combat, and there wasn't much to do but grind, collect a handful of key items, and fight the final boss. The HD-2D remake vastly fleshes things out. While you still only have a single character, you now can fight multiple monsters at a time. You gain access to whips and boomerangs from later games to help manage this, as well as access to a wide range of skills alongside your existing magic powers from the original. You have a pretty wide toolkit, and you'll need to make use of all of it to survive. Many bosses have patterns you need to recognize and exploit, as with only one character your action economy is of paramount importance. For example, one boss has a pattern of casting a self buff, followed by two turns of heavy elemental damage. You can either stack elemental resistance, or you can foresee the elemental turns coming and use Defending Champion to nearly negate the damage.

On the story end of things, all of the breadcrumbs in the original have become full story beats. You will definitely have progress gated by hard story flags in some parts, so you can't just blitz to Cantlin and hope RNG is in your favor as you take on the Golem. Also, some of the story elements are pulling in elements from Dragon Quest II that logically should have existed in the first game, but the world hadn't yet been fleshed out. It all comes together to create a reasonably meaty 15-hour experience that I would call the definitive version of the game.

Dragon Quest I HD-2D is the best kind of update for such a foundational game. The jank from it being such an early title has been removed, but it doesn't try to undermine the things that set it apart from the games that would follow later.

Post by **Markies** » Thu Nov 06, 2025 1:00 am

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2025!
***Denotes Replay For Completion***

1. Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii)
2. Mario Party 4 (GCN)
***3. The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (PS2)***
***4. Pokemon Snap (N64)***
***5. Dead Or Alive (PS1)***
6. Rogue Galaxy (PS2)
7. Pokemon Blue (GBC)
8. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)
***9. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising (NSW)***
***10. Sonic The Hedgehog (GEN)***
***11. The New Tetris (N64)***
12. Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls (GBA)
13. Yoshi (NES)
***14. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)***
15. L.A. Noire - The Complete Edition (PS3)
16. Batman: The Video Game (GBC)
17. Splatoon 2 (NSW)
18. The Punisher (GEN)
***19. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time / Master Quest (GCN)***
***20. ChuChu Rocket! (SDC)***
21. Advance Wars (GBA)
22. Shadow of the Ninja (NES)
23. Tecmo Super Bowl (SNES)
24. Child of Eden (PS3)
***25. Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth Of Destiny (PS2)***
***26. DuckTales: Remastered (WiiU)***
***27. The Bard's Tale (XBOX)***
28. Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)
29. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (GB)
***30. Threads of Fate (PS1)***
31. Metroid Fusion (GBA)
***32. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES)***
***33. Super Baseball Simulator 1,000 (SNES)***
34. Miitopia (NSW)
35. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (WiiU)

I beat Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker on the Nintendo Wii U this evening!

One of the many memories I have of watching Backloggery Live is them playing through Super Mario 3D World together. Besides Drumble finally achieving his dream of becoming a Goomba, I vividly remember everybody enjoying the Captain Toad levels. When a full game of Captain Toad was released in 2014, I also remember everybody loving it as well. Well, when I finally got my Wii U I knew that I wanted it as well. It's going to take me forever to play through Super Mario 3D World, but I thought I didn't need that knowledge to play through Captain Toad. So, during one of my last shopping experiences after I beat my Backlog, I picked it up and after wanting something a bit happier, I decided to finally pop it in.

Captain Toad is a fun little puzzle game where the main mechanic is that Toad cannot jump. Each stage is presented like a 3D puzzle where you have to navigate toward through the level to avoid monsters and collect treasure at the end. Obviously, the game is filled with that Nintendo charm and can be quite funny in spots. Also, as somebody who used Toadette in Mario Kart: Double Dash, it was wonderful to have her as a playable character. There are three worlds in the game with each world have multiple stages and ending in a Boss Fight. The game does like to repeat itself with mini-boss and Boss Stages being the same but only have slight variations as the game progresses. But, most stages are extremely varied and unique along with offering that perfect level of challenge that is not too difficult. It really is an adorable experience and it was very easy to just lose track of time while playing.

There are a few mechanics where you have to use the GamePad as a touchscreen. You have to turn a wrench or blow into it which meant I was looking at the GamePad more than the screen and that was kind of annoying. Also, you collect these Diamonds throughout the levels and you need a certain amount to progress. I don't mind collecting them for 100%, but to stop progress was also annoying.

Overall, I would say those are minor issues as I mostly enjoyed everything about Captain Toad. It is extremely charming and very addicting to play. The adorable presentation won me over and I just wanted to play some more puzzles. I will be going back to this in the future and I would recommend to anybody who has not played it yet. Just a cute little puzzle game!

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Thu Nov 06, 2025 6:42 am

Partridge Senpai's 2025 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
* indicates a repeat

1~50

51~100

101. Rayman 2: The Great Escape (N64)
102. Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa (Famicom)
103. Panic Restaurant (NES)
104. Mr. Gimmick (NES)
105. Bucky O'Hare (NES)
106. Wheel of Fortune (N64)
107. Resident Evil 2 (PS1)
108. Dragon Quest VI (SFC)
109. Ninja Gaiden (NES)
110. StarTropics (NES)
111. Parody World: Monster Party (Famicom)
112. Super Mario Bros 2 (NES)
113. Kamen No Ninja Hanamaru (Famicom)
114. Power Blade (NES)
115. Power Blazer (Famicom)
116. Metroid (NES)

117. Kid Icarus (NES)

After having less than enjoyed the original Metroid, there was still another old Nintendo action adventure game on my NES Classic that I was nonetheless still keen to play. I’d played this a bit in years past, but I’d never committed a ton of time to it. I wanted to beat it without using save states or anything, so the couple of times I’ve dipped into it on the Switch Online service, I never ended up getting more than just toying with it. However, I was determined to actually beat it this time! After an hour of struggling to make it to the first world’s dungeon, I was perplexed enough at my continuing lack of upgrades that I went and looked up the manual. Finding a lot of useful info there, I then looked up the actual figures for health and weapon power advancement (just to make life a little easier for grinding), and started again from the beginning. It ended up taking me about 4 hours in total to beat the English version of the game and get the best ending without saves states playing with my Wii Classic Controller Pro.

This is another old adventure game where most of the story is in the manual, and virtually none of it is in the game outside of the “Congratulations, you did it!

”-style text once you actually beat the game. The tl;dr of the matter is that the sky world is in trouble! The goddess Palutena has been kidnapped by the evil Medusa, and the only one left to save her is the Pit, the titular “Kid Icarus”! You’ve gotta fight your way up out of the underworld, through the overworld, and up through sky world to get the three legendary treasures and take down Medusa once and for all. It’s a fair bit of fluff that doesn’t impact that actual game all that much, but that’s pretty par for the course for the time. It makes for a fun and novel setting, and it’s more than a good enough excuse for the action at hand.

The action at hand is pretty darn good, too! An action adventure game originally released on the Famicom Disk System just a few months after Metroid was, Kid Icarus ends up being far less bold than Metroid had been in terms of exploration, but that focus on good, linear action ends up making it a much stronger game. The game is divided up into three worlds as described earlier, and each world is 4 stages. The first three stages are linear platforming stages where your only major goal is to simply make it through to the end, and the fourth stage is a dungeon where you’ve gotta take down a boss to complete it. The dungeons are a good way to break up the pace of the action of the normal stages, as they have Zelda 1-style room layouts but you’re still doing the same kind of platforming that the normal stages do. They’re not so big that you’ll easily get lost, but they’re also not small enough that you’ll just effortlessly stumble your way through to the boss either. That’s not just because of their size, either: It’s because this game is pretty tough too.

From the underworld to the sky world, there are all manner of monsters out there to stop Pit on his quest to rescue the goddess, and they won’t hesitate to cut you down like nobody’s business. On top of that, the underworld and sky world stages are both somewhat infamously vertically scrolling, not horizontal like the overworld, but they still use the same ratcheting screen scrolling that a normal left-to-right platformer does. The screen doesn’t scroll back down when you progress it, so falling generally means death. Between the numerous enemies and the perils of platforming, there’s no shortage of ways to die in Kid Icarus. However, there are quite a few tools you can use to even the odds outside of how the game generously gives you infinite lives in the first place (though you always respawn at the start of the stage you died in with all your progress since the start of the stage reset).

Firstly is the aforementioned health and weapon powerups. They’re not terribly intuitive, but the manual does thankfully list out generally how these are gained. For max health, that’s all tied to your total high score. Though the exact totals aren’t told to you in game, reaching various total high score amounts will net you max health increases upon reaching a checkpoint between stages. Similarly, strength powerups are bestowed to pit upon reaching rooms that will measure his “skill” proved in the stage up to that point. The rooms are normally empty if your skill isn’t high enough, so even though it’s impossible to tell whether a room you’re about to enter is a skill room or not, finding it empty once you enter is a good indication that you both lack the required skill but at least have the right location. Skill is an invisible score measured per stage, and while the exact numbers are pretty easily found online, the short version is that getting hit loses total skill while taking down enemies and picking up the money they drop gets you more skill. Once I finally knew how to even the odds a bit and take down enemies easier, the game became far more simple and far more fun.

That’s not all Pit has up his sleeve, either. All that money you can get from enemies can be spent in shops. While you can get more health to save you from death when your life runs out as well as things like the pencil and torch to actually make your map function properly in dungeons, the most valuable thing in the shops is the feather. The feather will make Pit gain the ability to briefly fly if he takes a fall off the bottom of the screen that’d otherwise kill him, so they’re invaluable if you’re having trouble with the platforming. Items in shops are quite expensive, so you’ll need to pick and choose carefully on which item is the most worth spending your hard-earned hearts on, but the expensive of items is something that helpfully and subtly compliments the health and weapon powerup systems. You’ll already be killing lots of enemies to get enough hearts to buy items like feathers and health potions, so that’s that much more skill you’ll be building for better arrows and points you’ll be accruing for more max health. It’s not the most elegant solution for more health and better damage (especially compared to something like Legend of Zelda), but I think it still works more than well enough here to make for a really fun NES action adventure game.

The last thing Pit has at his disposal are the 3 legendary weapons. These aren’t strength upgrades and they aren’t the 3 legendary treasures either. During his journey, one of the types of rooms that you’ll come across are challenge rooms. If Pit can survive the onslaught of flying panels, he’ll be rewarded with his choice of one of three incredibly powerful items that can make his bow stronger as well as provide protective crystals to damage enemies that come near him. However, these are not permanent upgrades. There are thief enemies that can steal Pit’s items if he touches them. You can always just do another challenge room and get the item again or even just buy them back from the black market store (for an extortionate price) if you want, but these items are so powerful that it’s most worth just avoiding those thieves in the first place if you can. If you can manage to get all 3 items and keep them until the end, that’s also one more of the 4 requirements for a better ending you’ve got all wrapped up (with the other 3 being having max health upgrades, max weapon upgrades, and a maxed out money counter).

Kid Icarus may not be the most technically impressive action game on the NES, but it’s still a super fun one for my money. The game may not be super long and it’s also quite linear, but the linearity of it combined with how tough the game is made for a very compelling and challenging gameplay loop, especially with infinite tries at each level. Not knowing how the health and weapon strength advancements work will definitely make the game suffer a lot, but that’s what manuals were for back in the day, and it’s just as valuable a piece of information to use now too. If you can get to grips with Pit’s sorta funky momentum the platforming isn’t all that hard either given just how little knockback Pit has upon hit. The main obstacle at that point are the infamous Eggplant Wizards in dungeons. Getting turned into an eggplant and needing to run to (or, even worse, find at all) a hospital to get turned back into Pit so you can actually fight again can be a real pain, but if you can deal with that sort of trial, then there’s nothing stopping you from defeating Medusa and saving sky world~.

The aesthetics are quite good for the time too. Famicom games were getting quite impressive by the end of ’86, and Kid Icarus looks pretty darn good and runs quite well too. The slowdown and sprite flicker is negligible even when there’s quite a few enemies on screen. The graphics are simple and there aren’t too many backgrounds, but the sprites for both enemies and stages are well done and provide a nice looking fantasy atmosphere for your adventure. The music is also very well done, typical for a Nintendo game, and I’m honestly heavily considering replaying the game on the Famicom Disk System if only to hear that version’s better versions of these tunes~.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. I already was pretty sure that I’d like this game going in, but I was very happily surprised at just how much fun I was having even with all the trial and error and runbacks from nasty eggplants. Kid Icarus is definitely not an easy game, but it’s still a really well put together action adventure game on the NES if you’re willing to keep at it. Especially once you know how the health and weapon power upgrade systems work, this is a game that was both fun to learn and even more fun to master for me, so this is definitely one you shouldn’t sleep on if you like 8-bit action games and don’t mind a bit of a challenge~.

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