What I've beaten:
Astro Boy: The Video Game
Batman: The Brave & The Bold
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow***
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia***
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin***
Contra 4
Giana Sisters DS
Kirby SuperStar Ultra
Kirby: Canvas Curse
Kirby: Squeak Squad
Mega Man Zero Collection (only MMZ1/2)
Monster Tale
New Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario 64 DS
Super Princess Peach
The Legendary Starfy
Scurge: Hive (on GBA)
What I've played:
Aliens: Infestation
Bangai-O Spirits
Commando: Steel Disaster
Donkey Kong: Jungle Climber
Drawn to Life
Exit DS
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Impossible Mission
Kirby: Mass Attack
Max & the Magic Marker
Mega Man ZX
Mega Man ZX Advent
Metal Slug 7
N+
Prince of Persia - The Fallen King
Sonic Rush
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
Steal Princess
The Legend of Kage 2
Wario: Master of Disguise
Yoshi's Island DS
I'll talk more later about most of these when I get a chance. If the game got beaten, I probably enjoyed it enough, although it's no guarantee I liked it better than something I just played.
My absolute favorites in that have to be the
Castlevania games. I think the best of those are
Dawn and
Ecclesia, but
Portrait was pretty good, despite some serious asset reuse. (Oh, and Johnathan! Charlotte! Johnathan! Charlotte!)
Contra IV is the bomb. Hard as nails, but it plays more like a cross between
Contra III and the original
Contra, which means there's a lot more stage and platforming than other, later
Contra games.
Astro Boy was addictive, peak Treasure-level stuff. I loved the exploration, some of the insane combat, it's just a great game all around. NOPE
Super Princess Peach was surprisingly good, and a game I wish I'd bought legit. You can tell it's TOSE, who also does the
Starfy games, but this one felt a little more thought out, with some more interesting level design, despite the overall lack of challenge.
I've recommended
Scurge: Hive before. Only the ridiculous boss battle at the end keeps it from being an absolute instant classic in my mind. I might be a little more irrational about it than some, but it really struck the right chords with me.
New Super Mario Bros., despite being the game that sort of rebooted 2D Mario, still holds a special place in my heart. Remember, the idea of returning Mario (or a lot of other games, honestly!) to his 2D roots was an idea that folks weren't sure was going to work! I love how the game is content to be rather simple, a sort of
SMB1 take on the genre.
The two platformer Kirby games are excellent, of course. I'm a sucker for them. Always have been, ever since
Adventure on NES.
Super Star is still amazing in DS form, and
Squeak Squad, while at times feeling a little more perfunctory, can be legitimately challenging if you're aiming to snag the treasures in time. There's an urgency there that's not often in Kirby games, and if you're in the mood for that (not always the case when I'm playing Kirby, though!), then it's pretty cool.
Canvas Curse isn't necessarily a platformer in the traditional sense, but it
is fantastic. I think it's better than
Rainbow on Wii U.
Monster Tale is a really nice
Metroid-style game that suffers from a little
too much pointless backtracking. In
Metroid, backtracking usually nets you all sorts of interesting things along the way, and also lets you uncover shortcuts to areas to shorten up said backtracking. You don't get a whole lot of that with this one, but it's still solid stuff. Same dev as
Henry Hatsworth.
I think I'll talk about a few more later.
