Every Game I Beat in 2025
I’ve always played video games. Growing up, I think that was our primary form of childcare when my mom was busy doing other things. I have fond memories of playing on our computer in Windows 98 for hours on end during long summer vacation days. In 2024 I decided to start writing down all the games I beat as I beat them, and then at the end of the year I made a big list of all of them for this blog. That took a lot of time, so in 2025 I started writing them down as I played them along with a little mini review. This made my life now much easier and simpler!
I’m really excited to share what I’ve been up to gaming-wise over the last year with you! I’m proud to announce that I “beat” 50 games this year! Note that when I say “beat”, I mean that I got to the credits scroll. In some games, this takes a long time. Others, a credits screen means you’ve just barely scratched the surface, so no two entries on this list are created equally.
I’d also love to point out that I also stream a decent majority of these games on my YouTube channel! Most of the time I have no viewers, just me and the stream. A lot of times my brother at least lurks. But occasionally random internet strangers show up to make fun of my skills! It really evokes my favorite gaming memories as a child. Gathering around a random TV in the neighborhood and watching and offering tips to the one kid who was actually playing. I stream mostly just for my posterity, so if I want to remember how a game was I can just go back and look at it myself. It would mean a lot if you checked out the channel and dropped a subscription so you can hang out the next time I’m playing something! My channel is @dareelcatskull.
Let’s go!
# Freelancer
Windows [2003] | Digital Anvil | Microsoft Game Studios
1/2/25
I’m not sure how I came across this game, but boy, I’m glad I did. I’m not really familiar with the whole Chris Roberts-verse and have never played any Wing Commander games. I’ve been more-or-less obsessed with the entire “space cowboy” concept for about as long as I can remember. Why is it so gripping? Freelancer is everything I’ve ever wanted out of a “space game”. Here’s the thing about outer space - it’s mostly empty, which is also pretty boring. A lot of “space games” get caught up trying to work around this since your options are to make it boring or unlrealistic. Freelancer has a very basic gameplay loop – land on planet, get job, go into space, do job (usually in the form of flying to a specific place and shooting a group of bad guys), earn money, upgrade ship, repeat. At face value, it’s boring and repetitive. However, the actual space combat itself is just so well done and engaging that it’s really actually addicting. The game also does a fantastic job with some really well done voice acting and cutscene work, well ahead of it’s time. Unfortunately this game is mostly lost to obscurity and you can’t even buy it anymore. Despite that, there is a passionate community of players and mods in the Discovery scene, but I haven’t gotten into that yet. Honestly, I want to just play the main campaign again and take my time with it. By the way – how was this game not on the original Xbox? I yearn for an alternate past where this game launched on Xbox Live in 2003. It would have been incredible.
# Half-Life: Uplink
PC (xash3d-fwgs) [1998] | Valve | Sierra Studios
1/23/25
I’ve never played any of the Half-Life games. The only Valve game I know that I’ve played is Portal. I decided I’d find out what the fuss was about. Officially, there’s no way to play the original Half-Life on Mac without emulation. Fortunately, MacSourcePorts has a version available. It’s using a project called xash3d-fwgs, an open-source implementation of the original Half-Life engine (GoldSrc). Playing at 75hz on my little 4:3 SyncMaster LCD is quite engrossing and feels very authentic. It’s probably not fully fair to put Uplink on this list, but I’m doing it anyways. Uplink is a HL demo that has a small standalone campaign. It used to be very obscure, but Valve included it in the Anniversary release of Half-Life so everyone can play it. It really is a great little preview of the full game and is probably worth playing through before starting the campaign if nothing else as an extended tutorial as I found the difficulty to be a lot lower.
# Half-Life
PC (xash3d-fwgs) [1998] | Valve | Sierra Studios
1/25/25
Here’s some raw output from my notes:
- robot voice sounds awesome (kraftwerk)
- screaming butthole dogs?
- gonarch
- “Just keep shooting at the B A L L”
- helicopter is way annoying I have a theory - first-person shooters should not have a jump mechanism. I can totally see why Counter-Strike took off in a way that Half-Life didn’t as much - the combat and shooting is so tight and the AI is actually pretty fun. There’s human soldiers and aliens (butthole pigs) trying to kill you, so you have to keep shaking up your weapon of choice and strategy. Ammo runs pretty low usually so get comfortable with all the weapons. It’s not without it’s flaws but overall Half-Life was pretty fun, cursed biology notwithstanding. Seriously, jumping into the three-armed baby’s head and shooting it’s floating electric orb brain until it dies. I’m excited to continue the Half-Life-verse.
# Half-Life: Blue Shift
PC (xash3d-fwgs) [2001] | Gearbox Software | Sierra Studios
1/26/25
I admit I did get Blue Shift running on my Dreamcast at some point and made it far enough that the save file eventually exceeded the size of the total VMU capacity and it wouldn’t let me continue. I don’t remember much as I didn’t get far. This is a pretty weak expansion overall. It’s fine but offers no real “new” content beyond just more of the same thing you got in Half-Life and it actually doesn’t even have all of the weapons (unless I missed something). The entire end sequence with draining a coolant pool, moving barrels to jump on, filling it back up and beyond is just kind of not fun. The end sequence in particular is really weak, just listening to some NPC do some random stuff off-screen. And at the end they just… drive away? It feels like the “best parts” of this game are supposed to be little glimpses of the Gordon Freeman storyline but it’s not enough to keep me going. Play if you love Half-Life but don’t feel bad if you skip this one.
# Portal
macOS (illegal source port) [2007] | Valve | Valve
2/8/25
I played this around when it came out by saving my lunch money for a few months to buy an Xbox 360 and borrowed my friend’s copy of The Orange Box. For whatever reason, I never got into any of the other games but Portal was different. The entire GlaDOS narrative was just mind-blowingly cool to me then, and it still holds up! And then the credit song. I’m not going to lie, I sat in my office and sobbed. It’s just such a fun game and a pleasant experience. GlaDOS feels like as much of antagonist to the test subject as the game itself is to me. Provocative yet irritatingly engaging. Good one for kids too!
# SteamWorld Dig 2
macOS (Steam) [2017] | Image & Form | Image & Form
3/4/25
I played the first SteamWorld Dig game on my 3DS in 2015 after buying it as part of the first (and only) “Humble Nindie Bundle”. It’s a game that on the surface seems to have almost no real appeal but if you commit to playing it for 5 minutes, I bet you’ll play the whole thing. The gameplay is just so fun. It’s hard to describe - like a dig dug metroidvania. Overall the graphics, sound, story, and music are mostly forgettable , aside from one surprising “glitch in the matrix” event. I really enjoyed this game and it’s improved on the original in pretty much every way, so if you haven’t played either you’re safe to jump right into the sequel. Highly recommended!
# SteamWorld Heist
macOS [2015] | Image & Form | Image & Form
3/13/25
After I beat the original SteamWorld Dig in 2015, I was excited to see the next game in the series. I was initially very turned off by SteamWorld Heist. It’s a 2D turn-based strategy platformer. Image & Form really know how to innovate on some existing game styles, and they do it very well. It’s mission based and the maps are somewhat randomly generated. Enough that if you die or give up, you get something that’s not exactly the same the next time. It also means sometimes you just get a bad dice roll and things go south. The only real penalty is your money (gallons of water because they are robots that run on steam) and money isn’t really that useful. The game will give you new gear and weapons to use and my strategy was to use the new weapons. It’s class-based, so you recruit a team of specialists. Before each mission, you’ll select 1, 2, 3, or 4 members of your team and load them out with gear and weapons. Team members are rewarded in experience points and will unlock new abilites that make your life easier. For this reason, you end up a bit with the Pokémon issue of only levelling up your favorite members of your party. It’s not all bad, I found bundling an under-leveled team member in with more experienced members worked out just fine. And you can always go back and re-play old missions with new team members. I got pretty addicted and it was a little frustrating. I played through on the normal difficulty but had to drop down to easy for the sub-boss fight that was just insane.
# The Lost Vikings
SNES (OpenEmu-Arm) [1993] | Silicon & Synapse | Interplay Productions
3/15/25
Silicon & Synapse started in the late 80’s as a contract studio to port other games. It’s a solid business plan and one that is still pretty lucrative if you’re good at your target platforms. The Lost Vikings was their first original IP and is a real-time team-based puzzle-platformer. Kind of like Lemmings, but you have three Vikings. Each Viking has a set of unique abilities - one can jump and run, one can fight, one can block and use a shield as a parasail. There’s fall damage like no tomorrow. Each level is basically a unique puzzle. The game is split into “worlds” and each world has a few levels. The music is so much better than it has any right to be, and this was pretty early in the SNES lifecycle as well. The gameplay is just fun! The levels are designed extremely well. I had to use the hint book a few times, and as always I make heavy use of save states. With those handicaps, it was an enjoyable experience.
# The Lost Vikings 2
SNES (OpenEmu-Arm) [1997] | Blizzard Entertainment | Interplay Productions
3/19/25
So the first game was some random company and the second game was… Blizzard? As in the Blizzard? Yes! Almost immediately after The Lost Vikings, they changed their name to Blizzard Entertainment. And then Warcraft, Warcraft II, and Diablo happened. Not to mention StarCraft a year later. Those are three of the absolute best and most popular games of the 90’s. Blizzard was on fire! I assume The Lost Vikings 2 was in development/planning for a while and then Warcraft was such a huge surprise hit that it took a while for it to get the right people on the project and by the time they did, the N64 was already out and frankly Blizzard had better stuff to do. But apprently Interplay was happy to publish it to mediocre sales which is unfortunate, because this is a true sequel to an already great game. Difficulty and puzzle-wise, it picks right up where the first game left off. Each Viking how has some additional abilities (runner has jetpack boots and can swim, fighter has a robot arm to swing around, shield guy can… fart). They also added a werewolf and a dragon. The wolf can wall jump and melee attach. The dragon can fly and shoot fire balls. You still only play with 3 at a time, they just swap in and out at random. This one felt shorter than the first, but not too short. The final boss is quite a bit more spread out in this game. I should also mention that there is a PS1 port of this game that’s exactly the same game gameplay-wise, but literally all the graphics and assets are different including full voice acting that’s not bad! It wasn’t developed by Blizzard so I opted for the SNES version, but this isn’t a bad option at all!
# The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX
Game Boy Color (OpenEmu-Arm) [1998 (1993)] | Nintendo R&D2 | Nintendo
4/12/25
On September 20, 2019 I walked into a Bic Camera in Tokyo, Japan and bought a copy of “The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening” and a grey Switch Lite, both of which had been released that day. While I enjoy the remaster, I was disappointed by it’s poor performance and overall felt the gameplay was lacking some of the charm that made the original and it’s re-release so appealing. I’m sure it’s likely due to a healthy dose of nostalgia. I remember playing, and enjoying, Link’s Awakening as a kid growing up in the 90’s. I owned a Game Boy but not this game, so I was relegated to quick play sessions at a friend’s house. I appreciated multiple save files - usually there was a free space for me to save my game. I never made it very far, but the entire intro sequence was just so unassuming yet inviting to me. Later I remember borrowing the DX release from my older brother’s friend and getting maybe half way before losing interest or having to give it back. I’m pretty sure Link’s Awakening was my intro to the Zelda franchise. Later we’d own Ocerena of Time and Windwaker, but those are other stories. The game holds up pretty well. I played with the “redux” romhack which just tweaks a few very minor inconveniences. Still, the copious amount of back tracking did get old. Thankfully, the game doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. By the final dungeon, I was pretty much done with the persistant menuing to get items equipped. But then, it ended! I beat it! I liked Link’s Awakening then, and I like it now. As a kid it was just a game I could pick up and play even if I didn’t know what to do. My kids agree, letting them take a turn for a few minutes hacking away at baddies and grass is easy and smooth.
# Prince of Persia
PC (SDLPoP) [1989] | Jordan Mechner / Broderbund | Broderbund
4/15/25
Another entry in the “it was on the family computer growing up”. I played this one a lot growing up. The completely unforgiving platforming, combined with the extremely forgiving and quick resets makes this a very good game to suck at. Indeed, my 4 year old took over half way through this one, including the combat. As always I made copious use of save states to get through each section flawlessly, but it really doesn’t detract at all from the game. The platforming is fun. Really fun. The low quality rotoscoped animations have aged like fine wine and look even better today than ever. The platforming is somewhat slow and deliberate, as any “cinematic platformer” (as they’d later come to be called) should be. Prince of Persia is an inviting and forgiving game to play for all ages and I’d highly recommend you give it a shot. It was also ported to pretty much every console around, and I’m sure those ports are all fine. Just give it a whirl!
# Blackthorne
SNES (OpenEmu-Arm) [1994] | Blizzard Entertainment | Interplay Productions
4/19/25
It’s a bit difficult to try and make sense of the early Blizzard Entertainment timeline. After 1993’s “The Lost Vikings”, the gang followed up with a another fresh IP - Blackthorne. The story is mostly unimportant and forgettable, but I did pick up on the same root ideas that would clearly later influence both Warcraft and Diablo to some extent in both theme and art style. Diving straight into Blackthorne after TLV, it’s clear to see how similar the games really are which is when I realized that The Lost Vikings is also technically a “cinematic platformer” as well. Following on the major success of Prince of Persia, Flashback, and Another World, Blizzard fired up the Lost Vikings’ engine and cranked out a cinematic platformer of their own. As always copious save states made the game quicker and more enjoyable. The game is broken into levels with a few different “areas” where the graphics will change. Progression usually looks like moving from the entrance to the exit, solving various platforming puzzles along the way such as finding key items or accessing hard to reach locations. The level design is really good, flows naturally and I rarely had to rely on a guide or walkthrough. A staple of the “cinematic platformer” genre is combat sequence breaks. Kind of like a 2D Time Crisis if you’re played that arcade classic - take cover, shoot, take cover. The combat isn’t anywhere as engaging or smooth as Prince of Persia, but shooting the gun is fun and you’re treated with decent upgrades along the way to keep the gameplay fresh. Like the other Blizzard games on this list, it packs in just the right amount of content to feel like you had an opportunity to really nail the platforming without going on longer than it needs to.
# Another World
Sega CD (OpenEmu-Arm) [1991] | Delphine Software | Delphine Software / Interplay
4/19/25
“It was on the family computer growing up”. I actually later personally bought the SNES port after that computer had fallen out of repair because I liked it. This game has captivated me for a long time. It came out in 1991 which was the year I was born and it was on our computer from the time I can remember. Playing this game with my Dad is one of my earliest and most distinct memories. Have you ever seen anything like this before, or since? I haven’t really. Artist, programmer, and overall genius Éric Chahi previously worked on Future Wars which I played through last year. Chahi implemented the game as a virtual machine with all vector graphics which is why it was ported so easily and mostly very well to pretty much every system. Are you getting the picture yet? If you make a game that runs on literally everything, you’ll sell a lot more copies! After a Grammy-worthy opening cinematic, you’re teleported to the bottom of a giant pool of water. As you swim to the surface, some form of alien tentacle begins to reach for your kicking legs. As you climb out just in time, you’re greated with a bleak alien landscape. Something moves behind you. Welcome to Another World! The game almost plays like an interactive story book. The puzzles are challenging yet rewarding. I’m truly filled with a sense of wonder as I’m taken through the game’s story, each new environment more unique and interesting than the last. This is worth spending a few minutes of your time with!
# Warcraft: Orcs & Humans
MS-DOS (DOSBox Staging [WarCraft: Refurbished]) [1994] | Blizzard Entertainment | Blizzard Entertainment
4/29/25
I distinctly remember when the family got Warcraft back in the day. It was pretty exciting. We’d been a Dune II household, so a hot new RTS was really something. As a kid, I liked the art and voices. I understood the basics of RTS gameplay but likely never made it much past the first few missions. Just like then, I made it to the first cave level for the Orc campaign and decided I’d rather cheat my way through than deal with the poor unit command options. The possibility of complex unit command structures is there, but the UI just make it so incredibly difficult. I think it’s 100% beatable as-is. I just ran out of steam brute-forcing it. Cheating my way through the rest of the Orc and the Human campaigns was actually pretty fun! It’s fun to see the misssions as the story and map unfold on both sides. The voice acting is really good, and the art is fun and chunky. I think Dune II is a better RTS overall, but Warcraft proves once again Blizzard knew how to make a compelling entry into an (at the time) uncommon genre.
# Waluigi's Taco Stand
Nintendo 64 (OpenEmu-Arm) [2018] | Kaze Emanuar | Camelot
5/9/25
I can’t say Waluigi’s Taco Stand was on my list of games to play this year, but I’m glad I found it. It’s a delightful little collect-a-thon. Waluigi has gambled all of his and Wario’s (joint account) money away and rent is due to Koopa Troopa. He gives Waluigi a job at his taco stand. Each customer has a specific request for what they want on their taco and it’s your job to go run around and find all the ingredients. Goombas give you beef. Goombas are beef. Goombas are cows? Goombas make milk? I’m left with more questions than answers but I can say that I had a short little blast running through this game. Would recommend! “You must become ‘Wa’ with yourself.” - Ancient Chinese Proverb
# Katamari Damacy Rolling LIVE
Apple Arcade [2025] | Bandai Namco Entertainment | Bandai Namco / Apple
5/10/25
Katamari Damacy Rolling LIVE is the first new mainline entry into the Katamari series since 2011’s mobile-exclusive “Touch My Katamari”. I think Rolling LIVE is overlooked as another mobile exclusive, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The game boasts 4K 120fps support on all the Apple platforms that support it. It’s not some watered-down mobile port. It’s a full-fledged entry into the series! In my opinion, this is the best Katamari game yet. It has you helping The King collaborate with “streamers” to build your streaming channel. The “streamers” are random people with specific requests, from a man in an eating contest asking you to roll him into as much food as possible, to an Alien wanting you to roll up the entire world. I think the live-streaming aspect of the game is an extremely original take on the series that just makes the game more fun to play without actually changing any of the core gameplay. In fact, if anything, it helps make a bit more sense of the story. Rolling up everything in sight while beeing cheered on by your chat is just such a pleasant experience. The soundtrack is phenominal, and you can listen it on all streaming platforms. My favorite track is the blissfully cheery “Making a Star” which serves as the perfect juxtaposition for rolling up screaming and kicking people into your Katamari.
I love Katamari. I’ve bought every Katamari re-release so far. I intend to keep buying and playing, and talking about Katamari until the air leaves my chest for the final time. I like to consider Katamari literally. What if you were sitting in your living room, and a little cool dude came rolling a ball through? At first, it’s fine because it’s just like crumbs and other stuff. But then he comes through again, and dang it he just stole your shoe. Finally, he comes through and rolls YOU up. But here’s the thing: it’s not a problem! Getting rolled up by a Katamari is literally the best-case scenario for your life!
I’d like to thank Bandai Namco for developing this game, and Apple Arcade for releasing it to the masses. I think everyone should play this game from ages 1 to 100. It’s universal.
# Jikkyō Oshaberi Parodius ~forever with me~
PlayStation (Duckstation) [1996] | Stone Heads / Konami | Konami
5/25/25
Of all the Parodius games, this one is my favorite. I’m loving the trend in 2025 of “completly random games I had no intention of playing”. Jikkyō Oshaberi Parodius ~forever with me~ is the 4th entry in Konami’s Gradius parody series Parodius. Where Gradius has a theme of space, Parodius has a theme of absurd. I truly do not know what kind of crack the designers at Konami were smoking in the 90’s but I’m really glad they were! I don’t play “shmups” often, they stress me out and I, generally speaking, suck at video games. Back in the day I had Parodius Collection on my PSP and just found it to be super engaging and easy to pick up casually. After watching a My Life In Gaming stream where they played Adventure Island II, I got an itch to play my own insane 90’s Japanese pixel art game. Parodius! I love that game! I picked this specific entry at random. The title implies that the game has a game-show style announcer. As someone who speaks zero Japanese, this means that throughout the game, a random Japanese voice will shout things at me. I love it! My favorite is when you get a fairy (no clue what it does), he’ll say “yeah” in the funniest way. It’s literally the sole motivation I have to get the fairies, just to hear him. Each level is truly a children’s book on acid and every segment has me on the edge of my seat, eager to see what insanities they’ve cooked up. They even took the “cat bus” concept one step further and one of the final bosses is a “cat train”! There are lots of “ships” to choose from, each representing something absurd. I played through as the baby. A literal flying baby - that’s the ship. The music is mostly remixes of classical music and they did such a fantastic job! I made heavy use of Duckstation’s rewind feature, which made the game a challening but completely frutstration-free experience for me. Highly highly recommend, I loved this one. Image credit - Moby Games
# Harmful Park
PlayStation (Duckstation) [1997] | Sky Think System | Sky Think System
5/26/25
After having fun with Parodius, I decided to give another “cute ‘em up” a try with Harmful Park. I played with the Japanese translation which is to say I have no idea what the story means, if there is one. I can say it’s a straightforward, forgiving, and fun horizontally scrolling shooter. Instead of the Gradius style power ups, you have access to all of your weapons at all times. You can power up to get 2 sub guns which makes you pretty tough. I used the normal bullets and mowed everything down easily enough on “Easy” diffuculty. I went back and did the first 2 stages on “Very Hard” difficulty, and it still wasn’t so bad. This is definately not on the level of a Parodius game in terms of inventiveness, but it’s a great two player game you’re sure to have fun with.
# Sexy Parodius
PlayStation (Duckstation) [1996] | Konami | Konami
5/26/25
Sexy Parodius is the 5th and final mainline entry in the Parodius series (not including Paro Wars, a turn-based strategy game). Like the name implies, the game is “sexy”. What does that mean? Well, there’s girls in risquee situations. Though really it’s not too “adult” themed, I probably wouldn’t let my kids play it. I really like Parodius!
# Gokujō Parodius Da! Deluxe Pack
PlayStation (Duckstation) [1994] | Konami | Konami
5/26/25
The second and third Parodius games in one package! They’re both just as fun as the next. Having now played through all the mainline Parodius games (except the very first one), I think that Jikkyō Oshaberi Parodius ~forever with me~ is my overall favorite. I think that’s the culmination of the crazy ideas Parodius represents.
# Time Bokan Series: Bokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo
PlayStation (Duckstation) [1996] | Eleven | Banpresto
5/26/25
I don’t know where I heard of this game or why it was on my computer, but it was and I’m very happy. Apparently this is based on a 1970’s Japanese manga called Time Boken from the studio most famous in the US for Speed Racer. The game consists of 7 or 8 levels. Before each, you choose from a handful of mech-vehicles to pilot. Each ship behaves differently and they’re all fun to play, so it actually makes for quite a bit of genuine replay value. I found myself playing through stages two or three times. It’s a vertical shooter and the pixel art is a great example of the peak of the 2D/16 bit SNES look we saw glimpses of on the Playstation. I really enjoyed this one and I can definately see myself coming back to this, assuming I will be able to remember the name.
# Time Bokan Series: Bokan Desuyo
PlayStation (Duckstation) [1998] | Eleven | Banpresto
5/26/25
The only thing better than an obscure PS1 shmup based on an obscure manga is the sequel to such a game! It’s more of pretty much the same, which is good in my opinion. There’s nothing here that fundamentally shakes up the gameplay. You could start with this one just as easily as the first. Unfortunately this seems to be where the Time Boken shmup series ends. I can’t even find anything about the developer of this game, did they do anything else? I’m not even totally positive Eleven is the developer, that’s just what the Time Bokan wiki says! If there’s more games in this series, I’d love to play them. I did find a racing game Bokan Go Go Go, maybe I’ll give it a shot.
# The Legend of the Mystical Ninja
SNES (OpenEmu-Arm) [1992] | Konami | Konami
5/28/25
Mystical Ninja! I was introduced to this game by illegally downloading a ROM in 2001 and playing it on Snes9x on my brother’s computer. I was immediately taken with the unique charm. Set in feudal Japan, Mystical Ninja’s story is mostly irrelevant beyond the need for a joke. And the jokes are quite silly! The game refuses to take itself seriously. Some of the platforming sections are challenging. 2-player mode in theory is great, but in practice my kids made it hard or impossible to not die. Lots of great 90’s Konami art and design with more easter eggs and throwbacks to keep track of. The game has the entire first level of Gradius fully playable in-game! The game is filled with little fun things like this, I think it wants you to hang out in mystical Japan just as much as it wants you to beat the campaign. Good music, good graphics, tight platforming. I like it! It’s shorter too, only a couple of hours to play through.
# Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shōgun McGuiness
SNES (OpenEmu-Arm) [1993] | Konami | Konami
5/29/25
Being a fan of Mystical Ninja I became familiar that it was actually a part of a much larger series in Japan, based on historical characters, similar to something like Robin Hood or Johnny Appleseed - folk heroes. In 2005 my family got a broadband connection and I can remember searching up the Nintendo 64 Geomon games on eBay and offering a “best offer” listing $20 off their listed $120 price and they replied “Not for this incredible treasure!” To this day, the only Goemon game I had ever played was Mystical Ninja. I changed that! Goemon 2 improves on the first game in pretty much every way. You can tell that Super Mario World came out during/after the first game had been developed. The second game goes so far as to almost be a spoof of SMW. An overhead map replaces the direct linearity of stages in the first game. They even introduce a couple of “alternate exits” a-la SMW, but as far as I could tell they were both single-route deviations, not an entire new path like SMW. Still, what’s there is there and it’s good! My favorite addition is the new mecha stages! I love mechs and mecha-anime. Each boss fight has you controlling a mech, first in an “endless runner” type stage, smashing towns and enemies as you go. Then, a first-person Punch-Out style fight! You can hit a left hook or a right hook and have to deflect and punch the boss at the right time. It’s really fun! And funny too! It’s a bit less all over the place compared to the first game, and I like both for what they are.
# Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Montana's Movie Madness
Game Boy (OpenEmu-Arm) [1993] | Konami | Konami
5/29/25
We had this growing up. It was one of the few games on Game Boy I played as a child. I can remember bringing it with me to visit my dad at his office to ask him to help me beat a level. He obliged and of course I immediately died. I must have been 3 or 4. This one is a bit odd - it released in North America first and a few months later in Japan. There are a few fairly critical design flaws. Just issues in the level design where the difficulty seems to be accidentally extreme just for a single jump. I cheat, and use save states, so I was able to get past without too much pain. But if I didn’t have that, I don’t know that this game is even beatable. It’s too bad because other than a few issues, it’s really fun! Good music, nice graphics, and the platforming is as tight as any Konami game. You’ll traverse 4 distinct movie sets and each has a few stages plus a themed boss fight. I liked it as a kid, and I still like it. It’s enjoyable enough that even a 4 year old can spend 15 minutes with it and have some fun.
# Bust-A-Move '99 (Puzzle Bobble 3)
PlayStation (Duckstation) [1996-99] | Taito | Taito
6/21/25
Lore drop: in high school I dated this girl and on her family computer they had one of the worst clones of Puzzle Bobble I’ve ever seen. But Puzzle Bobble is such a cloneable game that even a bad clone is still fun as heck. We’d go head to head and I’d beat her to the point of her rage quitting. Getting a little bubble to nudge up right where it should be is really freaking satisfying. I just like poppin’ bubbles, man. Generally speaking I think the PS1 got relatively okay arcade ports of most random Japanese stuff, and emulation is really good thanks to Duckstation. I briefly considered trying out the arcade version via MAME but PS1 is just so easy.
Puzzle Bobble 3 was released in 1996 in arcades. It was eventually “localized” and released in the US as “Bust-A-Move ‘99”. More like “bust-a-nut”, am I right? I won’t bite the hand that feeds though. I think most of the Puzzle Bobble games are about on par with each other in terms of gameplay - which is to say incredibly satisfying and addicting. To be honest, the game might technically be a form of gambling, but I won’t get into the specifics of that. I tend to like the earlier 16/32 bit look of the earlier games, but I’m warming up to the bland “2002” PS2 look the low-quality releases of that time had.
# Bust-A-Move 4 (Puzzle Bobble 4)
PlayStation (Duckstation) [1997-99] | Taito | Taito
6/21/25
More of the same! A good thing! I really don’t know what else to say.
# Super Bust-A-Move 2
PlayStation 2 (PCSX2) [2002] | Taito | Ubi Soft
6/24/25
Like I said, I’m generally not a fan of the early PS2 low-budget aesthetic. This one doesn’t even bother to fill up an entire CD-ROM, let alone a DVD! But I have to say, I lost quite a bit of the charm I felt with the earlier titles with this one. I really just think I prefer the 90’s aesthetic for these games. The bubbles just don’t pop with the same zest they used to. I think I’ll go backward, not forward. This game is notable for having the worst voice acting I’ve personally seen in a game. Nobody plays Puzzle Bobble for the story, but the presentation here is almost offensively bad. Just skip. You’re here for the bubbles not for the voice acting.
# Frederik Pohl's Gateway
DOS [1992] | Legend Entertainment | Legend Entertainment
7/1/25
As a broke kid with internet access, I spent a lot of time diging through archives of “abandonware” DOS games looking for hidden gems. One day I was playing “Space Wars” on my Palm Pilot and a long time family friend asked if I’d ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It immediately struck a chord. As I read and researched, I found the interactive fiction adaptation co-designed by Douglas Adams himself and Steve Meretzky.
I found the strictly text-only interface to be a little overwhelming, which is why when I discovered the crop of early Legend Entertainment interactive fictions, I jumped at them immediately. It’s everything I love about IF and everything I love about retro DOS gaming - great art, animations, and soundtrack! It really makes for quite an immersive experience.
Eventually I read the Gateway books, my favorite being the first sequel Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, but this game has always stayed with me. I had a really hard time putting this game down. Steve Meretzky has some input on this one as well. I feel they really leaned hard into the interactive fiction aspect. There are certainly challenging puzzles, but if you read and take notes nothing should be too incredibly difficult. I relied on the official hint book, as well as a walkthrough at times when I was just stuck.
Really awesome experience! Would recommend.
# GRASSY KNOLL: The JFK Assassination Simulation
Inform (frotz) [1995] | Tom Kidd | schnapple.com
7/6/25
I’ve been following Tom Kidd for some time. He does some excellent work on the macsourceports project. A lot of the games I’ve played on this list are thanks to his hard work. It seems like I’d heard him mention Grassy Knoll in passing, or maybe I read about it on his website. It was a bit of a surprise to log in to the macsourceports discord after a few weeks and see he’d just released a “Director’s Cut” of the original version of the game he made in 1995. Since I’ve been on a bit of an IF kick, I thought I’d give it a whirl. I ended up streaming it, and he joined in for some helpful commentary. How fun could a “JFK Assasination Simulator” be? Well, it’s more like historical interactive non-fiction than anything. He’s recreated a few key buildings and details about the Dallas area where the unfortunate tragedy occurred. It’s a bit observational, like A Mind Forever Voyaging. The point of the game is to just kind of look at things. There are some dynamic gameplay elements, like following Oswald’s trail out of the Book Depot. Overall, it was an insightful little journey through something I know embarrassingly little about. Thanks, Tom!
# Superluminal Vagrant Twin
Glulx (Spatterlight) [2016] | C.E.J. Pacian |
7/11/25
Since I had such a fun time with Grassy Knoll, I decided to see what other modern interactive fiction might be out there. Superluminal is essentially a space trading sim. It’s pretty straightforward, but the gameplay loop is quick and rewarding enough that it’s pretty satisfying! It’s a bit like a giant fetch quest, but there are some puzzles along the way. It’s not always obvious who is buying and selling. I had a fun and quick time with the game! And shoutout to Spatterlight for macOS. Super sleek and customizable IF parser. Knowing that there’s a parse this good out there makes me very excited to keep playing more IF.
# Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure
Game Boy Advance (Analogue Pocket) [2004] | Dimps | Banpresto/Atari
7/13/25
For some reason, Dragon Ball has always had a special place in my heart. Young Goku is just so cheerful! We rented Curse of the Blood Rubies at some point and loved it. I never watched much DBZ either. I ended up browsing the list of GBA games to see what I might want to play and I optimistically picked this game, hoping beyond hope for an actually good Dragon Ball game. Boy, did I find it! This was a total blast! It actually reminds me a lot of the good parts of the sidescrolling parts of the Mystical Ninja games I played earlier. On top of that is a really quite compelling 2D fighter. As you progress through the game, you slowly gain abilities and upgrades. The final boss fight against Piccolo was challenging but not overly so. I’m trying to get my friend Pacheco to play it also so we can go head to head over link cable!
# Beetle Adventure Racing
Nintendo 64 (OpenEmu-Arm) [1999] | Paradigm Entertainment | Electronic Arts
7/22/25
My friend had this one growing up. I remember it being cool and fun. After my friend Carter hooked me up with one of them new-fangled N64 Switch Online controllers, I decided to give it a go with it! I really like this game! The racing is fast paced! Apparently this was developed as a Need For Speed title and then switched to a VW Beetle tie-in game, inexplicably. Fun fact! This game was released in Australia as “HSV Adventure Racing” and “HSV” is a brand of Australian cars. There are 4 circuits, and unlike Mario Kart, you’ll be re-playing the levels from the previous circuits, only faster. Each time you complete a circuit, the next circuit unlocks which has you then play through all previous levels with the addition of one more. So by the end of the game, you’ll be kind of sick of the first level, but you’ll also need to rely on all the random tricks and shortcuts you’ve found along the way. Because the levels are so long and dense, there are many opportunities to find secret passages and shortcuts. The levels seems to be pretty balanced as well, unlike the shortcut in Wario Stadium for example. It’s just how you’d like to do it, which made local multiplayer really fun. Trying to steal secrets from each other was a blast. The soundtrack is a nice drum and bass track and the announcer sounds fantastic. It’s a great racing game!
# Rhythm Heaven
Nintendo DS [2009] | Nintendo SPD/TNX Music Recordings | Nintendo
8/15/25
I loved this game! As a drummer of a few decades, you could say rhythm is in my DNA. The presentation, the art style, and the MUSIC. I love the sound aesthetics of the Nintendo DS. The slightly bitcrushed sound tickles some deep synapse in my soul. I picked this one up brand new from a Walgreen’s in maybe 2015 at a time when I certainly had much better things to spend my limited income on. I’m not ashamed to admit that until now I’d never actually played it. I just know it’s a good game for me so I’ve been hanging on to it. I haven’t had such a huge smile on my face in quite some time. I beat the main campaign but there’s still a ton of post-game content. It’s mostly just slight variations on the base rhythm games, but more of a good thing is, well, a good thing! I hope to keep plugging away on this one as time permits. The only issue - my kids want to play whenever they hear the DS open. They are horrible at it, I make it look easy I guess, but we still have “fun”.
# Star Fox 64 3D
Nintendo 3DS [2011] | Nintendo EAD/Q-Games | Nintendo
8/27/25
Look… we had Starfox 64 growing up. In fact, my own late father once described his greatest life accomplishment in beating my older brother at Starfox. I had a lot of fun running through the short campaign. How many of us have been totally frustrated by the “protect the idiot party member” sections of an otherwise decent game? In Starfox 64, you have not only one idiot party member, but three! Slippy, the cute childish frog that seems to be completely unable to help himself stay out of harm’s way. Peppy, the boomer-ish bunny that is equally hapless. And Falco… Falco… How do we deal with his constant insults and sarcastic attitude? Do we just take him out deliberately? Personally, I feel bad when I let a party member down. But I also am not good enough at games to keep them alive. This game stresses me out. I didn’t find this 3DS port to be particularly impressive and most of the time struggled to get it to even shoot in the right direction. Struggling against controls does not a good time make. Look, I’m glad that this 3DS port exists. I’m glad Nintendo finally re-released it as part of the classics collection since it was out of print for a long time. It just didn’t translate super well for me. I like Starfox, and this gave me a hankering to play Starfox Adventures. I churned through the short campaign on “3DS” mode and that didn’t leave me with much of a desire to ever pick it back up. I guess the lesson learned is don’t make your antagonists more sympathetic to the player than the protagonists. I’d rather have my party die and leave me alone than try to constantly stop the incredibly weak enemies from absolutely destroying Slippy. Plus, if they die, then you don’t have to listen to them any more. Bring back the SNES style bloop bloop voice acting. I’d kind of like to make a romhack that replaces the voice acting with the most insulting and annoying lines of all time.
# Super Mario Land
Game Boy (Super Game Boy 2) [1989] | Nintendo R&D1 | Nintendo
9/3/25
This might be the very first video game I ever played. It’s almost certainly the first I beat. I really love Super Mario Land. We didn’t have an NES, so I believe this was also my introduction to the concept of Mario. My brother had an original Game Boy DMG-01 with a copy of Mario Land. Hirokazu (Hip) Tanaka’s soundtrack is bar-none. Lore drop - while I haven’t officially met Tanakasan, I have seen him in real life and could have said hello if I had something intelligent to say to him. I especially love Overworld BGM 2. I made up some words to it - “Everything, is going to be okay. And everything, is going to be just fine. And everything is going to go my way. And everything is going to beeeeeee juuuussst greeeaaat now!” I love the insane diversity of the worlds, unlike pretty much anything we’ve seen in another mainline Mario game. Aliens? Easter Island? Pyramids? I love it all! The submarine and airplane stages are an excellent break from the normal platforming. This has to be one of my favorite games of all time. It’s tricky, but extra lives are plentiful so you should be able to get through it without too much trouble. Thanks, Nintnedo and Mr. Tanaka!
# Shining Force
Sega Genesis (OpenEmu-Arm) [1993] | Climax Entertainment / Sonic! Software Planning | Sega
10/3/25
If my memory serves, it was Christmas 2001 that my brothers and I received a copy of Sega Smash Pack Vol. 1 for our Dreamcast. The summer before, we’d sold off a bunch of our systems, pooled our money, and saved up to buy a used Dreamcast from Software Etc. Ill-fated as the console may have been, I personally loved the Dreamcast and to this day I think it’s my favorite video game console of all time. I just love the Dreamcast. Everything about it. We had owned a Super Nintendo, but my experience with the Genesis was mostly just passing. Other kids had them, I thought the controller was strange but I liked the unique sounds and graphics compared to the SNES, Game Boy, and PC.
To be honest, I found most of the games on Smash Pack mid at best. Streets of Rage 2 (“Streets of Agence” as my younger brother called it) was particularly fun to play. Golden Axe, Altered Beast, and Wrestle War… not so much. However, one of the games that caught my “video game expert” older brother was Shining Force. I remember watching him play through the first missions, fascinated with the various party members who would join you, seemingly at random. It was fun to watch and offer my fledgling strategy advice during battles. That Christmas, my mom helped us convert our garage into a temporary “game room” (probably just to keep us out of her hair) but man, I fondly remember the gentle sunlight streaming in during the realtively warm winter days of Southern Utah Christmas. I don’t recall how far he made it through the game, but I seem to recall that he eventually rage quit out of frustration. Still, I always remembered Shining Force as a curious and inviting Sega game.
I have a confession to make: I suck at video games. My attention span is almost zilch. I get distracted, bored, then end up doing something else and by the time I want to revisit, I can’t remember where I left off or what to do. I’m honestly not sure if I’ve ever actually beaten an RPG that wasn’t Pokémon. However, about a year ago I sunk a decent amount of time into the PS2 remake of Phantasy Star titled Phantasy Star Generation 1. I gained an appreciation and understanding of the non-Nintendo/Square/Enix JRPG heritage. They just play differently and in my opinion, different in a good way. Shining Force is certainly no exception.
Shining Force is incredible. It’s hard for me to put into words why I like this game so much. It reminds me a lot of the early Pokémon games in the way that you play through with mostly a small-ish party, but there’s still plenty of other characters for you to familiarize yourself and form strategies around for future playthroughs. Most of the party members in Shining Force, like Pokémon, are optional. I’m generally pretty thourough but I still didn’t even find all of them during my playthrough! The game is incredibly balanced, the enemy AI adapts to your specific party and play style. It’s challenging but incredibly forgiving! The hero of your party, Max, has a spell that will instantly teleport you from the battle back to the last Priest you visited to resurrect and heal your party. All experience is kept, so even if you fail and have to retreat or die, the game rewards you for even trying since when you attempt the battle again, your party will be a little stronger! I did a bit of “grinding” to level up party members if I found a battle to be a bit too difficult or if party members kept dying, but it doesn’t really feel like grinding in the typical JRPG sense since the enemy AI will adapt to your new stronger party. No two battles will ever go exactly the same way! It’s a bit like chess in that sense.
As usual, I cheated by using a single save state (mostly to eliminate mistakes and random number pitfalls), and made heavy use of fast-forward to help with my lack of patience. Even still, my experience with Shining Force was absolutely incredible. This is a strong contender for my Game of the Year, and possibly even my favorite game of all time. There are no tutorials. No exposition. No insane story and opaque directions. It’s incredibly linear. It plays almost like a book. But with the variability in party members and stats, I could see how people would play this game again and again. There are some rough spots when it comes to inventory management and party management. My choices were mostly “vibes” based, just seeing which members seemed to do well in battle versus those who just totally sucked. If you ask 10 people how they play this game, you’ll probably get 10 different answers and to me, that’s what makes a game fun. I don’t think they expected you to buy the strategy guide and call a 1-800 help line like cough Nintendo cough did at that time. They simply made a great game that’s fun to play.
# Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict
Game Gear (Retroarch/Gearsystem) [1995] | Sonic! Software Planning | Sega
10/6/25
After having a complete and total blast with Shining Force, I knew I wanted to play another game. I had a hard time deciding diving straight into Shining Force II or sticking with the timeline of the games and going with Final Conflict. Obviously, I went with Final Conflict. There are actually a total of 3 Shining Force games released for the Game Gear and if the other two are anywhere near as good as Final Conflict, they’re easily in the top 3 best games released for the Game Gear. Too bad nobody would have been able to actually see the dang game on actual Game Gear hardware back in 1995! It really is too bad because this is possibly one of the best 8-bit RPGs on any system ever released. I like to imagine an alternate timeline when the white LED was invented in the late 80’s, which would have enabled the Game Gear to have a display that is actually legible. Oh well.
Final Conflict takes place in between the first and second Shining Force games on the Genesis. To be honest, any connections to the first game are mostly irrelevant. The only characters from the first game that appear are Adam, the useless robot who is actually unplayable but becomes a combined tactician and priest (he heals your fallen party members); Mishaela, Darksol’s evil magician lady who’s kind of a mini-boss in the first game; and (spoiler alert) Max, the lead from the first game who’s fallen under Mishaela’s spell. Other than that, I’m not aware of any people or locations that are related to the first game. All that to say that if you’re playing this for the overall Shining story, it’s not really necessary.
That said, as an 8-bit tactical RPG, Final Conflict is pretty good! There are absolutely no overworld exploration sections. Most of the time between battles Adam will just ask you if you want to save and allow you to raise fallen members. Occasionally you’ll go to a town which consists of Adam and his normal abilities, and a shop where you can upgrade your weapons and buy healing items. Some of the major annoyances with inventory managment are actually solved here by simple means like asking if you’d like to immediately equip a new item and the ability to quickly see what everyone is currently holding instead of diving through the same menu a thousand times. That was a welcome improvement! Due to the Game Gear’s limited screen resolution, a decent chunk of the battle map will be taken up by title text but simply holding START hides it! You’ll be holding START a lot if you want to know where you’re going!
Compared with Shining Force, Final Conflict felt slightly uninspired. Two maps stand out though. The first being a bridge you have to cross while it’s falling apart by an evil giant squid that will also completely wreck you if you stay near the edge of the water. The second to last map has you ascending a giant tower with 5 statues that will continually rain hellfire down on your party while also getting completely pwned by flying magic creatures giant area of effect spells. Seriously, I almost rage quit on this mission and had to go through several times before I eventually loaded everyone up with as many healing items as I could. Further complicated is the fact that the final battle against the same 3-headed (well, two handed and single-headed in this case) dragon as the first game will fully heal any of your party members but will not raise them. This means that if most of your party dies in the lead-up, you’re stuck with whoever is left. The first time I beat the second to last mission I ended up with only two party members which left the final mission impossible. Usually you can simply egress back to town to heal up and jump right back in, but in this case doing so will boot you back to the tower of hellfire doom! So you really have to be careful to not leave yourself with no remaining party members! Once I was able to do this, the final boss was a total cakewalk. The other issue I had is that many of the maps make use of “suprise” attacks where a bunch of random enemies will pop up half way through the map and totally wreck your tactics. Even still, they aren’t too hard, it just kind of left a sour taste in my mouth each time my carefully planned out team layout would just get completely turned upside down by a random magic user casting some spell that nailed 4 of my party with massive damage. Melee and ranged enemies are no problem but man, the enemy magic is seriously overpowered! I had less of a problem deciding which party members to take with me and which to leave on the bench because there’s less party members overall and the ones I left benched basically completely sucked. For these reasons, I feel that there’s significantly less depth in this game than the mainline entry, but for an on-the-go “side story”, I still had quite a bit of time with the battles!
Overall, Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict is a fun and impressive game for yet another ill-fated Sega console and it’s too bad we didn’t get an official release in the US. Thanks to the folks at Shining Force Central for the fan translation!
# Mother 3
Game Boy Advance [2006] | Brownie Brown / HAL Labratory | Nintendo
10/30/25
I first played EarthBound on my brother’s PC using SNES9x in about 2002 after becoming familiarized with Ness in Super Smash Bros. I found the game to be very difficult, yet appealing. For some reason the typical high fantasy setting of most RPGs never really struck a chord with me. But this strange game set in modern day America, complete with an odd but interesting soundtrack, was quite intriguing to me.
A few years later I ended up with a Dell Pocket PC and it could run NES games quite well despite the horrific ergonomics. Somehow I came across the unreleased original “Earth Bound” game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, known at that time as “EarthBound Zero”. I can remember getting to the factory level and being quite overwhelmed, but still the game was intriguing.
In October 2008 I was in my senior year of High School. I had a friend’s PSP I was “borrowing” and liked to play random games on. The fan translation for the long rumored “EarthBound 2” finally came out. That was my introduction to Mother 3. I have a clear memory of playing it on my PSP while waiting in the school parking lot for my friend to finish basketball practice. It had everything I loved about the other two Mother games with a modern layer of polish and refinement that made playing it a pleasant experience. I never actually beat the game at that time, but I enjoyed the time I spent with it.
Over the years I’ve participated in Mother 3 fandom by keeping it around to play, organizing group reproduction buys (before the days of cheap bootleg carts flooding eBay), trying it out on various emulators, and generally just keeping the game on my radar, hopeful for an eventual official release. There’s been several times I’ve nearly decided to finally give it an earnest shot again, and a couple of times I’ve attempted it only to become frustrated or distracted by life. That’s right, up until now I’d never actually beaten Mother 3.
I’m not sure what made me decide now was the time, but roughly 17 years to the day from the fan translation being released, I decided to give it another shot.
Mother 3 is an absolute treasure. The story for the most part is incredibly linear, playing more like a book or movie than a true video game. I like this in games. I don’t like not knowing what I’m supposed to be doing and not knowing the little sequence break tips and tricks experienced players know. I also don’t have the time or patience to figure it all out on my own, and I feel like a cheater when I use a walkthrough, it just takes away the wonder and excitement. Mother 3 fits that niche perfectly for me. It’s excellently paced, broken up into chapters that just seem to be the right length to keep it fresh.
The game is genuinely hilarious! One thing I like is that the overall cast of characters is small, maybe only 50 or so NPCs you’d actually interact with. Because of this, you’re able to watch them all grow and change throughout the game. It’s not just town after town filled with endless people who usually but not always have nothing helpful to tell you. Each time you see an NPC you can expect they’ll have something unique, novel, and usually pretty funny to say to you.
As usual, I cheat by playing with a single save state and fast-forward. I generally “suck” at video games, so using a single quick save buys me a lot of peace of mind knowing I won’t mess anything up too bad. Occasionally I’ll use more save states when starting a big battle but that was rare in this instance. Fast-forward makes the occasional grind less of a bother.
Mother 3 is a masterpiece. It’s my favorite in the series by far, and likely one of my favorite games of all time. I just get it; it gets me. I’d like to personally thank Itoi-san and everyone else who was involved in it’s creation. I’m glad they took the time it needed to get it just right. If you’ve never played it, there’s never been a better time than now!
# Donkey Kong
Game Boy [1994] | Nintendo EAD / Pax Softnica | Nintendo
11/4/25
Another one we had in the family growing up. This served as my introduction to the character of Donkey Kong. Colloquially known as “Donkey Kong ‘94” because Nintendo decided to release it as simply “Donkey Kong” despite the fact that it is not the same game as the original arcade Donkey Kong and it’s home console ports. Instead, this serves as a partial remake of that original arcade game for the first few stages, then it opens up into a nice little puzzle platformer. Much later, Nintendo would attempt to remake it for the Game Boy Advance but instead opt to spin it into a new series which became Mario vs Donkey Kong. I beat it using fast-forward and rewind and it took me about 3 hours. Interestingly enough this game introduced Mario’s backflip jump later found in Super Mario 64. It’s a fun, cute little game with decent replay value and the last real entry before Donkey Kong Country would totally retcon the Donkey Kong characters.
# EarthBound
SNES (OpenEmu-Arm) [1995] | Ape Inc. / HAL Labaroatory | Nintendo
11/11/25
What can I say about one of the most beloved and neglected video games of all time? I have to admit, I am usually pretty eager to update this list shortly after I beat each game, but it’s been over a week now and I’m still not sure where to put my thoughts. On one hand, I love the charm of EarthBound. The music in particular is incredible, I love the Hospital Dub track so much I can easily listen to it for hours on repeat. However, I didn’t love the obscure mechanics and niche strategies. I suppose it makes sense that for the US release, they included a full strategy guide with every copy. In a way, I wish I would have referenced it throughout, as I kind of assume that’s the “official” way to play the game, and apparently Nintendo has high quality PDF copies available for a free download, and it’s quite fleshed out. There were many times I was confused on what to do next, or in what order, or using which items. Inventory management is an absolute nightmare and offers no “fun” whatsoever. Mother 3 also has limited inventory, but all of the key items and equippable stuff doesn’t take up room and they make the whole menuing system a lot less cumbersome to navigate. EarthBound on the other hand left me continually wondering what items were worth even having at all since they like to fill you up with “trick” items that are worthless and do nothing. But a broken machine? Yeah you need to keep that around for sure. How am I supposed to know that? Another instance where I started getting “I’m not playing this game, the game is playing me” vibes is with the “despawn loop” to try and get some enemies to leave you alone. I streamed my entire playthrough and had a lot of fun as some “professional EarthBound players” (my designation) showed up to offer tips and spoilers. That was my favorite part of it actually! I’m glad a played through it but it left a fairly plain taste in my mouth overall. That’s right, I’m saying that I think EarthBound is overrated. The best part is that it’s a game that proves you can do things a little differently and still have a nice game! As a self proclaimed fan of the Mother series, I still hold Mother 3 far above the other two entries. It’s really really good. EarthBound is ok.
# Golf Story
Switch [2017] | Sidebar Games | Sidebar Games
11/16/25
I’m not sure how I heard about Golf Story. At the time it came out in 2017, was one of the only good indie Switch exclusives so it got a decent amount of praise. Back then, I bought the digital version of it and made it maybe 40% of the way through the game until my oldest son, who was two and a half at the time, somehow deleted my save file so I walked away out of self preservation. Later, there would be a limited (cough) physical release so I picked that up as well. Well, it sat on the shelf for long enough and after the relative stress of EarthBound and Mother 3 I needed something a little more casual. I dug out the defunct Switch Lite I bought on launch day at a Bic Camera in Tokyo just by chance, that will always be a fond memory for me. In retrospect, Golf Story is a good 2d golf game with some limited RPG elements. The core gameplay is mostly aiming up your shot, taking into account environmental hazards like wind, setting spin/angle on the ball to curve around trees or to get the ball to bounce just the right amount. That core loop is satisfying and addicting. They break up the rounds with the occasional minigame or off the wall challenge, and it’s mostly not annoying. There’s a “Made in Unity” splash screen and all I can say is that it shows. There’s a fair amount of jank and bugs, but nothing I ran into was game breaking. Now I kinda just want to play Mario Golf. It’s too bad Golf Story never got a wider release on other systems. Unfortunately it seems that the developer made a sequel that was very poorly received and they’re now defunct. I’d love to see a proper Golf Story sequel as I think with another layer of polish they could make something truly great!
# Retro Game Challenge
Nintendo DS (melonDS) [2009] | indieszero | Xseed / Bandai
11/18/25
This is another game that came out during a very pivotal time in my life, my senior year of high school. I actually didn’t even own a DS, but I talked my friend into loaning me his DS Lite he’d just gotten for Christmas so I could play Retro Game Challenge. I’ve always had a very special place in my heart for this game. I’m pretty sure Xseed lost money on their US localization, but I’m really glad they did it. Back in the mid 2010’s, when GameStop was trying get rid of their DS stuff, they’d sell loose copies of this game for like $5, so any time I went into an area on vacation I’d make sure to hop on their website to scour the area for any and all copies I could get my hands on. I think I ended up with 4, but now I just own 2 complete with a home printed case. The developer, indieszero, would later go on to make the NES Remix games for Nintendo, but for some reason those never really interested me. Retro Game Challenge consists of 8 Famicom style games. There’s a galaga clone, two puzzle platformers (one is a sequel), a proper top down shmup, a top down racing game similar to Micro Machines with an in-game ramen noodle branded tie in “sequel”, a proper 8-bit RPG in the vein of Dragon Quest, and a late-generation 2d platformer that also serves as a much expanded sequel to the two previous puzzle platformers. Each game has just enough original gameplay to keep it fresh. You’re given 4 challenges for each game, such as attaining a certain score or beating a level, and rewarded with new games to play. The premise is that you’re sent back in time to the 80’s by the “Game Master” to play games with himself as a child, completing challenges for each along the way. One aspect that really helps sell the whole vibe is that there’s an in-game magazine that will occasionally release new issues complete with sneak peaks of upcoming “in development” games and cheat codes for the old games. The cheats will come in handy too, since your final challenge is to beat every game. I would say it didn’t quite hold up as well as I remember it, but it still scratches a major itch. With the amount of impossible 8-bit shovelware games that are out there, it’s nice to have a super linear curated list of different games to play. The games really do feel authentically 8-bit as well, I think they could all be actual NES games and I wouldn’t even be surprised if there were ever proper console ports of the games themselves. indieszero really knew what they were doing with this game and it shows! If you’ve always wanted to be a fan of the 8-bit era but found some of the games just too daunting and challenging, give this on a shot! There was a sequel as well that unfortunately never saw a release outside of Japan, but luckily there’s a good fan translation of it. My only real question now is if I go straight into the sequel or do something else. I’m kind of feeling the Switch itch again, so we’ll see…
# LocoRoco
PlayStation Portable [2006] | Japan Studio | Sony Computer Entertainment
11/22/25
In high school I requisitioned my friend’s PSP to do shenanigans with. Back then, the most reliable way to mod them was to make your own “pandora’s battery” which I did successfully. A replacement official battery was $30 at Best Buy if my memory serves correctly. As a broke kid, I simply couldn’t afford games (let alone the system itself), so this really opened up a world of possibilities. To be honest, I’m not sure that there were really any good games on the PSP, at least none that I can remember playing. I mostly liked playing emulators. However, I can remember distinctly one day at school where I think I was an aide for the computer teacher during a period where he didn’t have a class, so it was just me alone in the computer lab. I don’t know where I heard about it, but I loaded up a freshly downloaded copy of LocoRoco and was immediately smitten. The entire presentation was just so charming! I have a vivid memory of then immediately looking up how much a copy would cost at my local GameStop and it was only $20! More than that it was in stock. I immediately left school and drove to GameStop and picked it up. I didn’t even open the case but I felt like it was such a unique game that I needed to shell out a few pennies to support the craft. Revisiting LocoRoco today, it’s still got quite a bit of charm. After I booted it up nearly all of my kids from age 2 to 10 gathered around asking what I was playing, who were those guys, what was going on. There’s a strong soundtrack full of really unique music that the little blobs called “LocoRocos” sing along too. There are 5 worlds with 8 stages on each world. There’s not much in terms of variety, and the game is really a one trick pony. You control the “world” and tilt it using the R and L triggers which cause the rocos to roll. Pressing both triggers together causes the world to bounce, launching the rocos into the air. You start with a single roco and eat fruit hidden throughout each stage that cause you to grow larger and adds another roco to your blob. You can hit circle to break your blob into individual rocos to navigate tighter spaces, and hold circle to cause them to rejoin. Honestly, I think it’s really more of a glorified demo than a full game, there’s not just enough unique concepts to sustain the whole game. However, I think it was designed to be played in shorter spurts rather than sinking several hours into in a single session. I still really love LocoRoco but there’s very little in terms of replay value. You can gather a total of 20 rocos on each level, but as far as I know the game does not reward or punish you for getting all of them or missing some. Well, other than giving you parts for your house which is a mini game where you build a kind of rube-goldberg machine to guide the rocos along a certain path. Personally I wasn’t super interested in doing this. As I played through the game, I sensed a certain lack of polish that seem to be more inherent in Sony’s games as opposed to Nintendo. But maybe that’s the point, it’s not a Nintendo game and Nintendo wouldn’t have made this game. I love LocoRoco for what it is but I can’t see myself revisiting it any time soon. There are technically two proper sequels but I”m not sure if I’ll dive into those, although I hear that LocoRoco 2 is better in pretty much every way.
# Mario Tennis
Nintendo 64 [2000] | Camelot Software Planning | Nintendo
11/22/25
Okay, this is kind of cheating I think. For this list I consider a game that I’ve “beaten” as having gotten to the credits screen. However there’s no real set standard in video games for how much of the game’s content you’ve actually experienced in order to see a credits screen. Some games like Castlevania like to trick you with “bad endings”. Others, like Retro Game Challenge leave almost nothing on the floor. Mario Tennis will show you a credits scroll as soon as you fully complete a tournament a single time, which is what I did. I can remember playing this back in 2000, I’m not sure if we borrowed it from a friend or rented it but I believe it was around Christmas time and I had a lot of fun playing it by myself. I think what you’re supposed to do is complete the tournament with every character, but I”m not sure what reward there is for doing so. There’s probably unlockable characters and other things, but it’s not clear to me what any of that is. Honestly, I like that about this game. You can get as deep as you want but it’s not forced. I’ll probably spend some more time with Mario Tennis, or I might jump into the Gameboy Color or GameCube version. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this was the official introduction of Waluigi which is frankly, incredible. Also this incredible fun fact from the wiki article: Camelot asked Nintendo if the game could also feature girlfriends for Wario and Waluigi, but Miyamoto said that he “didn’t even want to see their girlfriends.”
# Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Nintendo DS [2005] | Konami | Konami
11/25/25
I really love the Nintendo DS. I especially love my DS Lite that I picked up off some kid in the local classifieds back in 2015 with a copy of Bakugan that’s long gone. I love everything about the DS Lite. I actually bought the original white DS Lite when it came out from money I’d saved up from my (probably illegal) telemarketing job I had one summer. It didn’t last long, I think the white color combined with the touch screen just really stressed me out, fearing damaging it. These days, I love my banged up black and red Lite. It’s missing the stylus. It’s missing the Slot 2 cover. But the unique form factor and crispy pixels just look so good to my eyes. After streaming a lot of games locked away at my desk my lack of involvement with my family started to weigh on me so I wanted something I could play on the go. I reviewed the games I beat last year and noticed I had beaten Aria of Sorrow and meant to play the DS sequel but never go around to it.
Dawn of Sorrow is both beloved and hated. The issue is there are some extremely grindy aspects combined with a really gimmicky and glued-on touch screen mechanic. However, my experience with Dawn was pretty positive! I really love a lot of the “metroidvania” style Castlevania games, and compared to some of the others, I felt like Dawn really kept the pacing up. Usually I’ll get completely lost at least a few times, and I did get lost a handful of times in Dawn but I was able to quickly search the internet for the next step. The map layout is fairly forgiving with warp points located at pretty ideal spots. And the touch screen gimmick? You have to do a “seal” when you beat a boss which consists of tracing a specific pattern on the touch screen. If you mess it up, you have to keep fighting the boss and try again. However, at any time the game can be paused and you can review the seal pattern and even practice it. To me, this wasn’t really that annoying. It took about 30 seconds, and I did mess it up a few times on a boss battle but for some reason it didn’t really bother me all that much. The bosses themselves are quite fun to play and offered a nice challenge. The more annoying mechanic to me was the “soul capture” aspect. Randomly (and I do mean truly randomly), when you kill a monster you’ll absorb it’s “soul”. There’s no stat I found that impacts how frequently this happens so you really just have to grind until you get the soul you want. The game forces you to capture three specific souls at the end of the game to get the proper ending and having to remember where the specific monsters live in the castle, combined with the random number generation that dictates if you’ll even capture the soul, that late in the game really deflated a lot of the good pacing the game has. It’s just dumb. Those specific three souls are really not even useful in any other way, it’s not like you need them to beat the boss or anything, it’s just an arbitrary stupid gimmick the game forces you to deal with.
One thing I’m mixed on is this mechanic where to get better weapons, you have to fuse specific monster souls with a weaker weapon to keep upgrading. Fortunately the game tells you exactly what soul you need for the next upgrade, and for my playthrough I used only a single axe weapon so it was just one little thing to remember as I naturally encountered the monster I needed. By far the grindiest part of the game for me was my decision to upgrade my axe to it’s final level, which required a soul from one of the strongest enemies in the game. The “final armor” as the enemy is named required 15 hits to kill and there were a couple of times I actually died when trying to capture it’s soul. I think it took me about 30 minutes of killing the enemy, navigating back to a save/heal point that wasn’t really even that close, then rinse and repeat. Just… ugh. I seriously considered rage quitting the game at that point. But thanks to the DS I was cozied up in bed with my daughter so I decided do persevere to get the best axe weapon in the game.
As far as post-game content, as typical with Castlevania games, you unlock another mode where you play as another character with it’s own abilities and mechanics. Honestly, I feel like the so-called “Julias Mode” might actually be better than the main game. It completely eliminates the soul capture and seal mechanics that everyone hates so much and actually ties into one of the main game’s “bad” endings. I’m half tempted to complete the playthrough in Julias Mode since I think it would go pretty quickly.
I’ve said way too much already but as you can tell, I did enjoy this game. It’s well done, good music, and excellent pixel art graphics. Oh, not to mention a great anime opening cutscene! It’s a really complete package and may be the peak GBA/DS era Castlevania game. Still, I think Symphony of the Night might be better than them all…
# Mario & Luigi: Dream Team
Nintendo 3DS [2013] | AlphaDream/Good-Feel | Nintendo
11/27/25
Ugh. Uuuuggghhh. Last year I finished off a playthrough of Bowser’s Inside Story (original DS version). This is the fourth Mario & Luigi title and so far, it seems the series is going downhill. I think my favorite was Partners in Time since I love the DS aesthetic and it seemed to be mostly gimmick-free. Dream Team is the opposite. It’s basically one big gimmick. And you know what? It’s not even really much of an RPG. It’s more like Mario Party RPG. What I like about the action-RPG elements of the original Paper Mario and the Mario & Luigi series is that the action elements in battle serve to just add a nice little cherry on top of an already fun game. Instead, Dream Team is like a series of mini games strewn together with some fairly weak action platforming stages. There aren’t really that many battles to do, and when you do them it’s a few minutes of the same repetitive minigames over and over and over again. All of them really just have you pressing A and B in certain patterns and there just wasn’t enough variety to keep it interesting. On top of that, your special attacks are again, like individual minigames that you basically have to learn and master or else you’re better off just doing the regular attacks. I actually gave up on learning the special attacks and limped through.
I actually started this game maybe around the time last year I beat Bowser’s Inside Story and then got bored of it. When I picked it back up, I kind of intended to give it a fresh start from the beginning but it turns out I was like 90% of the way through the game so I decided to just finish it off. I just did not vibe with this one, sorry. Even the setting is just kind of… dumb in my opinion. It’s something to do with Luigi going to sleep using a magic pillow and then Mario enters the dream world which is a 2.5D platforming stage. On the platforming stages you can use “Dream Luigi” to do, for lack of a better term, special moves such as a high jump or a tornado spin. It’s just not fun! It’s cumbersome! There are battles in the dream world and you have a completely different set of special moves (minigames) to learn and master, or ignore like I did. I really wish they would have just kept the same stupid moves the whole time so at least I could master one or two of them, but the way they split up the “dream” sections meant that I basically would almost get a special move down, and then have to switch to the other mode and forget it. I can absolutely understand why I rage quit this game after like 40 hours. Good grief.
I generally prefer the aesthetic of the original DS over the 3DS. It’s not that AlphaDream did a bad job with the direction on these, it’s just not for me. But the gimmicks. My absolute hell the gimmicks. We’re talking mandatory motion controls. I just covered Dawn of Sorrow which was lambasted for having contrived touch screen elements. This game is basically chock full of that kind of crap. “Tap fast!” “Draw fast circles on the touch screen!” There are certain boss battles which play like extremely drawn out quick time event. We’re talking like a 10 minute quick time event. The final one with Bowser took me about 30 minutes on it’s own just to do all the stupid random crap. There’s way too much unnecessary animation so in between the actual game you’re forced to sit through the same mini cutscenes again and again and again. Seriously, did they playtest this at all? How is this fun? I actually felt pretty bad about the whole AlphaDream situation with them going out of business but man, they deserved it. This game really seriously kind of sucks. Fortunately for the actual RPG boss battles they give you an “easy mode” if you die which I graciously took advantage of. I’m not going to learn the dumb mini games which are actually enemy attacks just to try and dodge them and not get completely fricked over.
Am I excited to try Paper Jam next? Yes I am. Besides Brothership (which was made by another developer completely), that’s the only other Mario & Luigi game I haven’t played through. If it’s this bad, I’m going to give it up sooner than later and I won’t look back. AlphaDream, go frick yourselves for what you did with Dream Team. If you want to play the M&L series, I’d say start with either the original Superstar Saga or Partners in Time and definitely play the Super Mario RPG Switch remake before you give Dream Team a second of your attention. Bad game. Shame.
# Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Game Boy Advance [2001] | Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe | Konami
12/11/25
I’m not entirely sure which Castlevania game was the first that I played in earnest, but it was likely this. I might have played some of the original NES games in an emulator at some point, but Circle of the Moon was certainly the first I owned. I believe that one of my Boy Scout troop leader people recommended it to me, so I picked up a used copy from the local Game Crazy for $15 or so. Circle of the Moon was a launch title for the GBA, and reviewing the list of US launch titles for the system, it’s clearly by far the best. In fact, it’s probably the only US launch title that’s even noteworthy or worth playing at all (other than Nintendo’s own remake of Super Mario Bros. 2).
Hot on the heels of the massive success of Symphony of the Night, Konami trimmed down a bit of the complexity into a great little portable package. Contemporary reviews complained the game was hard to see on the GBA’s tiny unlit display, but that’s not a problem for us at all, is it? Even by the time I bought my copy, I had a GBA SP and never really had an issue seeing the graphics. I can’t really remember how far I made it in the game back then, but I’m pretty sure what happened was what normally happened for me: I made it somewhere between 40-70% of the way through, at which point my older brother commandeered my GBA and either finished the game for me, or started from the beginning and finished the entire thing before I had a chance. That’s okay, he is much better at games than I am.
One of the “innovations” of Circle of the Moon is the “Dual Set-Up System” which gives you the “opportunity” to collect randomly dropped cards from certain unknown enemies. However, the drop rates for the cards is completely horrific. During this playthrough, I think I collected about 6 of the cards total, out of 20. There are two sets of 10 and matching them up does… something. Sometimes the game tells you, sometimes it doesn’t and you’re supposed to just figure it out? Luckily, there is an easily exploitable bug where you can activate any combo you do have and then immediately change to any combo whether you have it or not and the game will activate the new combo. The most useful combo for me was on that gives you a poison cloud around your body which eliminates most enemy and boss projectiles as well as serves to open all the secret walls you can whip through to get powerups. Like most Castlevania games, getting hit at all by an enemy results in massive kickback, sending you absolutely yeeting through the stage. It doesn’t even matter how strong or weak the enemy is, if they touch you, you will fly. So the poison cloud really helps to give you a protective barrier when there’s a ton of random enemy projectiles on screen. The game is pretty challenging, so a bit of grinding is necessary. I ended up making it all the way to the end of the game about 10 levels under the recommendation for the final boss, so I grinded (ground??) for about 30 minutes while watching a show. With enough save states, I made it through without too much trouble.
Circle of the Moon is fun. I like it. I think it’s a great intro to the entire franchise as well. It’s straightforward enough that you don’t need any prior knowledge and honestly, the stupid DSS system can also be ignored if you’re willing to grind and pull your hair out a bit.
# Metroid Fusion
Game Boy Advance [2002] | Nintendo R&D1 | Nintendo
11/13/25
Metroid Fusion… what a game. For some reason, my brother got Metroid II on the Game Boy and that was just one of the games that existed growing up. I really, really sucked at it though and found it mostly not very fun. I have a very vague and early memory of seeing another kid playing Super Metroid at some point in the late 90’s in his basement in the dark. I think later when we got into emulation, my brother revisited Super Metroid and we’d grown in our appreciation for the style of game it was. Still, it wasn’t all that interesting to me, and I also sucked at it. In the summer of 2001 my family moved to Henderson, Nevada and I made friends with a really cool kid. It turns out, he had a copy of Metroid Fusion and I had a GBA SP with basically no fun games at all, so he let me borrow his copy. I think mostly my brother played it, and he really enjoyed it. I don’t think I played it very much though. Later, in my early adulthood, I picked up a Game Boy Micro from a thrift store for $20 and an EZ Flash IV and I played through Fusion. This was my first revisit in about 15 years or so.
What I liked about Fusion then, and to a lesser extent now, was how straightforward it is. It’s nearly fetch-quest level of straightforward. A bossy computer orders you around from point A to point B. Having come fresh off of Circle of the Moon, I was struck by how easy the game is. The bosses? A total cakewalk. Even the much feared Nightmare X boss was absolutely no problem at all. The plotline with the evil SA-X Samus clone thing was pretty cool though. One of the favorite movies is Anihilation which features a similar evil-ish alien clone plot line. The eerie ambiance of exploring a derelict space station research facility is spot on. Metroid as a series is very much a read-in-between-the-lines approach when it comes to storytelling and music, but the music that is here is top notch. The biggest downside for me when it comes to the overall game design is the usual complaint against “bomb every wall”. Once you get the super bomb, it’s basically enter room, super bomb, shoot tile with revealed weapon. I think I prefer the Castlevania game design approach where the hidden rooms are more supplemental and not in the core level progression.
# Metroid: Zero Mission
Game Boy Advance [2004] | Nintendo R&D1 | Nintendo
12/15/25
Since Fusion was mostly enjoyable, and also did not over stay it’s welcome by any means, I decided it was only fitting to dive straight back into the next logical game. Released just two years after Fusion, Zero Mission is a remake of the original Metroid game on the NES way back in 1986. I’ve attempted to play the original Metroid but holy balls is that a bizarre game. I honestly think they expected you to sit there with a sheet of graph paper and map it all out yourself. So, Zero Mission is a welcome remake with all the nice features of the Super Metroid and Fusion nicities (like a freaking map). Compared to Fusion, I actually appreciated the slight return to form on the graphics and design front. I actually found the gameplay to be more difficult than Fusion, which isn’t to say it’s by any means hard at all.
The big addition of Zero Mission is an entirely new exposition event after the main game ends that has Samus in her “zero suit” which is just her basic human form with a little pea shooter. It’s kind of a stealth-ish section that has her exploring some Chozo ruins and avoiding the space pirate crew. Eventually you get her ultimate powered up form but the victory is short lived and before you know it, you’ve blown up the space pirate ship and escape on a stolen ship.
As I played through Zero Mission, I had the feeling that this game was a lot like Super Metroid if they sanded down every edge into a smooth ball, not unlike Samus’ morph ball. There weren’t really any amazing new features, just kind of more of the same old same old, but it’s well executed. My play through lasted just over 4 hours, like Fusion. I have a small feeling that a lot of the love for the Metroid series is through rose tinted glasses. Having said that, I have never put significant time into a Prime game, but I did beat Dread which felt very mid to me. Has the Metroidvania genre been beaten to absolute death? I don’t think so, considering the sequel to Hollow Knight felt like by far the biggest release of 2025. People are still showing up in big ways for a metroidvania game but it seems like Nintendo doesn’t know how to deliver them any more. Konami got off the bus completely about 20 years ago. I’m looking forward to the eventual Bloodstained sequel myself. Do I play SotN next? Go back to Dread? AM2R? I think I might be a little vania’d out at this point so maybe I need to change up the genre. I put several hours into Racing Lagoon a year or two ago, and I kind of really want to go back and finish that one off for good.