• Bonze Adventure Header
    1980s,  Arcade,  Review

    Review – Bonze Adventure

    The best part of playing Bonze Adventure is probably learning what a bonze is. I'm not sure I'll ever use that knowledge, but at least it's there now. And knowledge is power. Unfortunately, Bonze Adventure is has some great character design within, but not much else going for it.

  • DuckTales 2 cover
    1990s,  NES,  Review

    Review – DuckTales 2

    DuckTales is pretty great. Not just the cartoon, but the first NES game which I usually point to as a baseline for licensed platformers. It has unique mechanics partially informed by the subject matter. Duck Tales 2 is more of that. More of that and not much else.

  • Header Black Bird
    2010s,  Review

    Review – Black Bird

    Yoshiro Kimura and his cohorts have my eternal gratitude for Chulip. So, I don't think there's any situation where I wouldn't be willing to try something new from them. Black Bird is a pretty far cry from promiscuous smooching, but that's okay. At least in this case.

  • Pu-Li-Ru-La Header
    1990s,  Arcade,  Bakage,  Review

    Review – Pu-Li-Ru-La

    The beat-'em-up series is a varied as you can get when it comes to putting fists into faces and faces into concrete, but Pu-Li-Ru-La stands apart in its cartoon art-style. It's just too bad that it can't live up to the intense, wall-to-wall weirdness of its third stage.

  • Image via Monomi Park
    2010s,  Review

    Review – Slime Rancher

    Slime Rancher is among the most successful cozy games in the niche, and for the most part, I love it. However, it's like a glass of milk; it's very enjoyable at first, but if you sit with it too long, it starts to smell and you don't want to drink it.

  • Ben Bero Beh Header. Image via FlyerFever.com.
    1980s,  Arcade,  Bakage,  Review

    Review – Ben Bero Beh

    I have a confession to make: I’m attracted to weird Japanese arcade games. There’s a word for it: Bakage (Ba-kah-gey, not ba-cage). It means stupid game. It’s not to be mistaken for kusoge (koo-so-gey) which means crappy game. I have made the mistake before, but merely because I didn’t know there was a name for bizarre games. 1984’s Ben Bero…

  • Psycho Dream Header 2
    1990s,  Review,  SNES

    Review – Psycho Dream

    The opening credits showed the director, Kenichi Nishi. “I know that name,” I thought to myself. I initially believed it was maybe because he had something to do with Valis, but I knew it was something more significant than that. No, wait. Kenichi Nishi was at Love-de-Lic before he co-founded Skip. The dude helped create Chibi-Robo!