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Review – Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
While the Game Boy was released in 1989 to near-instant popularity, it would take developers a few years to actually come to grips with the little grey brick’s eccentricities. Early games on the handheld tended to be either single screen puzzle or arcade games, and attempts at porting the gameplay of existing NES licenses. This resulted in games like Castlevania:…
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Review – Earthworm Jim 2
Yeah, just try and convince me that Earthworm Jim 2 isn’t a work of art. How else do you describe a game that abruptly casts you as a blind salamander clutching a plasma gun and drops you in a giant maze of intestines filled with pinball bumpers while playing Moonlight Sonata in the background? Earthworm Jim 2 is an inexplicable game.…
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Review – Jurassic Park (SNES)
Jurassic Park is one of those really weird licensing situations. On one hand, the movie really isn’t for children, while on the other hand, marketers were extremely quick to rush out all sorts of toys and action figures for it. It’s sort of like Star Wars, especially when you consider the sheer marketing power of the franchise. The only difference…
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Review – Yomawari: Night Alone
I’m not so sure about horror games, anymore. Back in my younger days, I was easily frightened by the Resident Evil series. Heck, I remember dealing with frequent nightmares after the release of the Gamecube remake of the original game in the series. These days, however, I’m too confident in my capabilities in video games and too analytical of gameplay…
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Review – Monster Party
It doesn’t feel like I’ve been collecting retro games for that long, but I guess it has been a little over 10 years. Those were the days. It seemed like there was an unending supply of gems to discover hidden behind every rock. These days, it feels like I’ve only got sports games left to collect Monster Party was one…
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Review – Earthworm Jim
When I was younger, I was a massive fan of Earthworm Jim. I remember renting it for the first time, seeing the promo for the cartoon, and even managing to beat it, despite my inexperience and underdeveloped thumbs. I once even wrote a letter to Shiny Entertainment, and asked if they would be creating a sequel, and they wrote back…
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Review – Pilotwings
When the Super Nintendo finally landed on Western shores in 1991, it brought with it three games. Super Mario World and F-Zero have gone on to be legends in their own rights, but the third game is a little more obscure. Pilotwings may seem like the less exciting choice when stood up next to a Mario game and a hyper-fast…
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Review – Celeste
It dawned on me recently that a lot of the games I played this year didn’t actually come out in 2018. I mean, you can look back through the blog and get a good account of what I played through; not a lot of new releases. Hell, I spent the first month of the year playing the early Elder Scrolls…
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Review – The Messenger
The pixel art style was once rather contentious. Anecdotally, many of the complaints I heard were that it was simply a ploy to try and sucker people who are easily swayed my nostalgia. That may have once been the case, but these days, the emulation of low resolution sprite art seems to more frequently be employed as a way of…
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Review – Snatcher
I can’t say I have the best relationship with Hideo Kojima. On one hand, I respect him as a creative force. On the other hand, he’s an excruciatingly awful storyteller. The Metal Gear series can, at the best of times, be an entertaining experience, but then it stops, lurches in your direction, and vomits exposition directly on your shoes. And…