Every game franchise has its "black sheep".  Often times they'll have more than one but there is usually one title that stands out among the rest as the game everyone seems to hate except for a select few... only for that select few's appreciation of the work to gain more and more traction until it's widely accepted among the fanbase.  Zelda has Majora's Mask, Mario has Mario 2, Pokemon has Black and White, and the Kingdom Hearts series has basically any game that released after KH1.  For one of the most defining series in gaming, Metroid, that game is Metroid II: Return of Samus.

At one point widely considered the worst Metroid game and, to many, is still the worst "canon" Metroid game, Return of Samus released for the original Game Boy in 1991.  It sees our protagonist, bounty hunter Samus Aran, on a mission to exterminate the Metroid species after the Galactic Federation discovers their native ecosystem on the planet SR-388, lest they once again fall into Space Pirate hands.  It was innovative for the series, introducing several now mainstays such as Samus' triple firing beam the Spazer, the Plasma Beam which can pass through enemies and obstacles, the Space Jump which allows Samus to continue jumping indefinitely in the air, and the Spider Ball and Spring Ball, two Morph Ball upgrades that allow Samus to climb walls and natively jump in the form, thereby freeing her movement.  Metroid II also introduced and defined how saving would go in a Metroid game, being the advent of proper "save rooms" which are scattered throughout the planet.

However, as innovative as Metroid II was, it was also one of the most divisive games in the series.  Contemporary critics largely seemed to agree that the Game Boy hardware was holding back what could've maybe been a great game, though they couldn't exactly agree on how exactly it was doing so.  The small screen size and how it limits what Samus can see, the large caverns full of darkness and nothingness, the heavier focus on run and gun gameplay, the spirtework, the music, basically every element of this game had been praised and criticized in equal measure.  No two reviewers could agree on why this game missed the mark, but all of them could agree that it did, that the game was flawed and broken in ways that stopped it at the finish line.  And as the series evolved, and hardware evolved alongside it, Metroid II seemed like it was doomed to fade into obscurity, the lost, outdated Metroid game whose entire contribution to the series could be explained away in a couple sentences of the opening crawl of Super Metroid, its much more successful baby sister.

But that wouldn't be the end for Metroid II.  Rather, Return of Samus would see a second life among the community, with many citing it as a flawed but spectacular Metroid entry that had been sadly overlooked by both critics and the fandom at large.  I remember, actually, the first time I ever heard anyone talk about Metroid II was a very old video by the now retired content creator dookieshed, where he talked a lot about how the game was an underrated gem and how it nailed the sci-fi/horror atmosphere that the Metroid series would later on adopt as a feature in titles like Fusion and Dread.  Return of Samus became the community's favorite child, the misunderstood and oft forgotten middle kid in a line of icons.  The true Metroid fan's favorite.  Literally the Majora's Mask of the series.  And as the cult classic of the series, it would get a lot of love from the community, being the center of so much discussion and reevaluation and, most importantly, reworking.  Remaking Metroid II is such a common practice within the Metroid community that the most famed version of Metroid II is literally called Another Metroid 2 Remake.

Nintendo themselves would even try their hand at remaking the Metroid series' most underrated title.  In 2017, a year after the release of AM2R, Nintendo would release the creatively titled "Metroid: Samus Returns", a remake of Return of Samus for the 3DS by the developer MercurySteam, who would later go on to develop the next mainline Metroid title, the long awaited Metroid Dread.  Obviously with a game that has gotten this much love and this many remakes/reimaginings, both fan-driven and official, it's inevitable that people would compare and contrast them, see how they're different and the different approaches to what Metroid IS to them.  But an interesting thing that is revealed in this discussion is that none of these games seem to replace the original Metroid II.  Unlike the previous Metroid remake and its predecessor, Zero Mission and the original Metroid, there is no consensus that any version of Metroid II has truly perfected it.  That no matter what the remake does, something about Metroid II keeps getting lost in translation.  And I kind of want to explore why that is by analyzing each of the three key versions of Metroid II, what its goals are, and why there is still something to be gained from the original Metroid II all these years later.

The Metroid IIs - Why You Can't Make a Perfected Version of the Most Imperfect Metroid

What every version of Metroid II has in common

Before we begin discussing their individual ideologies, I want to establish the things the three of them have in common.  Namely their basic plot and core design ideology as a result of said plot.  Each version of Metroid II starts with the same basic plot setup.  After Samus' victory against the Space Pirates on the Planet Zebes, she reported her findings to the Galactic Federation.  These findings included the discovery of the Space Pirates' secret weapon, the Metroids.  The Metroids are a species of parasites that can latch onto a being and drain them dry of their life force in a matter of seconds, their origin is completely unknown and it seems likely they were intentionally created as a bioweapon rather than being a naturally occurring species in the universe.  The Galactic Federation, anticipating the Space Pirates being able to regroup, becomes worried about the continued existence of Metroids in the universe and so sends Samus on her next mission: to find the home planet of the Metroids and drive them to extinction, a harsh but necessary action for the benefit of the universe.

This leads Samus to the remote planet of SR-388, an alien world that was so off the Federation's radar that it didn't even receive a proper name.  It has seemingly never be inhabited, the planet being a haven of as of yet unknown fauna.  It is also the "native" planet of the Metroids, them seemingly having been created here for some unknown purpose.  As Samus touches down, she begins her hunt, delving below the surface into the massive labyrinth of caverns within.  It's here that she discovers the horrifying truth: the Metroids here are not simply existing, they're thriving.  Growing.  Evolving.  Breeding.  The larval stage of the Metroids, the ones she encountered in her previous journey, were basically an appetizer.  These new Metroids are faster, meaner, and their previous weakness to her beam weaponry has been effectively eliminated.  While they are now more vulnerable to both concussive and explosive force, their bodies have grown a natural defensive physiology to protect their weak points.  And the longer Samus goes on, the more they grow, eventually becoming massive alien monsters that look more like Xenomorphs than Metroids.

And so Samus must fight.  She must wander this planet, hunting horrifying creatures that are more hunting her than the other way around.  All the while discovering the hidden past of the Metroids, revealing that this seemingly uncharted planet may not have been as uncharted as it seems.  She will discover the secrets of the people who raised her, that the wise and noble Chozo people, a beacon of peace and technological prowess, might not have been the people she believed them to be.  She is truly alone, the odds entirely against her, the monsters lurking in every wall and crevice.  This is where Metroid II really shines for a lot of people, this sense of loneliness, of isolation, the weight of sins long past.  It nails the atmosphere of a Metroid game, with many of its fans saying the series has yet to truly recapture how perfect Metroid II's atmosphere is.  Metroid II's core strength is being so unabashedly, so truly "Metroid".  It's almost the real template for the series' style, atmosphere, and narrative, which is surprising given the fact that it's a Game Boy sequel not a lot of people knew about or played.  Super may have been the perfector, but Metroid II was truly the originator of "Metroid".

Samus Returns

We'll start by talking about the first incarnation of Metroid II that I personally played, the official 3DS remake Metroid: Samus Returns.  The long awaited return of the Metroid series, after a 10 year gap of no mainline titles (technically 7 but at this point Other M is no longer considered a mainline title); Samus Returns was, as previously stated, the first game in the series to be developed by game developers MercurySteam.  It is part of a noted trend, one might even say it's a "strategy", of Nintendo hiring new developers to remake their older titles to see if they can be trusted to begin working on newer ones, i.e. Grezzo and the Zelda remakes they did before making Echoes of Wisdom.  It is perhaps most famous for being one of the last 3DS titles people even noticed came out as they were fully moving over to the Nintendo Switch, a game clearly released to show that Nintendo was continuing to support the 3DS so if the Switch also failed, they could refocus on the 3DS until they found another niche.

I will not mince words here, of the two notable remakes of this game, Samus Returns is arguably the bigger departure in design ideology.  MercurySteam was working with a dormant franchise in a genre that had evolved past its humble origins.  Metroid is famed for bringing the sprawling open worlds with roadblocks that require you to go around and complete other objectives to clear to the masses, but even by the time that its fourth entry, Metroid Fusion, had hit the market we were starting to see the genre grow past it.  The release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the game that makes up the "Vania" part of the Metroidvania, showed an insufficiency in the Metroid part of the formula.  That while Metroid nails the atmosphere and exploration aspects, its core gameplay can be, and often is, somewhat lacking.  Namely, the combat, which in Metroid is very slow and not especially dynamic.  Now I think it's part of the charm, Metroid makes you feel like you're a roaming tank firing off at enemies to make them dead.  But to a wider audience, the traditional Metroid game would probably be a bit lackluster.  Samus Returns was launching the same year as Hollow Knight, arguably the greatest Metroidvania to ever exist, and Hollow Knight has all the things Metroid has in spades AND good combat.

So MercurySteam was in a peculiar position with Samus Returns.  Metroid needed some modernization, something to make it feel like a Metroidvania that came out in 2017 and not 1993, but how to do that without losing the spirit of Metroid.  Their solution is, in my opinion, elegant.  Metroid: Samus Returns largely plays like a traditional Metroid title, maybe a bit faster than games past but it primarily has the same methodical gameplay of the past titles.  But, it does make the combat more interactive.  Samus now has a counter as one of her core mechanics, particularly beneficial in this game as the fauna of SR388 really like getting in close.  When enemies, and especially Metroids, go in for an attack they will briefly flash and make a sound effect sometimes.  This opens up a parry window, allowing Samus to counter said enemy and stun them.  This allows the bounty hunter to safely deal damage to or dispatch the enemy safely.

As well, she gets new abilities in the form of the Aeion system.  Aeion is a Chozo techno-mysticism that Samus has built into her suit and/or DNA, allowing her to unlock new abilities from interacting with ancient Chozo technology.  These abilities range from environmental (a scanner which reveals hidden destructible blocks and unveils part of the map) to defensive (a brief super armor) to offensive (a powerful rapid fire shot which decimates enemy HP).  One can easily criticize these powers for being a bit too good at times, and I think the criticism is fair, but it does really inform how Samus Returns wishes to be perceived.  A traditional Metroid for a modern era, creating a more dynamic and action-forward experience.

However, as you could imagine, this greater focus on dynamic gameplay makes Samus Returns quite a bit different from the game it's remaking.  While Samus Returns does retain much of the atmosphere and the same basic plot structure of Metroid II, it is a far more action-y affair than the traditional Metroid series had been thus far.  Its key design ideology is very much to create the best "game" that Metroid II can be, rather than creating the best version of Metroid II in the same way Zero Mission attempted to create the best version of Metroid.  It's a game that focuses on being as fun as possible to reintroduce the wider world to Metroid, and in my mind, it succeeds, I adore Samus Returns, it is my third favorite Metroid game and second favorite of the classic series.  However, it's undeniable that it loses part of Metroid II in its quest.

See, one of the things that makes Metroid II so special, makes its atmosphere so beloved, is how natural everything feels.  Samus is the invader on this closed alien ecosystem and she never knows how close or far from a Metroid she truly is.  She is hunted as she is hunting, as previously stated.  Any room could contain a Metroid and while the game does show you the discarded shells of Metroids who have reached different stages of maturity to indicate that you're in the right location, encounters with Metroids in II feel very sudden.  Like Samus is stumbling upon a bear in the forest, a wild animal living its life that she now must do battle with.  This is not the case with Samus Returns.

In Samus Returns, every Metroid feels so choreographed.  Metroid fights aren't as much random elements in the world as dedicated boss fights Samus is being led to.  They're always events when they happen, a cutscene of the Metroid slamming through the wall to attack Samus occurs transferring directly into the battle.  This causes a ripple effect across Samus Returns, the natural feel of the environment of SR-388 is just gone.  In its place a fun but very video game-y world  It's not a bad decision, I want to make clear, so often when people highlight changes in adaptation it's with the note of "oh, this version is better".  Samus Returns is doing what is best for its own goals, not just in trying to make a more modernized Metroid experience but also in creating an accessible one.  These are neither correct nor incorrect decisions, they are just decisions one made.

But, it does compromise the original atmosphere of Metroid II in making this decision.  It fails to be a definitive remake of Metroid II because what it wants to be is so different from what Metroid II wanted to be.  Again, I think Samus Returns is brilliant, it's one of my favorite Metroid games and, honestly, one of my favorite games of all time.  Settled nicely in slot 90 (for now).  But in trying to be more action-y, more dynamic, more modernized, it doesn't become "THE Metroid II".  It's simply A Metroid II.  It makes big swings in its ideology that create what is probably the best "game" of the three, but if you are looking for loyalty to the source material, is the worse of the two adaptations of it.

AM2R

Now let's talk about the one that's the more faithful of the two, at least spiritually.  AM2R is a critically acclaimed and masterfully done fan rendition of Metroid II.  Attempting to actually do for Metroid II what Zero Mission did for the original Metroid, AM2R's core ideology seems to be "enhance, not recontextualize".  It's not like a direct remake by any means, it adds a considerable amount to the game, including a new B plot, new areas, and most notably a bunch of new lore.  If anything it fleshes out the history of SR388 MORE than Samus Returns did.  Lore that is all fanon, obviously, but it's still really cool to see, especially since for a series that is mostly about a solo warrior wandering through dark caverns and facilities to fight monsters, there's been a surprising lore focus.  The Prime series taught us that Metroid fans love lore, even if it doesn't feel like they should given the core ideal behind these games is "our main character is completely alone on deserted alien planets".

Now it's not entirely fair to say that AM2R's desire is "enhance, not recontextualize" as there are some very distinctive parts of this game that do go deep into interpretation on what the Metroid's purpose was.  But I think that the key idea driving AM2R is to make the modern player understand what it felt like to play Metroid II back in the day.  Its key ideals are preserving the atmosphere, of keeping that aspect of "Metroids are just as much hunting Samus as the other way around" intact.  It's a very hostile world, a world of creatures who have evolved into monsters after billions of years of isolation.  It does even lead into the horror aspects of Metroid more than Nintendo ever would on their own, the parallels between Metroid and Alien are drawn attention to and utilized for great effect.  Even if AM2R is not simply "Metroid II but in a more updated gameplay style", it does a lot to preserve the oppressive atmosphere and unique design ideals that make Metroid II so beloved.

But it is also a remake that does update Metroid II into a more updated gameplay style.  I don't know if this started out as a romhack of Metroid Zero Mission, the at the time most recent 2D Metroid as depressing as that is to say.  But it keeps a lot of Zero Mission's DNA, its visual style and core gameplay are very much borrowed from the GBA title.  This leads to a lot of very important, nay, crucial gameplay ideas.  For instance, being able to just switch on your missiles instead of having to hold down the button is obviously very important for a game where you must use those missiles constantly, as Metroids are only vulnerable to the concussive force of the Missiles.  It also adds some of Samus' missing powerups from the original Metroid II, most notably her iconic Screw Attack and her wide variety of beams.  But unlike Samus Returns, it doesn't modernize it to such a drastic extreme.  AM2R is what most Metroid fans probably think of when they think of safe, comfortable Metroid gameplay.

However, while I find AM2R incredibly fascinating and compelling and think that it probably is as close to a perfect Metroid II remake as we're going to get, it too is missing something.  And ironically I think what it is missing from Metroid II comes in what its core goal is.  AM2R wants to sell you what it felt like to play Metroid II back in the day, to enter this truly alien world with its deep atmosphere and its vast caverns.  But the feeling of playing Metroid II is far grander than what Metroid II actually is and as such, AM2R also cannot truly replace it.

For me, a major part of it is that AM2R is so inspired by both the horror vibes Metroid II has as well as actual horror films and video games.  I made the comparison with Alien before and I think that's pretty accurate to AM2R's general ideology.  It feels like a Metroid that is trying to bring that connection with the film that inspired it to the forefront.  There's a lot of body horror elements in AM2R, they visibly show the Metroids molting and growing throughout their life cycles, they literally use gross, flopping bug limbs as an indicator of when a Metroid is utilizing a smarter AI than previously encountered Metroids.  They also lean very hard into the darkness, there are times where you will be literally running around in the dark only to be assaulted by a Metroid who was lurking within.  Which especially seems Xenomorph-esque given the more monstrous designs of adult Metroids.

However, as you could probably imagine, I think that these decisions, these attempts to make it more of the sci-fi horror that its cult following always said it was cause AM2R to miss the same thing that Samus Returns misses.  Metroids aren't events, aren't staged like video game boss fights but they also aren't treated as natural creatures in this world.  They're the monsters that lurk in the dark, horror movie bad guys instead of predators that naturally roam this world.  Because it's so caught up in trying to capture what Metroid II felt like, it misses a key aspect of what Metroid II is.  Again, that's not a bad thing, it is simply an adaptational choice.  But it's one that makes it, just like Samus Returns, A version of Metroid II rather than THE version of Metroid II, at least in my opinion.

Why You Can't Remake Metroid II "Perfectly"

So why is this?  Why is it that despite two incredibly excellent remakes that, while both attempting to accomplish different things, still seem to be enhanced versions of this game, we haven't been able to create a version that truly replaces the original?  By all accounts this should be easy, Metroid II is an incredibly archaic Game Boy game, it should be one of the easiest entries in the series to replace with a later remake.  And yet, both of the big remakes of Metroid II fail to capture something specific about it, the natural feeling that Metroid II has that makes it so special?  In my honest opinion, the reason why Metroid II is such a hard game to "perfect" without losing something is the thing that makes it so in need of a remake.  I think Metroid II's biggest strength is being an early Game Boy title.

The Game Boy, as fantastic as it was, also was an infamously underpowered system.  It didn't even play in color initially, opting instead for different shades of what could only be described as "pea green".  While there are tons of truly evergreen titles on the system, it is now a very disappointing library to return to as a lot of games are simply just "poorer versions of console titles".  A lot of games had to compromise a lot to fit onto the Game Boy, and while at the time players were okay with said compromises if it meant getting to game on the go, it's undeniable that a lot of original Game Boy games feel really bad to play now.  Especially the earlier releases, games that didn't really know what worked on the hardware or, indeed, how to work the hardware at all.  I'm sure most people reading this have played an early Game Boy entry in a beloved series and hated the process the entire time.  Hi Super Mario Land.

However, I think that it is these technical limitations and this inexperience with the hardware that makes Metroid II what it is.  The dark, oppressive atmosphere that players felt in SR388 comes from how uncanny the game is.  It's weirdly quiet and very empty, a world of tight passages and small caverns.  A world that feels truly uncharted and uninhabited.  And while I'm sure this was an intentional decision to design it this way, it is undeniable that it came with great consideration for the Game Boy hardware.  Doing a big world just wasn't feasible, having a lot of music wasn't feasible, and having to account for these hurdles creates the very oppressive atmosphere of Metroid II.  This world exists because of the Game Boy.

This extends to the very natural feel of coming across Metroids, of just having them be parts of the environment.  I'm sure that, if the hardware had permitted it, we might've seen something akin to Samus Returns with the Metroid encounters.  Each Metroid being a specific boss fight and each encounter being an "event".  But the hardware limitations didn't permit that even if they wanted it, so Metroids are now a common element of the world that Samus simply stumbles upon.  I wouldn't be surprised if the sheer amount of Metroids was itself adjusting for a hardware limitation, there being 40+ Metroids to hunt rather than a handful.  It's a way to reuse assets and keep your game much smaller, but it also contributes heavily to Metroid II's vibe.  Having a population of Metroids makes SR388 feel more natural, sells the alien world that Samus is the true invader on that much more.

However, this is seen as outdated by the majority of players.  Metroid II has always had its fans, obviously, it probably has the most dedicated individual fanbase of any Metroid game period.  But it is incredibly difficult to make a game that has this same ideology anymore.  Especially in a franchise attempting to appeal to the widest audience possible, having this very specific, distinctive atmosphere, a world you just feel like you're thrown in and told to go hunting, it can feel obtuse and archaic.  Both remakes of Metroid II lose something of Metroid II because they have to.  Because the kind of game design that makes Metroid II so magical is also not acceptable anymore by a wider audience.  The game industry has changed, audiences have changed.  Samus Returns and AM2R may never replace what truly works about Metroid II, but that's good.  Because the changes they make, the ideas they bring to the source material, allow the spirit of Metroid II to survive.  There can never be a "perfect" Metroid II, but I think three flawed but ultimately brilliant Metroid IIs is more than a fair trade-off.

Games I Cleared in May - 2026 Edition

 Check out the first entry in this series for additional context on what these are and what the nuances of my Game Clearing is~

Game 1: Sutte Hakkun - Beat

Something I really enjoy doing is having a sort of "chill game" alongside my longer game clearing projects.  You'll notice that a lot of these have started popping up on the blog as of late, mostly because of a renewed NSO subscription.  It has been a lot of retro games, a lot of puzzle games, this is the slot that roguelikes would slot into if I had any on Switch that were interesting to me and I could like play in bed.  Which I do, I've been doing low key runs of Necrodancer on the side for a while now.  But currently I've been working through the retro games on NSO, picking out anything that looks neat to me and that I've maybe heard about.  Which brought me to Sutte Hakkun, a puzzle game that I've heard is quite the sleeper hit on SNES/Super Famicom.

Sutte Hakkun is a puzzle platformer where you play as Hakkun.  Hakkun is a tiny cloud/hummingbird guy who lives on a series of islands connected by rainbow bridges.  One day, the rainbow bridges are broken apart, their shards scattered across the islands.  Hakkun, being the hero of our tale, must go around the islands solving the 100 puzzles which are guarding the 100-ish shards, some levels have more than one but the majority of them only have one.  As you progress on this task, you unlock more islands and, as such, more puzzles, ultimately only needing 75 to unlock the final area and the final set of puzzles.  As you might imagine, the puzzles get more and more difficult, with them starting simple and easy and very forgiving and ending up so precise that any mistake has you hitting that reload checkpoint and/or death button.

Hakkun's ability to solve the puzzles comes from his distinctive hummingbird-esque nose.  Hakkun is capable of utilizing his nose to interact with a variety of elements in the stage.  The primary usage of this is moving blocks, Hakkun can absorb certain blocks and then place them down in other areas.  And while he has absorbed a block, he takes on all the qualities of a block.  Similarly, he can interact with the rare enemies in the game, the Rokkun and Makkun.  Not the Blokkun though, which are sentient version of the blocks who can't be absorbed and can only be pushed with Hakkun's nose.  He must use all these elements, shuffling them around each individual puzzle, until he finds a path to the solution.  Aiding him on his quest are vials of potion in three distinct colors, red, blue, and yellow.  The most common usage for these potions is to imbue the blocks with different movement properties, red being vertical, blue being horizontal, and yellow being diagonal.  But they interact with the other elements in the puzzles too for unique effects.

And that's kind of just what Sutte Hakkun is.  It's an incredibly fun puzzle game, it's not too difficult but also not too easy, it makes you really think about puzzles and it's a master at making the solution obvious but making the mechanisms through which you achieve that solution obtuse.  I will say though, I'm not super plussed by how many puzzles in the late game just go "you made one mistake so now you have to completely reset the puzzle instead of having a method to work your way back to an open game state".  But it's a very fun, very solid puzzle game that I'm glad I checked out.  If you have NSO, definitely check out Sutte Hakkun if you need a puzzle game, it's genuinely a hidden gem.  8/10

Game 2: Claymates - DNF

Claymates is one of those games that has lived in my memory for a long time.  I have never played it myself, this isn't one of those "I played a random game growing up and then lost it, can the internet help me find it" deals.  I knew exactly what Claymates was this entire time.  A content creator I watched from the early internet days kind of made a career off of playing these sort of off-kilter, left of the dial games.  She is how I learned of E.V.O. Search for Eden and actually Luigi's Mansion at a time when that game wasn't very famous.  Also LOST: Via Domus, meaning she was my introduction to the LOST franchise.  One of the games she played was Claymates, this weird 2D platformer with a claymation visual style that I always wanted to play because of how unique it looked but never had a way to play it properly.  Luckily for me, Claymates got put up on NSO.  Unluckily for me, it's kind of bad!

Claymates is a 2D platformer of the type that games like Bubsy, discussed in one of my previous entries, occupied.  Sonic the Hedgehog had been a big hit and a lot of people were attempting to cash in on the mascot platformer gold rush.  Claymates was the now-defunct game studio "Interplay's" first foray into this market, before their later, far more successful and far more beloved entry into the genre, Earthworm Jim.  In Claymates you play as Clayton Putty, a young boy whose father, Professor Putty, has developed a shapeshifting serum which, when consumed, will transform the user into animals.  But the evil witch doctor Jobo appears suddenly and demands the serum.  When Professor Putty resists, Jobo turns Clayton into a ball of clay and then absconds with the serum and the professor.  Clayton must then follow the witch doctor across the world, fighting his minions in Oceania, Japan, Africa (it's as bad as you expect) until eventually cornering the Witch Doctor in the place all 90s mascot platformers end, in space.

As mentioned previously, Claymates is a Sonic the Hedgehog-style platformer, valuing large levels with numerous paths to approach them and a general sense of speed.  What makes Claymates stand out is the aforementioned serum.  When Jobo flew off with the professor, he accidentally scattered drops of the serum across the world.  This was fortunate for Clayton, as he can use these serum drops to transform his clay body into one of five animals: a mouse that can speed through levels, a cat that can climb walls, a bird that can briefly fly after a running start, a fish that can easily traverse through water, and a chipmunk who can throw acorns as projectiles.  This is not the only gameplay style to the game, though, as when you beat a level you are thrown back into the overworld where you will be faced with a puzzle: two or more robots have left the level with you and they will automatically move about the area.  Clayton must push rocks and carts around to put the robots on a path where they will pick up the axes or bombs laying about the area and then head towards the road blocks that they must then clear.

I really wanted to like Claymates, because I do enjoy its unique claymation visual style and its interesting dichotomy of platforming and puzzle levels.  And I like the way it handles power-ups, with these transformations that each have their own strengths and weaknesses.  But it is a truly awful platformer.  Much like a lot of the post-Sonic platformers, it's designed to be a visual or stylistic leap forward for the medium and the gameplay is unfortunately secondary.  It's one of those games that reviewed very well at launch because, back in the day, reviewers were very positive about games that visually innovated.  Bubsy got good reviews.  But unfortunately Claymates' platforming is just really bad, it's stiff and way too precise for a game that also wants you to gain as much speed and momentum as this one.  Like, in general the speed of this style of game is counterintuitive to its level design, but this one is REAL BAD about it.  It's a shame, I was hoping that this one would be a super neat hidden gem that validated how much headspace it has occupied for all these years.  But alas.  4.1/10

Game 3: Trine 2 - Beat

Yet another game, or in this case game series I know about from a content creator whose name has been lost to time.  Trine is a very cool but very obscure series of puzzle platformers built around the idea of utilizing three classic RPG tropes, a wizard, a thief, and a knight, who through interacting with a mystical object have had their souls intertwined and as such exist as one entity, switching between who is occupying their shared existence at a time.  You must use their unique skills, one being puzzle based, one being combat based and one being movement based, to traverse the levels, solve puzzles, defeat enemies and figure out a way to get yourselves unbound.  But the artifact, the "Trine" will always come back, unifying out three heroes at times of peril to once again save the land.

Trine 2 picks up some time after the first game.  Amadeus, in the first game a flirtatious and unserious wizard, has settled down and started a family, living a provincial life in a tiny town by the kingdom's forest.  One night, though, he is awoken in his sleep by a bright light and, following it, reunites with the Trine and his compatriot Pontius.  Pontius was once a drunken and dim knight of no notoriety, but now has made his way to the captain of the guard.  Pontius explains that the kingdom is in peril, massive plants have begun to overtake the world and the trio must reunite to find out who is behind this magical malady.  They then both find Zoya, the thief, who now makes her living not by stealing for herself but stealing to bring justice upon the rich.  The three of them reunited, they delve straight into the mystical forest to find the villain at the center of all of this.  Along the way, they are beset by the goblin army, who have taken advantage of the chaos to expand their territory.  And by the end, the trio will uncover a lost history of the kingdom, one which reveals the hidden lore of the royal family.

So the way Trine works, as previously stated, is that essentially each member of the trio is built around one aspect of the game.  Amadeus is notable for lacking any offensive capabilities at all, outside of dropping objects on the opponents, which is unreliable.  He can't even cast fireball.  Instead his skills are entirely built around solving puzzles, utilizing conjuration and telekinesis to make boxes and planks as well as hit switches.  Zoya has some combat capabilities and, in a pinch, will probably be your back up if Pontius ever gets overwhelmed, utilizing her bow to pick off enemies from afar.  But moreover her thing is movement, her grappling hook is the backbone of the games' platforming, allowing you a lot of freedom in how to get around obstacles.  And Pontius is entirely built around combat, he very rarely, if ever, contributes to the puzzles or platforming in the way the other two do but he mows down enemies like it's nothing.  If Pontius ever falls in battle, you are likely just done, you need to get back to a checkpoint to revive him because he is crucial.

The most notable thing about Trine is, in general, how pretty these games are.  It doesn't seem very notable nowadays but when Trine was new, there weren't a lot of indie games of this standard of visual quality.  The Trine games originally came out at a time where the majority of indie games were primarily made with pixel art and usually meant to replicate a classic style of game that was no longer made, and/or provide commentary on classic genre tropes in a deconstructionist way.  Trine was one of the very early games that tried to be very modern in its aesthetic, and I think it works really well.  It has this very dreamy, beautiful look to it, like a storybook come to life in full 3D and the second game just maintains its signature beautiful style.  I don't know if it really adds to it, but it doesn't have to as Trine 1 was already very strong visually.

Unfortunately the actual level design is not up to snuff with the rest of the game.  Like, it's fine, it does its job, but I think the issue with how Trine 2 carries itself is that it can't decide whether or not it wants the player to be able to find a solution with each character on their own or if it wants them to have to work the trio in tandem.  Some puzzles and platforming challenges are remarkably easy, usually only needing Zoya's grappling hook to get past without any other contributions, while others are just complex to a point that doing them with even all three characters contributing is difficult.  The puzzles are adjusted more around multiplayer as well, meaning there is a lot of having to move way too quickly on them if you are playing solo.  Thankfully it doesn't really matter if you fail at any point in this game because checkpoints are plentiful and can be accessed incredibly easily should you lose a character to a battle or a violent puzzle.  7.6/10

Game 4: Donkey Kong Land 2 - Beat

This one was so disappointing.  So I really liked Donkey Kong Land 1, probably more than I was expecting to.  I kind of expected it to just be an inferior port of DKC1 and, although it definitely starts out that way, Donkey Kong Land very quickly evolves into its own entity with its own flavor.  It even became a surprisingly early entry in the series that attempts to connect the modern DK with the classic Arcade style, ending the game in a big city setting.  And so I was excited to continue the Donkey Kong Land trilogy, hoping that the later games kept up this momentum of being wholly unique.  Unfortunately, that was not the case for Donkey Kong Land 2.  Donkey Kong Land 2 IS an inferior port of its console counterpart, DKC2.  It has some original levels but, on the whole, it is an attempt to properly demake the game for Game Boy.  This is especially unfortunate as, of the classic DKC trilogy, I think DKC2 is the worst and it's not particularly close.

Donkey Kong Land 2, much like its console counterpart, takes place sometime after the first game.  Donkey Kong has been kidnapped by King K. Rool leading Diddy Kong and his girlfriend Dixie to mount a rescue of the big ape.  Much like DKC2, the game starts at the ending area of the first game, K. Rool's pirate ship, and you instead go to K. Rool's home turf to get your friend back.  Although the individual levels can be different in DKL2, it is functionally a near identical game to DKC2, porting over much of its levels, all of its worlds, and just its general structure.  It's weird because at the time this was probably such a cool thing, they effectively got DKC2 on the Game Boy without having to compromise too totally much, it feels like a portable DKC2.  Nowadays, with both games being equally accessible and, moreover, accessible portably thanks to the Switch family of systems?  This is just a waste of time.

That being said, I do kind of like Donkey Kong Land 2 more than I did like Donkey Kong Country 2.  This is a pretty low bar, mind, I don't particularly like Donkey Kong Country 2.  Even though it isn't the Donkey Kong game I want to play the least, I deeply and truly despise Donkey Kong Country Returns, it's the one I find least compelling.  DKC2 to me just doesn't feel very interesting, it has this bad habit of just forgoing the world theming to have generic "Donkey Kong" level themes and I actually think it's like easily the worst soundtrack of any Donkey Kong game.  Heresy I know.  And while all those problems are still in DKL2, I think the fact that it's DKC2 on the Game Boy kind of gives it a certain charm that makes me like it more.  I don't think it is a better game than DKC2, it has literally all the problems that game while also being objectively inferior, and honestly I don't think it's as good as DKL1 even though it's objectively the better game just because it is a worse version of a SNES game instead of its own entity.  But if given the choice between Donkey Kong Country 2 and Donkey Kong Land 2, I just find DKL2 more endearing overall.  7/10

Game 5: Double Dragon - Beat

Fair warning, there are about to be a lot of beat 'em ups on the NES in these entries.  I know, I'm sorry, we're going to get so many games that no one really has much to say on anymore but they're all like.  "Important".  They're also just very easy games to justify me playing, they're perfect to just pick up and do a full playthrough before bed or while I'm eating lunch or whatever and there are a lot of really significant ones on NSO that I've just never played.  So bear with me, we have a lot of "dead space" on these posts coming up, especially with regards to the Double Dragon franchise and it's sort of sister franchise, Battletoads.  I'm working my way up to Battletoads/Double Dragon on SNES.

Double Dragon is, possibly, the most famous beat 'em up ever made.  Its now iconic intro has been immortalized and recontextualized and critiqued to death.  In the NES version, you play as Billy Lee, one of  a pair of martial artists in a crime filled city which may or may not be the same series from the other iconic NES brawler, River City Ransom.  At the beginning of the game Billy girlfriend, Marian, gets kidnapped by the Black Warriors gang and Billy must set off on a quest to rescue her, fighting through waves of the Black Warriors' goons to eventually get to their boss and rescue your girlfriend.  It's a very simple plot that is bolstered by the dramatic twist that the final boss is your own twin brother, Jimmy Lee, who has arrived at your moment of triumph to fight you for Marian's hand.

Double Dragon holds up surprisingly well in the modern day.  It's very simple, which I think contributes as to why, Double Dragon is to beat 'em ups what Dragon Quest is to RPGs.  Just a very simple, platonic ideal of the genre and its game design.  But it does have its own flair.  But it does have some serious depth in the form of its level up system.  Double Dragon has a very interesting level up system, where as you go along you will gain experience from defeating foes and, the more experience you gain, the more of Billy's moveset is unlocked.  It is not the only beat 'em up of this era to adopt a level up system, there's a very famous one we'll be getting to later on this list that also had vague RPG mechanics, but to spoil how I felt about that game in comparison; I think between the two Double Dragon's level-up system just simply holds up much better.  It's far simpler and less obtuse and I think in terms of NES beat 'em ups, it makes Double Dragon hold up very well even if it is just the platonic ideal of a beat 'em up.  I liked Double Dragon, didn't love it but definitely did like it. 7.3/10

Game 6: Star Fox 2 - Beat

I don't like Star Fox.  Of the "core 8" Nintendo franchises as shown in the Super Smash Bros. series, Star Fox is the one I got to the latest and is, by a very large margin, the one I like the least.  Which, side note, let's be honest those aren't the core 8 anymore, like, if they did Smash Bros. today that core 8 would probably be Mario, Pikachu, Villager, Link, Inkling, Kirby, Donkey Kong and like, maybe Olimar?  Star Fox has always been the oddball to me, a series of super arcadey, very short shmups that are more designed to show the power of the hardware than anything.  Which may explain why it went to the wayside for so many years come to think of it.  But with the announcement of a "new" Star Fox game and the fact that I did kind of write off the series after its first entry and some multiplayer stuff forever ago, I decided to give it another go.  No promises on if I'm going to continue Star Fox, I should probably play OG 64, but for now, let's talk about Star Fox 2.

Star Fox 2 takes place some time after the original Star Fox.  The Star Fox crew has been once again hired by the military of Corneria to defeat the forces of the mad scientist Andross, who after his defeat in the first game has shored up his resources and is now launching an all out assault on the solar system which Corneria occupies.  Now joined by new members Miyu and Fay, the six-man team Star Fox must launch a defensive military campaign in the solar system, stopping Andross' assault and pushing him back.  All the while having to combat a rival faction of mercenary space pilot, Team Star Wolf, who serve as Andross' hired goons and are a darker, more violent, more brutal version of Team Star Fox.

I would like to first state how interesting I find Star Fox 2.  Star Fox 2 is a rather famous game in gaming history circles, the basically finished, ready to ship SNES title that got canned at the last minute as Nintendo was shifting their focus entirely towards the upcoming N64, which had a superior Star Fox title in development concurrently with Star Fox 2.  It would then release through leaked builds over the years until finally being released on the SNES Classic microconsole and then, subsequently, the Nintendo Switch Online service.  It's a very fascinating piece of gaming history, one which on its own makes it a worthwhile game to experience.  But also, playing it, I have to question how accurate this narrative surrounding the game is.

Star Fox 2 is a game that feels unfinished.  Star Fox games skew short, mind, they're very arcade-y affairs that are designed for players to play over and over, learning the best routes, finding secrets, and getting the optimal ranks.  So it not being that long isn't super surprising.  That being said, Star Fox 2 just feels like it's lacking in content.  Like what we've been told is that Star Fox 2 was around 90-95% finished when it was canned, basically ready to ship, but it feels like half a game.  The Normal mode gameplay consists of like 3 very short levels, a couple dogfights, and then the final boss.  It is a 20-30 minute experience depending on how quick and efficient you are.  It feels to me like the game was probably in a "finished state" but was lacking in serious content and probably needed to be fleshed out more, and was cancelled before they could do that fleshing out.  And then what was there was just cleaned up and released by Nintendo later on.

That being said, I actually like Star Fox 2 more than I did Star Fox 1.  I feel like the rail-shooter stuff is actually kind of dull in the way Star Fox does it, just kind moving forward on a track firing at things that just spawn in.  I played KH1 as a kid and so I always associate this kind of gameplay with the worst parts of my childhood games.  Star Fox 2 instead focuses more on dogfights and incorporates strategy elements into the game, having the player manage the team as they have to fight their way through Andross' fleet while protecting Corneria.  It's definitely, as I've mentioned before, probably not as deep as they wanted it to be and I think that ultimately the game is still not very good, but I think Star Fox 2 has more interesting and compelling ideas to it than the previous game and honestly, I'm surprised there hasn't been an attempt to revive Star Fox 2 in some way?  Star Fox is now infamous for not being able to let go of the Lylat Wars storyline but I think this works super well and I think doing a full remake and fleshing out 2's ideas would really benefit the series.  But also I'm not the person to ask, I'm literally only playing Star Fox games because they are effectively free.  5.7/10

Game 7: Strange Horticulture - Beat

Finally back to my wheelhouse: really strange indie games that I eventually make all my friends obsessed with.  If there is any type of game that is an instant play for me, it is a supernatural mystery puzzle game.  It's an oversaturated genre at this point, mind, as a lot of genres that get popular in the indie space are.  Don't ask me about how I feel about deckbuilder roguelikes unless you want me to get on a whole tangent.  But it's one of my favorite oddly specific game genres, I love these weird occult indie puzzle games and I'm always glad to play one of them.  Especially when said puzzle game is all about deciphering cryptic clues and descriptions to progress.  See my Gaming Diary on Return of the Obra Dinn.  And Strange Horticulture is very much in-line with that sort of game.  I'm so glad to finally play this one, y'all.

Strange Horticulture is set in the small provincial town of Undermere, one of many towns, cities, forts, and castles that pepper a diverse country side.  In it, you play as a fresh faced shopkeeper of an occult horticulture shop named "Strange Horticulture", a shop recently inherited by the protagonist's late uncle.  Strange Horticulture is a supplier of all sorts of medicinal plants and fungus, stuff used in traditional medicine, magical enchantments, or occult rituals.  The protagonist, however, is very new to this world and knows very little about the plants in their shop.  Luckily, their uncle has left them a book of various plants, one that is missing numerous pages but can be used to aid in identifying the various plants and fungi that the shop stocks.  But something strange is occurring in the countryside, the patrons of their shop speak of weird rituals and ancient evils best left sealed.  A murderer hides among them, and a ritual is being conducted to awaken an ancient god who will threaten to destroy the world.  Will the protagonist aid in stopping this ritual, or will they become bound to it?  The player's choices will decide the fate of this land.  And also you can pet your cat!

The best thing about Strange Horticulture is, genuinely, the gameplay loop of identifying plants and/or clues to find new plants.  Customers do not tell you directly "hey, I want this plant", instead they leave with you either a name (scientific or common) or a description of what the plant is/does for you to go off.  At which point, the player must look through their book of herbology to find a plant matching the description, however, the plant is not just on the page.  The page will give you a description of the plant and a drawing of some key feature of the plant, which you will then use to look through the plants on the shelf to find one matching the description.  It's a very fun gameplay loop, and one that always leads to more plants either being identified or being added to your shelf as, rather than simply paying you, customers will typically gift you either new plants or new pages for your herbology book.  Or, if they don't, they will instead gift you a clue that, when solved will allow you to go out into the world and find a new plant.  It's a game designed to make the player feel clever, and I love that as a goal.

The mystery is also really compelling.  You are visited by a lot of similar players on the day to day and you must piece together what is going on by giving them their plants and listening to their stories.  The "culprit" in the mystery is kind of obvious unfortunately, there is only one person who talks of the events other people see as "prophetic visions", but there is a deeper mystery going on regarding an apocalyptic death cult and their obsession with plants that the player can become privvy too as well.  It's a very fun plot for this game and while it's not the most deep or compelling mystery, it is a very nice throughline that leaves the player wanting more.

If there is any criticism I can level at Strange Horticulture, it's that I think it's lacking in a sense of tension.  Like, the game is very relaxing, you can do literally everything at your own pace, but I think it's maybe to a fault sometimes.  You can sit there with a customer for infinite time solving their request and the punishment system for misidentifying plants is, honestly, pretty generous.  Usually the clues are put together in such a way that it could only apply to a couple plants anyways, so it's really a matter of losing a coin flip on the more ambiguous identifications.  There's a logistical reason for this ability to take infinite time, you will sometimes have to go find a plant in the world to fulfill an order and so having a time limit would be a problem.  You'd just fail out of turn.  But still, I'd like for there to be more stakes.  This is still an amazing little puzzle game though, I'm a big fan of it, it's a top 10 contender for this year. 8.8/10

Game 8: Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble - Beat

It is sometimes impressive how committed Nintendo, and the games industry as a whole, were to trying to get motion controls to work in the past.  From essentially the start of the video game industry, everyone was seemingly trying to make the idea of "gaming without the need for buttons" to work.  And it's not hard to see why, having to play around with a controller is by far the biggest hurdle to getting into video games.  For non-gamers, it is the most intimidating part.  As we saw with the early success of the Wii, if you remove that aspect, if you instead focus in on just movement as control, you can tap into a whole ecosystem of people who would enjoy video games but can't get past the complexity of traditional controls.  And also controlling a game with motion just feels cool, everyone imagines actually being able to punch to fight Mike Tyson or being able to realistically fly a plane in something like Pilotwings.  And while everyone has tried, no one has had the same consistent success as the big N.  Among their earliest forays into motion controls, however, is this game right here.  Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble, all the way back on the Game Boy Color.

Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble is a puzzle platformer game unique for its motion control gameplay.  Kirby, everyone's favorite pink puffball, is unable to move "normally" in this game, instead moving about stages in a ball form.  The plot explanation for this being that King Dedede has been causing mischief in Dream Land again, setting up pinball bumpers around the land for some unknown goal.  Basic Kirby stuff, Kirby stories are very simple.  This is ragebaiting, I am ragebaiting the people who care a lot about Kirby stories to comment about it.  Using a series of accelerometers, or more likely the gyroscopes in the Joy-Cons if you're playing today, you tilt the Game Boy/controller to get Kirby to move about the stage, flicking it to jump over obstacles and using the buttons to solve puzzles and interact with objects.  It works really well, it probably worked even better on the Game Boy as the Joy-Con is famously finnicky and needs to be resynced way more often than it probably should.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, it just ends up going the way of a lot of motion control games.  Especially older motion control games, which is what it is.  The early levels of Tilt 'n' Tumble are very fun, breezy and control very well.  If you were to play the first couple worlds only, you'd probably adore this game.  I sure did.  But as the game increases in complexity and the levels require more precise motion from the player, it starts to get far more frustrating than rewarding.  I'd be curious to see how many people who love motion control games are people who really value a first impression whereas people who dislike them are people who are more likely to have the last notes leave a bitter taste in their mouth.  I am moreso the latter, I tend to care about whether a game continues to be good rather than if it starts good.  To me, Tilt 'n' Tumble is just fine.  I liked the early stages and all the cool concepts that they did with this control scheme but in the late game I was just like "I don't really want to play this anymore".  6.1/10

Game 9: Psycho Dream - Beat

There has, historically, been a lot of criticism about the Nintendo Switch Online retro games service.  It's really funny as during the WiiU era, everyone was clamoring for Nintendo to stop doing a Virtual Console and instead do a sort of retro game streaming service and now that that's what they have essentially done, people are mad about it.  A big reason why is, likely, that because Nintendo isn't offering a direct revenue source and instead is paying licensing fees to every publisher, way fewer publishers are willing to play ball with the service.  Why would Capcom put up Mega Man 1-6 on NES Online when they could just sell the Legacy Collection on the same console, y'know?  But I actually like this decision.  NSO has so many games that no one would ever care about on a VC service, tons of obscure old Jaleco and Natsume titles and a lot of odd imports that wouldn't be likely to make it onto a service where people choose the games they want to buy.  And one such title is Psycho Dream, a game that I'm glad made it over because I really like it.

Psycho Dream is a Japanese-only sidescrolling hack-and-slash from the company that made the originally Megami Tensei game, as well as the Valis series, which it shares a lot of gameplay with.  It takes place in an alternate 1980s Japan where virtual reality films, films which exist as worlds for people to live in instead of just linear plots moving forward, have taken ahold of the culture.  The Japanese government has, in response to a trend of young people getting so engaged with their virtual worlds that they abandon real life, created an elite task force to go inside these worlds and free them from the virtual reality before they deal irreparable damage to their physical bodies.  Psycho Dream follows one such case, the case of Yuki Sayaka, a seventeen year old girl who had lived in the virtual world for three straight days and, due to pre-existing medical issues, is likely to die within the day if the task force doesn't get to her in time.  But the virtual world will not give her up so easily, the film has become corrupted as the monstrous beings within have captured Yuki and refuse to let her go.

I am not going to try and sit here and convince y'all that Psycho Dream is a better game than it actually is.  It does not have the best reputation, both concurrent and retrospective reviews tend to rate it as an incredibly average 16-bit hack-and-slash.  And it's honestly pretty easy, while you will struggle in the early game no doubt, once you unlock the main characters' ultimate forms you should breeze through the entire rest of the game.  What makes Psycho Dream so interesting, however, is its distinctive visual style.  Psycho Dream has a very surreal visual style, clearly inspired by J-Horror and Japanese Sci-Fi properties in general.  The contrast between the standard urban Japanese environments and the supernatural creatures that are invading them really gives this game its own unique flavor that, in my mind, causes it to hold up better than some of the other forgotten 16-bit era hack-and-slashes.  It's much worse than other games in its genre, don't get me wrong, but I think it has aged like wine.  It's very much a vibe.  Also, it has an insane pull for a final boss theme, like, truly unhinged.  7.7/10

Game 10: Battletoads - DNF

I do, indeed, have Battletoads.  Battletoads is one of the most infamous games of all time, a tough as nails retro beat 'em up from superstar developer Rareware.  It was their "big hit" before they became a big deal, the "Walkin on the Sun" of their catalog.  It's undeniably a classic, but it's also a very intimidating game to play.  Battletoads is up there with Ninja Gaiden as one of the classical examples of "NES hard", games which utilize grueling difficulty to engage players.  There's a longstanding theory that I'm unsure has ever been validated that this was mostly done to combat rentals, a common practice back in the day.  If a game is exceptionally difficult to beat, it becomes nigh impossible to beat it on a typical game rental period, incentivizing the player to purchase the game to have a better chance at beating it.  I don't think it's a coincidence that Battletoads lacks any save/password system, forcing players to start from the beginning.  But I also wanted to give Battletoads a proper shot, not only as a classic NES game but part of my quest to clear the Battletoads and Double Dragon games to where I can eventually play Battletoads/Double Dragon.

Battletoads is an attempt to cash in on the boom of anthropomorphic martial artists that dominated the late 80s/early 90s, kickstarted by the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  In it, you play as the Battletoads, a trio of alien warriors who resemble human-sized frogs as they run afoul of the evil Dark Queen on a mission to escort the Princess Angelica to her home planet.  The Dark Queen manages to kidnap Angelica, as well as fellow Battletoad Pimple, and hides the two away in her base under the surface of a hostile alien world.  The two remaining Battletoads, Zitz and Rash, along with their mentor Professor T. Bird, descend upon the alien planet to rescue their charge and defeat the alien sorceress, a woman who they are in constant contact with and who taunts them between levels.  It's kind of amusing actually, it feels like they're more like rivals than archenemies, like if Gary Oak was a tyrannical space emperor.

I want to be clear about one thing here: me DNFing Battletoads has nothing to do with how I feel about Battletoads as a game.  Because I actually really like Battletoads.  Of the NES beat 'em ups I've played so far, Battletoads is the best one by far.  Despite its limitations, only having one attack button, Battletoads has a surprising depth of combat that answers the problems things like Double Dragon and River City Ransom have had on the same console.  I like both of those games, don't get me wrong, but they have this issue of trying to create very deep and interesting combat on a system that only has two buttons to work with and, usually, needing one of those buttons to be the jump button.  Battletoads solves this issue by having combat be contextual, the moves you have access to at any given time are determined by what the context you use them in is.  If you punch the air, you can punch forever in an endless cycle, but the moment you punch an enemy, you gain access to a potent combo string complete with larger than life finishers.

Which is another great thing about Battletoads, the game's larger than life nature.  Battletoads adopts a very Saturday Morning Cartoon aesthetic and theming that gives the game a lot of charm and a lot of personality.  The Toads have the ability to shapeshift parts of their bodies, turning into a ram when they do a dash attack, increasing the size of their limbs to do combo finishers, turning into wrecking balls when they swing from ropes.  These wackier options really sell the cartoon come to life vibes they're going for.  Moreover, the Toads just have tons of classical cartoon reactions, such as their eyes bugging out and their jaws dropping to comical degrees when they see a boss.  It's a game that oozes personality and it remains endearing 35 years on, one of the NES games that holds up the best unquestionably.

So why didn't I finish it?  Simple: I just couldn't beat Rat Race.  There's no other reason for it, I got to the third part of Rat Race and was not able to do the essentially frame perfect run they need you to do for it.  I tried probably a dozen times without even getting close and was like "I don't think this is happening".  It's actually kind of funny, I messaged some friends when I started playing Battletoads, abouts when I finished Turbo Tunnel, and was like "Battletoads is definitely hard but I'm surprised at how manageable it is".  Turns out, it wasn't that manageable, at least for me, I had just not gotten to my own personal wall yet.  That being said, I did really like Battletoads, it's a very good game and I'm glad I played what I did.  Truly an all-timer beat 'em up.  8.1/10

Game 11: Tomb Raider II: Starring Lara Croft - Beat

A game clear a month+ in the making.  Since starting game clearing in 2023, one of my long term projects has been getting through the Tomb Raider series.  I'm always surprised at how much Tomb Raider, as a franchise, has fallen by the wayside?  Like, Tomb Raider was one of the most defining action-adventure games of all time not once, but twice, with the original 1996 release and the 2013 reboot being two of the most influential games of all time.  It's always surprising to me how little people know about Tomb Raider, and especially the classic era of Tomb Raider which thankfully now have been getting rereleases.  I guess something good has come out of Embracer purchasing Square-Enix's entire catalog of Western studios.  And I've been enjoying going through them, I've only played a couple Tomb Raiders so far but I've enjoyed every one I've done tremendously.  And Tomb Raider II is no exception, it has a reputation for being the best classic Tomb Raider and while it's not my personal favorite, I think it's fair if this one IS your personal favorite.

As is tradition, I'm not going to talk too much about the game here since I did a full blog post on it.  I moreso just want to apologize how much Tomb Raider II stagnated this blog.  I was doing so good earlier on in the year, I got essays and diaries done pretty regularly and I was super proud of my writing and then Tomb Raider II kind of conspired against me.  I did really enjoy this game, obviously, but it was so difficult and so time-consuming that it kind of stagnated the entire month and I hope it doesn't happen again but I worry it is going to with what is coming up on the docket.  I hope y'all are ready for me not to post for like two months only to come back with a whole thing about Dragon Quest.  It's DQ summer baby, shoutouts to my boy Thomas for providing me with some capital C content.  I'll try my best to get some more essays out, I'm in the midst of a big one, one that is very much in the style of "i don't like banjo-kazooie" but is much bigger in scope.  It's probably going to be even longer than Radiant Historia.  I'm so sorry.

Games I Cleared In April - 2026 Edition

Check out the first entry in this series for additional context on what these are and what the nuances of my Game Clearing is~

Game 1: Donkey Kong Land - Beat

I was feeling pretty down on myself with regards to game clearing for much of April.  The Fire Emblem playthrough ate up much of my time and, due to various circumstances surrounding it, I was having a pretty poor time playing Fire Emblem.  And due to how I was game clearing at that time, Fire Emblem's progress stalling meant I was stalling on the whole project.  Now I am trying out this thing where I alternate the games I want to write about with shorter, lighter fair on alternating days so a game's progress stalling doesn't get to me as much, but I only decided to do that AFTER I had been stuck on Fire Emblem for like a month with little progress.  I needed a light, breezy distraction in the midst of this.  And in came Donkey Kong Land.

Donkey Kong Land is part of a longstanding tradition of creating lesser versions of console titles for handheld systems, typically either a demake or a side game.  It's hard to even conceptualize this after almost ten years of the Switch, but once upon a time the handheld system(s) of each generation were considered so technologically inferior to their console counterparts that they often had to be entirely different games or series.  Donkey Kong Land is, as you might imagine, this for the Donkey Kong Country series.  A companion title to the DKC series which is roughly approximate to a DKC experience on handheld.  The story is even a fourth-wall breaking narrative where Cranky Kong, DK's elder of uncertain relation, challenges the DK Crew to replicate the success of DKC on a handheld system, enlisting K Rool's assistance in creating a new game by stealing the Kongs' banana hoard.

In my mind, they succeed fairly well.  Like it's obviously an inferior title, it does not reach the highs of the Donkey Kong games on Super Nintendo, but it does actually do a good job of replicating the DKC feel on a Game Boy.  I found this title incredibly impressive, it replicates the physics, the level design, the core gameplay, and even the graphics of the DKC games despite being a Game Boy game.  There are honestly times where I like it a bit more than DKC2, my personal least favorite of the SNES trilogy, I know, hot take.  I also find it very charming how Donkey Kong Land escalates into a city setting, with the final levels being on a construction site.  It can become easy to believe that the arcade Donkey Kong and DKC are two distinctive eras, literally separated by a generational gap, it's interesting to see a game from when DKC was contemporary try to blend these ideas.  It's a fun little Game Boy platformer, I think it has been overlooked in the discussion of the Game Boy library.  6.7/10

Game 2: Bubsy in: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind - Beat

I try not to let curiosity get the better of me when I do game clearing.  There are plenty of famously bad games in my library, a leftover from my game collecting phase, games that have been rated among the worst of all time.  And in almost every case, I have marked those games to either sell or just hid them from my digital libraries.  Unfortunately, I will not be doing the Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 gaming diary.  This is primarily because I want to enter each game I play with at least the notion that I will like it.  I tend to stay away from games that I know I'm unlikely to enjoy, and I want to generally not play famously awful games.  I don't believe in poisoning the well, I want to bring a level of earnestness to the games I play.  But, fittingly, curiosity did finally get to me on Bubsy.  And to say it killed the cat would be an understatement.

Bubsy in: Claws Encounter of the Furred Kind is a traditional 2D mascot platformer in the vein of Sonic the Hedgehog.  In it you play as Bubsy the Bobcat, a cartoony mascot who must race through a series of incredibly complex levels to overcome the invasive threat of the Woolies, a group of alien invaders who are attempting to rule the galaxy.  The plot to Bubsy is pretty irrelevant, something that many people have noted about the series, especially in later entries where the Woolies are a more active threat.  It's a bit like finding out that the Goombas are the actual big bads of Mario and it wasn't until Super Mario 64 that we met their boss, the Big Goomba, and had to do battle with him.  Along the way, Bubsy will encounter very traditional level themes like a grass/water level, a desert level, a forest level, before taking the fight to the Woolies and having a maze-like outer space level where you fight through their numerous ships.  All the while, Bubsy cracks jokes and makes pop culture references.

I do want to say that, while I am obviously very negative on Bubsy overall, I am a person with a pulse, the game's sense of humor is fine.  Bubsy annoys me but most "comedic" characters annoy me, I literally wrote a whole section about how Rareware's iconic sense of humor made the process of playing Banjo-Kazooie a whole lot worse for me.  But I do think that Bubsy does a decent job of translating that Saturday morning cartoon vibe into a video game.  It feels like you're watching a Hanna Barbera cartoon that you caught one time at like 6AM before school when Cartoon Network would play classic cartoons after the Toonami block ended and you never saw it again and you thought you made it up until you started watching all the B tier HB cartoons and suddenly this character was everywhere.  That is the exact place Bubsy is sitting in.

That being said, Bubsy is the worst platformer I've ever played in my life.  With the new game, which does admittedly look good, and Bubsy's overwhelmingly negative reputation that is likely overblown we are likely to see a renaissance for Bubsy.  A lot of Bubsy apologists coming out of the woodwork.  But, in my opinion, the common take on Bubsy is correct.  It has the incredibly complex, multi-path level design of something like Sonic but it is more unintuitive than any other game in its genre.  There appears to be, perhaps intentionally, very little care to making the levels have any cohesion or logic to them.  It feels like the most important thing to the Bubsy team was to make the levels a gauntlet of bad and obtuse decisions so that players could experience the numerous cartoony death animations present in Bubsy.

As well, the game just has a lot of bad ideas in it.  Bubsy uses yarn balls like coins or rings, a collectible currency of sorts that you can exchange for an additional life if you collect enough of them, but it places such absurd numbers of the balls around AND requires you to collect 500 of the yarn balls to accomplish their goal, making them both unsatisfying to collect and too punishing to even bother.  Bubsy takes up so much central screen real estate that it exacerbates the Sonic the Hedgehog problem of the main character's fast momentum and lack of screen space relative to them causing most of the difficulty in the game.  Bubsy LOVES vertical level design, with many levels requiring you to find your way higher up on the level before you can even hope to start looking for the exit, a process that quickly becomes an exercise in "hoping that whatever's above you doesn't kill you when you jump up there".  And Bubsy takes fall damage.  In a fast paced traditional 2D mascot platformer.  Bubsy has more than earned its reputation as one of the worst series of all time, and the fact that the original title is supposed to be the "good game" among them is harrowing, frankly.  1.5/10

Game 3: Stray Gods: The Role-Playing Musical - Beat

It's time to reveal something I've been keeping from all of you: I love musical theater.  I grew up on it, actually, my mom was a long time subscriber to our local Broadway Across America chapter since I was very young and she would take me to any plays she believed were suitable for my young brain.  I've seen so many shows, both good and bad, and while I've been out of the theatre game for a while now, I miss musicals so much.  This appreciation of the genre extends far outside of the theatre though, I love musical movies, musical television, concept albums.  Musical narrative fiction is one of my favorite things.  Disappointingly, though, musicals have only just started breaking through the medium of gaming.  We've had loads of music games over the years, but not really musical games.  But we are starting to see something of a renaissance of musical games, and one of the earliest adopters of the genre was this, Stray Gods: The Role-Playing Musical.

Stray Gods takes place in a modern day America where the gods of mythology live among humans in secret.  Unlike most takes on this mythology, the gods in question are actually immortal souls with mortal bodies, and instead of simply living on indefinitely, they must pass their soul onto another host after so many years.  You play as Grace, an aimless young woman and lead singer in her best friend's rock band, who one fateful day unknowingly runs into the Muse Calliope at her band's tryouts.  Later that same evening, Calliope arrives at Grace's door bleeding out and dying.  She quickly transfers her soul into Grace, making Grace the next Calliope, and passes on in her arms.  Immediately, Grace is summoned by a council of gods calling themselves "the chorus", the leadership of the hidden society of gods, comprising of Aphrodite, Persephone, Apollo, and their boss, Athena.  The group welcomes Grace into their family, before immediately telling her that she is the lead suspect in Calliope's murder and that she must be immediately put to execution.  Grace argues that this is unfair, that she is innocent and that, even if she were guilty, she is owed due process.  The gods contemplate this and begrudgingly agree, giving Grace exactly one week to amass the necessary evidence to prove herself innocent before she is to be put on trial.  This sets Grace on a new path, forcing her to investigate this crime on her own and clear her name.

But how is she going to gain this evidence from a group of potential suspects who have spent centuries keeping secrets?  Well, that's where her status as a muse comes in.  The muse's ability is to make people open up their hearts.  By initiating musical numbers, Grace has the power to make people enter a state where they are emotionally vulnerable, a state where they might be open to confessing the secrets they are keeping close to their chest.  She cannot force them to do anything, mind, she cannot initiate a love song to force people to fall in love or initiate a big villain number to make them confess.  But her powers allow her to put people into a state where they are more likely to tell her what they know, as the songs within their hearts are set free.  And by navigating these numbers effectively, Grace can learn what she needs to know a long the way, as well as potentially fix the relationships present in the complicated web of the gods' histories.

While Stray Gods states it is a RPG, I think that this is mostly because "Role-Playing Musical" is just a catchier title overall.  It certainly has some RPG elements, it was designed by members of the Mass Effect team and has a lot of the Mass Effect style of dialog choices, both outside and inside of the musical numbers.  But it is primarily a mystery visual novel, in the vein of something like Ace Attorney.  Much of the gameplay outside of the musical numbers consists of investigating locations for clues and interviewing potential suspects, witnesses, and allies.  All the while using the Mass Effect style dialogue wheel to either outwit, antagonize, or empathize with the people you meet.  It's a tried and tested formula that Stray Gods uses to great effect.

The worldbuilding is also super interesting in Stray Gods.  It's difficult for this urban fantasy setting, you know, the gods living among us in the modern day, to really feel fresh.  There have been numerous takes on it already, from American Gods to Percy Jackson to The Wicked + The Divine.  But I think Stray Gods does a very good job of creating its own take on it.  A point I really love is that the gods seem to function on belief, that people paying them tribute is integral to their existence, and so there is a massive blank spot in their memory from the fall of Rome to the Italian Renaissance.  Persephone puts it best, she remembers the Goths breaking into Rome in the fifth century and Zeus saying that the gods need to prepare for war, and then the next memory she has is Athena arriving at the nunnery a thousand years later and telling her to come with her.  There are other really neat things too, but I don't want to give spoilers because I do really like this game and I want people to play it.

If I had to level any criticism at Stray Gods, it is that the musical numbers are not always great.  I get it, having to develop a musical number that can fit a variety of different tones and melodies as the player shapes the song and have it sound really fantastic is obviously pretty difficult.  And there are definitely times where a musical number is meant to be off-tune, either to naturally lead the player into a better option for progress or to depict a character who is less confident in their song.  But some of these do just sound pretty mediocre.  A couple have stuck with me but overall I find the game's music somewhat lacking.  That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this and I highly recommend it.  If you have a Prime subscription and you've been redeeming the free games they give you in that, you probably already own it, and I think it's well worth a play.  I really did like this game a whole lot.  8.2/10

Game 4: Fire Emblem (The Blazing Blade) - DNF (For Now)

I'm so sad this one didn't pan out.  Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade was actually a game I was really looking forward to beating.  It seemed like such a slam dunk, it's a game in a series I like, it's one that I've already played partially and know I like, it's been a hanging thread for some time for me.  Due to the permadeath system, it could be very interesting to write about as I write about lost units and why my decisions made them lost to me.  I was so excited about playing Fire Emblem.  And then the WiiU conspired against me.  Someday, in the not-too-distant future I will never have to play a WiiU game again and when that day comes I will be happy.  There are certainly some truly great games on the WiiU, but man is this console terrible.  If you want to read about my unsuccessful playthrough of Blazing Blade, the link is here.

Game 5: Sonic Adventure - Beat (Sonic's Story)

I want to start this section by correcting a mistake I have made in the past when reviewing other 3D Sonic games for game clearing.  A long time ago, before I started this blog, I played Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Lost World.  It was in a year where I cleared like four Sonic games because my backloggery really like rolling Sonic games back then.  I rated Sonic Adventure 2 decently highly, I believe at the time I rated it a 6.3/10, and then because at the time I kind of liked Lost World a little bit more than Adventure 2, I rated it a 6.4/10.  Both of these are inaccurate.  I deeply dislike Sonic Adventure 2 and I rated it highly specifically because I wanted to give it its flowers as one of the most important games of all time to so many people, and I do not care about Sonic Lost World and do think it is just worse than Adventure 2 in hindsight.  I think this is an important thing to establish at the start of me Sonic Adventure 1 section because I like Sonic Adventure 1 considerably more than both of them, but also, spoilers, don't think it's that good.

Sonic Adventure is the first attempt by the iconic platforming franchise to properly transition the blue hedgehog into 3D.  Sonic had other 3D games in the past, but this is the first attempt to actually take the Sonic formula and translate to 3D, sort of Sonic's answer to games like Mario 64.  In it you play as, obviously, Sonic the Hedgehog, along with a cast of other Sonic characters both pre-established and entirely new.  In a divergence from the traditional Sonic formula, which took place in natural environments being corrupted by the mad scientist Dr. Robotnik, Sonic Adventure sees the cast in a metropolis named Station Square.  A mysterious monster made entirely of water has appeared suddenly and Sonic and crew have arrived in the big city to help stop it.  This monster is named Chaos, and it has been awakened by Dr. Robotnik, now given the nickname "Dr. Eggman", to help him achieve his goals of destroying Station Square so he can rebuild it as his own city/theme park hybrid.  Sonic and friends must race to find the Chaos Emeralds before Eggman can, as feeding the Chaos Emeralds to Chaos is what awakens its ancient destructive power.

Something I really appreciate about Adventure over other 3D Sonic games is how it makes a genuine attempt to translate traditional Sonic level design into 3D.  I don't necessarily think that this ends up being the correct decision, but it's the one I admire the most of the 3D Sonic games.  It's a very experimental kind of level design, trying to make the multi-path open ended level design work in a 3D context, and while I don't think it always works out, it is the 3D Sonic game that I believe has the most interesting level design.  Other Sonic games might technically be better, especially as we get into the Boost era which is where I personally believe Sonic finally found a formula for 3D level design that works for the character, but this one is certainly the most interesting one to play in my opinion.

It also, I think, does the "Sonic fights a god" plot the best of any of the games in the series.  I don't like this plot on principle, I think in general Sonic has become overly ambitious in its plots, to the detriment of the character, his world, and his fanbase, and that the series would benefit way more from really returning to the core setup of environmentalism vs. industrialization.  But I think Sonic Adventure does the best job of incorporating these ideas into the established Sonic dynamic without going too ridiculous with it.  Chaos is a corrupted guardian of the land that is being used by Eggman to destroy the natural world so he can rebuild it into his mechanized utopia, the focus is almost always on Eggman and his plans and the stuff with Chaos is a thing he arrogantly believes he can control only for it to go wild and start accomplishing his goals too well.  Again, if it were up to me I would never do a plot where Sonic has to fight an ancient god, much less how many the series has done.  But this one works.

People probably read the byline of this and went "hey, wait a minute, you didn't beat Sonic Adventure if you just did Sonic's story, what the heck" and like.  Look.  I don't dislike Sonic Adventure.  I would be open to the idea of playing the other stories in the future.  That being said, I also know the kinds of gameplay the other stories have and like.  I don't necessarily think I would love them.  The worst parts of Adventure 2 to me where the Tails/Eggman shooting stages, so having to do an entire story of that seems non-ideal.  But it's also just like, overall I'm kind of indifferent on Adventure?  Like I enjoyed it fine enough, but at the same time I am just pretty neutral on it.  I mostly played it because of the Sonic games I owned, it felt like the last one I NEEDED to play, with it I feel like I have played through all of the Sonic games of some importance to gaming history outside of Frontiers, a game I likely will play eventually.  Sonic Adventure is fine, but the thing I enjoy most is knowing that, for right now, the Sonic series is something I can mark as over and done with, and I like having a series checked off my to-play list.  5.8/10

Game 6: Mario's Picross - Beat

I love Picross.  This is an unsurprising statement if you know me, I talk about Picross very often.  I have started at least one friend's addiction to it, I highlight a lot of games that are built off of Picross, I am Murder by Numbers' strongest soldier.  Tetris is my first love in puzzle games, but Picross is the one I've returned to the most.  If you saw a very old version of my favorite games of all time list, actually, Picross S5, the city pop one, was literally listed as like a top 50 game of all time for me.  I have, unfortunately, been out of the Picross game for a while however.  Lack of funds means I can't really justify buying these little puzzle games annually at the moment and I also tend to focus on games that have more concrete objectives.  But, this month, I finally decided to play the OG Picross game, Mario's Picross for the original Game Boy, as kind of a "before bed/during meals" kind of game.  It's certainly Picross.

Mario's Picross is not a game with a narrative that drives the gameplay, there is no given reason why Mario is doing nonograms.  It can be broadly assumed, due to the game's theming, that Mario's Picross takes place in the midst of an archaeological dig, Mario playing the role of an archaeologist.  But mostly it is just a Picross game with loose Mario theming.  As such, I'm just going to describe what Picross is.  Picross is the most popular variation on a type of Japanese puzzle broadly known as "nonograms".  Nonograms are played on a grid, typically 10 squares by 10 squares or 15x15, with numbers at the left and top edges of the grid correlating to each row/column.  You must then use a combination of math and logic to figure out where to fill in squares on the grid, with numbers listed in order of their appearance from top to bottom or left to right.  The clues also tell you where there are breaks between the numbers, i.e. if you're doing a 10x10 and one of the columns tells you that the number of squares in a row are "4 5", you know that that the top four squares and the bottom five squares must be filled in with a break in between.  While the broader category of Nonograms does not require the ending image to be a picture, Picross, as well as other Nonogram games, usually do require the final puzzle to be some sort legible image.  It's even where the name "Picross" comes from, it's a Picture Crossword, ergo, it is Picross.

And Mario's Picross is just a solid little Picross game.  That's it.  It has a wide variety of puzzles, some of which are even Mario-themed, it has the very traditional progression of going from 5x5s to 10x10s to 15x15s, it's pleasant enough to look at, outside of one track it's fine enough to listen to.  It's basic, don't get me wrong, it is after all the first of the Picross games and it definitely feels like it.  It has an autocorrect functionality that you cannot turn off and only disappears after you have completed the first 192 puzzles and reach the finale.  Which for a pretty serious Picross player, games with non-optional autocorrects are just kind of disappointing.  But for a first attempt, it's shockingly competent.

I think the only real issue I ultimately have with Mario's Picross is that it kind of feels near the ending of the Star Course, the third puzzle set in this game, that there are just a disappointing number of puzzles where after you do all the stuff you can prove, you kind of have to rely too much on intuition to progress in the puzzle.  Instead of being able to use the math to make progress, you kind of get to a point where you've filled in a lot of the puzzle and then have to intuit how to fill in more squares based not on the clues in the puzzle, but on your knowledge of how Picross puzzles are solved and the methods they typically use.  But overall it's a fine Picross game, definitely a great one for beginners too.  I've often said that Mario's Super Picross on the Super Famicom, a game I absolutely love and have 100%-ed twice, is kind of the best "beginner's Picross", but this one might take the cake.  7.4/10

Game 7: Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure - Beat

I've mentioned in the past that I was a pretty hardcore Nintendo fanboy at one point of my life, specifically during the Wii era.  For that entire console generation, my personality was basically the Nintendo Wii, and most of the gaming news that I would receive would come from people who were very Wii-centric.  Literally, one of the only reviewers whose opinion I cared about was a guy called "the Wiiviewer", who I believe is still doing content though I haven't seen anything from him since like 2013.  For the most part, I cringe at what I was about in that era, I believe some truly awful things because of my Wii/Nintendo fanboyism, but there were some positives.  Because I was so inundated with the Wii culture, I knew about genuinely fantastic games that were consistently overlooked by more mainstream gaming circles.  Which leads us to our final topic for this post, Zack & Wiki.

Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure is a LucasArts style point-and-click adventure/puzzle hybrid developed and published by legendary game company Capcom.  In it, you play as the young pirate Zack, a boy who dreams of being the greatest pirate ever, alongside his pal Wiki, a magical monkey who can transform into an enchanted bell to alter the world around you.  On a simple treasure finding mission, the duo uncovers the skull of the legendary pirate Barbaros, which immediately comes to life.  Barbaros' skeleton has been scattered across the land in a number of treasure chests, and being unable to reassemble it himself as a disembodied skull, he strikes a deal with the duo.  Zack & Wiki will travel across the land, finding the treasure chests that contain the pieces of Barbaros and reassembling the undead pirate to, eventually, restore him to life; and in exchange, Barbaros will grant Zack his old ship and a part of his treasure hoard.  Along the way, Zack & Wiki must battle monsters, solve puzzles, and outsmart the rival pirate crew of Captain Rose, a beautiful but greedy female air pirate who is trying to race Zack to the treasure.

To accomplish this goal, Zack & Wiki are granted assistance in the form of various animals that they meet along the journey.  This animals are not actually there to help, they mostly serve as obstacles that Zack & Wiki must work their way around, but thankfully, they are helping us whether they want to or not.  When Zack rings Wiki near various animals and enemies, they magically transform into tools for the duo to use to progress towards their goal.  A centipede may seek to crush Zack between its jaws normally, but those jaws become a handy saw after Wiki works their magic.  Not every puzzle contains these tools, mind, but a good majority of them do require the usage of a clever tool made out of an unsuspecting enemy.

Zack & Wiki also is famous for its wide and intuitive usage of motion controls.  You can tell Zack & Wiki is a very early Wii game because they really go all out with how you can use the Wii remote.  The entire game is controlled via the Wii Remote's pointer, being a point and click adventure game, but most puzzles require you to hold the Wii Remote in specific ways and perform specific actions to progress.  To pull switches you have to hold the Wii Remote like a lever and pull down, to adjust cranks you need to hold it sideways and rotate it, stuff like that.  It is the kind of control scheme that, if handled poorly, could be seen as overly gimmicky and like.  I'm not going to say it's not overly gimmicky, its commitment to utilizing the Wii Remote in a number of unique ways definitely can get annoying, especially as you redo a puzzle multiple times.  But it's kind of charming as well, a truly unique game that really can only work as intended on the Wii.

The style and humor of this game in particular is top notch. I don't know if this was an inspiration for Zack & Wiki, but the whole game feels so distinctly French to me.  And not in the same way that I talked about Gravity Rush being French, no, Zack & Wiki is like a french cartoon.  It's very slapstick-y and has a good sense of movement to it, the main character has kind of a devil may care attitude, always munching on a chocolate bar when things are getting serious.  When I was playing it, I clocked it as "what if One Piece has been French instead of Japanese" and I think that's a pretty good description.  It even has a ranking system which takes the form of Wanted Posters of increasing value, showing Zack's evolution from a no-name pirate to a true menace.  And as it goes on the drawings go from crude to detailed to photographs to lovingly created artistic renderings.  It's just so charming.

Zack & Wiki does, unfortunately, lose steam in the endgame though.  It starts introducing more puzzles where any mistake in the order of operations requires a reset, you can't reliably work your way out of a point where you're stuck even if you wanted to.  The puzzles get a bit too clever for their own good, leading to a lot of "wow, this was really cool" moments mind but also leading to a lot of frustration.  The final levels introduce arbitrary time limits where the game was kind of lacking in those before, forcing you to learn the puzzles perfectly.  The motion controls for the last two ideas they add, the sword and the anchor, don't really work.  It doesn't sink the game, but the end game is pretty frustrating.  Still, Zack & Wiki is a very good, very fun puzzle game.  From those who have played it, it has a reputation as one of the best Wii games of all time and is famously an underrated gem on the system, and I am likely to agree.  It's real good.  I hope Capcom finds the want to port it to, like, the Switch.  8.5/10