Bionic Commando

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Capcom

RELEASE DATE: Jul. 20th, 1988 (JP), Dec. 1988 (US), Oct. 26th, 1990 (EU)

HOW LONG I PLAYED: Made it to the fifth level, which is actually called Area 6. Confusing without cause.

WOULD PLAY AGAIN?: This one’s not for me.

Bionic Commando presents a ridiculous premise, even for 80s games: what if an action hero can’t jump, not even a little bit? Since Super Mario Bros. revolutionized gaming in 1985, nearly all action platformers featured protagonists with some measure of jumping ability. By 1988, jumping was no longer an option if you were going to save the world, it was required. Then comes Capcom – bold, egotistical Capcom - with Bionic Commando featuring a man with a robot grapple arm, perfectly capable legs, and no jumping ability. It’s ludicrous, yet retro game-loving millennials and Gen-Xers sing Bionic Commando’s praises to the rooftops.

I think I understand why they sing, although I am not a part of their chorus. The grapple mechanic, against all odds, does work and provides a unique sense of satisfaction when you overcome a nasty obstacle or find your way onto a hard-to-reach platform. Unfortunately, the game surrounding the mechanic is often very cheap. Spike pits, bouncy platforms, and constantly regenerating foes are but three of the annoyances you’ll face throughout the game. All three would be obnoxious enough if your protagonist could jump, but with the grapple as your only form of movement outside of running, by the game’s halfway point, Bionic Commando becomes more of a chore than a rewarding experience.

You play as Ladd Spencer, the Ultimate Bionic Man, and you’re tasked to rescue Super Joe (from regular Commando!) and stop the Albatros project. At first, you’re equipped with a basic gun and your arm that doubles as a grappling hook. Over time, however, you collect stronger weapons (like my beloved rocket launcher) and different items (like the permit or the health beaker) that help you get further in the game.

The levels I played were a mixture of platforming challenges and shooting exercises. Sometimes, you’ll just grapple diagonally across the level from left to right, like a typical platforming stage. Other times, you ascend upward while Venus fly traps and bees and flying paratroopers all try to take you out. Or you’ll grapple across several one-hit-kill spike pits with marginal room for error. Or you’ll need to execute multiple consecutive grapples in a row without missing your target even once, or you’ll fall into the abyss. All the while, soldiers shoot at you behind barricades, rush you with knives, paratroop down upon you en masse – or a mixture of all three and more. The early levels aren’t as overbearing with their challenge, but by the fourth and fifth levels, you’ll be yelling “Oh come on,” to no one in particular while you die over and over again.

I want to join my retro gaming brethren in their adoration of Bionic Commando, but I just can’t. The grapple mechanic feels good to use, no question, and Ladd Spencer’s neon jumpsuit with spiky red hair and crisp goggles is an iconic character design. The increasingly cheap levels (I peace-ed out at level five after untold deaths), however, made me throw my controller down in disgust.

I get it, Capcom wants your grapple arm skills to grow with each successive level. And yeah, these were the days of NES hard, where gamers were expected to die a lot, start from the beginning of the game each time, and get better the more we played. The difference between, say, Contra or Ninja Gaiden over Bionic Commando is the sense of satisfaction you get by reaching a little bit further into the game. With the latter, even when I passed a particularly cheaply designed portion of the level, I felt more relief than joy. Trying to get the stiff Ladd Spencer to bounce and grapple onto a higher platform while neverending paratroopers get in my way, they’re landing on my bounce pad, why won’t they stop getting in my way, it’s hard enough just bouncing and grappling!!!

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Anyway, I never want to play those levels again. And if I’m not gonna try and get further in the game, why play it at all? Bionic Commando has its moments, but there’s a reason Capcom never successfully brought this series far beyond the NES (Rearmed games from the PS3/360 era notwithstanding). The grapple arm mechanic is both its selling point and its biggest hindrance to mass appeal.

C-

Blades of Steel

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Konami

RELEASE DATE: Jul. 22nd, 1988 (JP - Famicom Disk System), Dec. 1988 (US), Nov. 23rd, 1990 (EU)

HOW LONG I PLAYED: About an hour. Long enough to beat Chicago and get walloped by Los Angeles, of all teams.

WOULD PLAY AGAIN?: Absolutely.

It’s the 2^nd period. Chicago’s got the puck. Toronto is four points ahead, but Chicago’s showing surprising resolve. Nobody expects the American teams to hustle, but here they are, putting in the work. Chicago shoots, but Toronto blocks. When Chicago races into the Toronto goalie box to snag the puck, the goalie lays them out. “Arrgh!” they cry, while Toronto takes back the puck. Chicago isn’t going down quietly, though. Toronto feels the push, and without warning, he’s seeing red. The two players get into a fist fight. Whoever wins gets the puck, whoever loses get thrown in the “sin bin” for a while. Chicago overcomes Toronto, snags the puck, races over to the goal, and slams it in, upsetting all of Canada in the process.

Stuff like that and crazier happens all the time in Blades of Steel. And that’s just single player! I can’t imagine how insane this game gets with a sibling or friend to trash-talk/beat-up while you play.

Blades of Steel is as simple and enjoyable as arcade hockey games get. Pick between an exhibition game or a tournament, select your team, and get on the ice. Once the umpire yells “Face Off!” and lets the puck drop, the insanity begins. Whether you have control of the puck, or you’re trying to trip/beat up the opposing team for the puck, there’s never a dull moment here. Both teams are constantly moving to the point where it can feel like true bedlam on ice, and yet, avigating around the chaos is more enjoyable than irritating. When both teams are swarmed near a goalie, constantly trying to take the puck, the goalie trying desperately to hit the puck to their team away from the opposing side, the action feels truly thrilling.

Controls are simple too. The blinking player is the one you control. While playing offense, press ‘B’ to pass the puck to a teammate, ‘A’ to shoot. If you’re near the goal, an arrow will appear, and pressing ‘A’ will shoot the puck towards the arrow. With defense, press ‘B’ to switch control to the player nearest the puck. At a Face Off, press ‘B’ to snag the puck. Fair warning, though: the latter only works some of the time.

Blades of Steel’s claim to fame is its fight sequences. Two players throw off their protective gloves and get into a bare-knuckle beatdown, and the hockey game is put on pause. Each player has a power meter that drains as you land hits, and there’s a surprising amount of depth for what amounts to a silly minigame. You can bob and weave, block, and attack your opponent’s face and stomach. The controls actually remind me of Urban Champion, which sounds bad, but I guess it works here because of how short the sequences are.

I am not a sports game fan, and I don’t particularly care for hockey, but I love Blades of Steel. Playing it for this review, I was again stunned at how fast paced and satisfying the game is nearly 40 years after its original release. So much so, that I think an updated HD sequel or remake with outlandish new moves, fight scenes, and an online mode would sell well enough to justify its existence. Forget any official NHL license or authentic team names or players. Call it Blades of Steel: None More Steely and let younger generations discover the joy of intense puck shuffling and ice brawling. Make it happen, Konami!

B+

Starting today, I’m turning on paid subscriptions for “Nintendo is Great.”

Monthly and yearly paid subscribers will receive once-a-month comprehensive articles detailing Japan-only releases for Nintendo consoles/handhelds or once-a-month side quest posts where I look at competing consoles like the TurboGrafx-16, Neo Geo, PlayStation etc. (All Sega coverage can be found at my sister Substack, Sega Does).

Basically, with a paid subscription, you’ll get access to the type of rabbit hole posts I love to create, but can’t always justify.

Founding Members will receive everything monthly and yearly paid subscribers get, plus an exclusive one-time 45-minute chat with me about games, hobbies, life in general – whatever you want (within reason of course).

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For the next while (not sure how long yet), I’ll be running the “Deflation Special” where monthly subscriptions will be $3 and yearly subscriptions will be $30.

If any of the perks above sound interesting, or you’d just like to financially support this Substack, please sign up below!

40% off for 1 year!

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However you engage with this Substack, whether it be reading, liking, commenting, lurking, or throwing me a few bucks, I greatly appreciate your support.

I’ll be back with a new post on Thursday.

Until then!

- DC

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Nintendo

RELEASE DATE: Jan. 14th, 1987 (JP - Famicom Disk System), Sept. 26th, 1988 (EU), Dec. 1st, 1988 (US)

HOW LONG I PLAYED: Until the Maze Temple (4 out of 7 temples), though I have beaten the game many moons ago.

WOULD PLAY AGAIN?: I’m sure I’ll be playing this again. Not sure if I’ll ever beat it again, though.

You’ve Been Warned

If Ocarina of Time is like watching a beautiful sunset on a Mediterranean beach with your beloved while a string quartet plays romantic music, then Zelda II is that same beach days later with an overcast sky, a broken heart, and some dude blasting nu-metal from a nearby building.

If Breath of the Wild is like an L.A. Fitness filled with beautiful, fit white-collar workers doing beautiful, fit (white-collar?) exercises, then Zelda II is a sweaty, run-down boxing gym where no one feels welcome and everyone gets a turn bashing your face in.

Zelda II doesn’t fit with the popular games in the franchise, is what I’m saying. It’s clunky, it’s ugly, and it focuses more on combat than any other game in the series, save maybe Skyward Sword. Link’s in his awkward no-longer-cute-child-warrior phase. Zelda sleeps through the entire game. Ganon’s nowhere to be found (despite what the Game Over screen says). Zelda II is a side-scroller. Link’s sword is the size of a tiny thumb. You fight enemies for EXP. Link levels up. What is happening.

Thank God Zelda II exists, though, and especially that it came before Link to the Past. As much as I love the latter game, it established a design template that Nintendo would use for the majority of Zelda games until Skyward Sword. Link discovers he’s a hero, Zelda gets kidnapped, Ganon’s probably to blame, something about the Triforce, venture out into the world in a short green tunic, explore dungeons, get cool items that help you progress, and vanquish Ganon (or whoever) until the next timeline when Link or his ancestor (also named Link) do it all again. This was a beloved (rigid) formula until it wasn’t. The cutesy cel-shading or Miyazaki-esque grim-dark aesthetics of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess respectively may have convinced us to keep playing, but Skyward Sword’s busted combat mechanics and boring design revealed the truth. After twenty years, Zelda game design needed a change.

But that’s the future. Zelda II is the glorious past, a time when Nintendo wasn’t beyond adding unique elements to their game that may or may not work. Zelda II eschews the hugely popular non-linear adventure exploration of the first game in favor of a more streamlined hack-and-slash with RPG elements. The result is both delightful and infuriating, as Miyamoto and company surely intended.

Let’s Get Physical

Compared to the relatively threadbare stories of future Zelda games, Zelda II’s story is proper bonkers. Link’s 16 now and, out of nowhere, the Triforce shows up on the back of his hand. Impa sees the insignia and leads Link to a sleeping Zelda in a castle. Apparently, Zelda’s brother wanted to know the Triforce secrets, but Zelda didn’t tell him, so her brother’s magician friend put Zelda under a sleeping spell (also, the magician was killed by his own magic, so that takes care of that villain). Zelda’s brother felt deep remorse for what happened to her, so he placed her safely in a castle until she could be awakened and decreed that all princesses born in Hyrule would also carry the name Zelda.

Since Link has the Triforce insignia on his hand, Impa commissions him to be the hero to rescue Princess Zelda. She gives him six crystals and a bunch of obscure writings intended for the future King of Hyrule, which Link can read “for some reason.” Link’s task is to place the crystals within statues located in temples around Hyrule, gather the Triforce of Courage and awaken Princess Zelda.

Now wait a minute, Zelda has a brother?! I thought I knew my series lore, but does this brother appear anywhere else in the timeline? Does he have a name? Who’s the random magician friend who apparently sucks at casting spells since his own magic kills him? Is the Zelda who’s sleeping the same Zelda who Link rescued in the first game? Zelda II is a direct sequel after all. So many questions!

Once you’ve properly digested the backstory, the game begins with a tall and gangly Link next to a sleeping Princess Zelda. His green tunic and sword are still both far too short, but he won’t let these unfortunate hindrances stop him from exploring Hyrule’s depths, finding the Triforce, and waking Zelda up from her magical slumber.

The original Legend of Zelda had a top-down perspective that accompanied Link throughout his journey from the Hyrule overworld into the numerous labyrinths. In Zelda II, though, only the overworld has a top-down perspective. More like God-down perspective, really, as Link, the enemies, and the world itself look like ants from the camera’s high position. Once Link enters anywhere, however – an enemy skirmish, a town, a cave, etc – the perspective shifts to side-scrolling.

Because Link’s sword is short, he must get up close and personal with each enemy he encounters. This isn’t Contra or Ninja Gaiden where you can just mow them down and call it a day. You have to study each enemy type, figure out their distinct movement patterns, if they throw a weapon, any potential weak points, etc. and attack from there. As Link progresses through the game, he’ll acquire different techniques, like downward and upward thrusts which help with more complicated foes. Combat in this game is what you make of it. If you embrace how the game wants you to learn, then you’ll come to enjoy it. But if you’re impatient and just want to get to the end of each temple as quickly as possible, Zelda II will be your worst nightmare.

As you learn how to fight, you’ll die. A lot. Trial-and-error is key. At first you’ll want to curse Nintendo for giving Link such a short weapon, and yet, without its dinky size, combat wouldn’t be nearly as rewarding. That said, unlike every other Zelda game, enemies do not drop hearts. They might drop magic jars if you’re lucky, but stray health is basically absent from this game entirely. This lack of help is infuriating when you’re first learning to fight some of the more aggressive foes. Stick with the pain long enough, though, and you will overcome.

Each enemy gives you experience points. Once you get enough and level up, you boost one of three stats: your health, your magic or your attack. Increased attack does what you’d expect – stronger attacks, more damage to foes – but increased health and magic doesn’t increase the size of your life/magic bar. Instead, you’ll take less damage from enemy attacks and use less magic for each spell.

Spells are needed to progress in the temples, but finding them isn’t always clear. Usually, you’ll need to acquire an item of some kind, bring the item to a person in a particular town, then that person will introduce you to an old man in a basement who’ll let you know how to use Jump or Fairy or Life and so on. Like all early RPG-style towns, certain townspeople will drop hints about how to find the items needed for the spells or other progression hints, but if you’re unaccustomed to vague 8-bit mutterings, they won’t help you much. Browse an old Nintendo Power guide or read an FAQ on GameFAQs to save yourself the hassle.

Zelda II doesn’t take long to get nuts. The second palace is Midoro Palace, but in order to get there, you’ll need to traverse through Death Mountain, a labyrinthine web of false paths and plenty of tough enemies. The good news: if you get a game over in Zelda II and you continue, you keep all the items you’ve found along the way, spells you learned, any previously gained levels, etc. The bad news: any experience points you had are gone, and you start all the way back at Zelda’s castle. The latter is doubly terrible in this early part of the game, where you absolutely must get through Death Mountain to open up larger parts of Western Hyrule. But when you’re on your last life and you’re so close to getting to Spectacle Rock to get the hammer and you die, so you have to trudge through Death Mountain all over again and hope you actually make it this time… yeah, I understand why people give up on this game. I’ve played Zelda II a handful of times, and I’m still amazed at how difficult it gets so early on.

If there’s any real issue I have with Zelda II outside of the occasionally frustrating combat and ugly art style, it’s the bland temple/dungeon design. Sure, the first Zelda’s dungeons weren’t that creative either, but they definitely had a spooky vibe and atmosphere that the ones in Zelda II lack. Each floor in the dungeon is often just a straightforward path featuring a bunch of obnoxious enemies, with the occasional candle or block or lava moat to liven things up. Praises be, the enemies do not regenerate, so you don’t have to worry about facing the Doomknocker multiple times. The bosses aren’t particularly exciting here, either, particularly when compared to the sheer hell gauntlet you go through to make it to each boss. Perhaps Nintendo felt we had all suffered enough by that point.

Let Them Drink and Forget

Zelda II was at one point the only Zelda sequel. There was no Zelda template in 1987, no decades of formula for Nintendo and its creative overlords to draw upon. In the 8-bit era, it was easy and relatively affordable for developers to try out different ideas and forge them into a new title. And hey, if those ideas proved to not be profitable/popular, they could always go back to what worked. Zelda II actually sold about 4.4 million copies worldwide, a respectable number, though around 2 million less than the original Zelda. How many of the players that purchased the game actually enjoyed it, though? Even producer Shigeru Miyamoto was disappointed with the game and views Link to the Past as the true sequel to Legend of Zelda.

In 2014, I reviewed Zelda II for a different blog. While it might seem narcissistic to quote myself, this paragraph has always stayed with me, and I think it’s worth printing here in its entirety…

“Zelda II is white-hot rage pockets mixed with moments of fleeting joy. It’s a jilted ex-lover employing a psychosexual hold over your thoughts, emotions, and desires. You want to put Zelda II away, out of sight, out of mind. But then it calls you at 3 am, asking where you’ve been. It initially coos sweet nothings into your ear about all the good times you’ve shared together: traversing Hyrule, finding extra hearts/fairies/magic containers by accident. Then its tone shifts. It gets darker, more confrontational. ‘You’ve been a lazy boy,’ it says. ‘Death Mountain doesn’t sleep. Three-Eye Rock Palace doesn’t sleep. Your shadow doesn’t sleep. Only Zelda sleeps, and not because she has a choice. She’s your responsibility. Leave her to slumber for all eternity, you bastard. Go play a more fulfilling entry in the series, like Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, or your precious Wind Waker. Or if you want to be a real man, you pick up that controller and get to work.’ Sobbing, you do as Zelda II asks. Not because you want to. Because you have to, even if you don’t fully know why.”

My opinion hasn’t changed since 2014. Zelda II either grips you or it doesn’t. It’s not like any other game in the series. Like Link’s Awakening or Majora’s Mask, it’s regarded for how different it is. But unlike the aforementioned games, Zelda II isn’t particularly beloved today. Nintendo won’t be making any remakes of it in the near future, let’s put it that way. It’s an anomaly, an aberration, one that you embrace on its own terms, or you ignore and pretend that it doesn’t exist. It’s the Zelda game that refuses to compromise and looks the least like its brethren. And while I embrace the more conventional Zeldas, I can’t help but respect this oddball for being so willfully difficult, so strange, so very un-Zelda. I’m grateful Zelda II exists, because I know I’ll never see another Zelda game like it again.

B+

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Arcade Archives 2: Ridge Racer

PUBLISHER: Hamster

DEVELOPER: Bandai Namco (port by Hamster

RELEASE DATE: June 5th, 2025 (Worldwide)

HOW LONG I PLAYED: 40 minutes or approximately 80 quarters, presuming that each game lasts about 2 minutes

WOULD PLAY AGAIN?: Since I already paid for it, yes, probably. But I wouldn’t pay for it again.

Ridge Racer Resurrection?

I’m sure I saw Ridge Racer at my local putt-putt arcade sometime in the mid-90s, though I doubt I ever played it. Sit-down racing games really didn’t interest me; not when Super Street Fighter II and Virtua Fighter lurked nearby, demanding my attention. While everyone was losing their minds over the PS1 version of Ridge Racer in late ’95 and ’96, I was playing Donkey Kong Country 2 and Super Mario RPG on SNES, blissfully unaware of the technological revolution that was occurring in homes all over the world.

At some point in the late 90s, I learned that Ridge Racer was an iconic title, known as much for its PlayStation affiliation as its initial arcade presence. Both Sony and developer Namco seemed fine with their unspoken partnership for the better part of a decade, but eventually, Namco started making Ridge Racer games for N64, DS, Xbox 360, and of course, in the 2010s, mobile platforms.

Whenever a developer leans more heavily into mobile development and away from consoles/PC for one of their long-time franchises, that franchise is usually at death’s door. So it was with Ridge Racer. After 2013’s Ridge Racer Slipstream and 2016’s Ridge Racer Draw & Drift came and went on mobile, the series hasn’t seen an official new game in the series in a decade, with the last console release being 2012’s Ridge Racer Unbound.

It is in this post-Covid, Ridge Racer-less world that Hamster and Namco grace us with the 33-year-old arcade original. A reminder of the glory days, perhaps, or hopefully, a signifier that Namco hasn’t forgotten the Ridge Racer name entirely.

Wow! What A Start!

Either way, the Arcade Archives 2 version of Ridge Racer certainly does its job in transporting you back to the arcades circa 1993. From the bathing-suit wearing countdown girl to the techno soundtrack to the hilarious, obnoxious announcer (“Hey! Somebody’s right on your tail!”), everything is in its right place.

As for the racing, well, that’s pretty good too. Surprisingly so. I play all my Switch 2 games with the Pro Controller 2, not the Joycons, and I was amazed at how intuitive the car felt to drive. Like the game was made for a proper controller, not for a big arcade steering wheel. You select either Automatic or Manual, change the button layout as you see fit, and off you go. I played Automatic because shifting – both in games and in real life – is not something I’ve ever gotten accustomed to. Feel free to have a laugh at my expense in the comments.

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The game has one track, which even by 1993 standards, is lacking. Virtua Racing, which came out in 1992, has three circuits. Daytona USA, released a year later, has three courses also. I suppose Namco’s idea was for you to get really good at the track on the Novice difficulty level, then progress to Intermediate, Advanced, and so on. Your top speed does increase between difficulty options, and Advanced has a unique, more challenging section not found in the other two difficulties. Otherwise, you’re driving right round, baby, right round for as long as you can stand it. You face 12 opponents, all with cars decked out in artwork from various Namco games, except in the Time Trial where it’s just you and a yellow car (your arch nemesis, presumably) going head-to-head.

Because this is an Arcade Archives 2 release, you have additional gameplay options. Original Mode is where you can play unadulterated Ridge Racer in both English and Japanese versions. There is also an included DX version here which provides support for an H-shifter and clutch. The Hi Score and Caravan modes are similar in that the goal is to get as many points as possible, with Caravan mode imposing a five-minute time limit on all the racing. Finally, Time Attack takes you through all four modes – Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, and Time Trial – in one continuous race. The only way the latter ends is if you run out of time. Should you get a high score in any of the latter modes, it will be posted on the game’s Online Rankings for posterity.

Insert All the Coin

Short of finding a still-working cabinet randomly somewhere in the wild, this release is, without a doubt, the very best way to play the arcade version of Ridge Racer in 2026. Unfortunately, at $16.99, it is grossly overpriced for what you’re getting. One track, a handful of modes that are all fairly similar to each other, and did I mention one single track? The track is fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but there’s still only one. I understand this is an early 90s arcade release, but price the game accordingly. I should mention that if you buy the game on Switch 1, it is only $14.99, but that’s still too much in my opinion. For the value, $9.99 seems appropriate here. Anything higher feels insulting.

I have a deep respect for Namco’s games, Hamster’s Arcade Archives series, and the Ridge Racer franchise. Ridge Racer on Switch 2 plays great, looks fantastic, and sounds amazing, but its one track makes the entire game feel more like a tech demo than a full-fledged arcade release, never mind this home port. Unless you sunk hundreds of quarters into the original arcade version of Ridge Racer and you still can’t get enough of the game’s solitary track, I can’t endorse supporting this admittedly high-quality version for the absurd price point alone.

Ridge Racer at $9.99: B

The Current Price: D

All gameplay images were taken on the Switch 2 by me.

*all other images courtesy of Nintendo and a Ridge Racer fan page on Facebook.

I’d like to remind you of something I wrote three weeks ago. It reads as follows…

As most of you know, “Nintendo is Great” is a Substack dedicated to reviewing every game ever released for a Nintendo console and handheld in chronological order. For the bulk of the Substack’s life, this has meant primarily NES reviews, starting back in October 1985 with the test launch of the NES in America. Only recently have I jumped out of the chronological timeline to introduce Game Boy, Virtual Boy, and Game Boy Advance games.

But friends, I gotta be honest. I really haven’t enjoyed going out of chronological order. I did it mostly to provide some variety to longtime readers and hopefully bring in some additional subscribers. Perhaps it’s accomplished those things, but for whatever reason – OCD, probably – introducing these systems early feels like I’m not being true to myself and this Substack’s original purpose.

So after this post, I’m going back to my original timeline, back to November 1988. No more Game Boy games until I hit 1990. No more Virtual Boy games until I hit 1995. No more GBA games until 2001. Such is life.

All of this will remain true, save for one thing.

Alongside my current retro-focused chronological journey, I am going to break my own self-imposed protocol and start discussing Switch 2 games, also in chronological order. That means my Switch 2 articles will kick off with launch game coverage (June 5th, 2025, to be precise) and proceed forward from there.

I’m doing this for a couple of reasons.

Reason #1: I haven’t really engaged with a lot of newer titles outside of Nintendo developed/published games in the last decade or so. AAA, AA, indie, so many have passed me by. To be honest, most games don’t even look appealing to me, but that isn’t fair. To pass harsh judgment on something I’ve never played is a very “old man” ish thing to do.

Thus, the majority of my Switch 2 reviews are going to fall under the subtitle, “Old Man Yells at New Games.” Now, at 41, I’m more “aging football player” old than legitimately decrepit. That said, when I look at the genres and titles younger gamers enjoy these days (crafting, farming, farm-crafting, walking sims, weird indie titles that sell five million copies on Steam but aren’t on any console, Roblox, etc), I feel incredibly ancient and out-of-touch.

Basically, my desire to play Switch 2 games is to explore newer titles and see if I can shed my inner curmudgeon. I know I won’t love every game I play, but hopefully I can at least appreciate what many of them are trying to accomplish. Will I yell? Possibly, if I really can’t stand the game. Yelling is not the goal, though. I just really like the way “Old Man Yells at New Games” sounds.

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Ah, but what constitutes a “new game,” you ask? Yes, the lines are blurry these days. The first Switch 2 game I’m reviewing is the Arcade Archives release of Ridge Racer, a 33-year-old arcade game. Ridge Racer is, without question, an old game and does not qualify for me to yell at it.

After Ridge Racer, however, I’ll be confronted with nothing but mostly newer titles. Mostly. The Bravely Default HD remaster came out in 2025, but it’s just the 2012 3DS title all gussied up for larger, sharper screens. A 14-year-old game is not a new game by any means, and yet, remasters and remakes of older games are so commonplace now that I’m going to consider the majority of them “new” for the simplicity’s sake. Also, given how technological advancements in gaming have slowed considerably in the last 10-15 years and how people play games for years at a time, I feel comfortable calling something like No Man’s Sky new-ish, even though it came out in 2016.

I am unsure how I will approach “Nintendo Switch 2 Editions” of games like Tears of the Kingdom or Super Mario Wonder. To me, the latter games are still Switch 1 games, through and through. They might look a touch nicer and play better on Switch 2, but I don’t consider them Switch 2 games in the least. I will likely address the Switch 2 Editions, perhaps comment on any changes, but they won’t receive full-blown commentary. As for third-party titles that have both Switch 1 and 2 editions released on the same day, I will absolutely discuss Switch 2 versions over Switch 1.

I do not anticipate these Switch 2 articles being like my retro reviews. Rather, I want them to be more off-the-cuff thoughts and impressions, less formal, more loose and freewheeling.

I also want to give these newer games a fair shake, and as we all know, modern games are way too long for their own good. I’m several hours into the Bravely Default HD remaster, and I haven’t even gotten past the Intro. Only 30+ more hours to go! (I’m enjoying it so far, so I suppose I don’t mind). Point being, these Switch 2 articles will likely be fewer and farther between compared to the easier-to-play-and-digest retro articles.

Reason #2: In addition to playing newer titles for my own curiosity and amusement, I’m doing this to hopefully inject some variety into the Substack. I am grateful to all my readers who don’t mind me talking mostly about NES games, but I imagine for those of you younger than 35-40, it can be hard to care.

I also really love the idea of playing games from Nintendo’s oldest console and games from their newest console at the same time. Like two beautiful bookends.

I currently have no plans to delve back into any other Nintendo handheld or console library at this time. I remain committed to my original chronological journey starting with the NES, Game Boy, SNES, etc. Switch 2 will be the lone exception.

I hope you’re all looking forward to more Switch 2 coverage! Let me know if this excites/annoys you in the comments below, don’t forget a like or a restack, and I’ll see you next week!

*image courtesy of Nintendo World Report

Dr. Chaos

PUBLISHER: FCI

DEVELOPER: Marionette/SRS

RELEASE DATE: Jun. 19th, 1987 (JP - Famicom Disk System), Nov. 1988 (US)

HOW LONG I PLAYED: 3-4 hours

WOULD PLAY AGAIN?: Absolutely not

If you’re a retro gamer and you consider Dr. Chaos at all, it’s likely for the disturbing-for-its-day cover art. Forget that Castlevania II Nintendo Power cover with the severed Dracula head. Dr Chaos gives you a winged skeleton demon (with actual fleshy lungs) crouching over the hero. Unnerving ghouls closing in on all sides. Most importantly, the blood – or is it? The hero’s knife seems to be dripping blood from a previous monster encounter. His arm is stained with it. Then again, right next to the hero is a tipped over beaker that contained some red liquid. There’s ambiguity here, but I’m still surprised this cover made it past Nintendo’s censors.

Ok, so the cover freaked you out and intrigued you as a kid. Why is this dude dripping in what appears to be blood surrounded by evil abominations? You must know!

Story goes that Dr. Ginn Chaos is a brilliant physicist who specializes in opening warp zones to other dimensions. He conducts his research in a lab in a remote location, so he doesn’t draw attention to himself. Normally his brother Michael receives a monthly research report on Dr. Chaos’ findings, but after three months pass with no report, Michael grows concerned. He visits Dr. Chaos’ lab and finds zero trace of his brother. He does, however, spot Chaos’ diary. Apparently, monsters within the warp zones are out of control and only machines with special powers can keep them in their rightful place. Dr. Chaos is gone. It’s up to you now to control Michael, find the warp zones and machines and make everything right again…

The game begins as a side-scroller in Dr. Chaos’ mansion, with you, Michael, armed only with a knife. Bats, mice, and other terrors are effectively running the property, and a myriad of doors lie before you. You enter the first door you see and suddenly, you’re in first-person adventure mode, complete with disembodied hand to complete actions and click options provided on the right side of the screen. Will you: OPEN, GET, GO, and HIT? Yes, you will. All four, as a matter of fact, and as often as possible. Each room has four sides – North, South, East, and West – and is filled with mostly furniture and items; couches, chairs, dressers, armoires, and of course, the obligatory windows and doors. OPEN the dressers and armoires to find grenade, handgun and machine gun ammo and health potion curiously disguised within beakers. GET them to put them in your inventory (the ammo) or drink them on the spot (the potion). OPEN the door and GO to either return to the hallway or enter a different room. HIT the wall to find ladders to the mansion basement or attic or to enter an otherwise impossible-to-access room. Once you return to the hallway, you’re back in side-scrolling mode.

The purpose of these rooms is to seemingly confuse the hell out of the player, provide some reasonably spooky atmosphere, and to load you up on ammo and health for the warp zones. Since every room looks the same in terms of its design, it’s incredibly easy to get lost or turned around. Making a map (or just finding one online in our blessed day and age) is critical to finding your way through the mansion. Also, every time you return from a warp zone, every door, window, dresser, hole in the wall, etc. is reset, like you never even touched them. On one hand, all the items are replenished so you can acquire more ammo or health, should you need it (you will). On the other hand, you have to go through a bunch of the same mansion rooms again and again and again because there are eleven warp zones and they only get harder as you go.

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Let’s say you’re at full health, you have lots of ammo, and you’re ready to shoot some monsters in their gnarled faces. Where the warp zones at?! Well, they’re all in the mansion, but the game doesn’t give you any hints on their location. Usually with obtuse Japanese games like these, the American manual will provide a necessary clue or two to help you progress. The Dr. Chaos manual provides none. Me, I used an FAQ, I’m not an eight-year-old with hours of free time on my hands.

After spending so much time in the mansion, I was pretty hyped to transition to the warp zones and actually get something done. Unfortunately, the warp zones are just lackluster side-scrolling sections that take place in jungles, caves, and in one instance, a dungeon. Enemies are everywhere and, like any good late 80s NES game, one hit from them will send you flying backwards; R.I.P. your sanity. The guns and grenades are helpful, but sometimes the enemies juggle your scrawny body back and forth between them and there’s no shooting your way out of that. If you can get to the warp zone boss, kill it, collect the items (some of which give you additional armor or abilities), then you still have to trek back through the warp zone again to return to the house.

The thought of entering four or five warp zones, let alone eleven, filled me with more dread than anything on the cover. Dr. Chaos is, at its core, a janky side-scrolling platformer with enough ambiguous adventure to make the game seem more interesting than it actually is. I sort of enjoyed myself in the beginning while I was exploring the mansion and collecting ammo and health along the way. But once I entered the warp zones, my thought was “This is it?” The first warp zone was boring. The second warp zone was boring and cheap. The third warp zone, which I accidentally stumbled into, was immediately brutal. The water started draining my health and I couldn’t jump out of it to proceed beyond where I entered. Clearly, I needed items I didn’t have yet, but still, what the heck? How were kids supposed to figure any of this crap out without tons of trial-and-error? The late 80s were a different time, certainly, but as someone who vaguely remembers that bygone era, kids were still only willing to put up with a certain amount of cryptic direction in their video games before they gave up entirely. Dr. Chaos doesn’t provide enough return for the investment asked.

D+

Super Team Games

PUBLISHER: Nintendo

DEVELOPER: Human Entertainment

RELEASE DATE: Nov. 27th, 1987 (JP), Nov. 1988 (US)

HOW LONG I PLAYED: 30-40 (ish) sweaty, out-of-shape minutes. Long enough to try each activity.

WOULD PLAY AGAIN?: If there was no other form of exercise available, maybe.

The following post was written in 2013 when I was 13 years younger. I still have my Power Pad and this game, but the thought of playing it again by myself does not fill me with joy. If I was a younger man and/or had kids I could play with, then I definitely would.

I don’t possess the athletic endurance of a professional runner by any means, but I’m in decent shape. I eat healthy, I have a slim physique, I keep relatively active. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t make it through one pathetic obstacle course of Super Team Games without sucking down large amounts of oxygen and water. Either I’m in much worse shape than I think I am, my Power Pad wasn’t responding properly to my pounding feet, or Super Team Games is designed for Olympians.

Like Athletic World or World Class Track Meet, Super Team Games is a series of athletic events designed to get kids off their butts, while keeping them glued to the television.

“Obstacle Course A” dishes out the Log Hop, Water Cross, Wall Jump, and Sprint. These are varied events that you’d think would take advantage of the Power Pad’s twelve buttons on its B side. In reality, you’ll only need to run and jump on buttons 5 and 6 for all four events. Now it might seem silly for the Pad to only use two of its twelve buttons, but to Bandai’s credit, limiting the range of your movement helps you focus on your speed. You’ll need to be lightning fast and have serious stamina on reserve in order to a) complete all the events at once and b) beat your opponent. Ollie, the slowest opponent, was still slightly faster than me, let alone Jimmy and Jack, both of whom surely ate an all-Wheaties diet in preparation for the course.

“Obstacle Course B” changes the formula slightly with Belly Bump Ball, Crab Walk, Bubble Run, and Sprint. Belly Bump Ball has you running on the ever-faithful 5 and 6 buttons, while Crab Walk contorts your body so your hands and feet are on opposite ends of the pad. It’s a nice change of pace before the treacherous Bubble Run. You’re supposed to blow up bubbles on buttons 1 and 2 and keep a solid pace on 5 and 6, all with your feet. Better just to use your hands and feet at the same time and save yourself the trouble.

The “Skateboard Race” and “Super Obstacle Course” are the final two one-player options. The latter is both obstacle courses put together all in one shot. If you can take on eight events at one time without passing out, then you have a bull’s heart or ox lungs or both. In the “Skateboard Race,” you place your feet on the 5 and 9 pads respectively. Tap 5 to get your speed up, and when debris appears, jump and land on 5 and 9 or else you’ll biff and be laughed at by Jimmy and Jack. Not Ollie, though. His low self-esteem allows him to sympathize with your failings.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find five people and an extra Power Pad to indulge in some of the multiplayer Tournament options. It’s a shame too, since these events look to be the most fun of the entire game. In the 6-legged race, each team has to have three players standing on alternate buttons on the Power Pad. The goal is to move in unison, so if the players are out of sync with their movements, nothing will happen. The Tug of War is the same basic principle: everyone runs as fast as they can on the buttons to lend power to their tugs. The Relay takes the events from the obstacle courses, but instead of one person completing them all at once like some demigod, you pass off a baton to a different player when a new character appears on screen.

The summer-camp atmosphere in Super Team Games is endearing, but my inability to complete the courses without feeling like an overweight chain smoker doesn’t make me want to revisit them. If only there were a practice mode, something that enables you to play one event at a time to build up your stamina. Alas, Bandai disagreed. To paraphrase Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, you beat the obstacle course all at once or die tryin’. I applaud Bandai and Nintendo for challenging us Americans – both children and adults who act like children – to better ourselves through brief, strenuous bouts of exercise. But I think I speak for millions of Americans when I say, thank God the challenge is optional.

B-

If you were anything like me growing up – a lower middle-class white kid whose parents didn’t have much expendable income – then you cherished birthdays and Christmas. Those were the two times of the year you could count on the big gifts, the gifts that cost more than a few dollars to obtain.

That’s right, I’m talking about video games. Games that you couldn’t afford on your meager allowance. Games that cost weeks if not months to save up for, even if you did a bunch of chores and mowed your granny’s lawn and delivered papers all across creation. Birthday and Christmas were the two times of the year that your parents tolerated you asking for a $60 game.

I turned 41 today. I’ve been able to buy my own games for awhile now, so getting a game for one’s birthday, while a much-welcome throwback to a simpler time, doesn’t quite hit the same as it did when I was 9.

Nevertheless, I have received some choice gaming-related gifts over the years, gifts that resonate to this day, due to both the giver and the impact the gift has had on my life. Why not discuss a few of them? Why not indeed!

THE METROID PILLOW (2006)

I’m not sure if my wife made this for me for Christmas or my birthday one year, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a Metroid pillow. Look at it. It will suck your life away in the most adorable fashion.

For the last 18 years, the Metroid pillow has been a presence in all our homes, a force to be reckoned with. It doesn’t stare at people, but it does ask people to ponder its existence. When we were in our 20s and most of our friends played video games, the pillow was embraced, revered even. But now that we’re in our late 30s/early 40s, the friends that do occasionally come over to our house aren’t gamers. If they see the pillow, they choose not to remark on it. I think that makes my wife and I the weird ones, right?

But I don’t care! The Metroid pillow is one of the coolest gifts I’ve ever gotten, and I still get a thrill when I look at it.

To my wife, Carissa: Thanks for always knowing what to make me, hon. I love and appreciate you always.

ZOMBIES ATE MY NEIGHBORS (BIRTHDAY 1994)

Receiving a gaming gift from an extended relative is usually a thrill, but it can also be a gamble. Does your grandma know you’d rather have Doom, not Lester the Unlikely? Can your auntie be trusted to know that Super Mario 64 is the game every kid wants, not Bubsy 3D?

My uncle Keith bought me Zombies Ate My Neighbors for my ninth birthday, completely out of the blue. I’m convinced he bought the game because the name made him laugh, and the cover reminded him of cheesy horror movies from his youth. In other words, he was flying blind when he bought this game. Was it good? Who cares, it looks weird, kids are into weird stuff, Dillweed1 will love it.

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And I did! Zombies Ate My Neighbors is like every horror movie cliché crammed into one overwhelming, egregiously hard video game. Save the hapless neighbors, avoid the monsters, specifically the chainsaw-wielding maniac, the dolls that throw knives, or the enormous baby who can crush you with one fell stomp. I loved the game’s trashy vibe, even though I never got very far.

Uncle Keith loved how ridiculous the game was, and I was glad he wanted to watch me play. A biker dude with questionable morals and friends, Keith never seemed to fit into our family, and he knew it. He did what he could in the uncle department, though. When he moved close by for a couple years, we bonded here and there. He let me punch his six-pack as hard as I could. He gave me words to live by (“Hemorrhoids suck dude, start eating well now”). He introduced me to Jim Carrey’s filmography. He did his best.

Not long after Keith gave me Zombies Ate My Neighbors, his mom, my grandma, passed away, and our family was thrown into turmoil. I only saw him alive a couple more times after that. He passed in 2005 after a motorcycle accident.

You’re more than a single gift, Keith. Thanks for making an effort with your nephew. Love ya, man.

THE NES (1989 or 1990)

Forgive me if I’ve told this story elsewhere on this Substack, but this specific gift really is my origin story.

One random day, my Dad came home with an NES Action Set, the one with two controllers, a Zapper, and the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo cartridge. My four-year-old mind was blown, I couldn’t believe it. Could we afford this? Did I even know what my parents could afford at this point?

All I knew was life had been hard for awhile. We had moved into a house in midtown Tucson, but it was a rundown fixer upper. Dad was more than up to the task of making the house look great, but it took time. Especially when you’re four and every day feels like a year.

My room was the worst of all. It had an eerie feel, like someone was always watching you. The walls and floor were pure concrete, which gave the room a prison vibe. I wasn’t a fan of the dark on any occasion, but my room was like that rich oil black darkness, pure evil; night light was required for me to get any sleep. I also fell out of bed one night while I was asleep and smashed my front teeth. Baby teeth, thank God, but it hurt, and there was blood everywhere. Whatever demonic thing that was creeping on me was probably thrilled.

My dad gave me the NES in the midst of the chaos – I think. I don’t know for sure. But it would make sense. Consoles were expensive even back then, and my parents were pouring thousands of dollars into renovating their new house. If life was going well, they would have no need to give their child a huge gift not at birthday or Christmas.

I not only appreciate my dad’s generosity, but I see it as the gateway into my lifelong fascination with video games as a medium. None of us could have known in the late 80s/early 90s what video games would become, but to see games evolve in real time into what they are now has been a unique pleasure and privilege.

So thanks Dad (and Mom, who would buy me future consoles and games) for inadvertently starting your only son on a journey that continues three decades later. I know that was not your intent, but I’m grateful, nonetheless. Love you both forever.

What are some of your favorite gaming gifts over the years? Feel free to share in the comments below!

*images courtesy of the author, @nintendo64kids, GameFAQs, Nintendo Fandom, and Reddit

Bubble Bobble

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Taito

RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1988 (US), Oct. 26th, 1990 (EU)

HOW LONG I PLAYED: 30 minutes, or the equivalent of 15 or so levels.

WOULD PLAY AGAIN?: With a friend, yes.

Forget it, Dylan… it’s Co-op Town…

Bubble Bobble is meant to be played with two players. The often-claustrophobic levels are designed around two players, the game stars two dinosaurs Bub and Bob, and you can’t even get the good ending unless you beat the last boss with – that’s right – two players. And yet, every time I turn on Bubble Bobble for one of my mad “play every game on everything” quests, I always do it wrong. I always play by myself.

Single-player doesn’t automatically make the game suck or anything, but it does feel like a limitation, a hindrance. The enemies move faster than you and can overwhelm you quicker than you can blow all the bubbles at them. And anyway, Bubble Bobble doesn’t see you playing by yourself as a sign that you’re “just that good, you don’t need another player to help you reach the end” sort of thing. Rather, the game encourages you to be social, to trust a friend with their side of the screen. Perhaps if you both work together and trap all the bad guys in bubble prisons, you’ll accomplish more than just beating the game. You’ll grow as a human being.

Or maybe not, I don’t know, who cares. The point is, I know I’ve been playing Bubble Bobble wrong all these years, but for whatever reason, I just keep doing it. Maybe I need therapy, or maybe I just need to find “the right person,” the Bub to my Bob if you will. Until then, I’m a lone wolf and I’m rollin’ through as much of Bubble Bobble as I can… solo.

Deadly Dinosaur Bubbles

Bubble Bobble has a classic mid-80s arcade premise. You control Bub (or Bob), and you blow bubbles at enemies within a single-screen arena. The stages start out with simple designs, horizontal and vertical platforms arranged in basic patterns. As you progress, though, the stage design grows more complex and bizarre – and more difficult to navigate. Usually anywhere between four and seven enemies are strewn throughout the area. Trap them in bubbles, then pop them all to move to the next stage. You can pop them by jumping on them, bum rushing them, or trapping them between a wall. Special items sometimes appear to give you bonus points or clear the screen of enemies. There are a surprising variety of enemies that appear as you progress, all of whom have hilarious names like “Stoner,” “Drunk,” and “Hullaballoon.” One touch from an enemy and Bub and Bob lose a life. Three lives, you’re out, but you do have unlimited continues.

By stage 10 (out of 100+ stages), it becomes clear why Taito wants you to have a second player along for the journey. Enemies are plentiful and they move erratically. The dead-eyed Belugas in particular fly crazily around the screen, they are the absolute worst. One small miscalculation on an enemy’s movement, you’ll crash into them, and Bub (or Bob) is down. Oh, and if you take too long on any given level, Baron von Blubba (a skeleton Beluga) emerges and chases you around the screen. He can’t be killed, so you’ll either complete the level fast or join him in the underworld.

Don’t You… Forget About Me…

There’s a reason Bubble Bobble has been ported to nearly every console and handheld in some form over the last 40 years. It’s a near-perfect co-op arcade game, made for bite-sized runs or mammoth endurance treks towards the “final” fight with Super Drunk and beyond. Playing Bubble Bobble alone is fine, but never quite compels beyond a few stages. Indeed single-player feels like a concession, like designer Fukio Mitsuji had to include it because some Taito higher ups made him. “People don’t always have friends to play with!” some well-meaning executive may have exclaimed. “Whatever you say, boss,” and off Mitsuji goes, adding a single-player option where one should probably not have been. Mitsuji has the last laugh, of course. You can’t beat the game properly without a friend. As the old song goes, it takes two to make a thing go right. It takes two to make it outta sight.

IT TAKES TWO: A- (probably)

ALL BY MYSELF: C+

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Cobra Command

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Data East

RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21st, 1988 (JP), Nov. 1988 (US)

HOW LONG I PLAYED: My patience ran out in the 2nd level.

WOULD PLAY AGAIN?: Not if I can help it.

2 Tuff 2 Furious

When we consider the hardest NES games of all time, what comes to mind? The Ninja Gaiden trilogy, no doubt (especially the third one). Contra and Super C, perhaps. Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. But are these really the hardest NES games? Or are they the hardest NES games that millions of kids actually played? I think the latter point is why I never hear Cobra Command mentioned as one of the toughest. Few played Cobra Command. Fewer still got past the first stage without severe weeping and gnashing of teeth. In my current quest to play and review every game ever released for a Nintendo console/handheld, it is the hardest NES game I have played thus far.

Not a Cobra in Sight

Perhaps Cobra Command would be more memorable if there was a unique protagonist to relate with. Instead, you control a nondescript military helicopter, assigned with the task of rescuing dozens of hostages across various dangerous locations around the world a la Choplifter. Locations such as Sumatra, Borneo, the South China Sea, and the most dangerous of all, Enemy Headquarters. Your helicopter is initially equipped with unlimited single shots and unlimited mono missiles, but as you progress and take over enemy depots, the ‘copter can receive upgraded weapons, armor, and even engine parts.

Upgrades are all fine and good but surviving long enough to get them is tricky. From the first stage, your helicopter is bombarded by enemy vehicles, like tanks, helicopters, and turrets. The onslaught is relentless and respawns with no mercy. Helicopters and other aircraft shoot at you while turrets launch bombs in your direction. All the while a poor hostage tries to climb into your helicopter while wondering if he’s safer with his captors.

The best shoot-em-ups have a rhythm to them, and once you lock in, you become one with your vehicle and avoid enemy hits with relative ease. Cobra Command does not have this. You’re constantly starting and stopping the helicopter, looking for hostages or shooting weak points on fortresses while trying to avoid oncoming enemy fire. The hostages do climb up on their own, thankfully, but the fortress weak points need to be shot a certain amount of times before they eventually explode and reveal underground pathways.

On land, the helicopter deals with other terrorist vehicles all up in his space. Underground, however, he must proceed cautiously, lest he run into a wall or some other barrier. Less enemies inhabit underground, thankfully, but these areas are still very dense and thus more difficult to navigate.

One other minor (but still important) Cobra Command grievance: ‘Select’ is used to pause the game instead of ‘Start.’ I can’t tell you how many times I pressed ‘Start’ expecting the game to pause, only to see the helicopter turn in the opposite direction. The ‘Select’ menu screen allows you to change any options you want from there, and once you’re done, you press ‘Exit’ to go back to the game. The game doesn’t immediately start, though. Rather, it primes you with a message “Ready!” … “Go!” before launching you back out. I suppose they did this to allow you time to prepare, but it feels jarring instead.

Won’t You… Forget About Me…

I want to write that Cobra Command plays well despite the high difficulty and the funky ‘Start’ ‘Select’ debacle. But the more I ponder my time with it, the less I believe that. The difficulty is off-putting, yes, but the clunky mechanics prevent me from wanting to get better and progress further in the game. I never felt fully in control of the helicopter, nor did the helicopter ever seem like a powerful enough figure to destroy all that the enemy throws at you, even with the few upgrades I managed to acquire. The game has no rhythm, unless you consider continuous deaths a “flow” of sorts. I dunno. Even though Cobra Command deserves a spot on a “Hardest NES Games” list, the game is just so frustrating and forgettable that it’s hard to blame people for not remembering it exists.

D

OPERATION SECRET STORM

Even in the realm of video games, Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world. Or at least developers Color Dream thought as much when they made him the antagonist to the 1992 unlicensed Operation Secret Storm (not at all related to actual operations during the Gulf War, how dare you suggest otherwise).

You control CIA agent George B. in an unwieldy world filled with magic carpets, nude terrorists, and other vaguely insulting inferences. Despite being a CIA agent, G. Bush doesn’t have a gun, so he’ll have to stop Saddam’s onslaught with his kicks, knife, and occasional rhetoric (“be more like the Waltons, and less like the Simpsons!”). The game barely functions, and that’s not hyperbole. The enemies and ol’ Georgy B. himself don’t move properly, they float and fly all across the screen, like they’ve just ingested a bunch of mescaline.

It’s a scene, man. A bad scene, a scene you don’t want anything to do with. Like when someone you thought was a friend asks you to get high with them in some pitch-black bathroom stall, but really, they just want to play Operation Secret Storm with you in the dark. Just walk away.

BUT HOW PATRIOTIC IS IT REALLY?: What’s more patriotic than assassinating a dictator of a foreign country and his cronies?

No guns, though. That’s points off.

BAD DUDES

When General Duke Nukem tells you the President has been kidnapped by ninjas, then asks if you are a bad enough dude to rescue him, if your answer is anything but “sir, yes sir,” you are a communist.

Bad Dudes is a generic beat-em-up game, which means, unfortunately, no guns here either. It is what you’d expect. Rambling fisticuffs in the streets. The game is put together slightly better than Operation Secret Storm in that, Bad Dudes is a game you can physically complete, should you desire. Also, points to General Duke for bypassing the US military altogether and believing in two lowly street warriors’ abilities to vanquish evil ninjas and rescue the President.

As with most beat-em-ups, Bad Dudes is best enjoyed with a friend by your side. The ninjas come hard and fast and you’ll want your dude Striker’s assistance.

BUT HOW PATRIOTIC IS IT REALLY?: Once you rescue President Bush (President Reagan in the arcade version), he’s grateful and invites you to have a burger with him before laughing maniacally. The end credits feature you and the President standing in front of the White House, burgers in hand, grinning like it’s the end of your favorite sitcom, while bureaucrats with no faces loom in the background. The 80s were a different time.

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RACE AMERICA

The word “America” is in the title, so we’re off to a good start here. And Race America delivers what it promises. Pick from one of eight moderately offensive caricatures (Mike Linguini and Ito Speedo? Lord help us), get in a fast car, shut up and drive. You start the race in Boston, then to New York, Washington D.C. and so on, until you reach Los Angeles. This is a 1-on-1 race, and while there is the occasional motorbike or hapless motorist in your way, you and your rival are the only freedom-loving, fast-driving yahoos on the great American highways.

The racing is serviceable (mind the potholes, collect the gas cans, etc). The graphics are low-budget and terrible, particularly for 1992. And the tracks all largely feel the same, despite each track being in different parts of the country. But if you’re in the mood for some zone-out, flag-wavin’, boot-scootin’ boogie across the Best Country in the World, Race America is definitely a game you could play.

BUT HOW PATRIOTIC IS IT REALLY?: Putting your muscle car in sixth gear while you race from the birthplace of the American Revolution all the way to Babylon, is almost as American as cooling an apple pie on a window sill.

Have any favorite patriotic games on the NES or otherwise? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!

Anticipation

PUBLISHER: Nintendo

DEVELOPER: Rare

RELEASE DATE: November or December 1988 (US), Oct. 25th, 1989 (EU)

HOW LONG I PLAYED: Completed one full game against the computer.

WOULD PLAY AGAIN?: With people, yes. By myself, no.

Video board games are rare enough, but you know what’s unheard of? Original video board games not based on pre-existing property, like Monopoly or Clue. Anticipation is indeed a Rare original (with music by famed composer David Wise, no less) and it plays like a random board game you’d find in your grandparents’ closet. High praise indeed!

Anticipation is a 1-4 player game with each player controlling a seemingly random icon, like a pair of expensive high heels or a discarded teddy bear. If four humans want to play, two people will have to share one controller; the game released before any four-controller adapter like the NES Four Score. Otherwise, you can play against up to three computer-controlled opponents of varying skill.

The game has three levels, with each level consisting of a circular board containing four colors, yellow, red, blue, and green. When an icon lands on a color, you’re taken to a screen where a pencil will draw a crude picture based on a particular subject, like Food or Science. Guess the picture correctly before your opponent, and you’ll collect the color. While you watch the picture form, a die in the upper right corner slowly counts down from six to nothing. When you guess the picture correctly, whatever number the die shows is the number of steps your icon will take on the board. Collect all four colors on the board, and you’ll transport up to a new level with the same colors, but more difficult challenges. The first person to complete all three levels is the winner.

The challenge of Anticipation lies in your comprehension of the game’s often obtuse scrawling. If you can tell that the pencil is trying to draw a poorly rendered hot dog faster than your opponent(s), then you’re already one step ahead. Most pictures are unclear. Some are downright bewildering. This is the NES, after all. Plus, the game is trying to emulate Pictionary to a degree, and nobody that plays that game can ever draw.

The die does provide a touch of strategy, which is welcome. Initially, I’d solve a puzzle quickly, not wanting my opponent to win. But if I solved the puzzle and the die number lead me to a color that I already had, my guessing the picture correctly didn’t amount to much. Basically, you want to solve the puzzle when the die lands on the number that will lead you to the colors you need. Otherwise, you’ll be moving in circles aimlessly.

To Rare’s credit, Anticipation really does feel like the type of sleepy board game you and your siblings played on a rainy afternoon at your grandparents. These types of games weren’t always fun, per say, but making fun of your brother for not knowing that a TV camera is science at least helped stave off pure boredom for a few hours. If that sort of pining for simpler times sounds nostalgic to you, step right up.

C-

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Blaster Master

PUBLISHER: Sunsoft

DEVELOPER: “Tokai Engineering” (aka Sunsoft)

RELEASE DATE: Jun. 17th, 1988 (JP), November 1988 (US), Apr. 25th, 1991 (EU)

HOW LONG I PLAYED: Beat 3 out of 8 areas.

WOULD PLAY AGAIN?: Yes.

According to the Blaster Master manual, there’s a guy named Jason with a pet frog named Fred. Jason presumably loves Fred, but Fred’s sick of living in a cramped fishbowl. Remembering that he’s a frog, Fred leaps out of the fishbowl and hightails it away from Jason and his frog prison. Jason chases Fred outside and right into a radioactive chest where he sees Fred grow to unreasonable proportions. The chest and Fred fall into the earth, and when Jason tries to grab Fred, both frog and human descend into the darkness. Jason lands next to an armored car named S.O.P.H.I.A. (hereafter known as SOPHIA) and has an epiphany that he needs to destroy all the radioactive mutants living under the earth. He also decides to rescue Fred, even though Fred clearly wants to live free in the suburban wilderness.

I can’t count how many times this has happened to me personally. I always think, “Surely this will be the last time I chase my pet frog down a hole deep into the earth and destroy yet another radioactive mutant society.” But nope. Every so often, I’ll be sitting at my computer or baking bread when I see my frog bolt out the front door, and the cycle begins anew.

Yeah, Blaster Master has a ridiculous story, made specifically for the American market. But that’s ok. If chasing after a pet frog got young boys in the 80s to play this Metroid-inspired game through to the bitter end, then so be it. (I hesitate to call this a Metroidvania since 1) the term hadn’t been invented yet, 2) Castlevania hadn’t entered its Symphony of the Night phase, and 3) the developers clearly loved the original Metroid).

The game starts with Jason in SOPHIA driving around the strange underground world and shooting ugly, weird things that look like they could hurt you. SOPHIA is a beast. She can jump really high, has super tight controls, and has a solid blaster cannon attached to her front. For the bulk of the game, you’ll explore with SOPHIA and thank goodness for that. When Jason steps outside of SOPHIA, he looks like Mario without a super mushroom. Very tiny. Very “not a hero” looking, despite his neat-o space suit.

Around the world are tiny rooms called cabins that are just right for little Jason to squeeze through. Once Jason enters these, the game shifts to a top-down perspective and Jason looks more like a normal-sized spaceman. Not every cabin contains important items, but cabins are where you’ll find boss battles. After you kill a boss, they’ll drop a SOPHIA upgrade like the Hover or Dive abilities, upgrades needed to unlock more of the world and progress further in the game.

Blaster Master and Metroid’s gameplay loops are nearly identical. Explore the overworld with SOPHIA. Find the cabin where Jason can enter and kill the boss. Use SOPHIA’s newly acquired upgrade to get further into the game. Backtrack unreasonable lengths to move into areas you couldn’t get to before. You’ve played Metroid before, you know how it goes.

Interestingly, actual Metroids are one of the enemies in the first area, and Mother Brain is name of the first boss (although she looks nothing like the Mother Brain we’re accustomed to in Metroid). Perhaps Sunsoft got Nintendo’s blessing, or perhaps this was just the late 80s and Nintendo didn’t know or care enough to take them to court. Either way, the cojones on Sunsoft for this!

While both games are old as sin, Blaster Master is slightly less grueling and has arguably aged better than Metroid. The latter has impeccable atmosphere and a stellar lead character, but the difficulty can be overwhelming at times. Also, Super Metroid is such an improvement that going back to the original feels almost pointless, unless you just want to see how the series evolved. Blaster Master has boring environments with zero personality (ah, another vague science-y room), but its peppy music, two different gameplay styles, and more reasonable challenge make it the easier of the two games to enjoy in modern day.

And besides, Metroid doesn’t involve a lost pet frog. Maybe Fred doesn’t amount to a hill of beans to most people, but he’s Jason’s frog, so go rescue him. And when you find him, tell Jason to give him a bigger living space. Fishbowls are for fish, and Fred deserves better.

B-

Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Nintendo

RELEASE DATE: November 1988 (US), December 1988 (EU)

I emerged from my mother’s womb, gasping for air, and clutching Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt in my right hand.

Or... maybe that never happened. Not physically, anyway. I was born in the summer of ‘85, a full three and a half years before the SMB/Duck Hunt combo cartridge would grace our sweet American shores within the NES Action Set. Also, the NES wouldn’t be released in America in any capacity until October 1985, another few months after my birth. Also, from what I understand, my mom’s womb was sealed tight until my exit. No NES carts in there!

No, I did not appear from my mom with the world’s most iconic combo cartridge in hand. But considering I received the NES Action Set at the tender age of four, I can truthfully say that my conscious mind doesn’t remember a time without Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt.

Like Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” or the first “Ghostbusters” film, SMB / Duck Hunt is one of those pure 80s creations that feels like it’s always existed.

For myself and millions of millennials, Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt was the pixelated gateway drug, the portal to new dimensions. We had all experienced moving images on our television set from an early age. Now, with Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt, we were asked to actively participate in what was happening on screen.

When Mario jumped, we jumped.

When Mario increased in size with a Mushroom, we too grew several feet taller.

When Mario ran into a Goomba, we cried and fell on the floor.

We weren’t simple. We had just become one with a paunchy, mustachioed Brooklyn plumber. His triumphs were our triumphs. His pain was our pain. No mere television show could produce such reactions. Video games were a brave new world, one that could consume us if we weren’t careful.

Of course, Super Mario Bros. is the real breadwinner in this relationship. SMB is an Adventure with a capital ‘A.’ 32 smoothly scrolling levels, it changed video games forever, Mario still controls like a dream, yada yada yada, a true American classic, except it’s as Japanese as it gets.

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Duck Hunt is the game where you shoot ducks. And clay targets, if you’re feeling like your dad. There’s that goofy dog that laughs at you when you miss. He’s amusing, although lots of folks that live on the Internet seem to hate him.

What would our young lives had been like if Nintendo had paired two of their great early adventures – SMB and Metroid or Kid Icarus – together instead of SMB and Duck Hunt? Too much greatness in one combo cart? Or was Nintendo implying that we should complement our larger adventure with smaller, more immediate fare, like Duck Hunt or Hogan’s Alley? Without Duck Hunt‘s perhaps inevitable placement in the combo cart, we wouldn’t have received that quintessential piece of 80s tech, the neon orange Zapper. And a childhood without a futuristic video game gun isn’t much of a childhood at all.

Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt is one of the most ubiquitous NES games, and thus, can be found for a few dollars used online. Loose copies of the original Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt are much more rare than the combo carts and cost several dollars more.

Today, Super Mario Bros. is the first entry into a universe-conquering franchise. Duck Hunt is still a lone NES title where you shoot ducks (and/or father-approved clay targets) with your canine companion. While Nintendo likely never viewed them as games of similar quality, they each sold different, at-the-time equally important aspects of Nintendo’s new “Entertainment System.” If you didn’t like Super Mario Bros. (you monster), you could shoot virtual ducks to your heart’s content with the Zapper. If you didn’t like Duck Hunt, you could go save the Princess again and again.

There will never be a world without Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt. Even if all of the combo carts are rounded up and buried in the New Mexico desert somewhere, the millions of personal memories made from this most blessed of pairings will permeate our atmosphere for generations to come.

A+

We’ve all been through seasons in our lives where we get a little too set in ways we think or in our actions, to the point where they become detrimental to our personal growth. I’m not sure what’s going on in 2026, but I’ve been pummeled (in a good way) by a series of significant changes that I don’t think I asked for, but maybe I did? Changes that specifically affect the way I view life and why I do what I do.

Some of these changes relate to gaming and to this Substack as a whole. As such, I’d like to share with you a handful of shifts that have happened or are happening to me or to this Substack.

Let’s start with a fun one first…

#1 - SUBSCRIBERS

My subscriber count was in the doldrums for most of 2025, and frankly, I was used to it. I don’t want to say I didn’t care, but I was enjoying writing, and that’s really what it’s all about, right? That’s what we writers say, anyway.

Well, out of nowhere, my subscriber count soared in March, April and May, eventually tripling what it was at the beginning of the year. I have no idea why this happened. Bots? Humans? Ethereal spirit beings? Come one, come all, I guess.

Things have slowed down since May, but that springtime boost was most unexpected and welcome.

#2 – SELL ‘EM ALL

While my subscriber base was going up like the Dow, my perspective on my retro gaming collection completely changed. Essentially, I realized that I don’t want the majority of these consoles and games anymore. It’s been years since I’ve played most of them or thought about them. They sit in boxes or on shelves, unused and unloved. What’s strange is, my position on my collection changed more or less overnight.

One day, I couldn’t imagine parting with my SNES collection. The next day, I’m selling it to my cousin for a few hundred bucks. Very, very surreal.

Since March, I’ve been slowly selling my goods on eBay/craigslist or taking stuff into my local used goods store, Bookmans, and getting trade credit for them. And yet, for as much as I’ve offloaded, I still have so much left to sell. I’m still not sure what precipitated this change, but it feels like the more I get rid of, the more room I make - not just in my house, but within myself. Like these old games and consoles were keeping me from moving forward, somehow.

#3 – STREAMLINING

In addition to my physical clutter, I also have a “web presence” clutter - a bunch of sites and junk online that I don’t update or use anymore.

Specifically, two websites (Questicle and Sega Does, for the old heads) and two other Substacks, the Sonoran Videogame Society and The Kingdom Age. I wouldn’t call any of these defunct, per say, but I don’t use them anymore and, unfortunately for me, they still occupy space in my brain. The Substacks thankfully cost nothing to keep around, but I will likely just shut them both down. I do pay for hosting and email for the websites, though, and like most folks, I don’t like paying for things I don’t use.

My plan is to slowly consolidate all the work I want to keep from my websites onto Substack. Sega Does will receive its own separate Substack sometime later this year. If I decide to keep Questicle content, I’ll move it into its own section on “Nintendo is Great” somewhere. But I dunno. That work is really old and embarrassing. Perhaps it’s time to let it go.

#4 – HOW I VIEW “NINTENDO IS GREAT”

I still love writing for “Nintendo is Great.” That said, I feel the need to readjust a little. Or perhaps give myself permission to readjust.

As most of you know, “Nintendo is Great” is a Substack dedicated to reviewing every game ever released for a Nintendo console and handheld in chronological order. For the bulk of the Substack’s life, this has meant primarily NES reviews, starting back in October 1985 with the test launch of the NES in America. Only recently have I jumped out of the chronological timeline to introduce Game Boy, Virtual Boy, and Game Boy Advance games.

But friends, I gotta be honest. I really haven’t enjoyed going out of chronological order. I did it mostly to provide some variety to longtime readers and hopefully bring in some additional subscribers. Perhaps it’s accomplished those things, but for whatever reason – OCD, probably – introducing these systems early feels like I’m not being true to myself and this Substack’s original purpose.

So after this post, I’m going back to my original timeline, back to November 1988. No more Game Boy games until I hit 1990. No more Virtual Boy games until I hit 1995. No more GBA games until 2001. Such is life.

I want people to read my work and enjoy it, but if I’m not fully loving what I’m doing, how I’m feeling will show up in the final product.

(If I’m being honest, I’m not sure people care about the chronological progression as much as I do. That’s fine, but… I really do care).

As a slight caveat to all this, I do still plan to feature intermittent articles outside the chronological timeline. Ranked lists, Nintendo Direct articles, and some other stuff I don’t want to share just yet.

THE GREAT RESET

This year is only halfway done, and I know more changes are on the horizon. All of this is more than enough for now, though.

If you’ve made it this far and you’re still subscribed, thanks so much for reading!

I’m curious… How has your year been so far? Any big changes on the horizon? If you feel comfortable sharing, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

*image from PCMagUK

I’m not sure anyone cares as much as I do about the chronological aspect of my quest, but for those paying extremely close attention, my next game after Army Men Advance should be Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. Lord willing, I will get to that next week, but it’s been two decades since I’ve played it, and I wanted to give it a fair shake. Please look forward to it.

On with the post!

ChuChu Rocket!

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Sonic Team

RELEASE DATE: Mar. 21st, 2001 (JP), Jun. 11th, 2001 (US), Dec. 7th, 2001 (EU)

On January 31^st, 2001, the unthinkable happened: Sega became a third-party developer. The creators of the Master System, the Mega Drive/Genesis, and the Game Gear announced that they could no longer justify the expense of making consoles.

While the Sega diehards – those who supported the Saturn and Dreamcast from the beginning and through their dying breaths – mourned, gamers worldwide rejoiced. No longer would Sega’s outstanding franchise titles, like the Sonic and Virtua Fighter series, be shackled to a platform that few were buying.

Sega wasted no time porting then-recent Dreamcast titles over to their former competitors’ systems. First on the list: ChuChu Rocket! for Game Boy Advance, just in time for the handheld’s launch. For the first time ever (not including unlicensed titles and rom hacks), a Sega-developed game was on Nintendo hardware.

And what a game! ChuChu Rocket is an all-time classic puzzler, the kind that are easy to understand, difficult to master, and unbelievably addictive.

Each level consists of a single square room where you guide the ChuChus to – yes - a rocket. You don’t control the ChuChus directly, though. Rather, you place down directional arrows and create a path for the ChuChus to follow. When you’re confident with your path, press the ‘R’ button to set them loose. If your path leads to destruction or madness (ChuChus running around in an eternal circle), press ‘L’ to reset the ChuChus and try again. The level ends when all the ChuChus reach the rockets and they blast off to the next Space Port. Hindering the ChuChus’ success are the always-hungry robot cats, KapuKapus. If any ChuChus cross the KapuKapu’s path, they’ll be eaten and you’ll have to start the level over again.

In the Dreamcast version, players could go online and compete against other players in Battle Mode. Multi-colored ChuChus, redirecting KapuKapus to eat your opponents, it was a wild ride. Since the GBA had no online capabilities, however, multiplayer was achieved through the Link Cable. Up to four players – in 4P Battle Mode or 2-v-2 Team Battle – can contend for the top ChuChu Rocketeer position. While this does require four Link Cables, thankfully, you only need one copy of the game to play with others.

The GBA version is bursting with content. In addition to the Sega-made levels and the aforementioned multiplayer modes, ChuChu Rocket! also boasts 2500 user-made levels, culled from the Dreamcast game’s online servers. Special Challenge stages force you to complete tasks in thirty seconds or less. You can create up to 25 stages and even your own four-frame, fully animated custom character to replace the ChuChus, then share said levels/character with friends via the Link Cable.

As great as ChuChu Rocket! was on the Dreamcast, the game feels made for a handheld. The bite-sized levels just lend themselves to quick on-the-go gaming sessions. Sure, the sprite-based graphics are a technical step down from the polygonal graphics, and the multiplayer here is cumbersome. But when you’re solving galaxy-brain difficult levels and feeling like the ultimate brilliant humanitarian for saving thousands of ChuChus while riding the bus, really, nothing else matters.

A

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Earthworm Jim

PUBLISHER: Majesco

DEVELOPER: Game Titan (original by Shiny Entertainment)

RELEASE DATE: Jun. 11th, 2001 (US), Sept. 21st, 2001 (EU)

Depending on who you ask, Earthworm Jim is a ‘90s relic or a ‘90s classic, filled with the kind of off-beat, gross-out humor that millennials once cherished. There’s lots of barfing, green slime, fart noises, and of course, the infamous Queen-Slug-For-a-Butt. If you had told me back in the day that the game was published by Nickelodeon, nine-year-old Dylan would have believed you.

Personally, I think the humor of Earthworm Jim has held up pretty well, which means I’m probably still nine years old. Within the first couple minutes, you launch a cow into space using a stick and a refrigerator. Doesn’t get any funnier than that! But while the original Genesis and SNES versions more or less hold up today (depending on your affinity for older platformers), this GBA port is the epitome of jank.

Immediately upon entering New Junk City, something feels off. Jim and his surroundings are slower and chunkier than normal. Sure enough, as I move forward onto the stacks of tires, I notice that the game is running at a maximum 10-15 frames-per-second. Ok, not ideal, but I can power through that, right? This is a handheld port, after all, I’ll give it a little grace. I then see a devious, smiling crow fly towards me. I whip it, but it doesn’t die, and it’s supposed to die immediately after one head whip. I try again. Finally, the third time, it connects – but I’m not sure what action I performed differently. Meanwhile, until I finally kill the crow, he’s pecking relentlessly at my poor worm head, and I want to throw the GBA across the room.

Let’s move on to the boss battle. Could be the sentient trashcan New Junk City fight or the Snowman in What the Heck?, doesn’t matter. These things take thousands of plasma shots to kill. Not an exaggeration! What’s worse is the game doesn’t provide all the ammunition needed within the level, so there are moments where you’ll be waiting for your plasma ammo to slowly refill so you can shoot the bosses again. Inexcusable! For the sake of science, I replayed the Genesis version to see how many hits the bosses take there. A few hundred as opposed to 1000+. Sanity as opposed to insanity.

Jim doesn’t respond as quickly to your inputs either, particularly after you stop shooting or whipping. For whatever reason, there’s always a fair amount of lag between attacking and coming out of the attack. Frustrating, especially when you’re trying to shoot quickly, and avoid any enemies or projectiles.

Earthworm Jim has been ported to a lot of different consoles and handhelds over the last three decades, and in theory, the GBA should have handled this 16-bit game with relative ease. Instead, we get a choppy framerate, slow response time, and bullet-sponge bosses made just for this jalopy of a port. Not exactly a stellar showcase for the GBA’s capabilities. Besides, if Sega could make a Dreamcast game run well on Nintendo’s little handheld, then Majesco and Game Titan have zero excuse.

D-

Thank you very much as always for reading! I hope the few minutes you spent reading this was enjoyable, and I hope the rest of your day only gets better from here.

Best,

DC

Army Men Advance

PUBLISHER: The 3DO Company

DEVELOPER: DC Studios

RELEASE DATE: Jun. 11th, 2001 (US), Jun. 15th, 2001 (EU)

An Abridged Military History

By the time Army Men Advance released on the GBA in 2001, The 3DO Company had already published and developed thirteen Army Men games in three years. Not even the infamously prolific Mega Man can boast such a record.

You couldn’t escape Army Men games in the late 90s if you wanted to. I remember… I was there…. Blockbuster and Toys ‘R Us were filled with PS1 and N64 titles emblazoned with green plastic goofballs. Most of the games were third-person shooters, as you might expect, but others ventured into real-time strategy. Constant mediocre-to-terrible reviews in magazines like EGM and Game Informer didn’t stop the series from selling like gangbusters for a couple years; presumably because older generations saw toy army men and assumed Little Billy would like Sarge’s Heroes – and learn a thing or two about patriotism.

By 2002, however, the Army Men party was more or less over. Despite great sales initially, The 3DO Company went bankrupt in 2003, and their assets sold to other companies. Take-Two Interactive, of all companies, acquired the rights to the franchise and gave it to one of their brands, Global Star Software, to manage. The latter released a couple of Army Men entries in the mid-2000s, neither of which performed or reviewed well. Two (presumably garbage) mobile games by random studios later, and the Army Men series is very defunct in 2026.

Army Men Advance is the first – and only – Army Men game to be developed by Canadian developers, DC Studios (no relation to the comics brand), and the first Army Men game at the time to not be developed by The 3DO Company. Does this random fact make any difference to the game’s quality? If the mixed reviews for this GBA entry are to be believed, not really. Personally, though, I don’t know. Army Men Advance is my first Army Men experience, so I can’t compare it to other entries in the series.

And after tinkering with the Green and Tan Army’s apparently eternal dispute, I can say that Army Men Advance is a perfectly serviceable kids’ title. My age range for “kids” in this case is between six and nine-years-old. If you’re ten and up, this is a baby game, and if you’re five and under, this might be a tad too violent.

War Never Changes

You control either Sarge or Vikki, and your goal is to stop the Tan Army from “world domination.” Yes, for some reason, the less-popular Tan soldiers really have it out for both the Green Plastic and Human Fleshly realms. In addition to dominating the planet, Plastro, the Tan Army’s evil leader, has also taken your companions Riff and Scorch. Go on, then: get captured by the Tan Army, infiltrate and destroy them from the inside, rescue Riff and Scorch, and be the baddest there ever was.

I don’t know who any of these characters are, save for Sarge, and only because he got a couple starring roles in different games. I wouldn’t call Army Men Advance lore-heavy by any means, but the game does seem to think that you already know some characters and backstory from previous titles.

It doesn’t matter, though. At its core, Army Men Advance is a simple top-down shooter with some very basic objectives peppered throughout the game’s twelve missions. Objectives like, “Destroy All Tan Vehicles,” “Find the Radio,” “Use The Green Army Boat to Escape,” and so on. Nothing to it, really. You walk around large-ish environments, shoot Tan soldiers, and complete the tasks given to you. Perfect for a seven-year-old.

If you’ve ever played a video game, none of this is really challenging, but the top-down perspective can present problems. Tan soldiers have no problem shooting diagonally, for example, but the GBA’s D-pad isn’t conducive to eight-way directional shooting. I preferred Vikki as a character over Sarge, simply because she was faster and could avoid enemy fire more easily.

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Weirder Than You Think

What Army Men Advance lacks in unique gameplay, it makes up for in quirks. Lots of quirks.

1. Using passwords to advance, for example. One might think passwords would be outdated by 2001, but not on handheld systems. Sure, some larger games used battery backup saves, but third-party titles – like this one – often used password systems since they were cheaper to put in the game.

2. Whenever a Tan soldier dies, they make a hilarious guttural death noise that never gets old, no matter how many times you hear it (and you’ll hear it a lot – what the Tan army lacks in charisma, it makes up for in sheer numbers). Sarge and Vikki also make noises when they take a bullet, but the enemy noises are far superior.

3. With the exception of the intro story scroll and the final boss fight, Army Men Advance has no music. All the better to hear those enemy death cries.

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4. The story never says that the Tan Army and the Green Army might just be controlled by kids goofing around, but some of the level design seems to hint at this. Early in the game, you’re in the Tan Army Training Camp, complete with barbed wire fence and exploding barrels, but a few levels later, you’re in a bathtub, guiding a tanker through water filled with mines and enemy tankers. Other home-based levels include a Hallway, a Bedroom, a Patio, and a Garage. I wasn’t expecting DC Studios to really lean into the shrunken toy theme here, but the levels that do make use of it are well-executed. Also makes me wonder if Plastro isn’t controlled by Syd, that creepy teenager from the first Toy Story.

5. Times were different in 2001. Which is why Army Men Advance is rated “E” for Everyone, even though you’re definitely killing hordes of tan soldiers and Vikki – a human, not a toy I guess? – is shamelessly stacked on the game’s cover.

Army Men Advance is not for me, and it’s not for you reading this. Numerous plastic soldier corpses and Vikki’s chest aside, Army Men Advance is for youngsters who have never played Commando or Guerrilla War before. The latter two games are better examples of the top-down shooting genre, sure, but they aren’t here on the GBA’s launch day; gotta take what you can get. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa and their fierce patriotic instincts, Little Billy will play his first shooting game. And whether you think kids playing shooters at a young age is a good thing or not, he could be playing far worse.

C+

Game Boy Advance

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Nintendo

RELEASE DATE: Mar. 21, 2001 (JP), Jun. 11th, 2001 (US), Jun. 22nd, 2001 (EU)

TOTAL GAMES: Sources vary, but including multipaks and games released in every region, upwards of 1500.

FIRST TIME

The memories are hazy at best.

I’m in California on vacation, June 2001. My best friend had just bought a Game Boy Advance and let me borrow it, along with Castlevania: Circle of the Moon… but that can’t be right, can it? We were teenagers then, and no matter how good of friends we were, there’s no way he would have just let me take his brand-new gaming device out of state.

An alternate memory, as true or false as the previous. I’m in California again, sometime in the summer of 2002. My best friend has sold me his Game Boy Advance, along with Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, because he never uses it. I play the fabled handheld for the first time ever, and I’m astonished at how good the graphics are and how I can’t see anything when I’m not directly in the sun’s life-giving light.

Whichever of these memories is more accurate than the other, the facts are clear: I first played the Game Boy Advance in California on vacation within its first year of release. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was the inaugural game. The visuals were sharp. The lack of a back light was stupid. After this vacation – whichever one it was – the Game Boy Advance either went back to my friend or went into my collection. I never played anything GBA-related again until the Game Boy Player came out and I could enjoy GBA games on my TV…

But then, that’s not entirely true, either. I might have never played my friend’s GBA ever again, but I distinctly remember playing Advance Wars for hours at a sleepover sometime in late 2001/early 2002. Probably on a different friend’s GBA, doesn’t matter, I was hooked.

That was a long time ago, and yet, I felt so much older then. I was sixteen and I felt the encroaching responsibility of “job,” “driving,” “college,” the weight of things I had yet to experience. I wondered how gaming would fit in between these more important adult activities. After a full day of work/school, would I even want to come home and play a PS2 game? Would I buy a GBA and take it with me to school, so I could steal a few moments of play in between classes?

A lot has changed – for me and for the world. 9/11. Graduating college. Wars on terror. Marriage. The Great Recession. Gallbladder removal. Multiple jobs. Social media. Depression. Smart phones. Inner healing. Home Ownership. June 2001 couldn’t feel further away.

Through it all, my interest in games has remained. I keep getting older, and so do they. Recently, I booted up the GBA library on the Nintendo Switch Online and I was… slightly disgusted. When did these games start looking so ancient? Did the audio always sound like it was recorded in a garbage can? Sure, the games would look and sound slightly better on an actual GBA, but… yeesh. As a wise man once said, “Time makes fools of us all.”

I look in the mirror. I’m too young for ear hair, right? That’s just for seniors and super hairy people who can’t help it. I’ll just trim it, pretend I didn’t see it, be surprised when it grows back. Hey, I really should play some more Mario Kart: Super Circuit, those extra courses aren’t going to unlock themselves. Guess the smeared visuals and screechy audio don’t bother me as much as I initially thought.

The Game Boy Advance, against all odds, is 25 years old. Let’s talk about it.

POWER, AT LONG LAST

The original Game Boy had two very successful lives, the first in the early ‘90s courtesy of Tetris, and the second in the late 90s, thanks to Pokémon Red & Blue (and yes, Yellow, why not). And while young kids didn’t care that Pokémon Red & Blue had the graphics of a dollar-store coloring book, aging gamers who had lived through a near decade of black-and-white pixel funk were wondering when the decrepit handheld’s heir apparent might arrive.

Game Boy’s stopgap successor, Game Boy Color, appeared in late 1998, and boy, did it ever have color. Ostensibly a follow-up to Game Boy, the die-hards bought it for Pokémon Silver & Gold and maybe the Zelda: Oracle games, but the gaming culture largely didn’t care. Nintendo lumps the GBC’s sales in with the original Game Boy, and while the combined number is impressive – 118 million by 2003 – methinks the bulk of that is from the original model.

Finally, in 2001, Nintendo stopped pussyfootin’ around. No more needless iterations on the same ol’ tired song, no Game Boy Color Light, or Color Pocket. Game Boy Advance was the true Advanced One, the true heir to Game Boy’s sagging throne. The portable 8-bit games that looked more like 4-bits were a thing of the blessed past. Game Boy Advance came equipped with a 32-bit ARM chip that promised SNES-level quality or greater.

But wait, how does that work? In the days when bits stood for something, how come the Game Boy Advance only provides solid SNES ports and not PS1 ports? After all, the SNES was 16-bit. The PS1 was 32-bit. This is science here!

Reddit user Vegetable_Ad_6471 chimes in…

“The simple answer is that it had a 32-bit CPU as its main processor, so they called it a 32-bit machine.

However, the longer answer, and what I think you’re referring to (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) is that GBA games look like they’re 16-bit games (i.e., like SNES games) instead of like, well, something between an SNES and an N64 game. This confused me for a long time, too.

The reason why the games look the way they do is because, while the GBA had as it’s CPU a 32-bit microprocessor (specifically, an ARM7TDMI) and many of its background processes ran in 32 bits, a LOT of it (in particular the graphics side of things) was limited to 16 bits; it’s graphics processor, it’s VRAM, most of its WRAM (specifically, the EWRAM or External WRAM) and the connectors between the GBA cartridge and the GBA itself all ran in 16 bit.

And that ARM processor is important - it was specifically designed to run a mix of 32- and 16-bit processes (and could even run both at the same time), AND if optimized it would even run that 16-bit stuff faster than the 32-bit stuff. This was, to my (admittedly limited) understanding, both a measure to save money (32-bit was expensive at the time) and to allow programmers to optimize their code for the GBA to do the heavy lifting quickly and efficiently (hopefully avoiding lag or slowdown). There may also have been some expectation that, since the GBA’s screen is small, higher-edge graphics (or things like true 3D) weren’t going to be its strong suit since people wouldn’t be able to really see it.

tl;dr: While the GBA is a true 32-bit system that does most of the background stuff in 32 bits, some of what the games ran on, particularly the graphics, was a 16-bit architecture.”

I know, I know, quoting Reddit doesn’t exactly show off my journalist credentials, but this insight makes a lot of sense. Powerful 32-bit processor helps run 16-bit style games with greater efficiency. The gamers who cared about bits may have been confused, but the games were solid, so most of us didn’t care.

THE GAMES

We all remember the good times. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, the Pokemon titles, Mega Man Battle Networks 1-50. Hideo Kojima’s experiment, Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand forced us to play outside. The Sonic Advance trilogy was a wonderful complement to the Sonic Adventure games. Zelda: The Minish Cap, Advance Wars 1 + 2, the Final Fantasy Advance series, Golden Sun, the Castlevania trilogy, WarioWare. These are the games that linger, the ones that keep us playing long past the Advance’s expiration date.

We willingly forget the innumerable garbage licensed games that cluttered the system. Rugrats Go Wild, Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed and so many others provide a glimpse into what pop culture at large wanted everyone to care about in the early 2000s. You probably had a couple of these in your collection. Maybe you got them in a bundle deal on eBay or maybe they were all you could afford in the Toys ‘R Us clearance rack. Either way, whether we like it or not, these games are also part of our collective Game Boy Advance consciousness. A library without a little bit of trash is incomplete.

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Interestingly, Game Boy Advance did not receive an original mainline Mario title. Instead, it received the NES Mario trilogy, Super Mario World, and Yoshi’s Island. Super Mario Bros. was a straight port, while the remaining four games were part of the Super Mario Advance series. I’m not a fan of the changes made in these titles, particularly the grating voice samples peppered throughout each game. However, they did bring classic Mario to a portable console for the first time, so I understand why they’re fondly remembered.

THE ACCESSORIES

Game Boy Advance had a surprising amount of bling or “drip,” as the kids today would say.

The GameCube – Game Boy Advance Link Cable let you use the GBA as a controller for select GameCube games like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. You could connect games like Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion to unlock NES Metroid and Samus’ Fusion Suit in Prime. And, of course, you could transfer Pokémon from any of the GBA Pokémon games into Pokémon Colosseum or Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. While this cable does seem on paper like something only Nintendo would use, third-party companies like Square Enix, Sega, Namco, and Activision also got some mileage out of it. It’s one of the more underrated Nintendo peripherals and worth checking out if you’re nostalgic for quirky 2000s-era gaming, before everyone went online and gaming lost its soul.

Given Nintendo’s back catalog of insane peripherals, I’m not surprised the e-Reader exists, but I am stunned that it was approved for release anywhere outside of Japan. This bulky device slaps into the cartridge slot and from there, you scan cards. Lots and lots of cards. Want to play an old NES game like Donkey Kong Jr. on the GBA? Buy a pack of DK Jr. cards, scan all five cards in the pack, one at a time, and after playing Donkey Kong Jr. for five minutes, realize that you’ve just wasted your money. Japan got the most variety of cards, including some for F-Zero GP and Mega Man Battle Network, but America still received Pokémon cards, Animal Crossing cards, and my personal favorite, brand-new levels for Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3. Up to 36 new levels, as a matter of fact. The e-Reader was weird, and I don’t think it made sense to release in America, but I’m glad Nintendo did anyway.

My personal favorite GBA peripheral is the Game Boy Player, a device that connects to the bottom of the GameCube and plays GBA, GBC, and GB games on the TV. Once I got the Player, I never went back to playing the handheld itself. Not because I loved how blown out the GBA graphics looked on my TV screen or how tinny and terrible the audio sounded, but because I was never a portable gamer to begin with. Just because I didn’t care to bring my GBA to my early college classes, doesn’t mean I didn’t want to play GBA games. Thus, the Player was the perfect fit for me.

Special shoutout to the strange Game Boy Advance Video experiments, a way to watch kids TV shows, like Codename: Kids Next Door or Spongebob SquarePants in heavily compressed format on your GBA. Each cartridge contained up to four episodes of some Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon show. Later in the GBA’s life, you could even purchase a Shrek/Shark Tale movie combo pack and watch them in glorious 112p! I have no idea why these existed in the age of DVD box sets, but I’m sure some seven-year-olds out there loved watching Courage the Cowardly Dog on their GBAs. Wins all around!

THE VARIANTS

The original AGB-001 model’s horizontal design looked aesthetically pleasing in 2001, but now? I prefer the AGS models’ vertical design. Supposedly, the GBA launched with a variety of colors, including Arctic and Black, but I only ever played the Indigo/Purple model. Like the GB and GBC before it, the first GBA model does not have any sort of light on or around its screen, so you either need to play in direct light or buy one of those attachable worm light things for you to see what you’re doing. Two AAs got you fifteen hours of game play, which was definitely solid in those days. Also backwards compatible with GB and GBC.

The GBA SP (AGS-001) came out in 2003 and switched to a vertical clamshell design with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery (the first of its kind in a handheld) and a front-lit screen. To say this version was superior in every way to the original model is an understatement. Being able to fold the GBA (as we would all do several years later with our Motorola Razrs) and place it neatly in our pocket was a gift. Not needing AAs ever was just crazy and having any light whatsoever was fantastic.

The SP AGS-101 released in 2005 and featured a backlit screen and a toggle switch that let you control the brightness level. Supposedly the lighting is superior on this model. I have never played one, so I’ll take the Internet’s word for it.

Finally, the Game Boy Micro, the final Game Boy Advance variant and the final product in the Game Boy line, period. Look at this thing, look at how small it is. I know it didn’t sell very well, but for those that did buy it… you lost it at some point, right? In the couch, in the car, hell, maybe even in your pocket. It has a two-inch screen! Customizable faceplates! What is even happening.

THE CONCLUSION

Nintendo had a rough late 90s. The Virtual Boy collapsed one year into its lifespan. N64 struggled under the weight of countless cutesy 3D platformers. The Game Boy Color was a tiny iteration, not the revolution gamers wanted. Thank goodness for Pokémon and all the merch sales that came with it or Nintendo might have been in serious trouble.

Game Boy Advance was Nintendo’s first system of the 2000s, and it was a hit, firmly re-establishing the company as the king of the portables. And while this much-needed success unfortunately wouldn’t continue with GameCube, the GBA and its 83 million+ sales managed to keep Nintendo afloat while they figured out what would come next.

Most importantly, in its scant few years of life, the Game Boy Advance – not the GameCube – was the entry point for millions of young people into Nintendo’s beloved ecosystem. Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, Kirby, Metroid, and hey, even Fire Emblem. Not to mention Castlevania, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, among other cherished third-party properties. As we all know, once these characters and franchises take root, they don’t let go.

The Game Boy Advance didn’t propel handheld gaming into the cultural consciousness like the original Game Boy did. And it didn’t pioneer touchscreen gaming like the Nintendo DS. Rather, the Advance is just a really good handheld system with a mostly solid library of games.

From a historical retrospective standpoint, yeah, maybe that’s kinda boring. But if you’re a kid circa 2005 who’s the proud owner of a GBA and some of its best games, and you’re having the time of your life, who cares? The handheld’s legacy is all the memories you didn’t realize you were making. The GBA’s visual and aural capabilities don’t stand up twenty-five years later, but the games, the adventures produced moments of magic and wonder you’ll remember for the rest of your days. Can’t ask for a better impact than that.

LIFE, ADVANCED

But I ramble.

What do you remember about Game Boy Advance?

Straining to see Sonic Advance while playing in the car, even though your dad parked you directly in the sun upon request?

Catching all 135 new Pokémon in Ruby and Sapphire and feeling like the Greatest Hunter that Ever Lived?

Sliding an NES card into the e-Reader and watching Baseball or Balloon Fight magically appear on the screen?

I’d love to hear your GBA memories in the comments below!

Also, if you enjoyed this article, please leave a like on your way out, it really helps. Thanks for reading!

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STARTING NEXT WEEK…

I’ll be looking at the entire GBA launch library, all 17 games, one game at a time. See you then!

*images courtesy of GameFAQs, Reddit, Wikipedia, InStyle, FantasyAnime, Raiding the Globe, Super Philip Central, and Nintendo - Fandom

Hey all! After this post, I’ll be on vacation for two weeks and will not be posting anything during that time. If you’re starving for content (hah!), go read my archives, they’re all free!

My next post will be on June 11th, and it will be on the Game Boy Advance turning 25 years old. Please look forward to it, and please don’t think about how we’re all aging far, far faster than we would like!

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book

PUBLISHER: Nintendo

DEVELOPER: Good-Feel

RELEASE DATE: May 21st, 2026 (US, EU, JP)

A Very Yoshi History

Based on Yoshi’s very eclectic games across three decades, Nintendo doesn’t seem to know what to do with their beloved dinosaur figure.

His first “starring” role (if you can call it that) was in 1992’s Yoshi, a falling-block puzzle game from Game Freak of all companies. Yoshi stands off to the side and watches while Mario (that glory hog) tries to hatch Yoshi eggs using enemies like Goombas, Boos and Piranha Plants. If Mario accomplishes this, Yoshi’s counter moves higher; such is the extent of Yoshi’s involvement in his own game.

Yoshi’s Safari and Yoshi’s Cookie followed in 1993, a first-person Super Scope shooter (!) and another puzzle game, respectively. As with Yoshi, both games feature Mario as or more prominently than Yoshi himself.

In 1995, however, Yoshi finally found his calling with Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. Yes, he’s giving Mario a ride again, but this time Mario’s a helpless baby and Yoshi’s doing all the heavy lifting. He flutters. He shoots eggs. He collects red coins and smiling flowers. He gets high – on accident, of course. Like the best Mario games, every level has a staggering surplus of creativity that feels effortless. Yoshi’s Island isn’t just a great Yoshi vehicle. It’s one of the best platformers of all time.

Unfortunately, Yoshi’s Island’s ingenuity was also a bit of a curse. After 1998’s anemic Yoshi’s Story failed to justify its own existence, Yoshi became lost in the wilderness, passed off to various development teams outside Nintendo. DS and GBA experiments like Yoshi Touch & Go and Yoshi Topsy-Turvy are simultaneously bold and lackluster. Yoshi’s Island DS and Yoshi’s New Island on 3DS are technically sequels to Yoshi’s Island, but they iterate on their predecessor’s groundbreaking design rather than move the character forward.

Then, in 2015, Yoshi got turned into wool (courtesy of developers Good-Feel) and received his best game in two decades. Yoshi’s Woolly World isn’t perfect, but it takes the tried-and-true Yoshi’s Island gameplay and transports it to a Michael’s store, sans despair. The game’s fabric/wool aesthetic hails directly from your granny’s sewing machine, and it feels so warm and inviting. Even Yoshi’s trademark eggs are yarn balls. The music is wonderful; the vibes are glorious. Woolly World really is one of the best Wii U games, and it’s a shame that it’s stuck there (the 3DS port adds some content but also doesn’t look nearly as good).

2019 brought Switch’s Yoshi’s Crafted World. Similar thought process as Yoshi’s Wooly World, only this time, the aesthetic is a kindergarten art class. The setting is fantastic, and you really feel like you’re controlling Yoshi around a young kid’s creative madhouse, but the overall game doesn’t quite hit like Wooly World. I blame the recorder-heavy soundtrack and the fact that, once again, Yoshi’s Island is still the foundation for the game.

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New Yosh Swing

Now, in 2026, with Switch 2 desperately needing all the hits it can get, Nintendo releases Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, a Yoshi platformer unlike any other. In fact, I’ve never played a game like this one in my life, ever. And believe me, friends, I’ve played a lot of games. Thousands across nearly four decades of life. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is, for better and possibly for worse, a true original.

You play as Yoshi and your goal is to uncover the contents of a mysterious, mustachioed book. Within his pages are creatures of all kinds, creatures that, for some reason, he knows very little about. He tasks Yoshi and his colorful friends (also named Yoshi) with diving into his book and engaging with each creature in their native habitat to learn more about them. Imagine a picture encyclopedia, but all you have is the picture of a creature, not any information about them. By moving into each environment and experimenting with the creature and its abilities, Yoshi procures information and fills up the book’s pages.

Yoshi does this in ways both obvious and abstract. For example, Yoshi is excellent at eating things and turning them into eggs. Thus, in my current playthrough, one of the first things I do when I encounter a new creature is eat them. The more you explore each level and test what each creature does, the more you’ll discover. How do they respond when you throw them or stomp on them? Feed them different kinds of fruit? Do their specific abilities unlock new pathways or uncover hidden items? How does one creature interact with another creature? There’s a surprising amount of trial-and-error experimentation to be had with each one.

Each stage consists of one creature for you to focus on and an often-overwhelming number of ways to engage with them. Creatures range from Yoshi game mainstays, like the Crayzee Dayzee and Shy Guy to Glubbit, a bubble-blowing frog-like creature and Peckadee, a bizarre bird with a rocket-shaped nose.

The more pages you fill up with unique creature abilities, the more stars you get, which unlock later chapters within the book. You can also collect smiley flowers (one of the few lingering remnants from previous Yoshi games) and currency that unlocks hints and directions for abilities you may have missed.

I’ve played the game for about four hours now, and I’m on the third chapter, The Seaside. I’ve watched the Scatterpuff engulf everything it touches, been sucked into the Thudd’s enormous frame time and time again, and rode the Snurfboard over some killer waves. So far, I’m enjoying it, even if the game’s overall loop has taken some getting used to. Again, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is very unlike anything I’ve ever played. I’ve played the occasional lateral-thinking puzzle game, and I’ve also played far too many platformers in my life, but I’ve never played a game that’s combined the two genres. And while I’m still early on in the game (there are 12 chapters in total), for now at least, I do think Good-Feel has provided one of the most unique gaming experiences I’ve had in years.

Rough Road Ahead

My question is, who’s the target audience for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book? It’s not challenging, in the traditional sense. Yoshi can’t get hurt or die. Even if you just mess around on a level, you’re bound to uncover some of what a particular creature can do, thus enabling you to move forward in the game. But I can’t imagine many young kids enjoying this for long, and I’m afraid the super-cute aesthetic may turn off middle schoolers and high schoolers as well. That leaves adults, and outside of weirdos like me who have no problem in playing an adorable Yoshi game, I just can’t envision this game selling very well.1

Also, as much as I feel the Yoshi’s Island style needed to go, changing up a beloved formula presents its own set of problems. You can see this reflected in the vast range of scores for the game, from perfection to “it’s decent” to mediocrity. When a game comes out that spans the judgment gamut like that, who do you trust? How will you know whether you’ll like it or not? Nintendo would have been wise to release a downloadable demo for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book and frankly, it’s not too late; especially if early sales figures aren’t what they’re hoping for.

After thirty years, it seems like Good Feel is finally pushing the boundaries of a Yoshi game forward, rather than forever relying on what Nintendo pioneered with Yoshi’s Island. I just hope that enough players respect what they’re doing and support them financially. Otherwise, I fear the next Yoshi game will return back to that same ol’ nostalgic well, Yoshi cursed to remain trapped on his island forever with baby Mario screaming in his ear. Maybe the puzzle-platformer genre isn’t the correct long-term approach for Yoshi, but just because Nintendo isn’t 100% sure how to direct his path doesn’t mean that he – and we – don’t deserve better.

*images courtesy of GameFAQs, Moby Games, God is a Geek, Eurogamer, Video Games Chronicle, Switch Buddy, and Mashable.

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Konami

RELEASE DATE: Aug. 28th, 1987 (JP - Famicom Disk System), Nov. 24th, 1988 (US), Feb. 1990 (EU)

For decades, I’ve just accepted the common retro gaming opinion that Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest isn’t a very good game. The opinion goes that Castlevania II strays a little too far from its pure platforming roots, embracing vague adventure game design and light RPG elements that, at least in 1988 and on an 8-bit console, don’t really gel as well as Konami hoped they would. This viewpoint is somewhat valid. Castlevania II is full of clues about where to go and what to do, but if you happen to miss one or not remember the one you need for a certain moment, you’re stuck… if you’re living in 1988, that is. Today, with GameFAQs guides and YouTube walkthroughs, the solutions are ever before you. Today, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest is more than playable.

A playable game isn’t necessarily a good one, though. After nearly four decades, I want to know: are the critical retro gaming peeps correct in their assessment of Castlevania II? Does it fail as a game because it poorly embraces other styles and genres? Is the game itself just not very fun to play? Unlike with Spy Vs. Spy, where I still hate the game after 35+ years of playing it, I’m willing to give Castlevania II another chance.

Let’s find out what’s in this coffin… together.

Dracula’s Innards

Simon Belmont returns, fresh off his defeat of Dracula. What should be a time of turkey leg feasting and large wine goblet drinking is, instead, a time of sorrow. A ghostly maiden informs Simon that he is possessed by Dracula’s curse, and that the only way to be rid of it is to find five of Dracula’s body parts and bring them to Dracula’s home, Castlevania. There, Dracula will resurrect and he and Simon will fight again. Should Simon defeat the Count, the curse will lift, and he will be free.

He begins in the town of Jova, equipped only with his trademark whip and rugged determination. Immediately, you’ll notice townsfolk walking about and open doorways in which to enter. They talk to you if you stand near them and share clues, warnings, and occasionally, bits of information that will not make sense unless you know exactly what they’re talking about. It’s downright RPG-ish, it is!

Simon also has fifty hearts to begin with here. In the original Castlevania, hearts were used as sub-weapon ammunition. In Castlevania: The Adventure on Game Boy, hearts replenished your life bar. In Castlevania II, however, hearts are everything. The more hearts you receive from enemies, the more your experience increases. As you level up, Simon’s health bar increases and his defense goes up. Hearts also act as currency within the game, enabling you to buy better weapons, sub-weapons, and seemingly random items that are usually important (hello, laurels). Since these items are critical to progression, you’ll need to whip lots of ghouls and grab lots of hearts.

Not only does Castlevania II have adventure and RPG elements, it also features a day/night cycle, the first of its kind on the NES. The game begins in Jova during the day, but within three real-time minutes, an infamous text box will appear, stating “What A Horrible Night to Have a Curse.” If you’re in town, the people will flee, shops close, and zombies will roam the streets. If you’re out in the overworld, the enemies will grow stronger – but they’ll also provide more hearts once destroyed. After another three minutes passes, day will return (“The Morning Sun Has Vanquished the Horrible Night”). Skeletons, eyeballs, mermen, and other creatures will remain, but their strength will lessen.

Simon thankfully controls a lot better here than in the first game. He just feels easier to move, not as much of a lumbering barbarian. You’ll still have to jump carefully and precisely over too many death pits (including in towns – what the heck, Konami!), but they aren’t as much trouble as in the first game. Whipping enemies feels great, and while there are some difficult enemies, particularly in the second half of the game, they don’t feel nearly as cheap as the first Castlevania. Simon also purchases whip upgrades here, and unlike other early Castlevania games, the upgrades won’t be removed if you get hit or die. That’s right: once you buy a chain whip, it’s yours forever. Same with sub-weapons. Once you buy or collect a sub-weapon, it stays in your inventory forever. Supposedly, sub-weapon ammo is linked to how many hearts you have, and maybe that is the case, but I never noticed. I was always able to use as many holy waters or silver knives as I wanted to without issue. So nice!

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If there’s one thing all retro gamers can agree on, it’s that Castlevania II’s vibes are second to none. The towns and the environments –forests, caves, cemeteries, that marsh where the Ferryman helps you – all have this nightmarish, otherworldly feel that is supremely unsettling, during day or night. Occasionally, you’ll come across a still scene like Yuba Lake in the nighttime with its deep purple/blue skies and mountains that’s just eerily beautiful. Combine this world-class atmosphere with a top-notch soundtrack, and if vibes were all that mattered, Simon’s Quest would get an easy ‘A.’

The flow of the game is as follows: whip your way through the monster-infested overworld, find one of five mansions strewn throughout the land, gather one of Dracula’s body parts from each mansion, hit up towns along the way to heal your health in churches and find necessary items from (often hidden) merchants. Mostly, you’ll be traversing the overworld, back and forth, and hopefully not getting lost. I don’t think Castlevania II’s world map is terribly big, but I could see one making a wrong turn somewhere or going down the stairs when you should have gone right and just getting yourself in some trouble.

For example: you need to have Dracula’s heart equipped when you see the Ferryman if you want to go to Brahm’s Mansion; otherwise you’ll just go to the town of Alba. But if you don’t catch that clue, you’ll never get to one of the places needed to complete the game, and you won’t know why.

High Stakes

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest has a myriad of positives. The gameplay loop is enjoyable, with just enough new monsters and items added along the way to keep things fresh. The world is connected in a way that the first Castlevania’s wasn’t, and the day/night cycle is truly revelatory. Simon feels great to control and I love always having a strong whip and sub-weapons on my person, without needing to collect everything again if I die.

The game has one main negative, you know what I’m talking about: it’s intentionally abstruse. If you’ve never played Castlevania II before, and you’re trying to play it without any help, you’ll be writing down all the clues the townspeople give you. You might also have to make a world map to prevent you from getting lost. And even if you do all that, there’s still a chance you’ll miss something and not be sure how to progress. Should the latter happen, any goodwill the game may have accrued could disappear entirely.

Personally, I enjoyed my most recent playthrough of Castlevania II more than any other playthrough I’ve attempted over the last couple decades. I used a FAQ to figure out where to go, it felt great, and I don’t care. When you’re a kid in 1988 and you have all the time in the world (and no internet), sure, bust out the graph paper, make a map, memorize the clues. When you’re an adult in 2026, playing games from your childhood, do what works for you.

I look at Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest more as a noble experiment, one that took big chances, succeeded in some ways, failed in others. Some retro gamers defend it as an underappreciated gem. Many despise it, recalling how stupid they felt trying to play the game as kids. Few, however, are apathetic. Castlevania II produces powerful emotions from those that experience it, and regardless of where you land in the conversation, I don’t think we can call it a truly terrible game.

The game’s largest legacy, however, is what it inspired. Renowned Castlevania producer and scenario writer, Koji Igarashi, used Simon’s Quest as a template to convince Konami to let him make Symphony of the Night, a game that’s still the most beloved Castlevania entry nearly 30 years later. If a game as divisive as Simon’s Quest can inspire a game as revered as Symphony of the Night, perhaps every retro gamer, regardless of opinion, can agree that the pleasure was worth the pain after all.

1988 (sans hints): C-

1988 (with hints): A-

2026 (cruisin’ with a walkthrough): B-

NINTENDO POWER: It’s worth noting that Nintendo Power’s second issue featured a 17-page spread on Castlevania II before the game released in North America. It offers hint and tips that take you all the way to the third mansion.

And if you missed that issue, the “NES Games Atlas” released in 1991 and provides a mostly complete walkthrough that takes you all the way to Castlevania and the Count himself.

Invaluable resources in a time before GameFAQs.

Thus, I have chosen not to review Spy Vs. Spy anew, but rather, to adapt the text from my 2014 Master System review for this 2026 NES review. Cheating? Perhaps. But as I sat at my computer, hoping against hope that I had something new or interesting to say about Spy Vs. Spy, I couldn’t find anything other than vitriol. Also, unlike most of my opinions from 2014, everything I had to say about Spy Vs. Spy then still applies today. Thank you for understanding.

May you never have to play Spy Vs. Spy multiple times across your lifespan.

Spy Vs. Spy

PUBLISHER: Kemco

DEVELOPER: Mike Riedel (port by Kemco)

RELEASE DATE: Apr. 26th, 1986 (JP), Oct. 1988 (US), Jul. 27th, 1990 (EU)

Plenty of games bore me, frustrate me, annoy me, but there’s something about Spy Vs. Spy‘s limited, tedious gameplay that sends me into a Trent Reznor-certified downward spiral. If you’ve never experienced it, I hope this review will save you the trouble.

Based on the MAD magazine comic series, you play as a creepy, angular Spy in White (Mr. White, if you’re nasty) searching for five items in a series of dimly lit rooms. The items include a key, a passport, cash, documents, and a briefcase. The briefcase is the most important item: without it, you can only hold one item at a time. Once you collect all of the items, find the airport (signified by a door with an airplane) and jet away to the next series of rooms.

Your enemy, Spy in Black, is looking for the same items. The screen is split up into two sections, with the top half monitoring your actions and the bottom half monitoring the actions of Mr. Black. While you’ll mostly be focusing on your spy, seeing what the other spy is doing is helpful, especially if he’s laying down traps.

Both spies have access to traps – bombs, springs, guns, etc. – that can be set in strategic areas in each room. Should a spy trigger a trap, they’ll die immediately and have to wait several seconds before they’re regenerated. During this time, the dead spy’s half of the screen turns black, and the living spy can rob them of their stuff, if they search the room where the spy was killed.

That’s Spy Vs. Spy in a nutshell, but let me guide you through a stage, perhaps one of the earlier ones so we don’t get lost (later levels have an insane amount of rooms scattered among several floors).

Both spies start off in different rooms. Quickly check your map. Any room on your map with a dot on it has an item you need. Go to a dotted room, find the item, but remember, you can only hold that one item until you find the briefcase. Let’s say you collect two items, cash and a key in that order, but you do not have the briefcase. The black-coated spy can enter a room and steal the key you just picked up, even though the key appears in your item collection screen. I hate this and it happens all the time.

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Or, let’s say you collect a briefcase with every item and you’re off to the airport. You open the airport door and are greeted by a thug who punches you against the wall, killing you. The thug was not placed there as a trap by the black spy, he’s completely the game’s doing. In the meantime, while your screen is black and you can’t do anything, the other spy comes along, steals the briefcase, and walks out the same door where the thug is no longer there. Complete and utter bull crap. How are you supposed to know that there’s a brute behind the airport door that can kill you if you open it? You don’t, it’s a chance you have to take because you need to complete the level to progress. I hate this and it happens all the time.

Cheapness aside, every feature of Spy Vs. Spy works – the traps, collecting of items, taking down the other spy – assuming you like the style of play being offered to you. I don’t. I hate searching for the items. I hate searching for the briefcase to be able to hold all of the items. I hate the convoluted stage layouts past stage 3. I hate the time limit. I hate getting caught in a trap. I hate setting traps. The only aspect of this game that gives me any sense of release is punching/kicking the other spy until his ghost floats up to heaven. Everything beyond the brawling is unwanted tension and anxiety that increases with each passing level. Every level is the same tired trap-and-collect shenanigans, repeated over and over with an increasing amount of rooms that are frustrating to navigate, despite the presence of a map. If I never encounter Spy Vs. Spy again in my life, it will be all too soon.

F

ADDENDUM: I’ve been told by several people that playing Spy Vs. Spy with a second person is the only proper way to play the game. I believe their claims, but then my question is, why does the game have a single-player mode at all? Also, if I don’t like what Spy Vs. Spy offers when I play solo against the computer, I’m not sure two-player mode would change my mind.

Racket Attack

PUBLISHER: Jaleco

DEVELOPER: TOSE

RELEASE DATE: Apr. 15th, 1988 (JP), Oct. 1988 (US), Mar. 24th, 1994 (!) (EU)

Racket Attack is the NES’ second tennis game (after Nintendo’s own Tennis), Jaleco’s second NES sports game after Bases Loaded, and perhaps most importantly, features a character named Brofsky, who looks like an eternal frat boy. Don’t let his unkempt appearance fool you, though. My guy knows how to handle a racket.

I’d love to say that the aforementioned facts are the least interesting thing about Racket Attack, that the game is a ball-swatting tour-de-force, the likes of which move the genre – nay, the entire sport – forward. Alas, Racket Attack is just a tennis game, albeit one with an enormous character roster.

Long before Mario Tennis Fever crowded the courts with nearly forty Mario fan favorites like Piranha Plant and Nabbit, Racket Attack gave us sixteen players to choose from, eight men, eight women, all heart. Every player has one specific strength and… weakness? The manual says all the players have strengths and weaknesses, but the player profiles in the game list vague descriptions like player Gibbco’s “Fast A Foot – Net Play.” What does Fast A Foot, mean? Does Gibbco know? I’m not too clear about Net Play, either; isn’t tennis itself just net play? Other descriptions are a little clearer like player Horn’s “Powerful Serve” or Spohn’s simple, but effective “Volley.”

Whatever these descriptions may mean, you’ll be pleased to know that the three characters I played as – Brofsky (naturally), Horn, and Gray – felt no different from each other. They’re all a little slippery. They all hit the ball about 70% of the time. They all look ridiculous. Perhaps if I put in the hours and worked my way through matches against every opponent, I could sense subtle, but important differences between Orchler and Jansco. But Racket Attack doesn’t warrant that type of fervor, frankly. Brofsky might be a hero on the court and at keggers, but the game he stars in is your standard 8-bit tennis experience, no more, no less.

C-

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Seicross

PUBLISHER: FCI

DEVELOPER: Nihon Bussan

RELEASE DATE: May. 19th, 1986 (JP), Oct. 1988 (US)

Unlike many early arcade ports, Seicross has a legitimately weird story. Seems two races, the Petras and the Basrah were getting along just fine on the planet Colura - until they weren’t. The Basrah decided to be jerks and attack the peaceful Petras and drive them underground. Interestingly, the goal of Seicross isn’t to get revenge on the Basrah. Rather, you’ll be rescuing as many of the Petras as possible who are still left above ground with a cannon-equipped motorbike, affectionately named “Gilgitt Petras.”

The Basrah wasted no time in building a sorta functional overworld that completely hates the Petras. In addition to the Basrah having their own motorbikes and coming against you, you also have to deal with weird plants, fossils, energy cannons, etc. Some of these attack you directly, while others are stationary objects that will kill you if you run Gilgitt into them. Your best course of action is to shoot continuously, pick up your Petras homies, and make it to the end of each level unscathed. Gilgitt has an energy bar that slowly whittles down, but thankfully, the Basrah or some other benevolent beings leave more than enough energy replenishment on the ground.

There’s not much to Seicross, which is to be expected for an arcade port from 1984, but what’s here is surprisingly engaging. In fact, I’m not entirely sure why the game works as well as it does. It is a shooter, and I do love some old-school shooting action, but the focus is predominantly on points, which I don’t normally care about. Shooting things for points, collecting captive people for more points at the end of the level; points, points everywhere, so let’s all have a drink. The six supposedly unique levels (which repeat randomly after level 6) all feature similar enemies and terrain. Your motorbike, Gilgitt Petras only has one weapon power-up, and to be fair, it’s a banger. Still, I take a step back and look at Seicross objectively and I’m not sure why it draws me in. Then again, video games are either enjoyable to play or they’re not. Maybe I just need to stop worrying and love the bomb.

B-

Mario’s Tennis

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Nintendo

RELEASE DATE: Jul. 21st, 1995 (JP), Aug. 14th, 1995 (US)

If you’ve played Tennis on NES or Game Boy, you’ve played Mario’s Tennis on Virtual Boy. Yes, Mario’s Tennis features seven Mario characters to choose from and locales from the Mushroom Kingdom as court backdrops. But strip away any Mario affiliation and the Virtual Boy’s stereoscopic 3D, and what you’re left with is a bare bones tennis title, designed solely to give the Virtual Boy something, anything Mario-affiliated for its launch day.

Which Mario character do you want to see swing a racket? Mario, Luigi, Princess, Toad, Koopa, Yoshi, and Donkey Kong Jr. are all here and they all supposedly have different strengths and weaknesses. Luigi’s faster (and taller) than Mario, Yoshi and Toad are weak and fast, and Donkey Kong Jr. is so strong, he can smash tennis balls to the sun if he wants to (Bowser is sorely missed, would’ve loved to see him in some winning tennis shorts and a headband).

For my time with the game, I chose Luigi, Princess, Mario, and Donkey Kong Jr.. I got on the best with Luigi, but for the life of me, I couldn’t distinguish any differences in each character’s playstyle, despite the manual saying otherwise.

You can play Singles or Doubles, 1 game, 3 games, or Tournament. Easy, Normal, or Hard difficulty. No two-player option (Virtual Boy bombed so hard, a Link Cable was never produced). No extra modes. No special items or character-specific moves. You are playing one-player tennis with Mario characters, dammit, nothing else.

Thankfully, the controls are responsive. ‘A’ is a groundstroke, volley or smash, while ‘B’ is a lob or a smash. Like previous Nintendo-developed Tennis games, you control the direction of the ball with the D-pad while you hit the ball with ‘A’ or ‘B.’ Back-and-forth volleying is solid, but don’t be surprised if you misjudge where the ball might land until you get used to the 3D.

Mario’s Tennis has some charm in its presentation. Characters look excited when they get a point and dejected when their opponent gets one. Lakitu, fresh off his stint as the Mario Kart operator, functions as umpire here. The background assets plucked directly from Super Mario World are also a welcome touch amidst the unyielding red-and-black.

Charm aside, though, there’s a reason why Mario’s Tennis was chosen as the Virtual Boy’s pack-in title in North America. The game feels like a half-finished tech demo for the system, one whose core gameplay was taken from a Famicom/NES title that was over ten years old by that point. Mario’s Tennis is certainly more than playable, but it’s hardly worth the effort.

C-

*image courtesy of Nintendo Complete

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Red Alarm

PUBLISHER: Nintendo

DEVELOPER: T&E Soft

RELEASE DATE: Jul. 21st, 1995 (JP), Aug. 14th, 1995 (US)

Do you know how often I’ve called this game Red Alert, not Red Alarm? I blame this Basement Jaxx earworm.

Red Alarm is the perfect name for this retina-burning shoot-em-up, though. After 10-15 minutes of play, your eyes will be screaming to see anything other than red, black, and wire-frame.

You control a Tech-Wing Fighter, the last weapon of war in a trying-to-be utopic Earth. Unfortunately, a weapons system named KAOS has become sentient and wants to take over the Earth because, well, it’s a weapons system. It was created to destroy things, whether it’s aware of what it’s doing or not. Your mission is to fly the Tech-Wing Fighter into the heart of KAOS and destroy it, if you can.

Imagine Starfox, but devoid of personality and charm and existing solely within a hellish void. Such is Red Alarm. Everything is constructed of wire-frame, your ship, the enemies, the environments. Technical limitations and all that, the Virtual Boy is not a miracle worker. Nevertheless, because of this graphical design decision, it’s often difficult to discern where you’re going, where the enemies’ bullets are, and even what is an enemy and what isn’t. For example: I’ve avoided shield replenishment because I thought it was an enemy, until I realized the icon was twirling in a circle, not heading straight for me. Poor design by T&E Soft, for sure.

At the end of the day, though, Red Alarm is a straightforward shoot-em-up. The Tech-Wing Fighter has a generic blaster cannon and homing missiles, that’s it, no other upgrades. Shoot anything that looks like it’s against you, and good news, most of it is. The Fighter can also speed up and slow down, very helpful in boss battles when you’re trying to lock onto them. The ‘L’ button also helps maneuver you around tight corners - again, a plus for arenas where many enemies, a large boss, and tons of enemy missiles come together for mass chaos and destruction.

Even though Red Alarm is fairly basic, the Virtual Boy headset does an excellent job in immersing you into the game’s dark, claustrophobic world. You really feel like you’re steering a fighter ship within a corrupt computer system. Even the wire-frame graphics feel like they mesh well with the story. Unfortunately, Virtual Boy’s immersion was also actively destroying my vision. And yeah, you could argue all Virtual Boy games hurt your vision equally, but I dunno. My eyes didn’t feel corrupted by 15–30-minute sessions of Mario’s Tennis. Then again, the latter has very little happening on-screen, whereas Red Alarm has you destroying swarms of enemy ships and navigating environmental obstacles all at once, all of the time.

Essentially, Red Alarm is interesting because of Virtual Boy’s visual trickery, yet it’s hindered by the same trickery hurting your eyeballs. A conundrum to be sure, but blessedly, one I will lose no sleep over.

Red Alarm, sans headaches, maybe: B-

Red Alarm with headaches: D

“Red Alert” by Basement Jaxx: B

*images courtesy of ArsTechnica and The Elite Institute