Connor Nichols's Reviews
Ittle Dew might have been ported here after the outstanding sequel, but that doesn’t mean that you should ignore this original entry to focus on the sequel, as the first game is still a brilliant Zelda clone. Yeah, it’s much more linear than the open-ended nature of the sequel, but it’s also just as fun with the clever puzzles and combat that you’ve come to expect from a game in this category.
The Alliance Alive was a game that I was very surprised by, as it’s of really high quality! Containing some of the best aspects from the SAGA series with some handy quality of life improvements, and you have one of the best pick up and play RPGs that I’ve seen on the Switch in a long while.
Feather could have easily been a great relaxation game to unwind with, if it had an even remote sense of content to mess around with. But with nothing of significance to find, abysmal framerate drops (despite this game being out for months, this was never fixed in handheld mode for some baffling reason) and a boring world that you can pretty much see everything of in mere minutes, this bird sim is a really sad example of a great idea with bad execution, both in performance and scope.
While this isn’t really a game that’s practical or easy to beat, the journey in your attempts to try and beat the game is where the fun is, and I still had a lot of fun just playing for the sake of a higher score, even when I didn’t particularly care about progressing.
In conclusion, Ichidant-R is easily the most obscure Sega AGES title in the first wave of games. While the Arcade version’s English translation helps significantly in making this widely accessible to the west, the core game is unfortunately not that fun, though the helper mode is an appreciated addition to cut some of the repetitive nature for players who want to see the ending of the game.
The SEGA AGES port of Columns II may not be out here in the west for a while, (due to the irritating gap in releases we’ve had) but it is currently out in Japan, and if you’re an import fanatic like I am, I absolutely feel that it’s worth picking up from the Japanese eShop due to the sheer addictive nature of Columns I, the outstanding online mode for Columns II, and the braincrushing puzzles that will test puzzle fans to their limits.
Ovivo is a very barebones puzzle platformer with one simple mechanic. While this isn’t anything you haven’t seen before, I actually found Ovivo to work a bit better than I expected, since the controls are very tight and the simplicity of the levels make this a relaxing romp with little frustration. The $7 pricetag is pretty steep for a game like this, but considering the many, many other puzzle games on the Switch eShop that fail to nail the same relaxation factor as Ovivo, I can at least Ovivo props for sticking to a simple concept and doing good with it.
Whipseey is a very disappointing platformer that’s just way, way too short for its own good. It has some fun ideas, but with zero replay value, a short length and bad hit boxes, I honestly can’t recommend this platformer compared to the many others available on the eShop. You can play other shorter platformers for the same price or less, but they have more to encourage replays and are a lot better balanced overall.
River City Girls is easily one of my new favorite games in the Kunio franchise, right behind Super Dodge Ball. Made great thanks to an outstanding variety of battle moves, good level design, clever pattern-based boss battles and an outstanding co-op experience, this is one of the best belt scrollers in recent memory, and considering how many of them fall into the same trap of being a repetitive bore nowadays, it’s very refreshing to see a new one that nails all the right notes that make a belt scroller addicting to begin with.
For a $5 game on a system with plenty of better budget titles, this game isn’t a bad one, but it’s incredibly generic and very short, to the point that the platinum trophy basically gives up after the first two worlds, and doesn’t even bother to cover the entire game. You really have no reason to pick this game up unless you’re buying these cheap games for an easy platinum, which is pretty sad considering how some more complex level designs and a wider scale could lead to great potential for a sequel.
Regardless of how you choose to play this, Psyvariar Delta was a shooter that absolutely surprised me with how addictive it is while also getting so much right about score chasers. As a re-release, it’s fantastic, and as a new remix it’s equally as good.
Even if you’re a lasped Yu-Gi-Oh player like I was, this is still absolutely worth a look, and serves as a great tutorial for the main card game along with being a great place to experiment with gimmick decks.
Vasara Collection is a decent collection of two really fun scorechasers alongside a brand new game. However, several irritating bugs and leaderboard problems make this collection incredibly tough to recommend to those wanting to play this game for the sake of improving their scores. Still, the two included games are great co-op shooters, although the standard $10 price is tough to recommend in this compilation’s buggy stage, especially when you can get other shooters with proper leaderboard support for only $2 less via the Arcade Archives line.
The Ninja Warriors is a surprisingly great port, offering a bit more extras to make up for the unique display, while also being a fairly fun co-op game to play with a friend. However, as a single player game and as a score chaser, the game can get pretty boring real fast, with the only major highlight being the outstanding soundtrack. If you have a friend to spend time with, then this is an arcade gem worth picking up for sure, but otherwise you might want to hold off on your mission.
In conclusion, Road Fighter is a Konami classic that’s a fairly simple arcade racer compared to what would come out later, but that simplicity leads to a lot of fun overall. As a perfect fit for the online leaderboards (save for the caravan mode) and the good sense of one more try the game gives you, Road Fighter is still a bit tough to recommend at the pretty steep price of $8.
Mighty Switch Force Collection is a fantastic compilation of Wayforward’s puzzle platformer series. Containing the two major games, along with a remake and a spinoff, this is an almost complete collection, only missing that aforementioned puzzle game, which I honestly wish was added to supplement Academy. The controls are incredibly tight and just as responsive as they were in the original games, and with some of the best level designs in puzzle platformers.
Mochi Mochi Boy is a puzzler that I found to be pretty enjoyable, although incredibly basic. It gets the job done and is a fun way to test your thinking skills, but it’s nothing that you’ve probably haven’t seen before on mobile devices.
Ninja Spirit is a fantastic action game that holds up very well today, arguably a bit more than the PC Engine port that’s more famous. It may only be seven stages long and can be beaten in 45 minutes or so with trial and error, but they’re still some of the finest action stages that I have ever seen from an Arcade game, and I can’t recommend this game enough.
However, there’s still the issues with matchmaking, and compared to the more polished kart racers on the system you’re better off picking one of those, and you’re especially better off picking this up on any system but Switch due to the framerate downgrade if you’re still interested in these fun moments. Team Sonic Racing is decent as a handheld game and a fun racer in general, but this port could have been so much better.
Rolling Gunner is a fairly standard shooter, taking some elements and working on making them polished enough so that players of any skill levels could get used to shooting games, while experts can challenge themselves on the higher difficulties or by limiting themselves to getting as far as possible on one credit. It may not do anything new, but it serves as a fun, solid shooter for score chasing fans who enjoy these old-school games.