Connor Nichols's Reviews
This one’s just really darn fun to scorechase in, and I definitely see myself revisiting those Arcade leaderboards over and over in the months to come, especially with how silky smooth this port feels as a whole.
Sorcerian this ain’t, but you’ll be finding some fun in rolling the dice and clearing scenarios no matter how experienced at these kind of games you are, and I’m just happy to see one of the most obscure Technos franchises get the western release it missed out on.
This 40th Anniversary edition somehow manages to be outright terrible in so many ways. No D-Pad controls, weird input timing, one of the most hideous presentations I’ve ever dealt with here on SFG, and a lot of baffling design choices led to this remake being pretty darn infuriating and very unfun to play.
All in all, a well emulated, if simplistic set of sports games where I’m happy to say Qubyte has greatly improved their compilation skills since I last covered them; sadly, the lack of bonus material still stings a little bit for me, even if the core games themselves are mostly fun.
Still, if you’ve always been curious what an Arcade game would be like in 3D without completely reinventing everything, Snow Bros Wonderland is a fun example of that possibility.
While I am happy to see SEEP’s interesting catalog get introduced to a new audience, Ninja 1987 is a pretty disappointing start to that trend.
At the very least, this is a great value regardless of where you choose to play it, and the best proof of how Tetris is a timeless concept that’ll continue to be engaging for years and years to come.
But as it stands, Card-En-Ciel is just a decent time that will ultimately appeal to you more if you like Inti’s style a lot and are willing to deal with the bland barriers in the way of a very fun combat system.
Really, I’m at least glad this set had more time in the oven to not be a total disaster like the first volume, and I can even say this is a decent little collection of games if you like shooting titles. Sadly, with no real extras or any bonuses besides online leaderboards, this is still a really steep ask for the price point, and I once again feel that all three of these titles would have been far better as Arcade Archives titles.
The improved speed and slight QOL make the game more fun to play than the original version, yes, but the smaller screen and weird controls sorta offset those gains, and even the QOL doesn’t do much to help the fact that the first Aero is an incredibly tedious series of chores that aren’t all that fun to play around with.
Taking out the dull, tedious chores from the first game, some of the slow paced movement from the second game, and adding in a bunch of way more engaging combat mechanics and several techniques rewarding skilled play, and you have yourselves a really darn fun action platformer.
While I can’t say I’m a megafan now after playing this, I’m way happier to say I finally have a Worms game under my belt that entertained me, which I couldn’t say about my last Worms experience; GBA Worms Blast.
Aero 2 is a far improved followup to the dull original. Better level design, better gameplay, better variety, all better, all around! Of the two Aero games, this is the one to play for sure.
Ratalaika ported Aero 1 the best way they could have, and outside of the lack of the Genesis version, I can’t really think of much they could have done to improve this package. You get a well emulated version of Aero with the usual QOL features, and it plays as good as it can. The problem is well, you’re playing Aero The Acro-Bat.
As a game it shouldn’t be one to expect in-depth action from, but the interactivity you do have provides a great backdrop for a charming tale. It may seem asinine for a game this short to be worth the $15 price, but stories like this with shelter animals are seldom expressed in gaming, and for an honest to god effort and a lot of fun moments I really enjoyed a good chunk of Copycat and it had me go “aw!” many times.
The little bit of identity Night Slashers had that wasn’t the gore is just gone now, and I can’t say the game feels that great to play even after playing through it twice.
The bosses were clever, but the other stages didn’t really engage all that much, and I feel if you want a Mega Cat puzzler on Switch, Roniu’s Tale is still the must-have game to nab. That one just has a lot more brain-pushing puzzles from the get go, while The Meating takes a bit too long to get going, and doesn’t exactly excite once it does.
Really when the only complaints I have about this set are that the rewind timer is a bit short, the audio gets briefly weird when loading a save state and that I wish it had something related to the VS version of Wing of Madoola in here, this is just a great set of three fun gems worth discovering for the first time ever.
All in all, Gimmick 2 is a wonderful followup that shows Yumetaro’s game having a bright modern comeback akin to Blaster Master Zero and Ufouria before it.
BAKERU is just plain ol fun, and we could always use another game like that.