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[jayextee]

Tomb Raider I Remastered (2024, PS4)

Well, given my penchant for playing remakes-then-originals, isn't it nice for me to do the opposite order?

It's late and I can't be bothered typing a full review, so here's some scattered thoughts in bullet-point form:

modern controls are cursed, clearly this game works best with the controls it was designed for

modern visuals, on the other hand, are kinda nice...

...BUT lit differently, and often much dimmer than the original levels -- meaning I found myself switching quite regularly for visibility's sake.

Other than that it's fine. A few other niggles aside (such as the tutorial speech not working correctly, making the associated trophy a bit harder to access than necessary) compete with some nice changes (such as adding the later games' ability to 180 during a jump or while swimming by using the roll button). It's a solid package.

My one gripe is that when using classic visuals, while being visibly-clearer than the modern makeover, the framerate is seemingly locked to 30fps? At least it was on PS4. Bit rude, that.

4/5

[jayextee]

Duke Nukem 3D (1997, Saturn)

Shake it, baby.

After stumbling my way through Saturn Quake, it seemed the due diligence on my part to also play Lobotomy Software's other two Saturn shooters, so I figured I'd get Duke out of the way first. A little explanation for that is required.

I don't like Duke. Not a lot. I don't like BUILD-engine games, with their fatal doors and almost equally-fatal hitscanners who can spot the player, aim, and fire with nigh-pinpoint accuracy as soon as their field of vision is breached. I don't like the high damage almost everything seems to incur, I don't like being murdered by a cutscene explosion from a wall a foot to my virtual side. Fuck all that noise, gimme some DOOM or something. Well, not Saturn DOOM, obviously. Exhumed, then.

Well, okay, so Exhumed is going to be my reward for playing through this piece of shite, alright?

K, so. In brief; Saturn Duke doesn't use BUILD, instead being made from scratch in Slavedriver; the engine powering Exhumed (and also Saturn Quake). It has coloured lighting the original game didn't. It also has lower-resolution sprites and textures, missing levels, larger levels split into two, less one-liners, Duke can't reduce his speed of locomotion down to a walk nor crouch, there's less interactive scenery, and what levels are there have been simplified a bit.

Them's the facts out of the way, and I probably made the whole experience seem wretched. In fact, that's exactly what I steeled myself for; having played the PC version via Steam and whatever the PS4 thing I own even is in the last few years left that familiar BUILD taste in my mouth even now. But I was ready.

Then I started playing. And something unexpected happened. I started having fun (big shoutout to PandaMonium on YouTube for an excellent ongoing series of videos about Saturn games, by the way). Saturn Duke doesn't feel like a BUILD game. But it's quick and twitchy like one, albeit with some simplifications to the proceedings and some delightfully-judicious autoaim.

And y'know what, I think a lot of my fun comes precisely from the simplifications made to get this sucker running on console.

Switch puzzles are often simpler; squishy, deadly rotating sectors are now static and much easier to jump on; and so on and so forth. Sure, that may in some people's eyes strip a lot of what Duke Nukem brought to the 1990's FPS table, but I argue it's still got the weapons and the jetpacking around and it's still balls hard.

It's just, y'know, less fiddly and played with an excellent controller on the best-kept-secret cool console innit.

Rockin'. 4/5

[jayextee]

Alien Trilogy (1996, Saturn)

In space, no one can hear you say "may the fourth be with you".

So, as evidenced by the DOOM WAD reviews I used to do here, I loves me some vintage FPS. Some DOOM clones. Some boomshoots. Whatever. Actually, no, let me go back to that whole 'DOOM clone' nomenclature for a moment because this is the one. The cloniest of clones. The archetype of a whole genre.

No, I don't give a zero-gravity shite if it's the closest to DOOM or that there may be games that are mechanically or visually more of a match for id Software's genre-defining classic. Sit down and shut up. This is the one; I like to think that somewhere in 1994 a 20th Century Fox executive loaded up Justin Fisher's Aliens Total Conversion for DOOM and thought to themselves "oh hey, here's a thing we should license somebody to do". Probably forgetting that at some point id Software was supposed to have done it, so urban legend suggests.

Anyway, that's the preamble. It's a vintage FPS that doesn't have room-over-room level layouts. Changes from DOOM to here are few and far between, but I'll summarise; there's a motion tracker, some basic (and hoooo boy do I mean 'clunky' when I say 'basic') looking up/down, and levels can't always be merely completed -- they've got mission objectives. A bit more about those later.

So, the meat and veggies of a good DOOM clone would be, to my mind at least, the movement. Trilogy's weird with it. Walking's a fine enough speed, bit slow. Running's a better speed. Strafing is a bit slower than that, backpedalling slower still. In theory this would allow a bit more forethought and consideration to navigation in a firefight but that's not the case in reality. It just feels kinda 'off' and weird.

Strange also is the way the game handles what would later become known as 'hitscan' weaponry. You know the ilk; pistols, shotguns, that kinda thing. Stuff you point at and things feel pain immediately. Or would except here they're visible needle-thin projectiles that travel noticably-slower than 'instantly'. Shotgun's actually just this but with a few invisible projectiles, so there's some lag when firing and seeing the thing you fired at die. And guess what? Human enemies (or synthetics, whatevs) have hitscan weapons with invisible needle projectiles! So it's like, you can dodge them, but you can't see them!

This makes firefights kinda weird, and most of the time I just tanked the damage because, well, I'm probably going to strafe away from these not-hitscan bullets and back into them by accident because I can't see them. What a crock of shite, eh?

Other meanies populating the levels are basically alien, little red alien, big red alien, facehugger, chestburster, Queen, and egg. Egg will spawn one (1) facehugger if left undestroyed, and then that's all from our extraterrestrial ovine foe. And that's the only one that differs in any way behaviourally from the non-human bestiary's stock repertoire of "chase, melee, chase more, melee more, occasionally get stuck on scenery".

There are three episodes of this, ranging from the second movie's LV426 (episode 1), the third movie's Fiorina 161 (episode 2) and then the locale of the original movie; the "boneship" (episode 3). No, Quentin "FEETPIC PLS" Tarantino didn't write this, there's just some boneheaded excuse plot about going in after the events of the movies to 'clean up'. Ripley, who died in the third movie (oops, spoilers), is there to help apparently. Except you play as her. And, despite locations being many decades of space travel apart, it seems like you do all of this in an afternoon or something.

Okay, so, don't play this for the plot.

So, the gameplay? Well that's kinda awkward. It's a standard DOOM clone but with awkward movement -- I described the on-ground locomotion but not the instantly-falling like a lead brick. Or the awkward two-button looking. Or, oh my word this one boils my piss, the mission system.

You see, before missions you get this text crawl about what The Company (who you, as Ripley, are now taking orders from, after everything that transpired in the actual trilogy? Shyeah) want from you and it's not always "kill shit, find exit, win". Sometimes it's destroying barrels, or it's switching switches, or gathering ID tags, or worse. Late on there's a level that absolutely requires finding a whole hidden second-half by wading through a labyrinth consisting of channels of harmful acid that aren't helpfully marked on the map. Without? Objective failed. The game lets you exit the level, but you've got to play it again with the supplies you're now left with. Fuck that, reload, try again. There's also a level that has a whole fuckload of objectives hidden behind false walls, too. Wonderful.

Anyway, here's the kicker. I think this is a pretty bad game; for a first-person shooter and for something based on the Alien franchise.

And yet, I love it.

Look, I'm shallow. Put me in a servicable shootybang game where I'm shooting Xenomorphs in locales that look recognisably enough like places from the movies, and I'm all-in, y'know? I love this, maybe not the moment-to-moment level design nor combat, but I love it as a whole.

I just couldn't in good conscience recommend it to another human being unless they're similarly-afflicted by whatever brainrot makes me this way.

3/5

[jayextee]

Gato Roboto (2019, Steam)

I think I got this in a Steam sale or something? Dunno, it was sat there in my library for a bit and, well, having once made an indie cat game with monochrome art myself I wasn't entirely against the idea of playing an indie cat game with monochrome art.

It's a MetroidVania, as tagged proudly on the store page, so expectations going in were that, yes, I would be playing some Metroid. And indeed, there's more than a couple of vertical shafts dotted with platforms and critters who love to crawl on all sides of them.

There's a small twist though, in that your cat has a mech suit; which can be disembarked from to enter small gaps in a 'morph ball plus' kinda way, even if the kitty dies from a single hit without the suit. Separating in this manner is the basis for a fair few of the game's navigational puzzles, and they're all very clearly-communicated and well-designed.

Combat is as one would expect; regular shots plus missiles to start, although a neat trick here is that missiles aren't rationed at all; but to offset this infinite supply, only a small number of them can be fired before the launcher heats up and needs a moment to cool down. This gives an element of rhythm and pacing to the boss fights, that are the game's main sticking points -- they're kinda rough until the patterns are learned, but not unfair.

Art's cute, too. Despite being just the two colours (black and white, although more palettes can be found during gameplay) everything reads very clearly and there's a good sense of place throughout. Actually this brought to mind the seminal and excellent classic free indie title Hero Core, which is never a bad thing. So what else?

Atmosphere's good. Story's, well, it's there I guess. But then I wasn't on this ride for anything epic, just a short game I could take in whenever I had moments between other things. And with an achievement for beating the game in under an hour, short it very much is. Exactly my bag, I don't generally use a game's brevity as a cudgel against it and I won't here. Actually, I felt the game as long as it needed to be -- although I didn't turn back when the game warned me of its 'point of no return' to 100% it, so there's more it can offer me.

Worth playing. 4/5

[jayextee]

Tomb Raider (1996, Saturn)

Immediately, not one sentence into this review, I shall address the largest elephant in the room and say "it's not as good as the PlayStation version". What an absolutely tiresome thing to have to do, given that the game was initially released on the SEGA platform, has a few bugs that were fixed for the PlayStation version (as well as, OMG, adding the fucking handstand) -- in a way, playing Tomb Raider on Saturn is like having a fun jaunt through a fully-playable beta version of the game. With less save points, because real ones play SEGA according to my partner.

Now to continue with the revieWAIT, ANOTHER ELEPHANT JUST ENTERED THE ROOM. This one's wearing a shirt that says 'tank controls' and it can fuck right off. The tank controls are fine - the game was designed with them in mind. In fact, shortly after the gym tutorial section in Lara's House I got very well acquainted with the tempo and rhythm of the movement back in 1996 as I did during my recent playthrough of it in 2025. Walk to ledge, line up jump, hop back, hold forward and the jump button; with the 'action' button employed if a ledge grab may be needed. There's a cadence to it all that becomes quite comfortably-reliable after a while. The tank controls are fine. Anybody who says otherwise is probably operating from the POV that if the player presses 'jump', the foregone conclusion is that the game will assist, aid, and otherwise graciously handhold the player in every possible way to ensure that they end up at their target destination of The Other Ledge.

Kid, this ain't that kinda game.

I'm not saying that to appreciate Tomb Raider requires a history lesson, but I'm going to give one in brief. That fluid "press jump, go in smooth arc, land easily" style of platforming seen in Mario and its ilk was only one possible way to convey the concept of vertical locomotion in the early days of videogames. I won't go into the others in depth, but one such example was seen in the original 1989 Prince of Persia title; often attributed as 'cinematic' platformers, but I personally call them 'ledge grabbers' due to the mechanical focus.

One can, if they wished, draw a direct through-line from Prince of Persia, to 1992's Flashback, detouring via 1994's Blackthorne, and then diverging into the separate paths that are Tomb Raider and 1997's cult PlayStation classic Abe's Oddysee. It's a whole 'thing', a whole genre of games cut from the same cloth; experiences in which a "simple" jump from-and-to isn't as much a foregone conclusion as it is a whole-ass puzzle in and of itself. We'd see things go full-circle and evolved even further with 2003's frankly legendary Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time but I digress.

The fact here is, most of the game here is that platform-puzzle ledgegrab-porn affair and I'm personally absolutely here for it. There are some actual (read: more conventional) puzzles present, too -- as Lara often finds herself pushing large square blocks around in order to facilitate more hopping from surface to surface at the game's considered; almost turn-based; pace. Of course they're square, everything's a fucking square here. Oh, wait, so is another elephant that just invited itself to this soiree. One moment please.

I can joke about the platforming in Tomb Raider being a turn-based affair, but that's closer to the truth than it is mere jest. Indeed, the fact that the game's architecture does in general conform to a grid helps to facilitate this; and, in lieu of proper 3D cameras (as this game was released in an era where camerawork frankly sucked and right analogue sticks weren't even a thing to help fix that) the standardisation of scale this helps to enforce can give the player a very clear impression of the distance of any given gap, and therefore what length of jump is required to clear it. Indeed, I don't think I was caught off-guard by a single leap during my playthrough.

It's not just platforming, though. One of Tomb Raider's most-iconic and memorable setpieces involves a fight with a large dinosaur in the third level, so yeah there's combat. And I'm here today to tell you that the combat absolutely blows. Strangely, there are no elephants for this one in general, but I'd invite one in for tea and peanuts in this particular case. Because, yes, I'll agree with any criticism anybody has about the gunplay for this thing.

It boils down to this; with guns drawn, Lara automatically points at the closest foe in range. Hold down the 'action' button in this state and she fires at the cyberdemon enemy until it dies. They're sometimes faster than Lara, so some jumping around may be required; there's a button to perform a 180 dodge-roll to help with this. Enemies are also sometimes armed with their own firearms, ain't no dodge-roll gonna help with those. I'd say I burned my way through 90% of my medipacks in these situations having given up any pretence of dodging and resigning myself to a war of attrition, one bulletsponge versus another-who-can-heal-themselves.

So, platforming good: combat shite. That's the general flavour of it.

Level design is generally excellent, though; to a point. But I'll get to that. Every level has its own flavour, and there's a wealth of varied things to do; find the cogs for a mechanism to redirect a flow of water, turn three lead bars into gold, raise and lower the water level in a massive chamber to access new areas -- that last one's actually my favourite in the game, despite absolutely tanking the framerate on Saturn. What a damn good job that pseudo-turnbased movement compensates for heavy lag, then. Score one more for those unpopular tank controls; they absolutely work for this game and how it was designed, and I will die on this hill. This boxy, obviously conforming to a square grid, hill.

But that point I mentioned, and it happens at the last fifth of the game, is where the level designers decided the reins come off and they were allowed to be as sadistic and mean-spirited as they like; the last fifth of the game contains some absolute bullshit, I tell you what. Enemies who explode into damaging pieces (which can kill at close quarters if you're not entirely careful), untelegraphed rolling boulders placed in such a way that only some foreknowledge could warn you where they were (because the camera ain't shit for that), et cetera and so forth. It's when the game ramps itself up to 11 that the seams start to show and the flaws become quite apparent.

I didn't know where else to mention it, but the amount of deaths I had due to the slight delay between pressing the START button and having the inventory actually appear onscreen was large enough and significant enough to also count as a point against.

But, was it worth (re)playing?

Absolutely, and I do not regret the time I spent playing this game. It spearheaded an entire franchise for a reason after all, and those janky early-3D vistas are still something to behold almost 30 years after the fact. I've said before that Tomb Raider isn't just about exploration from a narrative standpoint, but a technological one also -- 3D games were very new, and the 3D platformer hadn't yet received the definitive genre template that was Mario 64 when this game was being developed -- it was all new territory, and playing through the game in 2025 is almost akin to reading the journals of some olde worlde explorer chronicling their experiences; good and bad, successes and failures, treasures and pitfalls; in undiscovered lands.

It's flawed, but nonetheless iconic.

4/5

[jayextee]

Castle of Illusion, starring Mickey Mouse (2013, Steam)

Remember when I reviewed Monster World IV, remake and then original, and ended up concluding that the older version was better? Anyway, Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse. Older version is better. End of review.

Nah, I wouldn't do that to ya. Probably about three people read my Tumbly reviews and by that very fact alone they're my best friends. If you're reading this, I mean you. I don't have many friends. The few I do have are special.

In lieu of fellow human meatbags to chat shit with, I've always had videogames though. By the release of the original Castle of Illusion back in 1990, I'd already played videogames for a good five years by my reckoning. I knew that I liked platform games. And I knew who Mickey Mouse was. And so, the title needed no real introduction. Here's a jumpy-jump game where you play as Mickey Mouse. It was very 'of its time', meant neither negatively nor affectionately.

2013's version is very of its time.

It's a pretty thing, that's for sure. Initially, I really enjoyed the little touches; instead of a small cutscene between levels where Mickey discovers the door to the next area, that plays out instead as a humble little hub area so you can do that same thing manually. And instead of experiencing the joy and wonder of a new area for yourself, there's a storybook-style narrator telling you what Mickey can see now; as if your eyes were lying to you.

Par for the course in the twentytens though, right in the middle of an era that decided gamers aren't smart enough to figure anything out for themselves so the film storytelling adage 'show, don't tell' went completely out of the window in favour of 'stop the show, grab their hand, point them in the right direction, shove 'em there forcibly'. I'm just being cynical, the narrator was kinda nice. Added a little then-modern twist to the familiar proceedings.

And they are familiar -- that's kinda what you want from a remake innit? I want to jaunt through a forest, leap some leaves, end up with it all getting spooky; and the game does this. Toy area with a climb to the top for a key, and then slide back down to the door as all the steps you ascended become slides? It's there. And yet, there are little ameliorations to remind you that this ain't yer dad's Mickey Mouse. Remember that rolling apple in the second part of the forest area? Of course you didn't, you blinked and missed it. But now it's a full-on Crash Bandicoot-style run into the camera with absolutely-missable gems!

Did I mention the gems?

Well, y'see, here's the thing. Between 1990 and 2013, expectations for platform games changed quite a bit. It's not good enough to simply get through the levels, now there's the expectation that you collect. Absolutely. Fucking. Everything. In order to unlock something or other. And this contemporary busywork is added to the remake, something I'm not entirely keen on -- I'll level with ya, I just wanted to see the ending and now I have I'm not going back for trinkets.

And why not? Game's not fun enough. I doubt the older version was either, it was a 'good-but-not-great' platformer that although pleasant enough to beat once or twice, didn't actually justify a replay. This'n feels the same, but they tried. And actually I wish they didn't, because some of those embellishments to the levels actually really piss me off -- remember when you got the rainbow gems at the end of the original, Mickey built a rainbow bridge out of them, then you went into the tower to fight Mizrabel at the end? Wouldn't it be great if you had to, manually, ascend that tower? With time-sensitive platforms and barely-visible rope swings and etcetera blah blah blah.

Well nah.

That visibility thing's a real problem, by the way - and one I constantly had toward the latter part of the game. The original, as 'good, but only good' as it was, knew how to telegraph most of the challenges to let the player know what was expected of them in the moment. It's good game design, Dave. The remake? Not so much. It's like the developers cared so much about making it look all modern (for 2013, I remind you -- although the art direction's still nice in my eyes) that they neglected to care sometimes about making it clear to look at.

Sounds like a nitpick gripe, actually hampered my enjoyment on a fundamental level. The apex of this would be the candy dragon boss in the sweets/cakes area, lobbing those macaroons at me in a pattern with absolutely no tells as to which of the three platforms any given projectile was aimed at. Now, it's the same pattern every time and learnable; but that most-cursed indie platformer dev credo of "learn by dying" wasn't really a thing back in 1990 and it shouldn't have been here. Especially given that for some reason the game kept the original's lives system. As well as, uselessly, its scoring system.

I did, when considered as a whole, enjoy more than I didn't. The game sees the original's 'good-not-great' and fails to raise with its 'okay-not-good-not-great'.

3/5

[jayextee]

Quake (1997, SEGA Saturn)

So y'all know I love me some Quake, yeah? Bet you're all absolutely unaliving to know what I think of the SEGA Saturn version, right?

Right so, this was my first Quake. This is where the love affair started. Guess it's a 5/5, then. Joking aside, when this dropped I was not the big DOOM freak I am now. I wasn't even all that into FPS games, having really only played PS1 DOOM, Alien Trilogy, and Exhumed on Saturn. That was it, really; some early-ass disinterested Wolfenstein 3D during lunch breaks at work experience notwithstanding.

I mention this because the frame of reference here is; WASD and mouse wasn't the standard control scheme yet. Nor was the twinstick equivalent for console. So we've got forward/backward and turning on the d-pad, strafe on the shoulder buttons, looking is done with a whole-ass button and up/down. Slow. And, according to some walking intellectual-vacuums, "literally unplayable".

Except it's not. It's different, that's all.

So. Way back when, a bigass deal was made of Trenton McReznorface from the band Ten Inch Tacks doing the soundtrack for Quake. It's an ambient, unsettling, weird horror soundtrack and evokes a terrifying atmosphere. It's absolutely as tonally far-removed from a Quake Done Quick speedrun as you can get, but for crawling along with slightly-stodgy controls as you squint to see what's in the middle distance at such a low resolution, it's fine. And that's the Saturn Quake experience, really. I sound like I'm insulting it, but no.

My first experience of Quake was that of a horror FPS, much like DOOM 3 attempted to be, and many of my non-circlestrafing friends playing the PlayStation version of DOOM considered that to be. It just seemed to be the 'in' thing, slow-paced first-person shooters designed to scare the everliving shit out of you. And for consoles bereft of those twitchy 'kbm' controls, that's precisely what they were.

And so, Saturn Quake has a low resolution and not the smoothest frame rate. But it's good for what it is, y'know?

I kinda wanna spell it out another way as well. A personal computer (heh, even back in the '90s we called 'em "PCs", I just didn't want to bundle a bunch of caps together at the start of a sentence) that could run Quake in 1997 would probably set a person back the better part of a thousand quid, if not exactly that when factoring in a half-decent monitor and speaker setup; something console owners already 'had' in the form of the TV they'd connect their machine to. Consoles, however, couple of hundred. They weren't quite as powerful (you'd think? But platform games pretty much always sucked on PC for some reason, a few notable but rare exceptions aside).

And yet, this game for powerful PCs was here running on the "shit, can't do 3D" underdog games machine of the era. HOW? DO WE NEED TO BURN THE DEVS AS WITCHES?

Right here was a marvellous tech demo for the Saturn. It wasn't 1:1, not least because instead of id Tech it used Lobotomy Software's proprietary 'SlaveDriver' (so named for being the engine of PowerSlave, the US name for Exhumed) engine. But, seriously, nobody thought this would even work. And, if someone tried to do it, it would not be expected to be even half as good as these final results. SEGA Saturn Magazine UK said "it had no right" being as good as it was. They were correct.

Okay so it's the best tech demo ever in 1997 and is the equivalent of running the latest games in 2025 on a literal potato. Was it that good?

Despite my praise, nah. It was good, don't get me wrong here, but there are certain quibbles that taint the experience. Autoaim, needed for the standard control scheme with 'look' button (because there is a more-modern, kinda, scheme hidden in the game for peeps with the NiGHTS controller...) often aims more at enemies' feets than their bodies, meaning many of my precious nails from the nailgun end up spent in the floor or the ledge that a given target is stood upon.

At close range with the shotguns, sometimes it would appear that my shots were flat-out going through enemies. Not ideal.

I say 'taint', but it's not complete ruination. It's a good game, if you can stomach a slightly-low framerate and resolution, and are willing to take it at a snail's pace. But hey, enjoy the horror of it all, yeah? 3.5/5

[jayextee]

Virtua Fighter (1994, SEGA Saturn)

So I said I'd be reviewing Saturn stuff I play.

Straight up, I'm a fan of this series. I'll try to be impartial as I can through this review but, heads up, I love it. Spoilers, I guess?

VF1 was not my first VF. Back in the 1990's my Saturn was bundled with Sega Rally, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, and Virtua Fighter 2. What an absolutely legendary trio of introduction games, there's no wonder I fell in love with the console immediately; and indeed, looking back I'd still say they're three of the system's finest. Play them. Now.

So, anyway, spoiled rotten by the amazing Vee Eff Two always made the first game seem quite basic to me. Threadbare, even. Except, those visuals. I couldn't get my head around them; in a good way, I assure you! Contrary to everything I'd heard at the time about VF1's graphics being "bad" and the texture-mapped VF Remix being released as an 'apology' for it, I thought those flat-shaded polygons were stylish as all hell. And I was here for it. And I'm still here for it.

Aside from how stylish the aesthetic is, it's got some problems and they're much-publicised. Polygons in the fighters can flicker between light levels or on/off entirely, and certain camera angles (usually during replays, or the intro) cut off parts of the arena that aren't even too far away, that's a hell of a myopic draw distance. And I'm not sure whether this is a side effect of me playing the game on Saroo or not (because I don't remember it from back in the day) but I've been witnessing certain HUD elements flicker when the action gets hectic. Bit messy.

But the thing is, the game really shines I think. Although the basic punches and kicks of every fighter are identical, they've got real character and strengths/weaknesses and all eight of them are real fun to play (even if I get the most mileage out of my main, Sarah, who I play most in every VF game). It's real fun to just slap these boxy fighter around, y'know?

But also, the game's strong in other areas. Not its meagre content, something also oft-discussed due to being constrained to arcade, versus, and a ranking mode; but the sound. Oh lawdy, that sound. Where do I start?

Music's catchy as all hell, even with the occasionally-grating reliance on that 'get go!' sample (oh, hi there end credits theme), but aside from one or two tunes that do this, there are some BOPS. Jeffry's theme, looking squarely at you. Hell, Sarah and Dural have some bangers too -- probably why both of them made it unchanged into the later Fighters Megamix.

But the sound effects, oh my, the sound effects. I'm more about how well sounds communicate the game's action over how 'nice' they might sound; but VF delivers in both areas to my ears. Firstly, there are different 'hit' sounds for different kinds of impacts (with a very clear 'reverb' to that thumping 'counter hit' sound, something Saturn VF2 didn't do right if I remember correctly) and it's never unclear what the audio is telling me. But also, they sound great. Hitting sounds crunchy and has impact, I dare say this is a really iconic bunch of effects here. If I were to levy a single criticism in this area, it's that vocal sounds are few and far between; but the sequels addressed this. It's good!

And that, to me, is the crux of how I feel with VF in modern times. I don't disagree with my older self that it's somewhat basic compared to later games, but as a streamlined VF experience; or even possibly an introduction to the series' staples and tenets; it's good. Not as great as the series would later go, but still incredibly fun.

I was about to end the review there, but there's one talking point I forgot to mention. Everyone seems to forget to mention it; which is why it's important for me to, even awkwardly-inserted into the tail-end of a ramble such as this. And that is, how well VF moves.

I'm not even kidding, it beat contemporaries like Tekken and ToShinDen to the punch and yet none of its rivals had animation anywhere near as damn good as VF's. Some movements are a joy to watch onscreen (such as that backflip with seemingly no other use than CPU Kage stalling for a time over victory) and absolutely cement that aesthetic in my mind as being "better than people in the '90s knew". Of course, I gather from YouTube comments here and there that I'm not alone in preferring this game's look to the later Remix and that assures me that I'm not quite as weird in that as my schoolfriends of the waybackwhen insisted. It looks good. It sounds good. It moves good. It plays good. It's good. 4/5

[jayextee]

BLUE BLUE SKIES <3

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[jayextee]

Story of Thor 2 (1996, Saturn)

I played this a wee bit back, but I'll try to remember enough of my thoughts about it to make it my first "oh look I'm playing Saturn games on actual hardware for the first time in decades" review.

Technically the prequel, I thought I'd play it before the first game on Megadrive. And I remember this as being a guilty little pleasure of mine way back -- hell, I had a one and a half hour speedrun route committed to memory at one point, alas now gone. Always saw it as an unpopular little Zelda clone that I really liked and nobody else did.

That was back then, because it was on Saturn and everyone I knew was moving over to PlayStation. And it still is right now, because the Rewritten Internet History Machine likes to tell anybody who'll listen that the Saturn was shit. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong! But I digress...

Turns out, I'd forgotten more of this game than I could remember. And so, playing it was a fresh enough experience; I'd say that over 50% of the game was new to me again. And I have to correct myself, it's not a Zeldalike at all -- this thing's closer to a MetroidVania with how areas old and new interconnect; and how some amount of sequence-breaking is possible! (A fact I'd remembered from that 1.5 hour speedrun I mentioned, actually)

But also, I'd forgotten how absolutely. Fucking. Goddamn. BEAUTIFUL this game is. Apparently not as good-looking as it could've been due to initially targeting the 32x, I wouldn't have guess. Animation is lush and smooth, colours are fantastic, character designs are appealing and read clearly. Almost makes me want to make a game just like it. Almost.

Sounds good, too -- although sound effects are serviceable and adequate, the brass-heavy Yuzo Koshiro score does a lot to establish an adventurous tone to the proceedings, bringing to mind the movies of Ray Harryhausen - an apparent influence on the game, as it happens.

Plays well, too -- the game ostensibly being a more-arcadelike take on the whole Legend of Zelda type of adventure albeit with the menuing removed and more in-depth combat in its place. Although a prior knowledge (and ability to pull off Street Fighter-style motion inputs) of the techniques will put a player at a serious advantage, heh, it's good. It works well if you're doing more than furiously tapping the 'stab stuff' button and hoping for the game to provide you with flashy combos. It just don't work that way, son. And I'm happy it doesn't.

And, yeah, the game's short. My casual playthrough was something like six or seven hours? And at that, my lost and never recovered memory of the layout and progression meant that I did a fair amount of wandering, trying to work out what the everliving fuck was expected of me, until I tripped over it.

Which leads me onto the negatives. There aren't many, but there's a few. Progress can be non-obvious, and only every skirting with being obtuse; and some of the puzzles in certain areas can be a little tedious (anything that requires playing stone pole-breakout with hovering spiked steel balls, I'm looking pointedly in YOUR direction). But also, lush as the game's visuals are, get used to seeing bricks and rocks. There's a lot of that. Many areas look incredibly-similar to each other, with only the sky and forest areas offering anything substantially individual to enjoy. Also the story's kinda basic. Ho hum.

But some of that feels like nitpicking for such a short and sweet experience. And I mean that, I think extending the game to a many-hour epic would greatly overstay its welcome for what it is. And what it is, is an adventure. Not a crusade. And it's good. 4/5

[jayextee]

Heads up, I think I'm gonna start reviewing things I play again on this neglected blog. Twist is; I recently re-acquired a SEGA Saturn, so I'm going to be irritatingly-full of copium as I bat for the fifth generation underdog.

[jayextee]

Oh hey, look what I got involved with (again). (seriously, that's four times now it's been an absolute blast to collaborate with these fine peeps) <3

Sonic The Comic: Reillistrated From issue 127: Robotnik Reigns Supreme (part 3)

All credits and information can be found here: https://stcr.nevira.net/stcr04.html

Here we go again! Some absolutely wonderful work once more from all our artists. This project would be nothing without you all!

[jayextee]

[jayextee]

TAKE THAT, SONIC

How’s My Driving? Westopolis ‘Shadow The Hedgehog’ Support us on Patreon

[jayextee]

[jayextee]

I've never drawn so fast in my LIFE dude

[jayextee]

A rare chance to see some of my art, plus some other amazing stuff made by fellow SEGA superfans. <3

Sega Superstars: The Next Generation

Three brand new Sonic the Comic-style stories and three more brand new comic strip previews that were compiled into a single issue for STC’s 31st birthday!

Full credits and a link to the PDF here: