[Finished January 12 2025, text wrote June 4th 2025] (Minor rewrite October 10th, 2025)
Contra is a title I've seen presented alongside Ghosts n' Goblins or Ninja Gaiden as one of the faces of the unfairly difficult NES game, the type of game that requires you to put hours into learning every enemy pattern and item placement in order to stand a chance in clearing, While it certainly does request a lot more memorization than say a Mega Man game, I feel this reputation ends up unwarranted and honestly quite unfortunate.
Contra is really damn fun and extremely approachable for someone's first ever Run n' Gun, and you shouldn't let the stories of people who grew up with the game scare you off. It never feels like you’ve hit a skill/progression wall, and aside from some environmental obstacles that can surprise the player in stages 6 & 7, deaths never feel unfair or unclear about what you could've done to prevent it. The closest thing that the game comes to an “unfair obstacle” for me are the tanks in stage 5, which require unreal levels of mashing if you don't have the Spread gun or Machine Gun.
Even if you're majorly struggling with the game you earn plenty of extra lives through gaining score, and with 3 continues as well you will always be making progress each run, as long as you apply what you learn of coruse. Even if you don’t want to, if you REALLY can't be bothered to learn the game, there is always the Konami code; which not only gives you 30 lives at the start, but also gives you 30 lives for each of those continues for 120 tries in total. That's crazy forgiving!! I'm honestly surprised to see it out of a game from this era.
As long as you go into it with a determined mind (and you enjoy playing it of course!) you will beat Contra. I promise you.
Definitely going to check out Super C or the 16-bit titles at some point. I played Contra on a whim looking through an NES challenge list that retro game enthusiasts 6527kg and MostlyHarmless made and ended up playing something I didn't expect to appreciate so much.
[Finished January 27 2025, text wrote June 23rd 2025]
I first discovered the Klonoa series in 2016 from a guy on youtube known as ExoParadigmGamer. Looking back I heavily disagree with his attitude towards game remakes, and I especially find his videos on the classic sonic games to be quite bitter and spiteful towards other reviewers, but that’s all besides the point. Although not a lot about those videos stuck in my mind, the impression that his review on Klonoa 1 left on me certainly did. And for some stupid reason this black and white cabbit has kept showing up in my life ever since.
Klonoa is wonderful. I absolutely adore everything going on with the aesthetic both artistically and on the tech side .The pre-rendered 2d sprites and 3d level geometry combine in this way that just makes the world have so much weight to it. There’s only 13 stages to the game, but the structure of those stages, the detours that the story takes you through, and the constant environmental setpieces all make Phantomile feel so much more larger. The music that plays during the adventure radiates this child-like aura that is just delightful and captures the motif of dreams perfectly. I was already familiar with the soundtrack from I Wanna See The Moon, but hearing it here was a blast. Using enemies as both projectiles and as methods of platforming is absolutely genius and I wish it was explored just a tad further. I don’t want to spoil the story too much, but Ghadius’s brief comments about nightmares are so interesting to me, there is a lot to dig into regarding the themes of dreams and the inevitability of sorrow. That ending too man, god, I knew what happened before going in and I still shed a small tear.
I cannot gush about this game enough dude. I know Klonoa 2 exists and I admit I haven’t seen much of it, but I really don’t think there is another game anywhere close to feeling like Klonoa 1.
Wahoo!
Played using the Enhanced Edition bugfix/restoration mod on the PC port.
Alluring and beautiful. I'd like to replay it at some point before writing more, but I completely understand why this game is so beloved.
[Finished June 09 2025, text wrote June 17 2025]
The Sega Genesis is a console I’m pretty unread about when it comes to the big non-Sonic titles. Not because I dislike it or anything! I was just a Nintendo kid growing up, and nobody I watched on youtube really talked about Genesis Games. My biggest exposure to the Genesis Canon was honestly probably Sonic for Hire? Anyway, to try and change that I made a big list of games that seemed interesting and from it I was recommended Rocket Knight Adventures.
God damn I was not expecting to love this game as much as I do. The Dash is such a wild movement ability, it’s so uncontrollable but the invincibility it gives you makes it so fun to just spam everywhere, and it just feels great to use on bosses. I love the constant set pieces and the seemingly unwillingness to use an obstacle twice, for a game released in the era where levels were created by rearranging the same obstacles in different ways; it's something I certainly wasn’t expecting. The bosses share this attitude in their design as well. There's an incredible amount of them and they have so many moving parts and phases that it honestly gets kinda funny at points. The Stage 6 boss is the main one that comes to mind when thinking about them. You go through 4 phases taking down different segments on the ship and right when you think it’s finally over the front cannon of the ship grows limbs and starts jumping around the screen. This game impresses me so much dude, it feels so, so fresh. (Also not sure where to put this, but the visual effect on the lava in the first part of stage 3 is CRAZY to me, I didn’t know the genesis could do that.)
Should’ve called it Radical Knight Adventures, I would absolutely recommend this to just about anyone.
[Read from March 14 2025 to August 24 2025, text wrote August 27 2025]
One of the most meaningful experiences I have ever had with a work of art. I struggle to find the words to describe just how much Umineko has affected me, but even if I did I wouldn't want to spoil a single thing. Please go into this as blind as you can. It left me with so many thoughts about how I view life, engage with art, what truth and trust means to me, and just, I love this story with all my heart. Thank you Ryukishi.
Also I got close to a someone who is now my partner and I love and cherish a lot from reading this with them lol.
Retro Game Club #1 - August/2025
Retro Game Club #2 - September/2025
Played on the FCE Ultra GX hombrew emulator using a Wii Remote in place of a zapper.
[Finished October 12 2025, text wrote October 14 2025]
Hogan's Alley is named after a common term used for a police firearms training facility, and I gotta say, Nintendo did a fantastic job here of representing what being a law enforcement officer is like. Unlike every other Black Box NES game where you get a game over after 3 to 5 misses, here you get to shoot up to 9 innocent civilians before any sort of consequences start happening, and even once you're kicked out you get to come back for another round like nothing ever happened. Truly incredible accuracy by the team at R&D1 here.
Actual thoughts: Although it probably has the most interesting gameplay of the 3 shooting gallery zapper games, this game just lacks any of the charm that Duck Hunt or Wild Gunman have. Maybe I'm just being the friend who's too woke but yeah, I don't care for the cop training facility setting, I'm sorry lol. Can game is siiiiick though.
Played on the FCE Ultra GX hombrew emulator using a Wii Remote in place of a zapper.
[Finished October 12 2025, text wrote October 15 2025]
My favorite of the 3 shooting gallery games, even if when looked at with a more critical eye it's probably the weakest gameplay wise. I'm just a sucker for cowboys I guess lol. I sadly wasn't able to get the proper experience of drawing the gun because the wii remote pointer takes a bit too long to appear, but I imagine with the proper zapper set-up it's gotta be super sick.
There's something about the outlaw's sprites I just love, I tried really hard to find out who did them but that information doesn't seem to be clear? From what I can tell it was either Shigeru Miyamoto himself or Makoto Kanoh, but I don't feel confident in saying either was the guy. Miyamoto was hired as an artist in 1979 and did the art for the arcade Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, and Punch-out games, and while they do share a similar style to Wild Gunman, the only mention for him working on the game was a 1989 interview with Micom BASIC magazine. Kanoh was the main designer behind a good chunk of the Game & Watch library, which according to an Iwata Asks interview that included doing the LCD art as well. While his style there does also has a reasonable resemblence to Wild Gunman's art, there is again, nothing proving he was the specific person to have done it. This is just a really annoying situtation really. The original black box series games have an absolutely iconic aesthetic that I really love, and while we have a vague idea of whose responsible for it, there is a good chance we may just never know who did exactly what.
I guess the bottom line here is that this medium's crediing habits in the early days SUCKED and still kinda suck from what I hear. Credit your damn artists.
Played on the FCE Ultra GX hombrew emulator using a Wii Remote in place of a zapper.
[Finished October 14 2025, text wrote October 16 2025]
Iconic for a reason, said reason being that Americans love hunting.
I don't have too much I really want to say other then I fucking love ducks man they're like top 5 animals easy, but also that I feel the VS. System version of the game is the definitive version and I wish Nintendo would rerelease it. Swapping scenes every round just adds a lot for me, plus you get to shoot the dog which is funny. Actually wait that's probably they haven't done it.
[Finished November 13 2025, Wrote November 13 2025]
Conceptually, this game should be right up my aisle. The original Mighty Bomb Jack's control scheme is incredibly unique and one that I really enjoy, and a precision platformer using it is something that has a tonnn of potential in my mind. Plus the BDSM aesthetic and cute lesbians and hell yeah, this should be gold.
In terms of Execution though, I feel all of that is brought down by having some EXTREMELY bland level design. Most of Tower 1 (aka, what most people are gonna play) is just a bunch of hallways and shafts that have you either jumping over single killers, jumping as high as possible to the next ledge without an obstacle in the way, or slowly weaving down back and forth between incredibly easy to dodge fires. Near the end it does start throwing some actual engaging jumps at you, but by the time that happens the game is already over. Tower 2 (which you unlock by beating Tower 1 in 12 minutes, or typing Queen during the opening) is certainly a lot more interesting than the prior one, with it presenting a lot of small concepts and making way better use of the spider enemies, but I still wish it went further with them than what it is here. For a game with such a heavy BDSM theme, I just feel it's pulling too many of its punches.
Also not sure where to put this, but I experienced a lot of what I can only really describe as like, "Old Gamemaker Platformer Jank" where my jump input would sometimes get randomly dropped. I think it usually happened when Jill switched running/idle states but I'm not sure? It kinda made what was actually here a tad bit annoying to play.
I would love to see another take on Mighty Jill Off, however considering the story behind the creation of the game it's probably best that it doesn't happen. Maybe if the real life Jill is cool with it a fan-made game could happen, but I don't think its worth digging up a shitty relationship just to make "Mighty Jill Off But With Better Level Design".
The Torture Room reference is kinda genius though.