Gyokuyoutama

How it abuses your expectations to make you overlook pretty blatant clues about what is going on given early in the series.  But the resolution has a good enough payoff that this doesn't feel like a cheat.

Show is about three girls who rob stuff as the phantom thief Cat's Eye to try to find their dad, though that's mainly just an excuse for them to go on heists as far as the show structure is concerned.  In the last episodes of season 1 they got told that they need to go to Europe to get more leads, leading to the idea that season 2 will be a European tour whereas the first season took place entirely in Japan and almost entirely in one city.

Season 2 begins with a short montage of the girls in Paris, both as tourists and as thieves.  Then within the first five minutes of the episode they get a call that someone is impersonating Cat's Eye in Japan, so they immediately head back to Japan for the rest of the episode.  Then at the end of the episode they get a tip from their private eye in Paris that their father is definitely in Japan and so they should not return to Europe.  And it looks like at least the next chunk of episodes is in Japan.

I don't know if they changed their minds on the direction of the show in between seasons or what but it's downright comical how much they hyped up the European setting at the end of season 1 and how immediately they threw it away in season 2.

a ghost

Emperor of the Faded Suns

 

This is a sci fi strategy that pretty shameless rips off Dune, Warhammer 40k and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun.  Think of a far off future environment with a vast human empire across the stars but with degraded technology, and constant scheming between feudal lords, merchants and the church.  The art style is sort of animesque, but reminds me more of Peter Chung's work (ex. Aeon Flux.)  Very cool in terms of style and concept.

 

However it's also a mid-90's strategy game and I only got it a few weeks ago, so I have no idea how to do anything in the actual game.

 

Various Sega Genesis Games

 

Due to the delisting of everything Sega, I completed the Sega Genesis/Master collection (well, except for the non 3D blast/Spinball Sonic games since those were already delisted.)  Some of these I have played before and some I haven't, but I haven't gotten into any of them far enough to give an honest review.  I will say that finding out that the Twinkle Park music from Sonic Adventure actually debuted in Sonic 3D Blast was a trip.

 

The Mutation of J.B.

 

J.B. stands for "Johnny Burger."  This is a pretty obscure adventure game that was never translated into English, and which I played mainly to see if I could play a German language game.  I thought it was Austrian, but apparently it was originally Slovak and just was much more popular in Austria/German because German speaking people love adventure games for some reason.

 

Basic plot is that Johnny is visiting his cousin, agrees to take his cousin's place in an experiment, and gets turned into a pig.  Then the scientist who changed him gets kidnapped by aliens so he can save their planet, and so Johnny is left to fend for himself.

 

I didn't have as much trouble with the language as I thought I would, but I did get stuck pretty early on because this is a 90's adventure game so of course things get obscure pretty fast.  The only walkthroughs are in Slovak and German which isn't an impossible obstacle, but I didn't bother to go through them yet.
 

Starship Titantic

 

This is an adventure game made by Douglas Adams, of HItchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame.  He also did a pretty fun (if absurdly hard) adventure game adaptation, so it's not like he knew nothing about making games.  It's also got pro voice acting from the likes of John Cleese, as well as an innovative (for the time) system where you can type in whatever you want when talking to characters.

 

I was warned that this game really doesn't come together and... it doesn't.  You are exploring the titular ship trying to uh... I forget.  Basically your main goal is to get your accommodations upgraded to gain access to more of the ship.  There is some fun in the exploration aspect of the game, but somehow it doesn't really "click".  There are tough puzzles, but whereas in teh Hitchhiker's game the difficulty was funny in how absurd it was, here it feels more like you are fighting the interface, or just are not given enough context to understand what you are trying to do.  Not horrible, but I can't say that I had fun with it.

 

Norse by Norsewest

 

This is the PC version of The Lost Vikings 2.  I want to stress that, because I've played the SNES version and that game kicks ass.  I expected this to be more or less a straight port, and it unfortunately is not.  The 16 bit pixel graphics are replaced by pre-rendered 3D graphics.  The nice music is replaced by CD audio dialogue and sounds (but no music in most places, unless I fucked up the installation which is definitely possible.)  The levels are similar, but they opt for a smaller scale on the characters to allow more on screen, and this together with some floaty controls ends up making it feel like you are having less of an impact on the world.  The game isn't bad per se, but it's clearly inferior to the SNES version.  This kind of exemplifies the worst impulses of the CD ROM era, i.e. putting in the "hot new thing" even if it meant overriding an already good game.
 

Plague Inc.

 

If you played the flash game "Pandemic" (not to be confused with the board game) you know exactly what this is.  Make a disease, kill all of humanity.  Does what it sets out to do with lots of variations, but nothing more than that.

 

Robert E. Lee: Civil War General

 

A wargame from the mid 90's.  Since it's a CD game they stuffed lots of reenactment footage for every combat, but it's not that annoying since you can quickly skip through it or disable it entirely.  There's a lot of historical information which was probably included just to allow this to be sold to schools as an educational game, but which is pretty interesting to look through.  The game tracks things like troop discipline, morale, health, weather conditions, elevation, etc. and it's kind of interesting to reflect on how few games do this now, even though it was bog standard for wargames back in the day.

 

Unfortunately I suck at historical wargames because I'm either in full rush mode (and thus get my troops obliterated) or I'm too careful (and thus run out of time).  I can't balance the two approaches very well.

 

Rolypolys no Nanakorobiyaoki

 

Yeah, I played it.  Uh... I'm not sure how to explain what this is if you've never heard of it.  I'm not even sure if you can call this a "game" in the first place.  I guess it's an English teaching program, in that you have things based around each letter of the alphabet?  Anyway, if you know you know, if you don't look up a youtube playthrough or something.

 

Music Ace 2

 

I have a fondness for this game because I literally got it at a garage sale for free from people who were about to throw it out under the impression that it was impossible to use on modern computers.  So just being able to play it at all is pretty cool.  The version I have is a 16 bit program for Windows 3.1/Windows 95, though apparently you can still buy a version of this which has been updated for Windows 10 (I wouldn't pay 50 bucks for this though.)

 

Basically this is a game to teach kids about music, particularly musical notation, tempo, and the piano.  There are a variety of rhythm game sections and listening tests to qualify this as an actual "game", and also many opportunities to just mess around with music.  (Technically this is a MIDI sequencer.)  It's pretty basic, and honestly so basic that I have no idea what could have been covered in Music Ace 1.

 

This isn't really a groundbreaking program, but I did enjoy my time with it and it does work as a teaching tool.  It also makes me really miss the days of having a "unified" system for teaching kids, rather than just linking to a bunch of videos online or whatever.  The whole is more than a sum of its parts.
 

10. Myst V: End of Ages

 

I put this off for a long time due to getting bored with Uru, since this comes chronologically after Uru.  Thankfully Myst V does not use the same control scheme as Uru which had miserable tank controls that were unusable in first person.  You have the option for free motion, which works about like you'd expect, but you can also do the classic "click to move in this direction" thing from Myst 1-4 and that style of navigation actually can be faster.

 

The game definitely is bleak.  As with all Myst games, you get an opening narration by Atrus, but this time he's talking about how his life work has failed except for the hope he has in his daughter, and honestly it reads like a suicide note.  His daughter, Yeesha, has grown up to be bitter due to the immense amount of expectations thrown onto her shoulders.  The game has you explore the ruins of the D'ni civilization, and throws in the idea that they got where they were in the first place by exploiting another race.  I guess this was introduced in Uru, but I didn't get that far.  The game even beings by throwing a locked Myst linking book in your face as if to say "Remember Myst? Fuck you, you ain't going there."

 

It's a bit too bitter for my tastes, though it does add an air of finality to the game, and Myst did really need a conclusion.  The game itself backs off from pre-rendered graphics, which I think was a mistake since Myst V ends up looking worse than Myst III, and roughly on par with Riven (though Myst V has better resolution.)  It doesn't look bad by any means (at least for a 2005 game), but it's weird to get such a step down that it's weird, and it's not like you really gain much by being able to move anywhere.  My biggest complaint graphics wise is that the ages end up looking kind of "same-y", i.e. they can't add enough wild effects to clearly distinguish them at a glance.

 

The story presentation is done much better than Uru or Myst 4, and it adds some new mechanics that don't feel out of place.  Mainly does what it needs to do, though Riven and Exile remain the highlights of the series.

 

9. Throne of Darkness

 

What if Diablo, but in feudal Japan and you controlled seven samurai?  That's basically this game.

 

I mean, I don't know if I need to say more than that.  It's exactly what you'd expect.

 

Mechanics wise it's a bit of a mix between Diablo I and II, with classes gaining spells on leveling (like Diablo II) but being more distinguished by their base and max stats as well as animation speeds (like Diablo I).  You only control four of the seven at a time, and the other three go back to heal over time at the main base.  There's no town portal, instead you get a blacksmith and a priest who handle mundane and magical items respectively.  This is nice, but it does create an annoyance in that all of their services are on a timer so that you can't just spam repair in between combats.  This has the side effect that when you need to do lots of basic maintenance after a battle it takes forever, and you have to do this for seven characters.  It's also very annoying that you can only use gold from the active player, though honestly you'll probably just pile all of your gold on the "leader" samurai, since he will have the highest charisma and thus get the best deals.

 

Can be more than a little bit of a clusterfuck since three out of four characters will be AI controlled, but it's also fun to just go to town.

 

8. NIGHTS: Into Dreams

 

Maybe the most famous Sega Saturn game?  This is Yuji Naka at his best, which is strangely close to him at his worst (see Balan Wonderland).  It's such a weird idea that nevertheless seems immediately intuitive: a kid is tormented in his or her dreams (two kids) and must be assisted by the benevolent Nights.  It also feels like an answer to how to have a 3D game when you don't have twinsticks: when playing the kids you simply walk around the ground, but when playing Nights himself you fly around on a 2D plane that rotates as you move through the level.  The goal is to collect "chips" and then recover the kids stolen virtues like hope or wisdom.  Then fight a boss.

 

What makes this work, beyond the clever implementation of the controls, is the playful and dreamlike atmosphere.  You don't have to be told that this is a dream, it just kind of feels that way, especially with the great musical score.

 

The main annoyance with this game is that you have to be very particular about how you play it if you want a high score.  In fact Sonic: the Hedgehog is like that too, though most people don't bother with score.  Here you are being heavily encouraged to get a high grade, but you don't get great feedback in game about how to get above "C".

 

I used the original graphics the whole time.  The remastered ones are technically better, but somehow destroy some of the magic.  I'm not a purist for old graphics, since I did really like the updated graphics in the Panzer Dragoon remaster.  I think that the theme of dreams might just work better with lower fidelity graphics (the new graphics here are also not nearly the upgrade that the Panzer Dragoon graphics were.)

 

7. Atari 50

 

I've talked about this elsewhere.  It's a collection of lots of Atari games (more than 50, the 50 is referring to the 50 year anniversary.) Some are pretty fun: you can't go wrong with any version of Asteroids or Missile Command, with Food Fight and Tempest also being standouts.  Some are interesting in concept but annoying to play in reality, like the Swordquest games (even the one created just for this collection.)  Some just suck.  Surprisingly there are some homebrews on here as well, like Yoomp! and these are all top notch.  Probably one of the biggest highlights of this collection is finding a game that rocks even though you've never heard of it, and in that sense the crap games add to the sense of discovery.

 

But this should really be viewed as a museum piece on Atari, and it works great from that perspective.  You can easily go through the games in chronological order, there are interviews with dozens of people about how the games were developed, text talking about the ups and downs etc.  I'm glad that Digital Eclipse has latched onto this business model, because it's a great way to do retro game collections while actually justifying something above a dirt cheap cost.

 

6. Backpack Hero

 

A dungeon crawler based around inventory management puzzles.  You start with a 3x3 grid to place items in, and you only "level" by getting more space for items.  It does pretty much everything you'd want to do with the concept, like caring about which items are adjacent or whether an item is in the top or bottom row.  There's frequently a tradeoff between keeping a good item or being able to rearrange multiple old items more efficiently.

 

The art style is kind of a non-descript "retro" unless I'm missing some console or computer era, but it's consistent and looks nice.  It has a kind of "rogue-lite" vibe in that you keep doing runs over and over and over again to unlock new things in your town, which in turn help you out in dungeons, etc.  However it's not nearly as punishing as most games of this type are.  The basic plot set up reminded me a lot of Crypt of the Necrodancer, though obviously the gameplay is completely different, and that game got cruel very fast. So I guess this is a "cozy" game.

 

5. A Solitaire Mystery

 

Two years in a row that a solitaire game got in my top 10.  Even though this is above Zachtronics in terms of rank from last year, I think this one is not quite as good.  So I guess that means 2024 wasn't as good for games in general?  Still, this is a "pay what you want" game and you will get your bang for your buck.  The main difference between this and the Zachtronics solitaire collection is that the presentation and polish is not nearly to the level of what Zachtronics does, but in exchange you get variety and yet more creativity.  The version I have has 23 games, and they might have added more since then (I haven't checked for updates in a while.)  Some of them aren't great (like Hanoi solitaire) and many are more exercises in making a weird game than making a fun one (like binary solitaire) but there are tons of solid games here.  The most famous is probably Babataire, which is solitaire that has noun, "IS" and adjective cards for shenigans like "BABA IS +5" (meaning that every Baba suit card is worth +5, looping around after 10) or "KEKE IS FOFO" which turns all Keke suit cards into Fofo suit.

 

If you are autistic enough to play solitaire in the first place this is worth it, but since it's 23 games that you might like 3 or 4 of, versus 7 games that you'll probably love at least 6 of, the Zachtronics collection is a better starting point.

 

4. Trails to Azure

 

If you've played the Trails games you'll play this one.  So what can I really say?  Especially since Trails from Zero was my game of the year last year, and this is largely more of the same.

 

But why then it is it not #1?  Almost entirely because of the bullshit in the last phase of the final boss, where there is a small window in which you must kill the boss before he does an unpreventable TPK.  This is after two long previous boss sections, and before a long ending sequence, so it rubbed me the wrong way.  I mean, at least let me save between phases!

 

That being said, the story, music, and characters are still top notch.  This is the last hurrah of the classic orbment system, where you get "spells" by manipulating your quartz items to get your element levels along lines to certain levels.  (Later games just have the quartz give you the spells outright, making it much less micromanagement intensive.)  Part of why they are able to do this is the restraint shown with the party.  The later games are infamous for the huge sizes of your parties, but here you only get 8 characters in the final dungeon, with only 1 guest party member on top of that.  Even Trails in the Sky SC had 12 characters in the final dungeon.  Likewise you have romance options here, but far less varied (and far more plausible) then in later games.  Some people view this as the "last good trails game" because of those excesses.  I wouldn't go that far, but it is high quality for sure.

 

3. The Great Ace Attorney

 

Hey, it's another game in a long running series that you already know whether you will like or not.  They change the setting by having it in the 19th century and following an ancestor of Phoenix Wright (or Naruhodo I guess; I don't know if we're still saying the Ace Attorney games take place in California at this point).   I actually avoided this for a long time because of complaints that it was too long-winded even for an Ace Attorney game.  And this is true.

 

A good example of this are the Herlock Sholmes deductions.  As is mandatory for a 19th century game, you encounter a Sherlock Holmes knockoff.  (Actually Sherlock Holmes in the Japanese, but the English translation uses the "Herlock Sholmes" workaround pioneered by the English Translations of the Arsene Lupin books. Since this guy is only vaguely like Sherlock Holmes, which the game even lampshades, I'm okay with the name change.)  Anyway, these go like this: he will announce that he has made a deduction.  He then goes through a dramatic sequence where he spotlights (literally) observations that he has made, often involving where characters glance after being accused of something.  He then strings together some idea that is wrong and bizarre, but honestly not out of the question for an Ace Attorney game.  Other characters will point out ways that his conclusion doesn't make sense, at which point you will be prompted to fix his reasoning which initiates the "course correction" activity.  In this you go through Sholmes's presentation again, but stop him when you get to a part that isn't right.  You must then replace one term with something else, often by replacing an item that Sholmes claims someone glanced at by something right next to it.  This will then update the argument to get to the truth (or at least something very close to it).

 

The segments are very clever in that most of the reasoning will still work even when the subject has changed (ex. a ferocious snake being changed into something decidedly less frightening), and it is fun to investigate to find what to replace.  The fail lines are also very good.  But in reality these segments take like 10 minutes to say something that could have been done in maybe 3.  That's basically the game.

 

You kind of have to go into this expecting a visual novel.  I played this right after playing a chapter of Higurashi (which I didn't include here since I don't really consider that a game) and if you are in that mood the game is more digestible.  

 

Now I've spent most of the review defending against the negatives, even though this is my top 3 pick.  But if you've played an Ace Attorney game, you already know what the positives are.  Clever mysteries, funny characters, just enough interaction in court scenes to make you pay attention, etc.  You could technically start here, but I think it's better to play 1-6 first.

 

2. Beyond the Edge of Owlsgard

 

I've already talked about this game at length elsewhere.  Basically a German indie adventure game that very faithfully replicates the feel of a 90's adventure game while also contributing something new.

 

1. Mullet Madjack

 

I think that this is the only game on this list which was actually released in 2024.  I've seen this one described as a "Boomer Shooter" though I don't think that fits at all.  This game plays almost nothing like the likes of Doom, Quake, Duke 3D, etc.  I'm guessing that it's been called that either because "Boomer Shooter" has come to mean "Any non-AAA shooter" or because this game exudes such strong "30 year old boomer."

 

Anyway, the premise of this game is that on each level you have 10 seconds to live, kind of.  Getting shot will drain time instead of health, while killing enemies will add to your time (though not above your max.)  More clever kills will give you more bonus time, and on harder difficulty levels the amount of time for basic kills is low or nonexistent, meaning that things like head shots and environmental kills are required.  The game says that this is because in the future humanity needs dopamine hits every 10 seconds to live, but it actually makes much more sense as a commentary on streaming.  That is, on most levels you are streaming your carnage, and presumably if you do not do something cool every 10 seconds your viewers get bored of you.  It should also be noted that in tutorials and on boss stages (both of which have the stream disabled) you have an actual health meter rather than your 10 second count down.

 

I guess that gets us to the plot.  In the future, most of humanity is mindless consumers, and robobillionaires have taken over.  A princess (read: popular e-girl) has been kidnapped and her company hires the mulleted protagonist to get her back (while racking up tons of views).  From then on you're climbing up a skyscraper one floor at a time (though these are some of the most implausible interiors I've ever seen in a video game, and you end up sliding down quite a lot.)  This translates to each floor being a level, and each level taking about a minute.  After each level you get an upgrade, after 10 floors fight a boss, at which point you get a checkpoint and lose all upgrades.  Then another set of 10 floors with a new gimmick introduced.  Rinse, lather, repeat.  Bosses are only so-so, but there's always just enough new to keep things engaging, and increasing the difficulty does force you to adjust your playstyle.  You also get many different weapon options to try out, so it works well as a game to play for 15 or so minutes at a time.

 

The aesthetic is a mix of 90's anime as interpreted by the west with "modern" retrowave.  There's really only three characters: the Peace Corp official running your stream (who pretty obviously only cares about getting high ratings), the main character (who is kind of a mix of an 80's action hero and a 30 year old boomer) and your nihilistic robot nemesis.  The moral of the story might be "Fuck this 24/7 Internet spew of trivia and celebrity bullshit" with a heavy dose of "fuck smart phones and fuck mindless consumerism."  I say might because of two things: the first is that there very likely isn't a moral at all, with all the stuff about corpo pushed streamer culture being because Cyberpunk and to justify the 10 second time limit.  And secondly because that interpretation requires Mullet to be more or less in the right as the "ultimate retrohuman", but the game seems to be poking fun at him too.  He will often give advice that is technically good but cliche as hell like "stay out of debt" or "stop browsing social media" or "free games end up costing you more" so I dunno.  I suspect that none of this is meant to be taking too seriously.

 

In any case the main event here is the gameplay which is solid, creative, and fun.  Also a 2 for 2 on games I've played from Brazil (the other being Fight N' Rage.)
 

• Heroes of MIght and Magic 2 and 3
• Civilization 2
• Civilization: Call to Power
• Eador: Geneis
• Doom 2
• Warcraft 2
• Muse Dash
• Inner Worlds
• Rome: Total War
• Trials of Mana
• Pizza Tower
• Touhou 19
• Pharaoh
• Star Wars: TIE Fighter and Rebel Assault 2
• Unreal Tournament
• Tooth and Tail
• Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos

UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Card Captor Sakura
Ranma 1/2, including the 2nd movie
Interstella 5555
Rurouni Kenshin
Lost Universe
Azumanga Daioh
Ruin Explorers
Some Captain Harlock OVA (but not the original series)
Slayers
Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz
The Vision of Escaflowne
Excel Saga
Sailor Moon
Oruchuban Ebichu
Mobile Suit Gundam the Movie 3: Encounters in Space
Some Cutie Honey series (but not the original)
Trigun
Spirited Away
Irresonsible Captain Tylor
One Piece
Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Great Teacher Onizuma
Read or Die
.hack//Sign
Sonic X
Sorcerer Hunters
Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro
FLCL
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Golden Boy
Cowboy Bebop
Princess Mononoke
Tenchi Muyo (or maybe Tenchi Universe)
Hare+Guu
Saber Marionette J
Macross 7
Yuu Yuu Hakusho
All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku
Love Hina
Akira
Inuyasha
Pokemon