I can't recall ever playing a menu-heavy based game on an older console, where actions took place in real-time, and having a good time. At the very least, the games I remember with heavy menus paused the action when accessed.

Looking at the images, the 3D in this game, based on the slow movement described, seems like it could have easily been done on a normal Genesis or a Super Ninten... oh.

Good review, and congratulations on finally reviewing every 32X game for the site! I actually thought you would never touch this one, and it got to a point where at one time I actually contemplated playing the SNES version out of morbid curiosity.

I have a decent amount of nostalgia for ActRaiser, I think mainly because it was one of the first SNES games I played and it looked and sounded so much better than the NES stuff I spent most of my time with, so it was one of those games for that system that truly captivated my imagination. Which would ordinarily mean I'd have some sort of desire to play this game, as I do occasionally bust out reviews for games I played simply due to some sort of nostalgia factor.

But tower defense stuff added to the mix? No thanks. I'm on the other end of the opinion on that than you, not being a fan. Hell, I remember with the last Ezio Assassin's Creed game how, if you were too active in being an assassin without paying off guys to lower your infamy, you'd have to do a tower defense sequence around a district's hideout. After doing the tutorial one to let you know what you were facing, I made sure to pay off people every single time I did anything to raise that infamy even a tiny bit. Just not my thing.

You know, I was looking through his catalog of games, and I was surprised just how many non-Double Dragon/Kunio-kun titles I played that he was involved with in some capacity.

I didn't know he was involved with the arcade version of Block Out, which makes a helluva lot more sense why Technos Japan created a "similar" game for the PlayStation 1 called Geom Cube a few years later.

I also own the Sega CD ports of Cobra Command and Road Blaster, which I think I recall him being director of the latter arcade version but didn't know about the former.

Surprised about him producing the PS1/Saturn Choaniki games.

Regardless of the quality of some of his games, he certainly made an impact on the industry considering a lot of mechanics from his titles are still incorporated into newer games to this day.

!@#$! Leroux reviews still slap. Really good writing in the end section about the boss fights.

Glad that my descriptions were clear enough to understand! I would've submitted some images, but SMS screenshots are a colossal pain for "reasons."

The mechanics make this, at least for me, one of the more fascinating games for the system, but the brutal difficulty escalation ruins any potential fun past the first ten stages. There's zero continues and dozens upon dozens upon dozens of stages... isn't that hard enough???

Thanks for reading.

Great review. This game sounds really weird and somewhat challenging to describe, but your descriptions left me feeling like I had a good idea of how it worked (and didn't work) mechanically.

Thanks for the read and that catch! Going to be working on a few more Dreamcast reviews and am working on balancing my different voices - me playing the games as a late teen and me playing the games now. Appreciate your thoughts.

I'm glad to see another review from you, and this was a nice retrospective on a game I have yet to play.

I don't consider Episode I the worst Star Wars film (that honor goes to The Last Jedi, because it tried its darndest to not to feel like a Star Wars film and mostly succeeded), but I also didn't love Episode I so much that I wanted to explore the games based on it.

You did a nice job of comparing your old experiences with the game with your more recent ones, and letting me know why I might want to finally get around to playing it in 2026. I only found one line that you will want to revisit at some point:

"By far and away the single worst part of any track are zero gravity corridors appear in a handful of levels."

There are a few ways you might fix this sentence, but here's one possibility:

"By far and away the single worst part of any track are the zero gravity corridors that appear in a handful of levels."

Good stuff!

I had no idea! I remembered after playing this game that AVGN did a video on the US prototype, Super Pitfall II, but I went through the entire game without realizing this one was the groundwork for it. And yes, Switch Online and various other collections (like Capcom's arcade collection) have allowed me to pump out a few reviews here and there. Hell, my Dig Dug II review came about because of Switch Online, and that and my history of renting the game a few times way back.

I see this game is just a month away from its 40th birthday. When these games came out, who would've thought that decades into the future, they'd get new life on services like Switch Online!

A nice review of a piece of gaming history!

Interesting how the obscure Virtual Boy anticipated today's immersive headset systems.

For me, the Bonk series has been one of diminishing returns. I really enjoyed the first TG one and then thought the second and third were, more or less, more of the same, but not quite as fun. And this one was a step below that. For me, I'd say the controls only really have been an issue in boss fights, particularly after the first game. Large enemies where you may only have a small portion that you can hit don't necessarily work when your main move is jumping in the air and directing your head into them.

Nice review, brother. I've dived in and bounced off this one so many times, and sometimes I wind up with cognative whiplash as a result. Bonk is one of those games that has a limited appeal to me thanks to its poor controls. It is not a laggy game--or series--but has never felt suitably responsive to make Bonk, and me, feel powerful. The times I have attained any skill with the controls, the levels bore me and I move on to something else that gets it right.

It was a really good time. Technically, I think I played the Eldritch Edition version that was on PS Plus for a while. Got to it in the month before it got removed, so I only had time to go for one ending. The one where you go full Elder God and kill your humanity at the end. Because there was no way I could turn down those sweet Nyarlathotep powers!

Think the main (maybe only) real difference between the two versions was the Enhanced one added three puzzle-heavy areas a person could do in order to access an optional boss. And I only did part of one before deciding to focus on the main game. Best part of it all was just how chaotic things could get. Gong rings and a million creatures just converge on you and things get crazy. Right now, I'm near the end of Code Vein and it has a similar feature where, in certain locations, invasions get triggered where wave after wave of enemies come at you. And when one gets started, it's on until either all of them or you are dead. You can run all you want, but they'll follow you for as long as it takes and even warp to your location if you try climbing ladders to get away. Not quite the same, as Sundered is more pure action and Code Vein is more classic Souls in its action, but the same philosophy.

I played this on the PC back when, and adored it. I went through it enough to get two of the three endings and always meant to go back and get the third. It's good stuff, this; glad you enjoyed it.

Thanks both for reading. Ultimately, I didn't mind my time with Andromeda, though replaying the original trilogy just before didn't help hide its flaws any, but it was open enough for me to make my own stories, and, turns out, I'm better at it than modern day Bioware.

Hasty - Actually, mod support for this game is lacking. That never used to be the case, but various engine updates have made previous fan efforts stop working, and no one cares enough about the game anymore to fix it. Which is a shame, because I modded the hell out of ME3 when I replayed, and the experience was much better for it.

The Mass Effect series was a distinct...experience for me, and I should probably review the original trilogy. I'm glad that my instinctive aversion to this one proved to be correct. It's just not one of those things I can get into if the story is so weak and affected by a buggy world that will never be officially fixed. I'm sure the fans have patched the heck out of it, though, just as they did the OG Trilogy.

Really liked this one. You did a great job of showing how this game is really good, but shoots itself in the foot by stupid dialogue and how it peaks with the first planet. But the whole "sense of exploration" is so addicting to, at least, me when it comes to games that I can easily see how a person can endure the stupid crap to play through it.

By Kemco standards, this was really good. Kind of in the class where you wish one of their teams had legit money and more time to make their games just to see what they'd come up with. At least this game made efforts to do some different things from what I'd expect to see. All the little stat bonuses you get as items scattered through towns and dungeons and how the plot basically revolves around your party simply looking for a source of near-limitless wealth and everything else in the world is kind of just background information.

Reading this review, it's difficult to imagine how anyone thought they were shipping a game that worked. The text does an excellent job of pointing out exactly how this particular 3D version of Tetris stripped the simple premise of those components that make it so irresistible. I wouldn't mind playing it someday, but now I know better than to expect something that will entertain me for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Compare that to Tetrisphere, which I quite liked, and it's easy to see what a difference a few years make!