The Japanese Mega Drive may not have been as popular as its English counterparts, but the system definitely has an interesting catalog of Japanese-only titles.

I do find it bizarre how under-the-radar the Puzzle & Action series had been for basically the majority of its life. I honestly believe that, had the game been created a few years earlier, that it would have seen a US Genesis release because Sega would have wanted to fill up a catalog of games for their then-fledging 16-bit console.

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Interesting overview! It's fun to learn about these obscure (to most of us) Japan-only games.

Your concluding paragraph matches what I remember knowing the game would be like based on marketing and such around the time of its release... which sounded pretty good to me! I still need to get back to the series, because I always have fun with the games, but I'm generally afraid to start another one because of the time investment. In any case, I look forward to playing this one someday and seeing how our experiences compare. I suspect they will largely align.

That's an interesting play style, overdrive--one that Peach can't rely on since she pulls up coins the slowest!

The way that SMB2 gave us four characters very different from each other seems advanced for the late 80s, offering people various ways to play, as Jason indicates!

I used to test myself on how many lives I could get in Super Mario Bros. 2, as well. But I used Princess Peach, because I liked floating. It was usually either her or Toad, and sometimes Luigi just because of his wild vertical leaps. I tried for a lot of lives in the original Super Mario Bros. but it lost its appeal when I played straight through the entire game without losing a life. I've noticed a lot of speed runners ignore not only extra lives, but also life meter extensions and such. I guess when you get too good at a game, you don't need half the assistance it offers. Or any of it, really.

Heh, it wasn't for me! In SMB2, I always used Toad. Quicker picking up of stuff meant more Sub-Con coins and I was both good at the game and very good at the slot machine one-up bonus game, so I'd challenge myself to see how many lives I could finish the game with. And fancy jumping just didn't get the job done as far as that was concerned!

"Is being able to hover in mid-air some sort of revolutionary game-changer? Probably not..."

"Excuse me!" -- Princess Peach, executive producer of Gargoyle's Quest II

Heh, I remember, on a blog post, picking this game for you to review. And you did!

This game was a bit of an odd duck, with such things as the rhythm/timed approach to combat and the nudie cards (GOTTA GET 'EM ALL), but one could also say that about the second game and how it seemed to be about 50x harder in the opening chapter than it was for the rest of it. This one did have its annoyances (still PISSED over how many times I had to reload it because one cutscene in post-riot Vizima didn't load properly and crashed the game...and I do less-than-fondly recall having to regularly manually delete saves because this game just created a new auto-save file EVERY DAMN TIME I did anything like enter or exit a building, causing my computer to get overloaded by unnecessary files.

But I did enjoy the overall experience and liked reading your take on the stuff Geralt does and the sorts of people he has to interact with. It kind of brought me back to finishing this game and thinking, "Ah, Radovec (or whatever his name actually is) is now the king and has the girl; that young man is going places!" and then playing the rest of the series and, uh, well, that didn't age well!

Interesting you mention that about the team, since the game was made by Sega's main console division, R&D 2, that were tasked with making stuff for the Master System and Game Gear. According to what Hideki Sato said in an interview (thanks, shmuplations!), the R&D divisions weren't experienced with making console games at the time, not to mention they were very low staffed.

With that said, I guess it's not too surprising that this game sucks.

Though, apparently the SMS OutRun port was made by the same division, which makes this more strange. I guess you can chalk it up to OutRun being high priority.

Thanks for reading!

Excellent review! I feel safe ignoring this one's existence. I liked your note about the manual's idea for the ramps, versus the reality. The Sonic burn at the end was unexpected and made me chuckle in agreement. I'm a bit sad Battle Outrun appears to have been handed over to a B-team (or even a C-team) because the idea has potential. Unmet potential, it would appear...

Uh... I'll be blunt. As a review, this strikes me as this-shouldn't-have-even-been-approved-from-a-reader bad. It's basically telling the story of a fair chunk of the game, ending abruptly at one point, completely spoiling that part but hardly mentioning any other game elements except the story. Admittedly, the narrative and atmosphere do shine (I for one am also fond of the combat system, there's a flow to it that's rare in games, but most aren't), but just presenting it does not make a review. And neither does just covering a part of the game and then ending abruptly. And spoiling that part so thoroughly should at the very least come with serious warnings, regardless of how old the game is.

This was a fun review with some great lines, and it makes the game sound like one I shouldn't continue to ignore. Liking the second and third game in the series should have offered me a clue along those lines, I know. I enjoyed this line in particular: "In town, you're viewed as a child-kidnapping albino philanderer - even if you're only most of those things - and nobody likes you." Also, the last line made me chuckle. You should listen to the voice in your head a bit more often, maybe, if listening turns out like this!

Title: Metal Slug Tactics
Platform: PS5

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps5/468068-metal-slug-tactics/data

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EmP: My "in order" tends to be "whatever might be on PS Plus assuming I am in the mood for one". Which is why my order has been: Judgment, Yakuza 0 and this. I think 1-6 and Lost Judgment were all there for a while, but I wasn't in the mood for one during that time. And got Yakuza: Like a Dragon when it was one of the freebies given at the beginning of the month a ways back. Guess a side story one (Man who something something His Name) is up now, but I tend to like to stretch out playing this series. Do a game, take a long break, do another one. Because I can get bored with any formula if I play it exclusively.

Jason: It didn't really feel like a small area to explore, but the lack of the modern pleasures like those arcades and certain other places made it feel a bit more barren. Lots of restaurants and shops, but also a lot of streets and little parts of town where there wasn't much to inspire a person to travel that way any more than necessary. Like, because of the "crime fighting" sub-plot, I was regularly walking to the slum section of town and, taking the north entrance where you bribe the guard with sake in order to go in and out, there wasn't much to do on that walk other than get into 5 or so fights.

It was a really cool game and I do like this series' cinematic style of game than most that try to be so story-oriented (probably because I love mob movies and Yakuza at heart is a mob movie in game form). Not the best in the greater series, but a lot of fun.

I'm at least #2 or #3! I'm not proud. But it was decent filler. Some fun stuff, nothing TOO bad other than a couple areas where there's forced grinding because by those points, basic encounters are really easy to get through so it's just a very boring interlude. And the Quartz system does lead to a bit of enjoyable customization and strategic skill usage in combat. Which is better than most Kemco games, where I really quickly find something that works and use it constantly.

Hamster's catalog may not always include high-quality games, but I do appreciate that they go out of their way to release games that no other company, in their right mind, would release outside of a compilation.

The Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move series has always been hit and miss. I haven't played every single game, but from the ones I have played it felt like the devs either ran out of ideas or intentionally stopped being creative about five or so games in. The 3D version I reviewed a few years back even somehow managed to be both boring and irritating at the same time!

The Sega Saturn port of Bust-A-Move 2 still stands as my favorite of the series, due to how hard it went with the features from the arcade version plus all the new stuff, and I have yet to play another sequel that matches its variety and creativity. But again, I haven't played all the games...

Thanks for reading!

Puzzle Bobble is one of those franchises that I've always wished I could enjoy more than I actually do. The concept and execution are fine, but it doesn't excite me the way some games (including Bubble Bobble, even though in a technical sense that one is inferior) do. I have this one in my collection on Switch, and I'm not sure I'll ever actually play it, especially with superior versions available. Even so, I'm glad someone takes the time and care to make these foundational classics available, for posterity's sake!

This game sounds like the sort of filler I might rather enjoy. It's nice to see the Kemco Khallenge alive and well. If you're not one of the leading authorities on Kemco's RPGs yet, you should be soon!

Title: ACA NeoGeo: Puzzle Bobble
Platform: PS4

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/248729-aca-neogeo-puzzle-bobble/data

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Ooh, a book recommendations thread? What a great idea, Josephwal!

I like pretty much anything by fantasy author Jason Venter. I've also been reading through a bunch of Mark Billingham stuff. He's great!