Lester the Unlikely reviewed

Long ago, in a world where Nintendo Power ruled the world I saw a spread about this game called Lester the Unlikely.  In it I saw wonderful pictures of this nerd doing cool stuff like hanging off ledges and jumping across spikes...keep in mind I was 8 and that's even less of an excuse but I digress.  But aside from that, I heard neither hide nor hair of it anywhere...I know it existed since this spread was one of those mini-walkthroughs but it faded away.  You still can't find a walkthrough on it, even on the internet.  When I got stuck, I had to find a drunken Let's Play to figure stuff out but I'm getting ahead of myself.  So without any further digressions, let's dig in to Lester the Unlikely.

Lester is your stereotypical nerd with his geeky glasses, his ill-fitting hoodie and his love of comic books that he wishes he could have enough money to buy a comic that has 52 different covers.  However, while reading and walking he wanders his way on a dock and then falls asleep which results in him being on a boat.  Then that boat is attacked by PIRATES!  But lucky for Lester he found a life-jacket so he swims his way to an island...that's the PIRATES headquarters!  Now Lester must find his way back home, send the pirates to hell, save the natives from the pirates reign of terror and get some with hot island girl Tikia.

Now there is something that sets this apart from other games and it's pretty much a love it or hate it thing.  In the beginning, every time Lester sees something dangerous and new, he'll either run away screaming, flat-out tell you no or hump the air for some reason.  It's a bit annoying at first but the further you go in the game, the less he does it until he's not doing it at all.  Like it or not, this has some decent character development and there's only 4 or 5 cutscenes including the first and last ones so with simple posture changes and less screaming, a wealth of character comes flowing out.  I played it all just to see Lester succeed since he's someone that I wanted to succeed.

Then there's the gameplay....utterly broken and laggy.  You can move in one direction and jump in the same direction and that works, it's not great but it works.  Then comes the question of turning around or jumping straight up and the flaws come flying out!  Turning around takes a couple seconds to do and when you're fighting something or running away that's literally the difference between life and death which I've found out the hard way.  And jumping straight up to grab on to ledges is also a pain since they're not next to the walls most of the time so you have to line your jump exactly or waste precious time missing. 

This game has great ideas but they're not executed in the best way.  Lester is likeable enough, mostly cause I see myself in him a bit too much.  The rotoscoped animation is wonderfully animated even if the other graphics don't really compare.  It's just a pain to play and the difficulty gets really high up there at times.  This should not have been a video game in the first place, it would have work much better as a book or even a movie.  As a game however, it's worth playing to an extent.

5/10

Soul Blazer reviewed

If you guys remember my Illusion of Gaia review I mentioned the Soul Blazer trilogy.  Of course, a lot of people played Illusion of Gaia and I was happy to leave it at that.  But then something started bugging me about maybe I should play the other two games in the series.  So I thought I should start at the beginning of the series with Soul Blazer.  Of course I was thinking this game would play fairly similar to Illusion of Gaia....boy was I wrong.  So with that said, I'll explain further as we dig into Soul Blazer.

Some time ago King Magridd of the Freil Empire finds out about this inventor guy Dr. Leo who can invent anything.  So the King impressions the doctor and forces him to invent a way to get the evil spirit Deathtoll into contact....which he does and that makes Deathtoll come.  So Deathtoll offers Magridd a gold piece for every living soul in the kingdom and he agrees so every living soul is now every living monster.  The Master of this world sends a plucky young angel ie YOU to go down, kill everything that moves and repopulate the kingdom.


Now I mentioned in Illusion of Gaia that it was a tad difficult to classify in a specific genre.  Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with that but I thought I should mention it just the same.  In Soul Blazer, it is ridiculously easy to classify, it's an action-RPG like Legend of Zelda II.  You go to a room, you kill all the monsters, you save all the people, plants and animals & you level up.  You basically do that for the entire game and it's incredibly simple but it is actually pretty fun.  There's something so nice about not thinking of anything but just swinging your sword until something dies.  Oh sure, you'll have to change swords a couple time to exploit weaknesses but that happens but a couple time.  Lastly, you can do the moonwalk if you hold the shoulder buttons on the SNES controller.

However, this game does not make anything easy.  I hesitate to call this maddeningly hard but at a few times I was really frustrated with how cheap the enemies are.  Most of the enemies come from this generator thing and they have a few seconds of invulnerability so you can't hurt them until they become vulnerable.  However, they can hurt you and if you're not careful, they can hurt you a lot.  Also, some of the bosses are actually quite cheap.  They're attacks are hard-to-avoid and they're usually at close range so it makes dodging even harder.

But all in all, for some weird reason I like this game.  It's the equivalent to a summer blockbuster where you turn off your brain and see some monsters die by your hand with a fairly slim story you expect from those types of movies.  The graphics may be simplistic but they are colorful.  Is this as good as Illusion of Gaia?  Almost but not quite.  While I blasted Gaia for having too much padding, I almost wanted some padding for Soulblazer.  But on the other hand, you can beat this game in a full day so it's not all bad.  It's decent fun but you'll forget it as soon as you beat it.

7/10

Toy Story, the video game, reviewed

Hey boys and girls, it's story time about MOVIES I LOVED AS A KID!  In 1995, Toy Story was released to huge success.  When I saw it in theaters it blew my mind, both in story and the 3-D animation. It immediately became my favorite movie at that time and when it was released on VHS, I watched it so much that my mom told me I was going to wear out the tape if I kept watching it.  So when I found out that there was going to be a Toy Story video game, I asked for that for Christmas and I got it.  As a kid I played the heck out of it just because it was Toy Story and it was short enough that I could finish it during a fog delay at school.  So does it still hold up?  Let me put it this way, it was going to be on my Top 50 games list and after re-playing it it's no longer there.  So without further ado, let's dig into the SNES version of Toy Story.

So we have another situation where the plot of the game is the same as the plot to the movie.  I could just to tell you to watch the movie and be done with it but I won't and I never will.  In a world where toys come to life when no one is looking there is a house where a kid named Andy lives.  In Andy's room he has a whole mess of toys where it is led by Woody, a cowboy toy.  All is well until Andy's birthday where he gets a new toy, Buzz Lightyear.  He's much more advanced than Woody and everyone replaces him as their leader which makes Woody jealous.  Then some wacky hi-jinks happened with moving, vengeance and a psychotic kid named Sid, anymore told would be criminal. 

So when I pop this baby in through an emulator and started playing, my first reaction was "This game has not aged well at all.  I don't think this game has ever aged."  I mean the graphics are just horrible, they're lazy and fuzzy & are indicative of the hate Licensed Games get.  To the graphics credit, it is very well-animated and fluid but as good as the movie in the animation department is equal to how bad the game's graphics are.  Now I have said that the graphics are not what makes the game, it's how fun it is to play.  In that respect, it's not all that fun to play.  The difficulty is harder than The Lion King's which was decently hard.  Things bump into you from out of nowhere, the mercy invincibility time is pathetic and when you are at the levels where you have to drive RC, that car, the battery life goes down to fast and the controls are very slippery making RC very hard to control.  This game is just not that fun to actually play.

However, not everything about this is a failure.  There are some levels where it does get to be a bit fun to at least look at.  In one level, you're racing Buzz to re-establish your dominance to the toys there are jumping toy sharks trying to nip at your heels.  Were there sharks in the movie?  No.  Is there any logical reason for this to happen?  No.  Do I care?  No.  There's another level where you have to ride Rex, the dinosaur, to escape the toys wrath when you accidentally pushed Buzz out of the window.  That never happened in the movie since Rex also wanted to kill Woody for that but once again, who cares.  It's kinda awesome.  And the level before that, you can whip Mr. Potato Head's features off.  It's useless but it's still really funny to do that.

So all in all, this game is best viewed through the eyes of youth.  It does tell the story of Toy Story fairly well with some minor alterations.  Most of the set-pieces are recreated to a good degree, especially when Woody gets a hold on Buzz and uses his karate-chopping action to ward off Sid's creations.  The bad thing is that section is really glitchy and your chops don't connect half the time.  Also, this game does try in level designs with a couple ones where you control RC, one where you fly...I mean fall in style, and even a first-person level where you have to find some of those alien thingies in The Claw machine.  I don't want to hate this game since I do have fond memories playing it from years past and I like games that do try.  It just doesn't hold up now and I have a feeling it didn't hold up then either for a 23-year old.

5/10

Illusion of Gaia reviewed

Many years ago a game company called Quintet existed and made various genre-busting games like the action/sim game of Actraiser.  Their shining moment came with a trilogy of loosely connected games known as the Soul Blazer trilogy which consisted of Soul Blazer, Terranigma, and the topic of today's review Illusion of Gaia.  Illusion of Gaia is easily the most well-known game of the trilogy but in the grand scheme of gaming history it has been almost forgotten by all but the hardcore SNES fans.  So does this game truly deserved to be forgotten or should it be worthy of a revival?  Let's answer this question as we dig into Illusion of Gaia.

So a year before the game starts proper, our plucky young hero, Will and his father along with some crew go up to the Tower of Babel and start exploring but something went horribly wrong and they all died.  Well not Will since he escaped but he has a case of convenient amnesia.  Now IN THE PRESENT, the game begins proper with Will dilly-dallying after school where he steps in a portal to ANOTHER DIMENSION where the spirit of the Earth Gaia is watching.  Here Gaia tells Will that he must leave to destroy a comet that is out changing the very fabric of Earth.  So begins a story of adventure, friendship, love and bashing the heck out of everything with your trusty flute.  Also, you can transform into a knight named Freedan and a shadowy warrior named Shadow that kills things with his fists...that turns into swords!

The greatest asset that Illusion of Gaia has is that it's a bit impossible to pigeon-hole.  It plays like a Legend of Zelda clone so you're thinking you collect stronger weapons and pieces of life like any Zelda game.  Well no, you really don't do that other than a couple life potions and you don't get stronger weapons besides when you become either Freedan or Shadow.  So it's a real RPG right?  Well no, you only get stat increases when you kill every enemy in an area plus there's no money to be had and there's a lives system.  Yes, there's a lives systems that's in use that increases when you get 100 blood orbs from the corpses of your enemies.  It's all a hodgepodge of various genres but it all works out.

The graphics in this game are simply breathtaking especially for its time.  The backgrounds are very rich and detailed.  The character sprites are very rich and even though they're not at all full of expression it still gets the job done.  There's even one part that is so rich that it's almost disturbing.  So near the end of the game you will have to set off a fire trap to save one your friends.  The guy is lit on fire and he's ambling towards you, completely on fire, in a slow sort-of realistic way.  Then he collapses and his arm is reaching out towards you before he finally stops moving.  It would be awesome if it wasn't so disturbing.

There are flaws in this game however.  One flaw is that this game suffers from very extreme padding.  There are a few instances where you learn a new song and it takes five minutes to learn it!  I may be exaggerating but not by much and it's even worse when you have to play the song for your appropriate plot point.  Then there's the infamous Raft Scene which needs no explanation, trust me on this when you play it you will know what I am talking about.  Then there's the Red Jewels side quest where you work your fingers to the bone to find 50 of these things in weird places.  Then the end result isn't really worth it since you really get nothing from it instead of a more tangible link to Soul Blazer, the first game in the aforementioned Soul Blazer trilogy.  And do you know Guide Dang It-y this side quest is?  The instruction manual had to tell you where they were, not a strategy guide you have to buy separately but the instruction manual that comes with the game!

So this game is pretty good.  It's very pretty too look at and it has a good style in its presentation.  The characters are somewhat fleshed out enough to the point that we do care what happens to them and there is a couple moments that did almost bring out a tear out of me.  If this game had much better pacing, lousy horrible flashbacks of the raft, and a better reward for the Red Jewels then this game would not have been forgotten like it is today. 

7/10

Lufia and the Fortress of Doom reviewed

In 1993, Taito unleashed Lufia upon us and that's kind of it. I mean there are other Lufia games and most gamers do praise Lufia II very highly but a casual gamer has no idea what Lufia is. Quite frankly, while this game is decent there must have been a huge leap of faith since the first game is quite competent and colorful but flawed and bland. So without further delay, let's dig into Lufia & the Fortress of Doom.

So a 100 years, ago the evil group The Sinistrals is surveying the world through their flying island fortress waiting for the time to strike. Before they do, a group of very powerful do-gooders bust in the fortress and beat The Sinistrals up before they could act on their evil plan slamming the world into a 100 years of peace. So guess what happens when that 100 years, or more accurately 99 years, are up? If you guessed that The Sinistrals come back, you're not that right, they will come back near the end of the game but most of the time they're in the process of being revived. However, monsters have come back and kicking everybody's butts. So now this new group of do-gooders, who are either just like the old ones or related to the old ones, have to come together and beat The Sinistrals...again.

The main thing you notice when you're off fighting things is that the battle system is a bit weird. If you remember the very first Final Fantasy battle system, well if you pour everyone's attacks into one guy out of four and the first guy killed it, the other three will attack what you just killed, instead of going to the next living enemy, resulting in three misses. There's something similar going on here but there's another weird thing in Lufia. If you have a group of the same enemies, you can't choose which specific enemy you can hit, unless you're using magic or have Jerrin using her bow to hit all the enemies in a group. However, it does lead to a sense of strategy to this that is really fun and almost a breath of fresh air compared to every other RPG out there.

The other thing worth mentioning is the writing and how awfully awesome it is. For the most part, all the dialogue is pretty much "Get this thing!" and "Rescue that person!" with most of the NPC dialogue really being banal and forgettable. Now, if we look at the the plot-related dialogue is where things get hilarious. At the beginning when you're the old do-gooders, the leader of the do-gooders tells The Sinistrals that they are going to return the pain they caused the world! That's something I expect out of Patrick Swayze in Road House. And at the end of the game, where the big twist happens, it's so poorly written and stilted that it's awesome in how the translators can screw up something should be a lot more emotional than it already is.

So on the whole, this game is somewhat above-average. As weird and flawed as the battle system is, there's quite a bit of fun to it with a good sense of strategy that must be used. The graphics are bright and colorful, none of our browns from our fancy new games. The writing at best is hilariously awful and at worst, just forgettable. In the end, you certainly won't be bored playing this game but you will be very hard-pressed to actually remember anything from it.

6/10

Kirby Super Star reviewed

This review is going to be a bit different than all the other video games that I reviewed. All those other game reviews only had one game to play and playing just one game is for the weak. This game however has 9! And 6 of those are real and complete games while the rest are just fun mini-games. So what I am going to do is review each and every game, even the mini-games cause trying to do a review in the normal style is just going to be a mess. So without further delay, let's dig into Kirby Super Star and all of the games therein.

The first game is Spring Breeze. Spring Breeze is just your normal Kirby game where you go right, eat things to gain their rich, tasty powers and finally beat up King DeDeDe because he stole everybody's food. It's a normal Kirby game, actually it's a remake of the first game with better graphics and color cause the first game was for the Game Boy. The point is that this game is your normal Kirby game that's reasonably fun but nothing more than that. 7/10

The second game is Dynablade. It's pretty much Spring Breeze in every way. I mean you are fighting this huge pseudo-mechanical bird instead of King DeDeDe and there's a map that you can move around, backtrack and find a couple secret levels. But other than that it's pretty much another Kirby game and while it's reasonably fun, it's not as fun as Spring Breeze. 6/10

The third game is Gourmet Race where it's promoted and treated like a real game but really isn't. It's a glorified mini-game where you race King DeDeDe cause he wants to prove his superiority again but without violence because DeDeDe knows he will never win in a fight against Kirby so a race is the next best thing. Anyways, you race him and you eat more food than him for about 15 minutes and, if you don't suck, you'll win. It's lucky that this doesn't overstay it's welcome. 5/10

The fourth game is The Great Cave Offensive. Now this game doesn't follow the Kirby formula because the main objective for this game is to get 60 pieces of treasure. There's no King DeDeDe, no racing, no pseudo-mechanical birds to kill it's all about treasure. Well and killing a whale, a Witch Doctor with rock hands and a RPG-style fight. Yes, there's a boss where it has it's own HP, it's turn-based, there's windows showcasing what's going on and you get status updates when you win, fun ones not the ones that mattered. Anyways, this game is pretty good with a loving history in the treasures and a compulsive fun to it. 8/10

The fifth game is Metaknight's Revenge. This game is as awesome as your mind is able to comprehend the whole concept of awesomeness. Metaknight has unleashed his warship, The Halberd, into Dreamland to end its reign of laziness. Kirby doesn't like that so he goes and basically destroys The Halberd with nothing but his bare hands! This game is balls-to-the-walls action that even has a running commentary between the Halberd crew in fear over Kirby's destructive ways! I wish there was a movie made out of this or a bigger game cause this is awesome. 10/10

The sixth game is Milky Way Wishes. This game is almost as awesome as Metaknight's Revenge where the Sun and Moon of Popstar are fighting. Then this guy named Marx finds and asks Kirby to activate Nova by finding the stars of all the planets in the Galaxy and wishing the fight to end. So you do so like a normal Kirby game but this time, you don't absorb the enemies rich, tasty powers. You have to find icons of powers but you do have these powers forever. Also, the map is open-ended so you can go to any planets in any order even though there is a real order you're supposed to do things in. Then at the end, it transfers to a Gradius-esque shoot-em-up and it's pretty awesome. 9/10

The mini-games are short but fun and they won't be rated. The mini-games are Samurai Kirby, Megaton Punch and The Arena. Samurai Kirby is a reflex game where you samurai versions of you and your enemies are waiting for the signal to attack, like a quick-draw shootout in a Western. Megaton Punch is more of a timing game where you punch a crack in Popstar while competing with some opponents. The Arena is a boss-rush, killing all the bosses you met all over again.

I do wish that a few of the games were expanded and released as stand-alone games like The Great Cave Offensive, Metaknight's Revenge and Milky Way Wishes. As it is though, at worst the games are mildly amusing and at best, it's the most awesome thing ever. On the whole, it's a nice, pleasant Kirby game that should please any Kirby fans.

7/10

Bebe's Kids, the game and movie, reviewed

So today I'm doing things a bit differently. As you'll see I'll be reviewing a movie and then reviewing the licensed gamed based off of that movie. But not just any movie, a movie so bad it's script probably killed Robin Harris, the comedian whose sketches spawn this. Granted I'm just doing some wild guessing but it's as good as any other theory. Anyways, let's explore the wonderful world of....duh duh duh....Bebe's Kids.

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During the 80's, Robin Harris was a fairly successful comedian even though no one knows who he is and why we should we care. His crown jewel of his stand-up was his story about Bebe's kids, a tale about kids so evil that even the police are scared of them. So Paramount came calling and they wanted to make a movie based off the Bebe kids act. So they started to but Robin Harris must have read the script cause not only did he decide to not be in it, he decided to die hoping to take the movie down with him. He failed...not in dying, he's dead but the movie lived by getting Faizon Love to be Harris and animating it. So we get this complete with the tagline "It's Animation!"...fine, it's really "It's animation...with attitude!" but who am I to stand in the way of a good legend. So let's get going as we dig into Bebe's Kids.

Anyways the plot is that our hero, Robin, is at a bar talking to some blind bartender...oh, the hilarity, my sides are in pain. He's talking about his woman troubles that lead to his horrible day at Funland with....duh duh duh....Bebe's kids!!!!! A little explanation is a bit necessary, Robin meets this girl and they hit it off, then he meets her son. Eventually that turns into a promise to take her and the son to Funland but when he comes to pick them up there are the kids while their mother is out cheating on welfare, prostituting herself and buying crack. Fine, the movie never says it but Unfortunate Implications do exist here. So basically those little monsters are unleashed and destroy Funland while Robin and the chick are getting their loving on. And for additional fun, Robin's ex-wife and her sister are there to mess things up for the love story but to the movie's credit, they do avert that idiot plot where the woman meets the ex and the ex lies and the woman believes her and won't listen to the man. Well it happens here but it gets straighten out pretty quickly.

So as an animated movie, the first thing you notice is the animation. It's really horrible. The colors are all washed-out, half of the time people talk without opening their mouth which is especially true for the baby and he does open his mouth. The characters are all drawn in the most ugly way possible. And for a movie based of a comedy sketch it's not funny, all the jokes fail miserably save one but I'll get to that later. It's hyper-stylized like modern cartoons are but it doesn't work cause we don't care about this movie. Humor only comes through if we care about the characters, the situation or anything at all. Then the sound mixing is horrible, it's all a wash of sound. The voices barely come in clear, they all sound alike(I realize the minefield I'm stepping on with that) and the music is all garbled and unintelligible. The only survivor is Tone-Loc and that's cause he's Tone-Loc, the man with the most distinctive voice ever.

But there are two good moments that are kinda funny and cute. The first is when Robin threatens one of the kids that he'll beat the black out of him and he'll be lighter than Michael Jackson when he's done. That's pretty funny. The other is when robots try to kill the kids to avenge the death of one of the robots the kids destroyed...yeah, I'm serious. I was hopeful that the plot may twist into a Machine-Human war. But Robot Abraham Lincoln has to convince the Robot Overlord to put them on trial with Robot Richard Nixon as the prosecutor. Alright, this may still turn into a Machine-Human war depending on the outcome. Then the kids start to rap....oh God, it's horrible. Then they escape and there is no Machine-Human war at all!

Anyways, this movie sucks! It's not funny. It's poorly made. It's suffers from Unfortunate Implications that can be construed into Racism. The stunt casting is negated through bland voice-acting. You can't make out the difference between the music and the voices. But I am not done with this yet, there's still the game.

2/10

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So after the horror of the Bebe's Kids movie failed without a trace we all thought we were done with this. How wrong we were because this game showed up to make gamers destroy their Super Nintendo out of blind rage. And you knew you were really in trouble when the two companies produced this is Mandingo Entertainment, the ultimate slave name, and Motown Software, the ultimate R&B Record Label, and as far as I know they never made another game again. So let's dig in to one of the worst games I've played, Bebe's Kids.

Anyways, if you read any other reviews you get the horrible feeling that none of them actually saw the movie and they don't know anything about how this game relates to the movie. Of course it doesn't matter but little mistakes really take a toll on me. So anyways, this game is told exclusively through the Bebe Kids, mostly LaShawn or Kahill cause that's who you get the choice of playing. And yes, it's basically like the movie where the kids explore and destroy Funland. All the old friends are there like The Agents, Pirates and especially The Robots that could cause a Machine-Human War. But let's face it, it's a side-scrolling beat-em-up so story isn't all that important anyways.

The control is important in a beat-em-up and I can't believe how horrible the controls are. The moves are pretty standard like punch, kick, jump and some special moves. However the controls are so unintuitive that it's a pain. I mean the A button crouches and you have to crouch to get items and you stay there for a couple seconds. As for your special move, well it's a bit awkward to use. You hold L and either X or Y to do an uppercut. If you do L and B you just do a regular punch cause B's your jump button. Yeah, you can't jump if you hold any other button and I won't even discuss jumping on the scenery...too much pain. Then you spinning jump kick is pretty much L + X/Y...in the air and considering how bad the jumping is...sigh. And I know all this through the failure of the Nostalgia Critic's review. Without him guiding the way I would've broken something and that would suck.

Of course there's many, many other flaws. So let's see, the graphics are bland, unappealing and washed-out...just like the movie! So maybe there's a deeper adaptation than I thought but that's giving the game too much credit. The music is equally lifeless with just a two second loop of any and all level themes. Then the fact that your normal attacks are next to useless when killing things, you literally have to punch things 10's of times before they die! There's also a unforgivably tough time limit and with the hard to kill enemies, you'll be seeing Time Over a lot. Or I would if I didn't know to that uppercutting the enemies kills them in three hits thanks to the Nostalgia Critic's failure in which we all better learn from.

But there's the crown jewel of failure that needs to be explained a lot more fully is the Haunted Mansion level that wasn't in the movie at all! So basically this level is a Find-the-Exit kind of level/maze. You have this thermometer that's your guide to finding the exit in a general sense. The problem is that this level is so poorly designed that finding your way out using logic is a lesson in futility. Don't get me wrong there is an internal logic to this place but it's logic is so contrary to normal methods of navigation that you might as well just wander aimlessly until you escape from this accursed place. And yes, the time limit is unforgivably hard.

This game sucks! The game looks like somebody puked on the screen. The music sounds like somebody puked on the synth. The controls play like somebody puked on the controller and gave it back to you expecting you to play. The enemy AI looks like somebody just puked the code and considered it finished. I mean this game is one of the worst games that I have ever played and I still have horrible flashbacks from the Home Alone games and the Rocky & Bullwinkle game.

1/10

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So yeah, this is horrible. I know Robin Harris has done other stuff like Do the Right Thing and House Party but this is pretty much what we associate with Robin Harris. And that's a damn shame.

Donkey Kong Country 2 reviewed

In 1994, the first Donkey Kong Country was released and it revitalized the career of Donkey Kong, who was just known as that guy who threw barrels at Mario. Sure the game was difficult in an unfair way and the game play wasn't as good as it could've been but man did it look amazing. The next year, the second Donkey Kong Country was released and it fixed each and every flaw in the first game to make an amazing experience. Then they broke it all over again with Donkey Kong Country 3 but that's a different story. So let's dig in shall we?

After the butt-whooping Donkey and Diddy Kong gave to the evil Kremlining King K. Rool and his army after stealing the DK Banana Horde, K. Rool was lying in wait for the right moment to strike back. Some time later, he has....he kidnapped Donkey Kong and has unleashed his navy onto the world of the Kongs! Now Diddy Kong and his woman, Dixie Kong, must go out and destroy the navy, beat up K. Rool again and save Donkey Kong with your clan helping you along the way.

Like the first game the graphics are amazing. The levels are varied enough to keep your interest and there is lots of details in it to make this a fuller experience. On the boat levels, when you kill enemies you can see a splash as they go into the water. On volcano stages, you can see steam rising up when you put enemies in the hot lava. When you visit the various Kong's places, they are so richly detailed that you can see the care into each room, especially at Cranky Kong's place where you can see a lot of video game artifacts there.

But the game's shining moment is the music. Each and every track is a classic that will burrow into your brain and never leave. I can not play the game for years and I can still remember some of the songs like the boss stage music, the boat stages, the roller coaster stages and the bee hive stages which takes an amazing amount of skill to accomplish. And the most amazing thing is that the music plays segues into the death music effortlessly. You almost want to die at every stage just to hear how the death music will be.

The game play is here is surprisingly deeper than at first glance. The core game is you go from the beginning of the level to the end of the level without dying, simple enough. First off, this game is really difficult but unlike the first game it's not unfair, just a bit frustrating cause you forgot that one thing that keeps killing you kills you. The animal buddies are much more fun to use than before cause they're all fun, especially Squawks cause in the first...he just held a flashlight. Now, he shoots coconuts from his mouth and flies with you instead of a flashlight! There's many hidden items and some special coins to increase replay value by quite a bit. Finally there's the Lost World where you go and completely finish the game for the best ending and it's worth it...very much so.

So this game stands heads and shoulders above the other two Donkey Kong Country games...and above Donkey Kong 64 but DK64 is better than DKC 1 and 3. The controls are fun, crisp and easy to use. The graphics are even better than the first DKC game. The music is awesome and there's not a bad track in there. It's simply a game you just got to play right now!

10/10

Chrono Trigger reviewed

I will say this upfront, Chrono Trigger is my favorite game ever.....ever. This was a shining achievement for the Super Nintendo, Square and Akira Toriyama, the guy who made the Dragonball series. Everything from the graphics, to the dialogue and even making sure people don't get lost during the story was on-point and awesome. Hell, even over 10 years of playing this this game still has me discovering its secrets. For the record, I am talking about the SNES version, not the PSX version where everything took forever to load or the DS....which I'll probably play eventually but not soon.

Anyways, this story may be dense if you think about it but it is easy enough to follow. You're this guy in 1000 AD who bumps into this girl and then go to a science demostration thing where things go horribly wrong and you go to 600 AD to right things that went one...like Quantam Leap! Then you do and now you're an enemy of the state in your own time so you go back to the future and find it.....a horrible one! You find out what caused this and vow to kill it and right things again, and eventually do it a bunch of other times in a bunch of other time periods, just like a season's worth of Quantam Leap. But there is a slight twist, you can fight the Big Bad shortly after discovering about him but you will probably die a horrible horrible death if you do. But basically there's like 5% real plot and 95% sidequests that advance the plot in it and there's something refreshing about it, something fresh. It's borderline genius.

Sure with out fancy 3-D graphics and our fancy generated-in-engine FMV's, the graphics here may be a bit old-hat. But then again, you are discounting the highly animated sprites and the great use of the Mode 7 engine(best scene in the race against Johnny and the "normal" ending). The sprites have enough animations to express anything at all, from joy to laughter to shock and even sadness which is a step up from the normal SNES sprites that usually had two movements, maybe three so that is quite a big leap, I'm not sure that even Final Fantasy VI had this many sprites. And the lands are so richly detailed that you can see the mountain backgrounds, the ruined future and even houses with appliances with such clarity it's amazing. It's one of the best graphical examples of the SNES-era.

And the music here is amazing. Almost every theme is composed to unleash the maximum awesomeness out of each and every note. Each track is awesome that it's easier if I just list the themes that aren't awesome, Marle's theme. That's it, just one failure of a theme in a sea of awesomeness. Trust me, listen to Magus's theme, The Kingdom of Zeal's theme, Crono's theme or Frog's theme they will be remembered forever inside you.

The gameplay is easy to pick up but it runs deep. The enemies are usually out in the open, granted some of them come out to ambush you but you don't have to worry about random encounters, which is nice. Also, the game has double and triple techs or you can use your special moves in tandem with someone elses special moves which is awesome. And this system does run deep with getting every combination of characters in your party so you can get every single tech in the game.

So this game is pretty much Quantum Leap as an RPG. You go back and forth in time to right things where they went wrong...and trust me, there's a lot of wrongs to be righted which results in a lot ass to kick so you can right those wrongs. And this game does have something for everyone with the characters. Girls can appreciate the love story between Crono and Marle. Guys can appreciate the friendship between Crono, Frog and Robo. Nerds can appreciate Lucca. S & M guys can appreciate Ayla. And the rest can appreciate Magus. See, something for everyone.

10/10