Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Super NES, 1993)

 

It's August 29th, you know what that means.

AVGN said that "any sane human being would shut this game off after the first stage"

Welp.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (NES, 1992)

 

LJN debuts with a bang. This was featured in one of the first Nintendo Powers I ever looked at, so to this day I still have this perception of the game as being really cool. Time to completely ruin this memory.

The Terminator (Super NES, 1993)

 

What's really weird...is that this game came out AFTER T2 for the Super NES. Yeah, they went back and did the first. They had to cover all their bases and really milk Arnold. This is actually a fairly playable game mechanically. The problem is that the design can't get out of its own way, which ruins it regardless of how mechanically playable it is.

The Terminator (NES, 1992)

 

Time for me to play a loathsome, shitty game! One that I no doubt would have tried to get if I'd ever had an NES in this era, as I was pretty obsessed with Terminator movies circa 1991-1993. T2 might have been the first movie I ever saw in a theater, not sure. That was a tough act to follow.

In any case, there's a reason why in all these years I never bothered to play any of the basic NES/SNES Terminator games. At this point I've played everything else based on those two movies (Game Boy, Genesis, Robocop Vs Terminator...) so I might as well give these others a spin and see just how terrible they are. I could be playing something good, like Castlevania or Dragon Quest. Instead I'm playing this. Official Nintendo Seal of Quality my ass!

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance, 2003)

 

This is a big step up from Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance. Out of the big six Metroidvanias on GBA and DS that are Symphony-inspired, this is the one that I've always considered the best and the closest to topping Symphony.

The next one, Dawn of Sorrow, is probably also on the same level, I just dock it some points for stylus usage. I could see someone putting that one as the pinnacle of this group as well. And personally I liked Portrait of Ruin the most back when I first played all six (though I do think the Soma games have better world design). There's a lot of good stuff in these six once you get past the iffy first two games. After the next Soma game, there are two more in this Symphony-followup-hexology, and both of them have hot playable leads.

Kid Dracula (Game Boy, 1993)

 

I've got five more 'Vanias I want to cover, so here's the next one. A sort of hybrid sequel/remake of the Famicom original, except this one actually made it to the US. It's the one I've been wanting to play for a long time, since well before I knew the Famicom one even existed. Now I finally get to it. Is it everything I hoped for? Well, uh...it's certainly a game.

Castlevania Adventure: Rebirth (Wiiware, 2009)

 

This is a hidden gem in every sense of the phrase. And I mean completely hidden, because you can't even play it anymore on the actual hardware unless you already got it back in the day. It's a download-only Wii game on a service that you can't access now. Which is nuts, because it's a great game that deserves to be reborn (incidentally) in a modern compilation or something.

This is supposed to be a remake of Castlevania Adventure on the Game Boy, but it really isn't. I mean it handles the same and has the same three tiers of whip strength, but other than that it's notably different. Probably the most different-from-original remake I've ever played that still called itself a remake. At least FFVII Remake followed the same story beats. This one has six stages instead of four and most of the bosses are changed. Well, considering Castlevania Adventure is probably the worst game in the series, it really needed a Rebirth, so let's do this.

Originally posted August 2024, reposted without any edits

Game Boy Player's Guide Game Wrap-Up Megapost

 

Now that I've played all of the games in here, 30 years later, I can compile my posts for everything related to this guide, while also covering the things I never gave a full post to. Microposts, if you will. Much like what the guide itself does towards the end.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Game Boy, 1990)

 

The last game from the Game Boy Player's Guide that I had on my list of things to check out (where it has been for, no joke, 30 years). Always kinda knew this would be the last thing I played from the guide, for whatever reason. I've got kind of an unusual link with this one, which I'll get into in a moment here. Also this is THE WORST GODDAMN GAME EVER.

R-Type III: The Third Lightning (Super NES, 1994)

 

This was the first really difficult game that I ever beat. They totally cranked that difficulty meter from the previous games and made this an ahead-of-its-time murderfest akin to Super Meat Boy. The good news is that rather than repeating the levels on death like all previous games in the series, this one gives you actual checkpoints and lots of them. Also infinite lives. So the incredibly tough levels can be tackled one segment at a time. There are no difficulty levels, but the difficulty is just right, and they pretty much got it perfect here. Though be prepared that this game does take a while to get through if played fully legit, and every stage is a fierce battle.

Super R-Type (Super NES, 1991)

Time for one of my favorite SNES shooters. This is basically R-Type II remixed for the new SNES, with some R-Type content thrown in, and a couple entirely new levels. I got this game as a kid, one of the 10-15 games I got in the 1990's, and really liked it because I kinda had to. It was all I had to play for a few weeks there! It's a good game regardless, and certainly easier on the eyes than the Game Boy ones (which admittedly punch above their weight). Since we hadn't gotten R-Type II in the states at the time, this game seemed almost entirely new. Still no build variety though.

(Originally posted in 2014, rewriting some of it now to go with the others)

R-Type II (Game Boy, 1992)

 

This one I played way later in time than the other one, and for a while didn't even know it existed. The first one was the only one I saw covered or talked about anywhere. And there's a very good reason for this: It never came out in North America. That's right, it got Japan and Europe releases and then they just kinda cancelled the American version. Regardless, this is basically part two of the first game, picking up right where it left off. It has a lot in common with Super R-Type (but not everything). I think most people only experienced this via the R-Type DX compilation on Game Boy Color, especially in the States.

R-Type (Game Boy, 1991)

 

Another Game Boy Player's Guide game, and one I'm surprised I never posted about already. I actually got this game as a kid, one of the ten or so Game Boy games I ever owned. Unfortunately, out of those ten-ish, this was probably the one I got the least out of. I think I played it a grand total of maybe 2-3 hours at the most, and was pretty much done with it in one day. It's a very short game and doesn't pose any particular challenge, especially compared to other games in this series. Still, it's worth a look.

The R-Type series, from Irem, was sorta the Ross Perot of the shooter universe circa the 1990s. Not as popular or well-known as Gradius and not as beloved by the hardcore as the vertical Compile games. It has a number of innovations that set it apart from (and even surpass at times) the Gradius games.

Ranking the Dark Souls 3 Areas From Worst To Best

 

Dark Souls 3 is certainly the most refined of the trilogy (quadrilogy, if you count Demon's Souls). I found that it was lacking a little bit of the grittiness and mystique of the earlier games in the series, but so goes the price of progress.

Ranking the Sekiro Areas From Worst To Best

 

Not a Soulsborne game but I absolutely consider Sekiro to be one of Fromsoft's "big seven" and a part of the overall series. It plays very differently from the rest, though, and is considerably more challenging than any of them. At least until you realize the game doesn't really penalize you much for spamming block. In any case, this game is tremendous and I had a huge amount of fun with it. While ER is their best game overall and Bloodborne is pound-for-pound the most interesting, Sekiro might be the most fun out of all of them. No character-creation in this one, but it allows the game to do a lot more with the emotions of the main character. No build variety either, which allows the game to have really focused gameplay that is centered more on mastery than finding a meta.

Ranking the Bloodborne Areas From Worst To Best

 

Good to finally get some Bloodborne content on here that isn't me hating on the game. While Elden Ring is Fromsoft's magnum opus, Bloodborne might be pound for pound their most interesting game. It's the only other one that sometimes challenges ER's supremacy for me, depending on the phase of the moon when you ask.

Ranking the Dark Souls 2 Areas From Worst To Best

A game with very low lows and very high highs. The dynamic range for zones in this game is a lot more variable than the rest of the series. I'm one of the few people who likes this more than Dark Souls, and I find it much more polished and streamlined. Well, for the most part. the Adaptability/Agility stat was unnecessary (and never appeared in any other From game) and the rolling wasn't nearly as good as the other games - which probably accounts for the vast majority of people's gripes about this game. Level Adaptability to 30ish to get Agility to 105ish and your rolls are basically as good as the rest of the series, which, essentially, "fixes" this game. It's kinda like triggering all of Alia's speeches and then backup-saving so you can play Mega Man X5 normally after that. Regardless, on with the list.

Ranking the Dark Souls Areas From Worst To Best

 

The second game in the series, but as of right now the "oldest" if that makes any sense. It's the only one that doesn't look amazing. Though maybe its muddy grittiness is a plus, I'm not sure. Despite having masterclass-level stage design, this has slowly become my least-favorite of Fromsoft's big seven soulsbornekiros. Not as pretty as all of the others, more rudimentary, and just kinda dark and unforgiving. Which, for some, makes it perfect. After the more normal level and level select format of Demon's Souls, this game's world layout is pretty much the next evolution of the Metroid formula and would define their games from here on out.

Ranking the Demon's Souls Areas From Worst To Best

Time for some Fromsoft content. They're my favorite game devs and make my favorite games, and I've barely mentioned them on here except to not like Bloodborne before I understood what it was (a mistake previously made with FFVI in 1995 and Xenogears in 1999). I think I later revised that, at least. Doing several of these lists, now that I've played most of these games several times over.

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#474 - 500)

 

#474 Contra (NES) – Fall 2013

Got to the rest of THIS series a good decade and a half after I should have (much like the Castlevania series). This is pretty much the quintessential NES action game. No bullshit, just cool weapons and nonstop battles. It also draws heavy inspiration from Alien and Aliens, which begs the question of why that series never got any games based on it that were just THIS. Nope, they always had to get cute and mess it up. Well, this game gives you the blueprint on how to make a good game, all they had to do was follow it. The only real downside is that it's a very difficult game. The thirty lives code helps a lot and I only play it with that.