With the year coming to a close, I'm starting to prepare my yearly GOTY post. I just have one game left to play (Antonblast) before I can finalize it, but for now, I thought I might as well post this smaller list I've been working on that compiles some of the primarily retro games that I really liked from this year.
Metal Slug Series
As you could probably tell from the influx of Metal Slug posts I made early this year, I really got into these games. They're just such a fun and addictive approach to action-platformers, less focused on genuinely challenging your abilities and more focused on just giving you a good time with tons of wacky setpieces, gargantuan bosses, inventive weapons and vehicles, and absolutely banger soundtracks. I've already reviewed each of these games and their soundtracks in detail, but just to recap, I grew particularly fond of Metal Slug 3, Metal Slug 5, Metal Slug XX, and especially Metal Slug X, my personal favorite of the series. However, even the weakest Metal Slug games are still really fun, even after Nazca left, it's just that consistently quality of a series.
Garou: Mark Of The Wolves
At this point, I can definitely say that I've played a lot of fighting games, but I don't think I've ever played one that feels as polished and smooth as Garou. It's hard to even articulate how well Garou feels to play, you kinda just have to experience it for yourself. It's just so comfortable, so tight, so responsive. Every move flows into each other, and every single command move and combo can be pulled off consistently and reliably. And the animation, holy crap, the animation in Garou is some of the best and most fluid spritework I've ever seen, without also getting in the way of the actual fighting gameplay. Despite introducing an almost entirely new cast compared to the Fatal Fury games it's based on, each and every character exudes so much personality through just their animations. I feel like I learned more about Garou's cast in a single playthrough than I did with Fatal Fury's cast after playing that entire series. SNK is known for their fighting games, but Garou is their best and most-refined, and it was an absolute joy to discover. It's a testament to quality over quantity.
Twinkle Star Sprites
Okay, this is the last Neo Geo game. Twinkle Star Sprites is the game that really popularized competitive shmupping, and was the direct inspiration for ZUN's Phantasmagoria games. And while I do really like those games, I think Twinkle Star Sprites still stands up as the best iteration of the concept. The premise is simple, you shoot enemies to make them explode, which takes out any enemy caught inside it. The more enemies you chain together with explosions, the more bullets you can send out at your opponent. But if you time your chains right, you can cancel out your enemy's bullets and send out even more powerful projectiles. This makes Twinkle Star Sprites this tense and frenetic back-and-forth, a compelling action/puzzle hybrid that forces you to constantly be ready to adapt your strategy while also being good at bullet hell games. It's an absolute blast, and the strong 90s magical girl aesthetic and catchy soundtrack (which itself also sounds like it inspired Touhou in some places) make for an overall great arcade package.
Shatterhand
If there's one console that I've gained a much stronger appreciation for this year, it has to be the NES. I always found the console not worth coming back to because of how simple its games were and how abundance its sprite flicker was, but when I decided to really delve into its library and give many of its biggest games an honest chance, I was surprised at how much depth and fun I could wring out of them. I even found myself enjoying games I had previously despised like Zelda II and Castlevania II just by taking the time to play by their rules. However, no NES game has surprised me quite like Shatterhand.
Shatterhand is a tight and tough action-platformer in the same vein of the Mega Man games focused around melee combat, it's actually surprisingly similar to Gravity Circuit which I raved about last year. The real depth comes in a variety of robot companions you can recruit by getting powerups in a certain order, and by keeping them alive, you can fuse with them into a super-powered robot suit that always feels great to use. The level design is also so cool for an NES game, consistently surprising me with neat and interesting level gimmicks, even tossing in a surprise antigravity segment in one stage, and the bosses are fast, dynamic, and always fun to fight. The spritework is stunning for the NES employing some beautiful parallax scrolling effects all without any slowdown, and the soundtrack by Shadow Of The Ninja's Iku Mizutani is an absolute banger. Shatterhand was such a pleasant surprise and I'm glad I gave it a shot, it not only stands up as one of the best games on the NES, but I'd even argue it manages to hold up to modern standards impressively well.
GG Aleste 3
For their 2020 compilation of the 8-bit Aleste games, the madlads at M2 brought together a dream team of shmup developers to make a third Aleste for Game Gear, and I think it might be the best game in the entire franchise. The folks at M2 just get shmups and they get what makes Compile's shmups so great: Huge screen-clearing weapons, blistering levels of speed, and bombastic setpieces. GG Aleste 3 keeps things faithful to its predecessors while also fleshing out the formula a bit with a neat combo system, and some truly jaw-dropping visuals that push the Game Gear's hardware to incredible degrees, with a 360-degree rotating rocket in Stage 5 being the notable highlight. The difficulty curve is pretty much perfect, every boss and stage is an absolute blast, GG Aleste 3 is such a remarkably solid game. It's also worth noting that the director of GG Aleste 3 was the absolute legend himself, Manabu Namiki, in his first role directing a game, and he knocked it out of the park. Of course, he also made the soundtrack and it's as great as you'd expect. Even on its own merits, GG Aleste 3 is an incredibly tight and well-made shmup, but the fact that M2 made an actual Game Gear game that feels like it could've easily been made in the early 1990s, and that they made a sequel to a game from 30 years ago that surpasses it on pretty much every level, is just so incredibly cool.
Cotton Series
After wanting to check it out for the longest time, I finally went ahead and checked out the entirety of the Cotton series, and it was overall a great experience. I was expecting simple but cute cute-em-ups, but what I got was an ever-expanding amount of unique mechanics that kept getting further and further refined with each new installment. From XP systems, to fairy companions, to spell combinations, to the ability to pick up and toss enemies in Cotton 2, to straight-up command moves. In terms of gameplay, it felt like each game was better than last. I was also pleasantly surprised by the story and characters. Cotton is kind of a aggressively selfish little gremlin of a protagonist, with her only motivation being food, which makes for a super refreshing lead akin to Mint from Threads Of Fate. The other cast members like Silk and Appli are fun and goofy in their own rights, and as of the recent games, Cotton and Umihara Kawase became sister series meaning they now cross over constantly. The visuals are often cute and colorful, but also genuinely impressive at times. Cotton 100% has some of the brightest colors on the SNES, Panorama Cotton is a sprite-scaling technical marvel, and Rainbow Cotton has fully-animated cutscenes and an adorable low-poly model of Cotton. On top of that, the soundtracks are often fantastic, with the rocking redbook audio score of Fantastic Night Dreams on the PC Engine being a particular highlight.
As far as the games themselves, here's my take on all of them:
Despite some difficulty and control quirks, Fantastic Night Dreams is a strong start to the series with solid level design, a breakneck pace, a fun spooky atmosphere, and that aforementioned incredible soundtrack.
Cotton 100% is a lot easier and safer, but it refines the controls, looks amazing, and has probably my favorite final act of any Cotton game.
Panorama Cotton is my favorite game in the series, an absolute whirlwind of stunning visual effects, surreal imagery, and consistently memorable setpieces. Despite being a 3D on-rails game for the Genesis, it still plays quite well while further iterating on the Cotton formula with a better spell system, alternate paths, a focus on high-scoring, and a hidden Silk campaign.
Cotton 2 is a close second favorite. The new mechanics it introduces are so fun to use, particularly the addicting chain system and tossing enemies into each other, and some of the unlockables and rewards you can unlock like tying command moves to buttons are ridiculously overpowered in all the best ways. The pacing is tight, the new characters introduced are great, and the spookier vibes of the first game are back in full force making for the most atmospheric Cotton game hands down.
Cotton Boomerang is mostly a redone version of Cotton 2 with the same environments, music, and bosses, but different enemy patterns and drastically different gameplay. Having eight characters to play as and command moves tied to buttons by default is nice, but the brutally punishing one-hit death system compared to Cotton 2's healthbars and multiple lives made me dramatically prefer its predecessor.
Rainbow Cotton is a game that should've turned out fantastic. It's a sequel to Panorama Cotton which takes cues from games like Panzer Dragoon, and its level design does have a fair amount of neat setpieces and environmental interaction. The visuals are also so ridiculously charming, the anime cutscenes are a joy to watch (Cotton canonically swears and it's glorious), and the soundtrack is one of the series' best. It's just a shame that Rainbow controls so poorly and so sluggishly, with the game having drawn-out pacing, loose controls, an inaccurate reticle, and worst of all, aggressive auto-centering. Rainbow Cotton isn't bad, but it is a big waste of a lot of potential. We did thankfully get a remake and from what I can tell, it does play a bit better, but it doesn't fix the game's fundamental issues.
And finally, there's Cotton Fantasy, a recent revival of the series with a lot more bombast in terms of its setpieces and bullet patterns. While lacking a bit in polish and it can be a tad visually busy at times, it still has all the tight controls, addictive combo systems, and sheer charm of the rest of the Cotton games. The best part though is the multiple crossover characters which all have their own unique playstyles based around the games they're from, including Appli from Cotton 2, Psyvariar, and of course, none other than Umihara Kawase herself. Also, Fantasy's soundtrack is incredible, easily my second favorite behind FND. It even contains some music by One Step From Eden's composer, Steel_Plus.
Bulk Slash
Bulk Slash is easily one of the best 3D action games on the Sega Saturn. It initially only released in Japan, but it eventually got a full-on English translation complete with a really solid fandub as well, and I'm glad it did because it's great. Bulk Slash is a mecha game not to dissimilar from something like Virtual On. The controls are pretty tight and easy to get to grips with, but the coolest part is the fact that your mech can shift between a land-based robot and an aircraft at any time, which gives you so much range in movement and variety in how you can tackle missions. Speaking of which, the mission design was easily the star of the show here. The first two missions are pretty standard mecha game stages where you shoot your way through an open city finding targets, but eventually, you discover stages with less ground to stand on requiring you to use the aircraft form, along with tighter dungeons requiring your land-based form. Even the missions start to get more diverse, like protecting a ship, ferrying bombs to use on the enemy, and descending further and further into a base. But despite the variety, not a single mission was un-fun or gimmicky, Bulk Slash remains fresh and fun throughout. Of course, I also can't go without mentioning the MISS navigators. There are seven female navigators who you can discover throughout the game, all of whom accompany you, direct you to the right place, and berate you if you screw up. These navigators are all quite likable and have really colorful and quirky personalities, and you get a unique ending for each depending on you beat the game with, which gives the game a good amount of replay value. Bulk Slash also looks pretty great, runs amazingly for the hardware, has some super fun boss fights, and a killer soundtrack, it's really the complete 5th gen action game package.
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
I'm not super familiar with Vanillaware, but I decided to check out Muramasa: The Demon Blade since I was searching for some more hidden Wii gems. And what a gem this is! Muramasa is a 2D action metroidvania not too dissimilar from Dust: An Elysian Tail, another great game. It's basically a side-scrolling hack-and-slash with incredibly fast and flashy combat and a ton of combos. Since this is a Wii game, the controls are pretty simple with attacking only being on a single button, but Vanillaware still managed to wring out a ton of moves from such a simple control scheme, and a ridiculous amount of swords to craft each with their own unique skills keep the combat fresh. Muramasa is also a jaw-droppingly beautiful game with some of the prettiest hand-drawn artwork I've seen in any game to this day, and coupled with a gorgeous orchestral soundtrack, makes for an audiovisual feast that needs to be played to be experienced.
Len'en Series
As I indicated earlier this year, I started to finally get into the Len'en games. Like with Touhou, I started by listening to the music, then I looked into some of the characters, and then I finally went ahead and tried the four main games, and they're fun! It's definitely of a different flavor compared to Touhou. The bullet patterns are less flashy and dense, and more efficient and inventive. It's more generous than Touhou between a Light Mode that lets players follow the story even if they're bad at bullet hells, a difficulty select for the Extra Stage, and a pretty helpful flashbomb system. I also wouldn't call any of the four games bad. There is the occasionally questionable bullet pattern, but each Len'en improves on the last in terms of polish and creativity, culminating in the fourth game being one of the most ambitious and wild bullet hells I've ever seen, going for a complex roguelike system with permanent upgrades, random bosses, and multiple routes. The lore is pretty interesting too, it's a slightly darker and more morally gray take on Touhou's premise with some solid comedic writing. And the music is, of course, very good. It starts a bit slow, but by the third game, Len'en's music has its own unique flair.
That being said, seeing as I had to do some wacky finagling to even get these games running on my Mac, they weren't exactly the most stable when I played them. I had crashes, music cutting out, text getting all weird. The fourth game, as inventive and admirable as it is, was almost impenetrable for me. However, I can say that the game I actually fully beat and easily had the most enjoyment with was Reactivate Majestical Imperial. RMI is an incredibly refined bullet hell that I'd even hold up alongside some of the better Touhou games. It has some fun and mostly fair patterns, a fun team system to play around with, a strong winter theming that the game really runs with, my favorite cast roster and soundtrack of the four games, and a pretty stunning final act with a fifth boss that feels like a final boss and a final boss that feels like an extra boss.
Mother
As I mentioned before, I started to really come to appreciate a lot of the NES's library this year, but the game I certainly didn't expect to fall in love with as much as I did had to be Mother. I already did a full deep dive into this one, so I'll keep it simple. Despite the many complaints Mother receives over its archaic elements, I was impressed by how ahead of its time it really was. The combat has so much options to play around with and really break the game with, there's a massive open world to explore and run around in, the pacing is brisk as you're constantly tossed into new environments and situations, the story is elegantly subtle in its delivery but still managed to leave me absolutely crushed by the end, the Peanuts-inspired visuals are charming, the atmosphere is impeccable, and the soundtrack is phenomenal. It's a truly ambitious and wonderful work of art that deserves so much more appreciation for what it managed to accomplish on its system.
Metal Slader Glory
Speaking of ambitious NES titles, Metal Slader Glory easily ranks up there with Mother. The development behind MSG is almost as interesting as the game itself, a four-year undertaking by Yoshimiru Hoshi and supported by Iwata himself so large and time-consuming that it nearly killed HAL. The game became a huge cult classic, but it could never make back its massive costs and audiences at the time didn't really click with it, so with hindsight, Iwata had since called it a managerial mistake. But from an artistic standpoint, I'm so glad Metal Slader Glory exists because it's one of the most impressive and awe-inspiring passion projects the NES has to offer.
At its core, Metal Slader Glory is a visual novel about a bunch of kids finding a mech and traveling around the galaxy to learn more about it and its origins, only to find themselves wrapped up in an intergalactic war in which they're completely out of their depth. However, it's all elevated by the execution. The graphics are easily some of the best on the NES, with impressive stills with dynamic coloring and shading, and facial expressions that sync with the line deliveries in real-time. The entire 4-5 hour visual novel is basically full animated and it remains jaw-dropping the whole way through, only complimented by some stellar sound design. The story itself boasts some fairly likable main protagonists with solid banter, even if there's a few iffy harem tropes smattered around, and the main mystery remains engaging, especially after a really effective tonal shift halfway through. At the time, this tonal shift and the subsequent gameplay genre shifts were the most divisive aspect of Metal Slader Glory, but those ambitious swerves are part of what makes the game feel so ahead of its time nowadays. The fact that Hoshi, Iwata, and the team at HAL managed to craft a visual novel that was on par with the PC-98 VNs of the time in terms of art direction and scope on the Famicom is absolutely wild, and if you're at all interested in this niche, Metal Slader Glory deserves to be experienced.
Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 1/2
Speaking of NEC's VNs, though, I do want to briefly shout out the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna duology which were also very pleasantly enjoyable. The gorgeous art and charming writing really made it feel like I was playing through a 90s magical girl show like Sailor Moon. Yuna is a lovably silly protagonist and the variety of goofy scenarios she gets herself in across both games were really fun to follow, and given that these games pretty much marked the end of the PC Engine's lifespan, it was also fun to see all the little references to Hudson Soft's past. Just a really comfy and endearing duo of visual novels that I had a fun time playing through.
Cave Noire
I love the Game Boy as a console, but it had a pretty rough first few years as developers were still really trying to grasp what it made for a good handheld title. I'd argue that the console really found its footing in 1992 with games like Kirby's Dream Land, Super Mario Land 2, and Kaero No Tame Ni Kane Wa Naru, but little did I know that early in 1991, Konami made a perfect handheld title and released it only in Japan.
Cave Noire is a roguelike that feels perfectly suited for the Game Boy in pretty much every way. It's digestible and deceptively simple, stripping the genre to its barest essentials while still cramming in a ton of depth. The moment-to-moment tile-hopping gameplay is easy to understand, but as you delve further into the dungeon, you'll start having to consider enemy movement, item management, picking your fights, and skipping floors. The condensed nature of each room and the simplified controls means that every decision you make matters, and trying to make the most of the limited options you have is surprisingly enthralling. The brilliance of Cave Noire is that the game is divided up into 40 brisk missions that task you to hop into a dungeon to complete increasingly harder objectives, and with each run taking about 5-10 minutes, it makes for a perfect game to play in short bursts on the go. And as someone who finds the sheer time investment of many roguelikes nowadays to be discouraging, this also made Cave Noire way more appealing for me personally. The fact that I can just hop in and get a full, satisfying roguelike experience in a few minutes is something that many entries in the genre don't offer aside from maybe Downwell, another roguelike fav by the way. Add in some incredibly charming spritework and one of the better-sounding early Game Boy soundtracks, and you get one of the best hidden gems on the console, and one of my new favorite roguelikes.
Battle Mania Daiginjou
Battle Mania Daiginjou for the Genesis is one of the strangest shmups I've ever played. You don't pilot a ship or anything like that, instead of play as two girls with jetpacks flying through a futuristic city with rock music blaring in the background. In the grand scheme of things, this is just a really solid shmup with tight controls and a cool 90s anime presentation, on a console filled with solid shmups, but it really is all that set dressing that elevated it for me. The sheer variety in Daiginjou is just nuts. The first stage has you fight a doppleganger of yourself, Stage 4 is a lengthy vertical descent with shifting walls and giant sawblades to dodge, Stage 5 has you chase after a train on a motorcycle before infiltrating it in Stage 6, and then there's the final stage, an intense timed escape sequence with multiple boss encounters and absolutely nuts music. Battle Mania Daiginjou may not have the same level of polish as a Treasure game, but it sure as hell has the same creativity, charm, and sense of chaos as them, making for a shmup unlike anything else I've played.
Wagyan Paradise
One series I checked out this year were the Wagyan Land games, and they were... not the best. As much as I like to claim that no game is too easy, the sheer simplicity of the earlier entries felt too basic even for me, and combined with the overlong and tedious boss minigames that were borderline impenetrable as someone who doesn't know Japanese, I bounced off most of them pretty quickly.
However, one of the last entries in the series, the SNES's Wagyan Paradise probably ranks among one of the wildest gaming glowups I've ever seen. Despite following a similar structure to its predecessors, the level design in Wagyan Paradise is consistently varied and engaging, with no two stages playing exactly the same. Even the aforementioned minigames were really fun here as there was a much larger variety of them, they went by a lot faster, and some of them didn't even require me to know Japanese. The pacing has been smoothed out so much, and the entire adventure was an absolute joy. But the real highlight of Wagyan Paradise is the overall presentation. Paradise shared several staff members with the Klonoa series, and you can really tell colorful visuals and adorable character designs. But most of all, it was even primarily composed by Klonoa's Eriko Imura, who managed to put out an OST so good it genuinely manages to rival Chrono Trigger and Donkey Kong Country 2 as one of my favorites on the console. Seriously, the samples she picked out sound stunningly crisp, and the whole score has this upbeat techno sound that feels like it could come straight out of a Wii game. I'm just going to leave a few tracks here because if there's anything you take from this entire post, it's to check out the Wagyan Paradise OST. I promise you won't regret it.
Continental Shelf, Cape, Forest, Water Duct, Roller Coaster, Sunken Ship, To The Stronghold
Super Nazo Puyo: Rulue No Roux
As a fan of arcade puzzle games like Puyo Puyo and Panel De Pon, I've always had a soft-spot for the dedicated Puzzle Game modes that focus on solving a single-screen in a few moves. Little did I know that there's an entire Puyo Puyo subseries called Nazo Puyo focused exclusively on solving puzzles. I immediately needed to check out the one game in the series that got translated, Super Nazo Puyo, and as you can expect, I was very pleasantly surprised. Super Nazo Puyo is a fun and unique take on the Puyo formula, with its tough puzzles really pushing you to master the nuances of how Puyos work. With two fleshed-out campaigns, one of which letting you play as Rulue, along with a variety of other modes like a classic Endless Mode and a puzzle editor, the game also has quite a lot of content. And the soundtrack is shockingly good, especially the boss themes. No one seems to know about this one, so I think I can easily call it one of if not the most overlooked Puyo Puyo game out there.
Lufia II: Rise Of The Sinistrals
On a console with so many samey medieval RPGs, Lufia II initially doesn't exactly stand out from the crowd. However, the more I played it, the more I was surprised by just how mechanically ambitious it is. On the surface, it's a fairly cozy RPG with a fast and snappy combat system, and a simple but charming story with uniquely naturalistic dialogue and some surprisingly effective emotional beats by the ending. It really reminds me of Game Arts' RPGs like Lunar and Grandia, though not quite as character driven. But beyond that, Lufia II adds in so many cool and forward-thinking mechanics. Each equipment having unique perks encouraging players to not always pick the most powerful equipment, the addition of overworld abilities and the most fleshed-out dungeon puzzles in an RPG until Golden Sun, a light monster collecting mechanic in the capsule monsters, and a hidden 99-floor dungeon called the Ancient Cave that basically plays out like an early roguelike. There's really a lot to love in Lufia II, and when you add in one of the best RPG soundtracks on the console, you get a truly complete package that easily ranks as one of my favorite non-Square RPGs on the SNES.
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