Mento

@bigsocrates: I remember us butting heads over the definition of Indie for another one of these (maybe an Ori?) but in this case I'm going to 100% concede that I'm really stretching the definition of the term well beyond breaking point. I just wanted an excuse to play it during this stupidly packed GOTY feature I've landed myself with. Maybe I should just rename this feature "A Game I Played This Week".

@sparky_buzzsaw: I definitely had that feeling while playing, wishing I liked playing it more because everything about the presentation is so solid and I instinctively want any big 3D collectathon platformer to be good so more of them get made. That's always been the curse of Double Fine though: excellent premises, excellent style, so-so gameplay.

@vortextk: Yeah, I somehow missed that Helmut was Jack Black (and that Nick/Gristol was Elijah Wood) until I checked the cast list afterwards. For such a flamboyant role he managed to rein it in a lot, I guess because there was a lot of tragedy around that character too.

I'm with you on the mind levels, I generally found their inventiveness the game's highlight but the combat and platforming necessary to get around them was a little weaker. I feel like the mechanical nuances of the gameplay is the sort of thing that can improve with sequels (even if it didn't with this one so much) but working up to that level of creativity wouldn't be as easy to pull off. (Not that game design is ever easy, mind, but relatively speaking at least. Don't see many games with this amount of imagination.)

The Woodstock/Yellow Submarine vibe of that level just made me realize the '60s was 60 years ago. Just odd to see in a game that has the sort of youthful chaotic energy where I wouldn't be surprised to see an adaptation on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network someday.

@borgmaster: I've been going by Sega Retro's dates because they have citations, unlike GameFAQs and Wikipedia. Of course, those citations happen to be contemporaneous video game magazines which aren't always super accurate but I figure it's still better than nothing.

Actually, since there were a lot of Genesis/SNES cross-platform games this week, I've been noticing some discrepancies between when the two versions came out: the gap seems a little too wide, so one or the other is probably inaccurate. I think that's why I prefer working on Japanese releases since they're so well catalogued that they have those release dates down to the day.

@zombiepie: If it doesn't work out, just play Tales of Destiny. It has a whole bonus dungeon based on Tower of Druaga (they share the same acronym, so I guess it fits).

I've also watched an unusual amount of anime in 2022 it feels like, and as someone who came into Chainsaw Man completely fresh I did not anticipate that whole mid-season spring-cleaning session but enjoyed it nonetheless. It really does feel like a series with a huge budget and level of consideration behind it, even before you get to the amazing animation in the fight scenes; the way every episode caps with a unique ending theme/video is proof enough of how invested they are in creating that show. Feels like this year's big appointment viewing anime, for sure, with the delightful Spy X Family a close second (and MP100 always brings it, even if it felt like it concluded in a hurry). Gotta say I've been enjoying Isekai Ojisan and Skeleton Knight in Another World quite a bit too despite them being even more isekai shit, Ya Boy Kongming and Birdie Wing were fascinatingly strange, and I surprised myself by how much I liked Sono Bisque Doll once it got a little less thirsty and switched the protag focus to Marin. The January/Spring season sounds like it'll be packed too, so I'll no doubt find myself watching a few of those.

Anyway, good award choices here and I'm definitely going to have to check out Stranger of Paradise early next year (it was an Xmas present) given how many GB people are enthusiastically (?) repping what at first blush looked like a very dumb and very esoteric FF thing that should've appealed to no-one.

(Oh, and the TG16 Tower of Druaga's not so bad. Hopefully JeffRud's thing gets to that sooner rather than later if you need a second opinion.)

@infantpipoc: Well, I do come from the Dan Ryckert school of video game reviews. Gotta fit MGS in there somewhere.

@nodima:That's pretty interesting. I'm not exactly the cleanest person (mostly out of indolence) but I can definitely be fastidious when it comes to having the correct spots for things and therefore didn't have much of an issue following the logic of the game and its demands. You're right though that people have all sorts of systems that intuitively make the most sense to them and I guess there's only so much the game can do to account for that.

Playing Unpacking made me curious to try that A Little to the Left game that just came out where you're organizing items in the right order, and hearing folks talk about that it seems like there's multiple interpretations of "the right order" the game recognizes. I wonder if they faced a similar feedback issue and made it a bit more broadly accepting of how people organize differently?

Good luck. So you're doing all the Japan-only stuff too, then? This'll be quite the ordeal but hopefully still on the right side of manageable.

Last time I checked the Giant Bomb wiki remains one of the best resources for the HuCard era of the TG16/PCE if you want to lean on it a little too. (I'll admit to chickening out on getting pages for all the PCE CD games though; there's a lot.) There's always Chronturbo as well, of course.

Say hi to Bonk for me.

@jeffrud: Anything specific I want to look at is already in my pre-selection shortlist. If we're talking more generally, I was hoping it'd pick more random weird Japanese games like Photopi while continuing to avoid all the generic sports and racing games on there.

Of course, I've already rolled it for next week and it is indeed a generic sports game. Statistically probable, unfortunately.

I might concur with JeffRud, despite being a rival of sorts. The comprehensiveness of this round-up is impressive and the quality of your writing has steadily improved since you started. Of a similar tier as ZombiePie's equally loquacious examinations of the Final Fantasy franchise.

I'm also glad we have another fan of Dr. Sparkle on the site. So much of my wiki editing and wiki-related blogging was inspired by his work with the various Chron- series. I've heard the dude's been through a rough spot lately so I hope he bounces back.

Anyway, good luck with the Saturn. I've been batting around blogging ideas for that system too, but I should probably should finish up Mega Archive first. I'll be sure to check out your coverage for any highlights (it has a Japan-only Dungeon Master sequel that strikes me as intriguing, though it's sadly yet to be fan-translated).