Just when I thought I was gonna mix things up after a Nintendo fuelled January, the Big N were like "resistance is futile in the wake of our shadow drops"
So here we are, remasters and game boy games then
9. Metroid Prime Remastered ★★★★★
I feel like it's taken me a rather potent amount of willpower to avoid revisiting Prime for a decade or so, as each year since Prime 4.jpg teased that this year was the year that some variety of HD remaster would bless us all, eventually they were actually right.
And it's absolutely been worth the wait, Metroid Prime is just kinda timeless I feel, this isn't saying it's without fault (that midgame magmoor backtracking), wasn't bettered by its sequels in ways (the bosses here are kinda ehhh to P2 and P3) and such.
The nuts and bolts of the game however, hold up pretty tremendously even after two decades of game advancements. Prime was always great, and this remaster really solidifies that, perhaps now more than ever its approach to scanning and logging information about the world as a major gameplay component strikes me as something that is more in line with the variety of gameplay experiences seen in the present, and less of the gung-ho shootbang fest that was the first person landscape of 2002 where the idea of first person adventure was often floated around because Prime just couldn't possibly be an FPS.
I highlight this because, really it's one of the secret sauces of Prime for me, the reason I've found myself preferring the 3D entries in the series over the 2D ones. Something about Samus investigating the world, uncovering its history and being able to confirm "yep, that tree there sure is rotting due to the contaminated water" just because. Filling up the logbook, reading up on space pirate experiments, boning up on the local flora and fauna, forget Samus the bounty hunter, Samus the scientist/researcher is what I'm here for.
Of course this is all intertwined with the standard Metroid-antics that are combat, world exploration/backtracking, powering up and some light platforming, how Retro's completely fucked development (of which you can read or hear about from all sorts of places now) managed to turn out a game that so fundamentally nailed the 3D Metroidvania from the jump is still kinda mindblowing.
Retro of the present (strange phrasing!) have visually overhauled the base 2002 game in a manner that threads the needle between respecting the art direction of the original, and just being a straight upgrade, I will fully admit to damn near tearing up when stepping back out onto the damp surface of Tallon overworld, rain running down the visor hud, kenji yamamoto's electronic synth driven music inviting me back to an alien world.
I don't really need to say any more, it's Metroid Prime, it's back, in remastered form and better than ever, please give me Prime 2 with the quickness.
9.5. Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3 – E Reader levels (no rating)
MY WHITE WHALE
Gosh, what a tease these stages were for a kid reading his UK video game magazines, the idea that my Super Mario Advance 4 cart, housed in secret a collection of extra stages, NEW stages (this is a pre- New Super Mario Bros world after all) that drew mechanics and power ups from the other GBA ports.
All I needed was a dodgy and rightfully doomed peripheral that was so doomed it never even made it to Europe, probably for the best really, thus these became my lost levels, the forbidden 2D Mario content.
While this isn't the first time Nintendo have snuck these out, I wasn't about to purchase SMB3 yet again on the WiiU, so now is the first time I've got my grubby mitts on these stages, nearly two decades of hype and…..
yeah, they're okay I guess.
Safe to say that all the appeal these stages had at a base level have been run right over by a conga line of New Super Mario Bros titles and especially the two Mario Maker games. That last pair is particularly notable because in reality, these e-reader outings are kinda like playing some perfectly okay mario maker stages. One could point out that it's neat for them to get a bit experimental at time, but really that just means "here's a stage where getting to the end is easy, but we really want you to collect the five big coins in our mini maze". So lite puzzle Mario is in vogue here which, is never my fave I gotta admit. It's also odd that they bank so much on the big coins as a hook because they ain't worth anything in the grand scheme of things, the even rarer e-coins fill up a very lacklustre gallery room that might as well have a display banner saying "wow, it's f'n nothing!".
Still, Mario 3 is Mario 3, I'm not sure we needed more autoscroller airships in here, or more boom boom encounters (boom boom X2 anyone? Whaddya mean no?) but it's a neat little time capsule of stages from the loooong gap between SMW/SML2 and NSMB.
I'll say this, the use of the triangle block to run up walls is taken to greater heights her than in SMW, the novelty worth visiting for.
10. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap ★★★★ (replay)
One man hype machine Neiteio basically got me replaying this a lot earlier than I planned, curse his effusive praise.
Now I played me a fair few runs of Minish Cap back in the day, I was even mad enough to complete the figure gallery so clearly I liked it a fair bit. Internet discourse surrounding the game has it often pegged as a perfectly okay Zelda game, so I basically just slotted that into my own memory bank for minish cap.
Upon replaying it now, I'm surprised to say that it in a paradox like sense, it's absolutely that perfectly okay Zelda, while also being y'know, pretty damn good in a way that makes it one of the zippiest and tightest Zelda game of the lot.
I could almost point to Minish Cap as a lean encapsulation of Zelda as a series, its plot and characters are standard fantasy Zelda fare, yet the minish angle (a teeny tiny borrowers like race of chaps that live in your rafters/walls/shoes etc) gives the otherwise stock Zelda adventure formula something to latch onto.
The item selection a lineup of usual suspects plus a few surprises or novel spins on old concepts (love me some gust jar). Design wise, you can see both the inspiration from Wind Waker in the visuals, the general tone and arguably the difficulty level (it's a bit spicier than WW but not by much) and also the signs of the future as the game's very focused overworld and puzzle ethos is very like Skyward Sword that the director here would go onto…well direct.
It's a warm bath of a Zelda game, one that's constantly throwing in bath bombs or more mr bubble (I committed to this metaphor okay?) via its kinstone fusion mechanic that adds a strange personable approach to uncovering secrets, treasure and heart pieces by having Link match gem halves with NPCs, it's all just adding a bit more life to the world.
On top of this Minish Cap makes Link a bit more upgrade-able? A lot of optional extras for those who seek them out such as remote bombs, light arrows, fancier spin attacks, temporary buff charms, faster swimming etc, just a lot of little things that add up to rewarding the player a bit more than the entries that just fall back on heart pieces you don't really need.
It's a small shame (haha) that outside the minish areas that link shrinks down into, this version of Hyrule is fairly cookie cutter for the most part, a late game excursion into the cloud tops aside, you could probably guess the area themes (FOREST, MOUNTAIN, LAKE, SWAMP…) and the overworld in general is pretty compact, building itself around a central hub town somewhat like Majora's Mask now I think about it.
It works well for a portable outing, keeps the pace snappy, and has overworld design that leans moe into making permanent shortcuts instead of the previous capcom Zelda outings that made you visit your menu multiple times to move like three screens across the messy overworld (why yes I do not much care for Oracle of Seasons, have you read my pamphlet?).
It's this somewhat workmanlike approach to being a Zelda game that keeps Minish Cap from the upper echelons of the series, yet among the overheard classic series overworld theme, the recurring NPCs from OoT to WW, there are glimpses of the bolder frsher game in those new items, tiny minish maps and even its cookie cutter as heck villain Vaati who can at least boast never turning into a pig.
If you were ever looking to play a top down Zelda game for the first time, you'd be well served by this one, a GBA title that hasn't really aged a bit, and it almost certainly going to make my planned resuming of a Spirit Tracks replay feel a lot worse.
11. Marsupilami: Hoobadventure ★★★
Finally back to the PS5, except it's to play Diet Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze of all things.
To say this game was a pleasant surprise would be an understatement, I just kept thinking to myself throughout that there was no reason for this game to be this legit.
Here we have Microbes, French developer/licensed game mercs for hire, tackling the license of some obscure (to me) comic that might be a bit more memorable to my European friends across the channel, but has no real presence I can recall here in Blighty.
And they just looked at what they had and went "okay, what if we did a budget Tropical Freeze for a laugh?" and then proceeded to kinda nail that off brand/great value variant.
Fundamentally this is a solid as heck platformer, you play as one of three leopard looking things that are apparently the titular Marsupilamis, they all play the same and from my uninformed position they appear to be "yellow main character", "orange girl character" and "grey doofy friend character?".
Neat thing about these creatures is that they have long spiralling tails that lend themselves very well to a continuous roll attack and a mid range poke of sorts, said tails also form the core of one of the game's more unique platformiing aspects, the ability to hook onto floating rings from a distance in a kinda auto/homing attack fashion.
When I say this game is diet Tropical Freeze, I mean it, from mid air roll jumping to blazing through stretches of long grass to unearth fruit, yep it's inspiration is clear, right down to the bats on fire fulfilling the same role as the owls on fire from TF, yet compared to Kaze (the DKC snes-like I revisted earlier this year in the thread) it manages to feel that touch more unique, oh and the pounce like animation for the roll jump is tops.
Visually the game looks clean and colourful, music is on point (that whistling map theme is a jam), the gameplay is tight, one could say it simplifies the movement style of retro's take on Kong to be more precise and easily mastered which can be a point in its favour (it certainly has me actually trying speed runs). So far so good, and even the boss stages avoid another Retro Studios DKC critique by just making platforming chase stages instead of actual boss fights, unfortunately it's only a whopping three worlds long....
oh
But wait, there's more, a year after release the devs whipped up one new world for free, and it's GREAT, the base game is fun and all but y'know, it's nothing you haven't seen in a platformer before. While the extra world is still more of the usual, it's got a bit more spark, a few more inspired gimmicks, strong theming with DINOSAURS, and you unlock hard mode versions of the stages being ravaged by a volcanic eruption. Basically the DLC feels like it went above and beyond for no reason other than the devs really gave a toot, or noticed they built up a secret audience of platforming die hards.
So that's still a pretty short game with only four worlds, but it left me wanting more so I take that as a good sign.
This is the kinda game where I feel like I'll oversell it, truly the way to my heart is just to rip off my favourite game of the last decade, but those bonus points reminscient of Wayforward in how the devs tackled a liscensed game like absolute champs is always worth shouting about in a business that frequently half arses such outings.
Someone give Microids a blank cheque and let them loose on a platformer
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