The only game on my list I classed under the 'naff' category. There's honestly not much to say about Skypatrol; it's a short game with frustrating level design, poorly designed stage obstacles, and a forgettable soundtrack. It looks alright! That's about all I can say for it. At least it provided the basis for a cute comic book, about 30 years after the fact. Only upwards from here!

Did you know the first Jumping Flash game wasn't Jumping Flash for the PS1? I mean, it was, but...

Geograph Seal for the Sharp X68000 was EXACT's first go at making a first-person shooter platformer hybrid thing, and given how early of an attempt it was, it mostly sticks the landing. It's also surprising just how similar it already is to Jumping Flash; the graphic design is almost identical between the two. It's definitely got more of a 'militaristic' feel to it though, so there's no adorable rabbit robot here. There's no texture mapping here, but they're able to convey plenty of detail using just the polygons. The game certainly starts off strong, and the first few levels are very much in the vein of the later PS1 go-around, but then Stage 4 drops you into a giant maze that feels like it lasts forever and the wheels start to come off a bit. That's followed up by an autoscrolling tunnel stage, which is probably the low point. There's two of these, but the second feels more egregious owing to its boss fight that feels more down to luck than any real strategy, such is the lack of clarity on whether you're actually hurting it or not. The best means of clearing said tunnel stage is just to hide at the bottom corners and let enemies pass you by anyway, so it's not especially engaging. Things improve for the final couple of stages, and it has a fairly satisfying climax, but the middle of the game definitely lets it down a bit. To be honest, most of the bosses also end up feeling a bit wonky; the hit detection doesn't always feel coherent, but to be fair my expectations weren't super high for such an early example of 3D gameplay anyway.


I do have to give some mention to the music, which is pretty good stuff. Stage 1's theme gets you pumped up like nothing else, and ends up being the stand-out track, and Stage 3's theme reminds me of Quick Man's theme from Mega Man 2, weirdly. It's not the most memorable thing on the whole, but in the moment it works pretty well.

I'd still say Geograph Seal is worth a play, especially for fans of Jumping Flash. While it's not as good as that game, it's still fairly impressive how well they managed to execute on their vision on their first go around.

While I was tinkering with the X68000 side of things, I decided I might as well give Mad Stalker a look. This is a side-scrolling beat-em up, albeit on a single plane which puts it more in the vein of Taito's Ninja Warriors. You control the mech suit Hound Dog through several stages, taking on various robotic bad guys with good old fashioned punches and kicks. The action is fast and frantic, and there's a decent bit of variety to your offense and movement - you've got a double jump to tackle the aerial threats you'll face along the way, and a dash move to keep up the pressure during fights. The game has fighting game style motion inputs for special moves, which prove especially handy during the bosses, which play out like a traditional fighting game. This combination of the two genres generally works well, and thanks to the format of bosses, there's even a 2P Versus Mode that allows you to control the other mechs too. Generally the stages themselves play out fine, with the one main weak spot being the prevalence of tiny enemies that you can only damage with crouching attacks. They offer variety, but in the middle of a swarm of robots it can feel a bit clumsy.


While the bosses are cool on paper, they do represent a bit of a difficulty spike in some ways. Trying to tackle them honestly can be a bit of a crap shoot, and I generally just found myself trying to game their AI in numerous ways. Fortunately the game is more than generous enough with its continues, so you don't feel especially penalised for trying different strategies, nor do you often have to deal with waves upon waves of enemies you already beat just for another go at the boss. Unfortunately the optimal strategy for dealing with those bosses is admittedly not exactly glamorous... you can just stunlock most of them with uppercut spam, and it meant the finale only took me a single try - the boss rush preceding him was far more difficult.

On the whole though, Mad Stalker is a really fun time that's fun to blast through on a rainy afternoon. There are numerous versions available, including a PS1 remake and a Mega Drive version that went unreleased until a couple of years ago. I can only speak for the Sharp X68000 version with my recommendation, but perhaps I'll give the other versions a go in the future. It's worth noting that this isn't my first run in with Fill In Cafe - as I've spent a good bit of time with their later fighting game release, Asuka 120%!

I wanted to try this cancelled-just-before-release PC-Engine exclusive for years - it was my main reason for hoping the PC-Engine Mini would get cracked open at some point. That never happened, but I have a MiSTer FPGA thing now (it's how I played the X68000 stuff too), so it was finally time to try the combination of Space Harrier and Fantasy Zone that I can't believe has only been done once. Or twice. Maybe three times, technically.

What we've got here sure is Space Harrier with a Fantasy Zone coat of paint, and with no sprite scaling to speak of. The second point doesn't bode well given my distaste for Space Harrier II for similar reasons, but I feel like Space Fantasy Zone generally handles things better; it's definitely less choppy across the board. It's bright and colourful, with some lovely CD-quality music that mashes up the two series themes really nicely. It's easy to forget the PC Engine was technically 8-bit hardware while playing this! Probably the biggest change compared to Space Harrier is the addition of Fantasy Zone's shop gimmick. Between each level, you can spend the coins you've collected to get upgrades, such as faster engines, an expanded shield gauge, and different bombs. It's also the home of Opa Opa's only other co-star on this adventure, the WepDonalds employee girl who's the biggest thing on the planned boxart. To be fair, she's cute!


Given the games that inspired it, it's not too shocking that this game is tough; but man, it's tough. Despite what I just said about the visuals, by the final stage the game has largely devolved into a choppy mess of bullets, and it can be very hard to gauge how exactly to stay alive. While your shield gauge allows you to take several hits (moreso if you've upgraded it), there's no lives here; if that bar is empty, you're back to the start of the game. It's not an especially long game to be fair, but it can be extremely frustrating to make it to the end and lose it all given how janky it can feel at that point. That being said, I toughed it out and bagged the 1CC, which I suppose is an upside to playing on MiSTer - had this been on a software emulator, I probably would've just given in and used savestates. My hands bloody hurt by the end of it though. It's also probably for the better that I didn't end up playing this on a hypothetical PCE Mini hack, given the input lag on that thing was so bad that even I noticed it.

If you're a fan of Fantasy Zone or Space Harrier, I'd definitely take Space Fantasy Zone for a spin. I think it's a fun curiosity, and the fact it was cancelled is a real shame.

I love Pac-Land. It's one of my favourites amongst Namco's 80's library, and I play it every chance I get at the arcade. Every time a Super Smash Bros fan decries it, I actually put out a hit on them. If that's you, then don't worry; you won't feel a thing.

You can't really finish Pac-Land, is the only thing. As with many arcade games, it just loops and loops! But the PC-Engine version addresses this, by adding a definitive ending to the game. It also adapts the button-based movement to a D-Pad, so you can play it more comfortably. Other than that, this is the Pac-Land I know and love. For those who've never played it, it's a side-scrolling platformer in the vein of the NES Mario games. You can find secret items by pushing certain objects, such as a helmet to nullify attacks from above, and there's obviously power pellets scattered throughout to let Pac-Man chow down on the ghosts swarming the place. The controls are tight and responsive, the music's good, the little intermission scenes added are quite cute - this port's probably my favourite way to play Pac-Land going forward. You also unlock a new 'PRO' set of levels for beating it, which is a nice bonus. The only thing that really strikes me as missing is the parallax background scrolling, which is an unfortunate omission. Really, the worst thing about Pac-Land is just those giant pools of water you have to glide over. I can never remember how to do them on a cabinet, but here just mashing the jump button works, which is far more intuitive.

If you've yet to experience Pac-Land, then this is a great way to do so. It's a simple but entertaining side-scroller that's remarkably well-done given it predated Super Mario Bros by a year. And maybe it'll give you some appreciation for the Smash Bros incarnation too. If it doesn't, you can rest assured knowing you're wrong.

Battle Mania Daiginjo has been on my 'games to beat list' for a while, but I figured it would make sense to beat the original game first. In the end the first game ended up being the only one of the two I beat this year, but I suppose there's always next year to get to the sequel.

At any rate, Trouble Shooter is a horizontal shmup where you control Mania (Madison overseas), a hired gun of some description who's tasked with rescuing some prince. The twist here is that you control two characters, meaning you can cover both your back and front, or just focus all firepower ahead. You'd think this would make you a bigger target, but thankfully your partner Maria (Crystal overseas) has no hitbox, meaning you've only got to worry about Mania. You've also got a charge attack that's more generous than most special moves in these sorts of games with how often you can use it - unless you get greedy. While it automatically charges, trying to use it early will completely reset the charge. Seems like it'd be an easy enough situation to avoid, but once you get into the rhythm of using it more often, it can be deceptively simple to misjudge when it's ready. If that wasn't enough, there's several different special weapons to choose from at the start of a stage, and it feels like each one has its uses rather than there just being one right answer for everything. Some stages also throw in an extra gimmick; there's stuff like the obligatory 'oooh now the screen is scrolling vertically oh nooo' level, but then there's moments like when you rescue the prince in one stage, and then in the next he's flying alongside you with a bazooka, giving you even more firepower.


More than anything, Trouble Shooter feels very earnest. It's weird, has an oddball sense of humour, and it's fun to watch unfold for that reason (although it helps that the game's remarkably solid too). The two lead protagonists really give the game its own personality against the various spacecraft focused shmups on the system, or even something like CottoN, despite the fact they're obviously just parodying Kei and Yuri from Dirty Pair. There's even an easy to trigger easter egg of Mania stomping on a Super Famicom, which apparently resulted in SEGA faxing all of their development partners to ask them to not do that. It feels like we got the game that the team wanted to make here, which is impressive given the game's development was apparently rife with issues.

I'm told that Daiginjo is a hefty step-up from this game, so I'm looking forward to finally sitting down and playing it at some point, given I already very much enjoyed this one.

I never play much in the way of Dreamcast, so this year I decided I'd fix that once and for all. And then I didn't do that. But I did play one Dreamcast game, at least!
Metropolis Street Racer is the prequel to Project Gotham Racing, a series my only experience with comes from playing a ton of PGR4 at the Xbox 360 launch as a wee lad, and being mesmerised by the realism of its locations. And given the obviously much weaker hardware, MSR does a stellar job at nailing the feeling of racing around each of its locales. Obviously as a Brit, the London areas hit the hardest, and being able to point out actual locations in a game this old is actually pretty cool. The game presents lovely renditions of San Francisco and Tokyo, don't get me wrong, but the London stuff hit differently. The commitment to realism comes right down to the radio stations heard in-game, with news reports, ad reads (yes I now own a copy of Bullet in the Gun by Planet Perfecto, why do you ask) and track transitions; it's so realistic that at one point my mum passed my room and asked why I was sat listening to the radio for once!

The kudos system is a unique way of rewarding actually good driving, and gives incentive to doing so over the kind of reckless turns and collisions I might get away with in something like Forza Horizon - although it can certainly be a source of frustration at times, too. There's a great selection of cars, and it's satisfying to unlock new stuff, and find a car that suits your driving style best. It's also really funny that you can change the Kudos pop-ups to whatever you want. Call it immature, but having the game yell out "FUCK" every time I hit a wall was both hilarious, and generally accurate to what I was shouting from my chair.


The big thing that keeps Metropolis Street Racer from breaking through to this year's Best Of list is just the overall structure of the game; it's far, far too repetitive when it comes to actually beating it. While there's technically over 250 courses in the game, you'll see the same locales over and over and over again, and run similar races over and over and over again. Initially I didn't even bother 100%ing the game, but the allure of the Skyline GTR was too much and I spent several hours tackling that brutal final GP. And it was satisfying in some form to box it off, but equally I just felt relief that it was finally over.

Anyway, I'd never live it down if I didn't mention the soundtrack. Richard Jacques is on music duty here, and he brings the goods; but equally important is TJ Davis of Sonic R fame, who brings some all-time classic vocal themes to the game. There's even a few nods to previous SEGA titles in the music, as 'It Doesn't Really Matter' is blatantly based on Sonic 3D's Green Grove Zone, and 'Heartland' mixes in sound effects from NiGHTS into Dreams. I generally found the country-inspired stuff in the San Francisco locale to be the weaker stuff, and the attempt at riffing on Oasis in some of the London tracks has a questionable result, but generally speaking the music compliments each area pretty well. And you know I had that final race set to 'Passion', simultaneously the best and worst song in the game.


I still very much recommend Metropolis Street Racer to anyone with a Dreamcast, despite my misgivings about its repetitive nature. Simply driving around is fun, and the game really gets you honing your skills for those later races. While it wasn't one of the best games I played this year, I do still feel like it made a big impact on me, which is probably why I've written so bloody much about it.

While I was in Texas earlier this year, I grabbed a few volumes of the Urusei Yatsura manga for the plane ride back. I quite enjoyed what I read, and for some reason instead of making me think 'I should draw Lum', it made me think 'I should play the weird Famicom game they made based on this series'. This wasn't actually the first time I'd played this game though, as I distinctly remember playing it on a fancy Twin Famicom at PlayExpo Blackpool some years back. This time I booted it up on my boring ol' regular Famicom and took it for a spin.

It's not the worst thing I've played on the Famicom, but it's a fairly bog-standard platformer with some frustrating aspects, as you might expect from a game like this at the time. In particular, the later levels can be quite egregious with their randomised enemy spawns, leading to situations that can feel like all-but-certain death approaching. The cutscene of Lum changing between stages is also maybe the single most seizure inducing thing I've ever seen in a video game. Granted, playing this on a 55" 4K TV probably didn't help, but it can't have been easy to watch even on a CRT. The use of escalators to advance through the stages reminds me somewhat of Elevator Action, and the process of finding them can be an interesting way of making players actually engage with the level design; if that counts for anything, given how limited it is otherwise.


Bizarrely, Lum no Wedding Bell is actually getting a brand new re-release for the Famicom soon. Although word on it's gone quiet, Japanese publisher City Connection (who got their name from Jaleco's game of the same name, and own most of their back catalogue now) revealed 'Clarice No Wedding Bell' in April 2025 - the Famicom game, with Lum swapped out for City Connection's Clarice. That's a cute way to handle it; a bit more tasteful than Joe Hoops, at least. Although it's equally surprising they didn't just make it a straight-up Famicom version of Momoko 120%, the arcade version of Lum No Wedding Bell that had to be turned into an original thing when Jaleco realised they only had the console license for Urusei Yatsura.

While on a particularly long train ride, I was flicking through the Nintendo Switch Online catalogue and figured I'd spend some time with Super Mario Land, since I'd only ever finished the superb sequel. And 'some time' was all I needed, because within what felt like 20 minutes I'd reached the final boss, and even then I was thinking to myself "wait, isn't this the final boss?"

I get it, it's a Game Boy game - one of the first, no less - but even then Super Mario Land just feels pretty insignificant. It introduced Daisy, so it gets some props for that I suppose, but I don't feel like I particularly gained anything from playing it. The physics are some of Nintendo's wonkiest, with Mario feeling like 16 tonnes of bricks. And combined with weird new takes on Mario's traditional elements such as the archaic 'Super Ball' replacing the fireflower, or Koopa Shells exploding for some reason, at times it gave the impression of playing a bootleg. I feel like even though Kirby's Dream Land is similarly short, it at least felt a little more substantial and considerably more polished than this (in spite of being even easier outside of its Extra Mode!).
It's not an awful game or anything, just kind of there. At least the sequel was genuinely pretty great.

Alright, that's probably enough for one page. Yes, we're doing pages now. Click here for Page 2, a page exclusively about a very pink blob.