Short reviews of games played and beaten in 2024
Published at 2026-03-20T21:56:08-05:00
Last updated 2026-04-03T16:02:06-05:00
All games are scored in a personally used 21-point scale, ranging from -10 to +10, 0 inclusive. Games between -2 and +2 can be considered "average", +3 to +6 being "good", +7 to +10 being "great", -3 to -6 being "bad", and -7 to -10 being "awful". Alternatively, a visual guide:
Any game listed directly underneath a game is the original/unmodified game and the score I give it (assuming I have played the original).
Table of Contents
Paper Mario TTYD64 [Nintendo 64 Romhack] (+8)
---Paper Mario [Nintendo 64] (+7)
I personally feel like this replaces the original for me. I generally prefer the visuals, music, story, environments, characters and sidequests in PM64 over TTYD, the only thing I wish it had from TTYD is its combat. This romhack does exactly that; imports the entirety of TTYD's combat into PM64 (badges, items, combat mechanics, even enemies can utilize items and badges now), as well as adding new locations to facilitate this.
Final Fantasy Restored [NES Romhack] (+5)
---Final Fantasy [NES] (+3)
Final Fantasy on NES is a good game but one that is plagued with a ton of bugs that causes about half of the game to not function as intended. Playing Final Fantasy Restored is a good glimpse of how the game should have been released as intended. Still some early Final Fantasy jank not removed by the QoL additions (spells being so limited for one), but it's a vastly better experience compared to the original release.
Chrono Trigger + [SNES Romhack] (+7)
---Chrono Trigger [SNES] (+8)
Chrono Trigger is the one RPG on SNES I consider the closest to perfect (not the best however, that goes to Final Fantasy 6). I enjoyed my time with Chrono Trigger+, but I feel its a little bit weaker. Not that it radically touches the original game outside of some new sidequests, but I feel the added content isn't up to CT's standard, and while exploring 1999's map is pretty cool it's a bit underwhelming in terms of what you can do. It's also a little visually rough.
Zelda 2: Link is Adventuresome [PC Fan Port] (+7)
---Zelda 2 [NES] (+4)
Zelda 2 on NES is a fine game on its own, but flawed in places. I feel like the fan remake resolves most of the issues I had with the same; there's ways to make it easier (via collecting extra items to help on your quest), enough variety to keep things from being repetitive, and there's even a post-game for the second quest. If you want to play Zelda 2, Link is Adventuresome is the way to go.
Sonic CD Restored [PC Game Mod] (+6)
---Sonic CD (+5)
The changes this makes to Sonic CD are for the most part minor, but added up this is probably the ideal way to play Sonic CD. The biggest benefit is "instant-warp", basically getting rid of the psuedo-loading transition between traveling through time periods. There's several minor level layout changes to make it similar to Sonic CD's original SegaCD release, allowing for more paths for speedrunners as well. And of course there's a customizable soundtrack editor so you can freely choose the JP or US OST for every zone. My preferred way of playing Sonic CD.
True Crime: Streets of LA [Gamecube] (+4)
I haven't played this game in nearly 20 years but it was fun to go back to. Probably the closest thing to a functional GTA clone on the Gamecube even though it does enough different that it's not a straight GTA clone. Definitely some jank in the game, signs that the game was a little bit rushed but it plays fine for what it does. Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City do what True Crime does better (typically), but if you only owned a Gamecube this is a worthwhile look.
Adventures of Tom Sawyer [NES] (-3)
One of my childhood games that I never beat until way, way later. This is a very mediocre platformer at best, with a story that doesn't involve the plot of the book at all outside of the final boss kinda. Your attack flies in an arc like the rocks in Friday the 13th which makes it difficult to hit smaller enemies closer to you. It's not the worst game I've played, but I definitely wouldn't consider it good.
Zook Hero X2 [Gameboy Color Bootleg] (-3)
This is a bootleg clone of one of the Megaman X games on Gameboy Color, all things considered its actually pretty impressive. However that doesn't make it good, with some janky controls, the "robot masters" not having weaknesses to any weapons, minibosses having some patterns that make them difficult to avoid taking damage, and the requirement of getting 4 hidden upgrades in stages to reach the final stage and boss. Amusingly enough this is the first ever Megaman game I've ever beaten.
Zook Man ZX4 [Gameboy Advance Bootleg] (-2)
Much like the above this is a bootleg clone of one of the Megaman X games on GBA. I think this is better but only by a little bit, it controls better and naturally the visuals are improved. Funny bad translation too but I guess you can make out what it says so that's a plus. The ending is odd though since there's no actual final boss, it just ends after the boss rush.
Zombie Nation [NES] (+3)
Prime example of Bakage (Stupid game) but it's a game I can easily go back to just to burn 20 minutes to have some fun. Difficult game unless you know of the HP-to-1 traps the game throws at you, after that the game difficulty drops dramatically. Some absolutely insane music and the visuals look pretty good, if you know the game well it can be beaten in about 30 minutes.
Jaws [NES] (-2)
I wouldn't go far to say that this is a bad game but it's a very boring one. You're a person who sails between two islands giving seashells to shopkeepers to upgrade your harpoon gun to be strong enough to do something more than 100 shots per 1 bar of health for Jaws, level 3 or 4 would be enough for a turbo controller. After that you ram the ship into Jaws to kill him. If this game did SOMETHING interesting with this I would have given it at least a -1, but this is a 15 minute game that you'll barely remember after finishing it.
Shooting Range [NES] (0)
This is just a shooting gallery on NES. If you typed into an AI generator prompt "A shooting gallery game on the Nintendo Entertainment System", this is what you'd get. Nothing stands out about this.
Donkey Kong Land 3 [Gameboy Color] (+3)
A surprisingly good platformer for Gameboy in the Donkey Kong Country lineage. Some people would probably consider this better than DKC3 proper as there are significantly less gimmick levels, and the game is generally shorter as a whole. The visuals look a bit muddy but that's to be expected when converting CG sprites onto an 8-bit handheld. The music was carried over from DKC3 but because they effectively had to be "demade" for Gameboy some sound a bit different tonally to me, but still enjoyable.
Honestly for a game that's considered at the bottom of the Kusoge pile this isn't _entirely_ terrible. It's just a really, really boring game that's completely arcane unless you know the story of Journey to the West. Combat is pointless as there's no stats to level up or weapons to get, only Son Goku has an actual attack and the other party members are completely useless, and the attack itself feels very janky. It's a very ambitious title for the time period, it's just the technology and skill wasn't there to make it.
The concept that this game has is actually really cool, but the game itself is massively flawed. The first two hours of the game is basically spent grinding just so you can have enough HP and equipment to actually survive duels long enough to grind up enough fame to access the first boss. You never truly get stronger as your weapons and armor don't contribute enough attack and defense unless your level is high enough to take advantage of it, and even by end game with the best equipment you'll get two-shot by enemies. Many of the quests are poorly explained with vague hints like "a tree to the west" being your only idea of a clue as to where to go to get something. At least the Redux patch reduces _some_ of the grinding, making it slightly more playable. This still took me 10 hours to beat though.
Super Metroid - Project Base [SNES Romhack] (+7)
---Super Metroid [SNES] (+7)
I gave this the same score as the vanilla game because the vast majority of changes made in this just make the game flow faster by merging a few rooms together and giving more exploration options to do a few things early. It's still Super Metroid at the end of the day. The new movement options are nice, but they don't really contribute a ton to a casual player like myself.
Commando [NES] (-2)
This is a rather mediocre run-and-gun from early Capcom. There's only 4 levels and to get the "ending" you have to complete 4 loops of the game. Everything just feels off in this, the visuals are a little muddy and can glitch out at times but they're mostly minor bugs. The stages aren't particularly interesting either, being your generic battlefield style stage. At least this game isn't as bad as Ikari Warriors on NES.
Guerrilla War [NES] (+4)
Now this is how its done. This is SNK doing overhead run and gun games right, with good music, solid visuals and fast paced gameplay with plenty of variety. The story is a bit silly as its very, very clearly based on The Cuban Revolution but who cares about the story in this, you just want to shoot soldiers jump into tanks and blow up stuff. Commando walked so Guerrilla War could run.
Tyrian 2000 [PC/DOS] (+5)
This is an incredibly high quality shoot-em-up by...Epic? The Fortnite people? But really, this is just an excellent game with plenty of variety and a good amount of nice fast paced shooting action. If there's any weak part about the game it's Episode 5, which was created years after the original game by a different dev team and it shows. But even with that bit of a blemish, it's still more Tyrian.
Xexyz [NES] (+4)
Yet another childhood game of mine, this one has an odd mix of action platforming and side scrolling shooting segments. I enjoy it for what it is, and I don't find the game too terribly difficult. The boss fights are neat, since they tend to be rather large but with not too complex patterns. Visually the game looks great for the era, and the music is good. I can't really say a bunch I dislike about it, maybe the shooter segments in the castles are a bit repetitive since they require you to pick the right door or you loop.
Zelda 1 Redux [NES Romhack] (+5)
---Zelda 1 [NES] (+4)
It's been a good while since I've played Zelda 1 and I found this to be better than the original if only because of some quality of life improvements like the map being a proper map and not just a featureless grey rectangle. Bomb-able walls also have cracks showing that they can be bombed instead of being a guessing game like the original, and arrows actually use arrows instead of rupees.
The only thing people really know about this game is the fact that it uses the VRC-7 chip and as a result has some very high quality music for a Famicom game. But I actually kinda like it, I think the combat is interesting enough for an 8-bit JRPG and the setting is neat, although I feel that the setting isn't utilized enough along with the story. I wasn't expecting weapon crafting and it's a bit arcane as to how it works, but I like it. I highly recommend playing with a reduced encounters patch however, as the vanilla encounter rate is insanely high.
Bashi Bazook: Morphoid Masher [NES] (+1)
I wanted to play this because it was compared to Xexyz and yeah, I can see it. Both games came out around the same time and its alleged that this game was never released in the US due to it being way too similar to Xexyz. It's an action platformer with the typical weapon upgrades you'd expect although you can miss them entirely if you don't look everywhere. I like the mechanic where the boss of every stage has more health the longer you take to reach it. Generally though if you want a game like this, play Xexyz, it does everything this game does but better.
This is definitely the worst game I played and finished this year. There are just so, so many bizarre design choices here. Why is the starting town invisible? Why is the game designed in such a way that most enemy encounters at the start will kill you? Why does the first weapon you buy do less damage than fighting unarmed? Why can you not run from battle until you learn a psychic power that allows you to run starting at around level 5, and even then it only works if it fails unless you have nobody else in your party? Why does the game require you to have at least 4 expensive keys to progress the story that are consumed upon use which can leave the game in a softlocked state? Why are you only doing single to double digit damage with end game equipment? Why are end game enemies only doing about 30-50 damage to you when you'll have about 6000 HP at this point? The only thing that's cool about this game is that your character portraits change after reaching certain level milestones.
Fester's Quest: PAL-To-NTSC [NES Romhack] (-2)
I honestly expected this to be worse but this is mostly the top-down shooter segments from Blaster Master turned into its own game but with worse controls. Using the PAL-To-NTSC patch makes shots do more damage and go through walls, fixing two of the biggest problems of the original North American release. It's still a subpar game however; some bosses still take too long to kill, like the level 3 and 4 bosses and the final boss I beat using a cheese method. But if you want your Fester fix, this patch is the way to do it.
Doki Doki Yuuenchi/Crazyland [Famicom/NES] (+1)
A platformer from VAP, this has an interesting power-up mechanic where your attacks get stronger the more damage you take. The music is pretty good too, but I feel like a lot of this is offset by some bad level design in later levels (particularly in the minecart levels), questionable enemy design and boss fights that go on for too long. The jump feels a little janky as well, but it's not the worst I've seen. It's worth a look at least, alternatively just fire up the soundtrack and listen to that.
Robocop 2 [Gameboy] (-3)
I never beat this game as a kid and playing through it now it's clear why. You move incredibly slowly, with plenty of blind jumps and instant death traps. All of the bosses are exactly the same except for a minor change like "the legs are armored", even the final boss is just fighting the same robot three times in a row. For a super fighting robot cop, you sure are incredibly weak. At least the title screen is kinda neat. The eurojank here is obvious, but what else would you expect from Ocean Software.
Menace Beach [NES Unlicensed] (-4)
Alright, this game is just bad. The later levels contain some of the most infuriating level design I've encountered in recent history, and it doesn't help that multiple enemies can only be killed via one specific item that can be entirely RNG on if you get it, and even then the item has such a long delay it's entirely RNG if the enemy will stand in the one spot for long enough. The music is dull, the level design is bad, your attack range is pitiful and the visuals look dated even for 1992. It's no wonder this was an unlicensed game; Nintendo wouldn't want to slap the seal of quality on this one.
Millionaire [NES Unlicensed] (-3)
I think Monopoly is a bad board game so making a clone of Monopoly but you're buying countries and there's no auction or trading and far less Chance cards sounds like a fun idea but the execution is so dull it doesn't matter.
Tiny Toons Adventures 6 [NES Bootleg] (+1)
An unlicensed port of Babs Big Break to the NES by Hummer Team, and is surprisingly faithful. There are a few differences, like you having more health and a few of the bosses being slightly different, but the addition of Konami's OST of Tiny Toons Adventures is actually pretty nice. There's a little bit of jank of course, but nothing that ruins the game in my opinion.
Tiny Toon Adventures: Babs Big Break [Gameboy] (+1)
And since I never played the original game TTA6 was based on I wanted to beat this to compare. I enjoy both at about the same level, but there are some things this game does better like a few extra areas and levels that weren't carried over to TTA6. Since this game is on Game Boy however the view area is smaller and the gameplay is slower in general, and I don't think the music is as good. The jump physics are consistent however so it makes some things easier to do compared to TTA6. Both are relatively short so I'd say play both.
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