Reviews

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Review

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

Nintendo’s always finding new ways to reintroduce people to the NES library. Whether it’s putting them out on the Game Boy Advance, including them as bonuses in Animal Crossing, available for download on the Wii and Wii U, or available with the Nintendo Switch Online service, there’s almost always a way to play Super Mario Bros. on a Nintendo console. But those are always straight ports of the old games. They did do the NES Remix series on 3DS and Wii U, which changed things up a bit, but otherwise, it’s been the same thing. This year, Nintendo released Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, bringing with it a new way to experience these games.

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The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Review

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

Ever since Zelda went 3D on the Nintendo 64, traditional 2D Zelda games became relegated to handheld systems. With the release of the Nintendo Switch and the discontinuation of dedicated handheld Nintendo consoles, the future of 2D Zelda games was in question. Would it make sense to put out a 2D game on a system that had Breath of the Wild on it? We got a little bit of hope in 2019 with a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, but it would take all the way until this year when we’d finally get a brand new entry. Was the wait worth it, and is there a place for 2D Zelda games in 2024?

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A Play Date on Mars, Mars After Midnight Review

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

In late October of 2022, I received my PlayDate, which I had preordered over a year earlier. The PlayDate is a very small, black and white indie handheld console. It mostly looks like a small Game Boy, with it’s D-pad and two face buttons, but it has a unique control twist. On the side is a crank that you can turn to do different actions in games. I was pretty excited for it, it seemed like a very unique new thing. But after a few weeks of goofing off with the included games, I kind of just put it down and forgot about it.

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, More Than More of the Same

~ Andrew Lokken ~ 2 Comments

How do you follow up a game like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? It came out day and date with the Nintendo Switch, completely reinvented the series, and may have pushed the medium of video games forward. Do you reinvent everything again, or do you refine what you have into something more polished? It’s been six years since Breath of the Wild, and in that time Nintendo really could have done either.

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A Prime Remaster

~ Andrew Lokken ~ 1 Comment

A few weeks ago, Nintendo announced and released Metroid Prime Remastered digitally as part of their Nintendo Direct. They also announced that a physical version would be coming two weeks later, and since I’m a weirdo who likes putting games on my shelf, I decided to wait. The wait was difficult, as Metroid Prime is one of my all time favorite games, but I have the game now. A lot has changed in the slightly over twenty years since Prime’s original release on the GameCube. Is the game still one of the best, or is that nostalgia-fueled rose-tinted glasses?

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A Cautionary Tale Of Spending Nine Cents

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

If you go on the Nintendo Switch eShop and look at the best sellers list right now, you’ll find a game basically no one had heard of sitting in second place, just under Untitled Goose Game and above a pre-order for Luigi’s Mansion 3. That game is Revenge of the Bird King, and despite the fact that no one has heard of it, it’s pretty clear how it rose up the ranks. If you go to the great deals section of the eShop, you’ll see that the game is currently only nine cents. Surely, a lot of people bought the game for that reason alone right? Hell, I know I did, and I used Gold Coins instead of spending real money. So now a lot of people have this thing, but is it any good? Continue reading →

Holding A Switch To Your Face

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that Labo hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm, Nintendo keeps pushing what their weird cardboard toys are capable of further and further. I didn’t end up writing about it, but I was really impressed by the third one, the Vehicle Kit. While it was pretty simple, it had a fully realized open world game with three vehicles that you could quickly swap to. I thought this was probably as far as the concept could go. But, then the VR Kit came out. Continue reading →

Pokemon Let’s Go Chill Out

~ Andrew Lokken ~ 1 Comment

It was pretty easy to be skeptical about Pokemon Let’s Go when it was first revealed. Not only was it a remake of the first generation of Pokemon games, which already had a remake, but everything looked like it had been dumbed down to appeal to the crowd who had only played Pokemon Go, rather than fans of the core franchise. Both these things are true, but does that necessarily make it a bad game? Continue reading →

The Eleventh Mega Man Game

~ Andrew Lokken ~ 1 Comment

After eight long years, a new entry in the original Mega Man series finally released today. With it comes a new art style, brand new mechanics, and multi-form boss fights, but it also brought with it a lot of questions. Could a game like this work in 2018? After Keiji Inafune’s Mighty Number 9, it sure doesn’t seem like it. After such a long break, would Capcom be able to recapture the spirit of those old games?  Continue reading →

Kirby Star Allies And Wasted Potential

~ Andrew Lokken ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever played a Kirby game? While the occasional spinoff game will make some unexpected changes to the tried and true formula, most Kirby games play pretty much the same, but with an added gimmick. One might introduce new animal friends, or maybe a giant robot suit for Kirby to ride around in. In his newest adventure, Star Allies, Kirby gains the ability to turn enemies into friends. An interesting idea, but does it do enough to make Kirby’s first Switch outing stand out? Continue reading →