52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

[realpoketendonl]

16. Yoomp! [Atari 8-bit]



Another game from Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. Yoomp! is a game for Atari 8-bit computers, developed in 2007 by homebrew developers Marcin 'Eru' Żukowski, Łukasz 'X-Ray' Sychowicz, Bartek 'BeWu' Wąsiel and Piotr 'OxF' Fusik. It was included in Atari 50 both as a symbol of the homebrew community surrounding Atari systems, and as an example of how much the Atari 8-bit hardware was really capable of. And wow, yeah, this game really shows that off. I am super impressed that they got something like this running on Atari 8-bit hardware. I mean, just look at it! THIS butttery-smooth pseudo-3D title is running on the same platform as that choppy barely-playable Food Fight port??

But not only is Yoomp! technically impressive: it is also really fun to play! I think the best term I can give it is a rhythmic cylindrical platformer? You control the ball, bouncing through the cylinder. You can move it left and right, and it will move forward one square with every beat of the music (which is very catchy by the way). Different tiles will have different effects on the ball, like launching it over a tile, sending it sideways or warping it to the other side. Your goal is simple: make it to the end of the 21 levels.

It's really addicting! Most games in Atari 50 were games I was content trying out for a few minutes and then moving on from, but this one instantly hooked me. I just kept playing it until I beat it. This is without a doubt a highlight of the collection. Hats off to the developers.

You can download the game for free on the official website by the way, to emulate or to run on a real Atari 8-bit computer if you have one. And I recommend it! It's really fun! https://yoomp.atari.pl/

EDIT

17. Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration

So Atari 50 is a collection of games from across Atari's history, but it's also a digital museum tour with a lot of background information. I've decided to count finishing the museum tour as "beating" Atari 50 itself, and then counting all the games in the collection (when beatable) as separate entries. Hence why the last two games before this were games that were in this collection. So I've now finished the museum tour, and at least tried out every single game that's part of that tour.

Context: I'm from 1998, so I didn't grow up on Atari. However, I am of course aware of their impact and legacy, and ever since I was a kid, that did intrigue me. I remember once finding and playing an Atari machine (I think it was Centipede?) as a kid and just being fascinated by it. And as someone with interest in that history, I found this to be a joy. This game is filled with video interviews with some of the key people from Atari's history, along with scans of ads, behind the scenes documents, manuals, box art, artwork, etc. I think in that sense this title holds a lot of value, as a digital archive of those stories. I definitely enjoyed watching these interviews and looking at these images.

Since this is an entry about the whole title, I'll also briefly mention the game collection as a whole here. It's Atari. I think you can estimate from that what you think of it. It covers their entire history: arcade, 2600, 5200, 7800, 8-bit computers, Lynx, Jaguar and a few miscellaneous things. Of course you have your classics like Asteroids, Missile Command, Pong, Centipede, etc. You've got some cult classics too that this title makes easily accessible, like Tempest 2000. And there's some hidden gems in here too: Yoomp! was a standout for me. The modern reimagenings of titles are a nice touch too, even if I mainly just like the novelty.

However, let's also just be fair: a lot of Atari's library either just does not hold up or has never held up. A lot of the 2600 titles may have been good for the time, but have not aged well. And many of the titles for the Lynx and Jaguar were never good to begin with. Now granted, especially the older titles also need to be viewed through the lens of time. And Atari 50 isn't a simple rerelease: it's a digital museum of Atari's history. And in that context there's absolutely value in these games being preserved here. But if you're going to get into this title, I think you need to see it through that lens. As a look into history, a museum tour, rather than a compilation of games you all want to endlessly replay. And thus you need to be interested in that.

If you are though: I can recommend Atari 50. It was neat to learn about this essential part of gaming history, and to try out all of these classic titles. I'm not sure how often I'll come back to it, but who knows, there's some stuff in here that even decades later is still as addicting as ever.

[bikingjahuty]

110. Layer Section (Saturn)

In the late 2010s and into the early 2020s, I was in the middle of a SHMUP renaissance that had me feverishly playing any and all SHMUPs I could get my hands on. I played some of the very best STG titles I've ever played during this time, as well as a few that are probably among the worst. But regardless, I was all about this genre for about half a decade. While my enthusiasm and adoration for this time honored arcade genre has cooled off since then, I still consider SHMUPs to be among my favorite genre of games and one that I return to often several times a year. One of the most enjoyable shooters I played when I was at the height of my STG fandom was Taito's Layer Section, a game that I considered one of the best SHMUPs ever made. After replaying and beating Layer Section again today, I still carry that sentiment.


Layer Section is a phenomenal game from all angles. Visually, the games sprite art mixed with limited 3D assets made it among the very best looking mid-90s shmups and eve none of the best looking games. This game just has ridiculously good production values all around. Everything from the stages, the basic enemies, the destructible backgrounds, and the crazy bosses are an absolute treat for the eyes from start to finish. Not only that, but the way this game is laid out has you on a continual journey where you do progress from stage to stage like in most shooters, but it is done seemlessly without any loading screens or end stage report cards before things transition into the next stage. The result is Layer Section feels like this epic journey where you're the lone ship battling an armada of futuristic ships, mechs and other awesome vehicles into the Earth's core for the final showdown against the boss. I struggle to find any flaws with this game visually, however, there is one fairly decent one which also ties into Layer Sections gameplay.


The name Layer Section is derived from the fact that this was one of the first SHMUPs to have two planes of combat. There's the top layer which is the one where your ship resides. You'll be dealing with enemies the way you would normally in most other SHMUPs by aiming your ship's primary lasers at whatever's in front of you and blasting away. However, in addition to this there's also a bottom layer where other enemies lurk and the only way to attack them is with your secondary weapon, a homing laser. Layer Section's gameplay depends on you being able to manage the bottom layer enemies and top layer enemies simultaneously, and especially addressing the bottom layer enemies before they make their way to the top layer. By the time enemies have made it to the top layer, they are far harder to kill than they were if you'd blasted them in the bottom layer, and they also often fire more projectiles at you as well once their on the same layer as you. This creates a very engaging, albeit very hard style of gameplay that is pretty fun, but at the same time very frustrating too.


Often, to take out bottom layer enemies before they make it to the top layer, you'll have to move ship somewhere that makes it easy for you to be point blanked by another enemy laser blast, or have an incoming enemy kamikaze you before you're able to react. I get this is likely an intentional design choice, but it often can result in a lot of cheap deaths or "WTF just killed me" moments. Where the game's visuals become a hinderance has to do with projectiles and enemies making their way from the bottom layer to the top layer. Often it can be hard to gauge where a laser is until it's too late. Luckily, these issues are fairly minor, but are still noteworthy blemishes on what is otherwise an excellent game.


Having address Layer Section's visuals and gameplay, the only thing left to talk about is the game's audio, which, oh man, is it good! The OST in Layer Section is incredibly catchy and undeniably has that mid 90s arcade sound to it which I'm admittedly addicted to. The other sound effects are pretty good too, but what really makes this game's audio stand out is that excellent soundtrack which you'll want to continue to listen to even after you've turned the game off.


Admittedly, I don't enjoy Layer Section as much I did when I first experience it 6 or 7 years ago, but even with that said, I still love this game. In fact, I'd still include it in a top 10 SHMUPs of all time list, which is saying something given all the SHMUPs I've played over the years. It is in good company too, even beating out excellent contemporaries like Hyper Duel and even more modern classics like Ikaruga. If you haven't played Layer Section and don't mind a very challenging game here and there, track this game down by one of its many names (Galactic Attack, Ray Force, or Gunlock) and try it out. It's amazing! (11/19/25) [40/50]

[bikingjahuty]

111. South Park (N64)

While growing up, there were two older boys I hung out with that lived on the same street as me. They were probably 2 or 3 years older than me, which means when I was still a fresh faced, innocent 10 year old, they were in the middle of being defiant, rude adolescent boys. Around the time South Park came out, it's all they would talk about and of course I wanted to be cool just like them so I did everything in my power to watch the hit new mature cartoon my neighborhood friends were so obsessed with. Despite my parents being pretty relaxed with what I watched as a kid, they would have never allowed me to watch South Park if they knew what was said and shown in it. That didn't stop me from sneaking downstairs at night and turning on Comedy Central at 11pm to catch the latest episode. I was instantly hooked!


South Park soon became my obsession as well as I amassed a large collection of South Park shirts, stuffed animals, VHS tapes, and various other merch that at the time I felt like I couldn't live without. Around this time, South Park the game was announced and my level of hype was immeasurably high. It's a game I bought day one with whatever meager amount of allowance and shore money I had to my name. Now 11 or so, my fandom of the show allowed me to overlook many of this games flaws and throughout the years, my general belief was that I thought the game was decent, but not great. Replaying South Park on the N64 over 25 years later, I somewhat expected my opinion to be more or less the same. After all, I still mostly like the show and have almost every episode on DVD to watch at my leisure. However, I now realize my adolescent opinion of this game being okay was far too generous.


Even with nearly 30 years of South Park fandom behind it, I cannot say anything other than South Park on the N64 is a terrible game. Aside from being on the repetitive side it does get the audio mostly right. Each character has a decent amount of lines for a game released in the late 90s, although you'll have heard every character one liner within 15 minutes of playing. Music from the show is present, however the music that plays when you're actually playing is on the generic side. Sadly, the audio is really the only thing I can say is at least pretty good. As for the visual presentation and gameplay...oh boy.


South Park does a decent job of capturing the town and vibe of the show. Character, enemies, architecture and other aspects from the show are mostly well represented in 3D, however, like the audio this game suffers from repetition, even more so when it comes to the visuals. This game has a woeful lack of enemy variety! You'll mostly be battling evil turkeys throughout the entire game which is as dull as it sounds. Worse yet, the game throws wave after way, after wave...after wave of these things at you to the point where you'll dread every second you see them pop up on your radar. There are variants to the enemies, turkeys and otherwise, but the lack of enemy variety is still a blaring fault with this game. Another major visual fault with this game is the poor draw distance which is represented by the entire game having a fog like haze that is constantly several yards in front of your character throughout the game. It doesn't matter if you're in a town, cave, inside a building, or any place else, the fog will always be there. This was obviously done to minimize framerate and other performance drops, however despite the constant fog, these are still major issues that will plague you throughout South Park. One final thing I need to gripe about when it comes to South Park's visuals are its mostly bland and uninspired levels. A lot of where you'll find yourself in South park are snowy mountain passes and mostly empty caves which combined with the repetitive waves of fodder enemies coming at you will eventually result in sensory deprivation like symptoms after less than an hour of play.


While the visuals in South Park are not great, nothing in the game holds a candle to how absolutely awful the gameplay is. It's hard to pinpoint what South Park does right from a gameplay perspective when nearly everything about playing this game just absolutely sucks. Beyond how visually unappealing the waves of the same enemies are, fighting them is even worse. The game has numerous weapons you'll find throughout the game, except ammo is somewhat limited, meaning you'll often be defaulting to snowballs which you have an unlimited supply of. All weapons have alternate modes which make things a little more interesting and dymanic. It's just too bad using any of them is terrible when it comes to aiming or hitting enemies. Speaking of enemies, stronger Tank like enemies and bosses are pure trash in this game. While the weaker common enemies will go down with a snowball or two, Tank and boss enemies are about the most bullet spongey adversaries you'll ever be up against in a game. Combined with bosses having specific weak points you need to target to do any damage, it can literally take the better part of an hour to get through most boss fights. Combine this with the half hour to 45-minutes you just spent trudging through whatever boring, fog infested level you just played through, with make even the most patient players want to quite before even getting through the first stage.


South Park is a terrible game, no questions whatsoever. However, I'd being lying if I said I didn't have a sentimental place in my heart for this game still. Probably the most ideal way to play this game is to look up cheats for it online, skip bosses all together and just get the story bits here and there, which is really the most enjoyable part about this game. For me personally, there's also that connection I have to the game as a kid growing up in the late 90s, but even with that, I still struggle to find anything enjoyable about South Park. Some things are just better left in the past, and South Park on the N64 (and PS1), deserves to stay there for good. (11/22/25) [19/50]