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52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

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marvelvscapcom2:
6. Jeopardy [PS1] - Finished Feb 10th, 2026






This game is a knockout! It fulfills every itch an old school, 90s, nostalgia, mustached Alex, Jeopardy fanatic could want.  The story of how this game came to be so personal to me, is a trip me and my mother took downtown to a vintage electronic shop.  My mom loved Jeopardy when I was little and she got this game for herself which was rare. There were maybe only a few games she played and I remember exactly how it played with the drawing your name.  What I wasn't aware of is that The game has 3500 individual questions.  Each game has about 72 questions asked. So that means you can play a good amount of games without repeats. 


Alex Trebek voices every question himself which is really ambitious for the time.  I half expected it to be a read along type of game with Alex voiceovers for only introductions. But nope. He reads every question.  (Not answers)  And each question is vibrant, accurate to the type of questions they ask on the tv.  I considered beating this game as beating the NPC in a game. And trust me it's no small task.  The NPC cpu you play against are some form of librarian literary nerds who know everything about the old testament.  It is a hill climb trying to out "Hariett Beacher Stowe" the Jeopardy contestants. And in that sense it is almost a good simulator for the real thing. It requires patience. Knowledge and the puzzle element of knowing when to risk and how much.  It's brilliant as anyone who has watched the tv game knows. And truthfully it took me to a simpler time.  A time when a 12 inch crt on a kitchen counter with aluminum foil wrapped around the antenna picking up I Love Lucy reruns and jeopardy at 7pm was just enough.  It was consuming media. Not being consumed by it.  Everything was so tactile and analogue.  I just love thinking of those times.  I am still very close to my mom. But this is a little easter egg of my childhood. A phantom bus ride, a simple ps1 classic.  And a legendary tv game come to life on old hardware.  It simply works.  It is so far ahead of it's time to me and it's an excellent console version of the jeopardy game. 

It's also cheap as chips so I can't reccomend it enough.  I have played at home versions of jeopardy on PC, buzzfeed, self created.  This feels more genuine to me. It feels like i'm back there.  Letterman on the tube.  Pre 9/11.  1 dollar nacho bell grandes.  Surge sodas and rug rats.  This is really really cool. And I will be playing it more.

bikingjahuty:
16. Omega Boost (PS1)

Another long time backlog game for me was 1999's Omega Boost. Despite seeing commercials for this game and it also being mentioned alongside Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, and Resident Evil in the Eiffel 65 song "My Console" (listen to it if you haven't), it took me 27 years to play this game. What's even stranger is it's a game about mechs which for many years was all I needed to know to immediately drop what I was doing and seek a game out. Unfortunately after playing Omega Boost, I can't say it deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as those other games from the Eiffel 65 their euro pop classic.


Omega Boost is a great example of a game that is easy to see just how much better it could have been. Being made by the same studio that makes the Gran Turismo games, the ability for Polyphony Digital Studios to make a well made, amazing looking game is not outside their grasp. Unfortunately, Omega Boost proves they know cars way better than they do futuristic mechs fighting in space. The ultimate flaw in Omega Boost is its gameplay, which just feels poorly implemented and balanced with controls that don't feel up to the task being asked of you half the time. There are some bosses and section in this game that are downright demoralizing, and not because they were designed that way. Rather, it's so easy for you to lose track of what you're fighting given how the camera just goes wherever the hell it wants. There is a camera recentering button that focuses you back in the closest enemy or enemies, but it's still annoying having to press it over and over again throughout this game. What makes this even more frustrating is one of your primary weapons and the one you'll likely be using the most is a homing laser attack which requires you to lock onto those enemies before using. You also have a standard plaster as well that fires where you're mech's reticle happens to be. But the act of aiming, managing the camera, and then dealing with stages that are constrained or disorienting make for a mostly frustrating time.


Still, Omega Boost's gameplay does have its moments. Being essentially a rail shooter with the illusion of being a third person open air mech combat simulator, you'll be doing barrel rolls, dodging lasers, and going toe to toe with a pretty creative plethora of enemies and bosses. While I'd say at least half these bosses are more annoying than not to fight, there are several which are actually really fun. In fact, the line that separates the good boss encounter from the bad ones is fairly faint. This is what I meant by this game having the potential to be a lot better than it actually is. When this game works, it is really enjoyable and just cool as hell. I just wish the gameplay and game design had been given more time to incubate. I'm a firm believe that if it had, this game may have launched a franchise and been Polyphony's other AAA series.


Not perfect, but certainly an improvement over Omega Boost's gameplay is its audio. The soundtrack is really a mixed bag with some songs and tracks being excellent and fully complementing the fast paced, space battle gameplay, while other tracks are just downright obnoxious. There was one stage, I believe stage 5 that I had to replay several times and every time the sound playing annoyed me far more than the actual annoying, poorly designed boss battle that kept on killing me. Luckily, there are only a few tracks that really grated on my nerves and everything else was decent to pretty good. There are even a few licensed songs, one being from one of my favorite rock groups of the late 90s, Static X. Other than the soundtrack, the sound effects and limited voice acting all fit pretty well and definitely add the the cool sci-fi theme the game is going for.


By far Omega Boost's best quality is its visuals and overall artistic presentation. It is almost unreal that this game was able to look as good as it did and run as well as it does on the PS1. Part of what it is able to do this has a lot to do with one of the game's only visuals flaws. Most stages and areas in Omega Boost are definitely pretty dark. Some of this is because the battles take place in the depths of space, while other times it feels like you're fighting inside a dimly lit cave. There are some more interesting and vibrant backgrounds, but most stages definitely posses this darkness. Still, darkness or not, levels all are fairly memorable and cool, but the real showstopper when it comes to the visuals is the mechs and enemies you'll encounter. The art direction in this game is excellent and there are some amazing looking bosses in this game, with there being virtually none that I would say even look just okay. Likewise, the effects of weapons being used all looks great against the mostly dark backdrops of each stage. There are also some really great damage effects on bosses which show their armor or overall structure becoming more and more damaged as you drain their health closer to zero. From the studio that made the Gran Turismo games, I'd expect nothing less visually, and in this regard, Omega Boost does not disappoint in the slightest.


Even though Omega Boost's gameplay had me on the brink of rage quitting more times than I'd like to admit, I still enjoyed this game far more than I would have normally for a game this poorly designed. The visual spectacle, the cheesy late 90s FMV cutscenes, the smooth, high FPS space battles, and the rad as hell bosses were all just too intoxicating for me to abandon this game. Still, those frustrations and annoyances were also a large part of my experience with Omega Boost, and had me lamenting the fact this game wasn't just a little but better designed. Having played Omega Boost now, I feel like Konami's Zone of the Enders was partially inspired by this game, both in aesthetic and gameplay, but fortunately that game ended up being way more fun, balanced, and designed than Omega Boost, by a fairly wide margin if I'm being completely frank. Still, this is a cool, somewhat obscure title that I'd recommend to mech video game fans, or just people wanting to see how goo a PS1 game can look. (2/10/26) [33/50]

kamikazekeeg:
7 - That's Not My Neighbor (PC 2025) - BEAT - I got a soft spot for the "Find the thing that's wrong or out of place" sorta games, and this one I had been meaning to check out mostly because a Youtuber I like did a great themed song of the game.  I like the gimmick, try to figure out if a resident is the actual resident or not, sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not.  I ran through the campaign twice which is short, and the nightmare mode once, and it's all fine and entertaining.  Any real complaints I'd have with wanting more content and variety, more characters, is mostly ignored for being a 3 dollar game lol

Overall, decent time, I might play it abit more, wanted to get at least one S Rank day, but there's always a thing or two I'm unsure of how to report and that usually gets my score dinged slightly.

Cartagia:
Played Mega Man X3 for the first time.  Maybe it's just because I played X and X2, but I found this game a fair amount more difficult than those.  Not in a bad way, though.  Great music, level and boss design.  I totally understand why this is kashell's favorite in the series. Until the final end game stages.  Those I didn't really like at all, and I found the final boss to be annoying instead of difficult.  Left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth after really enjoying the rest of the game.

dhaabi:
08. Gnog || PlayStation 4 || 02.09.2026



I'm not exactly sure how I came across developers KO_OP, but I suspect I only became aware of them and their game Gnog during its development as Double Fine Productions was attached to this project as its publisher. Six years ago, I began playing this game but for some reason didn't play for long and never went back to it. So, I started a new save file.

Interestingly, Gnog is a puzzle game that doesn't explain anything at all really. Not conventionally, anyway. It's comprised of nine single-screen stages that shouldn't take overly to solve for first-time players, though obviously that's situational. While the goal for each puzzle largely remains the same—to delve inside the one center object or environment on screen which acts as the stage itself to figure out just how it operates so that the one big button can finally be pushed—they all feel varied. Inside these objects, one puzzle divided into a series of tasks presents itself full of knobs and dials and levers needing to be rotated, pushed, and pulled.

If that sort of tactility comes across as early child development play, that's because that's how Gnog was designed to be. With that said, this is a game that greatly encourages play to progress through its puzzles, and it's effectively achieved with a tone that's both silly and simultaneously mesmerizing alongside its demonstration of light-up colors and playful sing-song sounds. Throughout the stage, there are visual (and sometimes audio) cues to help the player understand what's being requested to progress. Sometimes you may know what to do, but the means to accomplish it, or the order for what needs to be done exactly isn't quite understood yet. So, you'll inevitably go through a series of actions seeking to understand how these elements correspond to another. I'm curious just how capable very young players may be were they to play this game, as I was stumped on a small number of short segments for some time.

As single-screen puzzles, they may come across as simple at first but are unexpectedly expansive. Though, in some way, there are two screens to inspect—two sides to the same puzzle, anyway. By this, I mean that players will be required to navigate between the front and back of these 3D objects as they rotate 180°. Of course, there are instances where this design is subverted in novel ways, such as a housing development that's interconnected. The capability to inspect the puzzle's sides by using the joystick is also sometimes necessary, and it acts as another way to demonstrate how the stages themselves are like physical puzzles we would hold in our hands. While the stages themselves are often some an environment such as a home or a laboratory, they're also sometimes non-living things such as a submarine or a log. No matter what the stage is presented to be, though, their true nature is a monstrous face suspended in air that, in time, reveals itself as some vessel for the things within them.

While much of the game is without formal instruction, problems needing to be solved have clear goals. For instance, one beginning stage involves a submariner collecting treasures and artifacts whereas another is a mother bird feeding her chicks. How to go about this, as previously mentioned, is usually not straightforward, though. So when a puzzle is fully solved, the sense of accomplishment is felt and reinforced by the stage itself as it comes to life and celebrates with you by dancing and singing in its strange way. It's not wrong to describe stages as mundane, but what happens in them is often unexpected or presented in an abstract, cartoon-ish way and are always creative. Gnog's presentation is bolstered with VR functionality that I did begin using, but I quickly reverted to standard mode play as there are finer details needing to observe that I simply couldn't see as my headset wouldn't focus.

In some ways, Gnog is difficult to discuss to anyone who's not experienced it because of its abstracted presentation. But something that I think most people can relate to is real-world play and kinetic thought, and KO_OP's implementation of it toward video game design is both novel and successful. Gnog is a short game to play, so by its quick end I was left wanting to experience more.

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