Messages

1

Modern Video Games / Re: Report: PS6 2029 | Switch 2 price increase soon?

« on: Today at 03:16:21 pm »

All this AI nonsense that is giving us nothing good, just completely decimating the PC and console market.  Hate it so much.

I work in an industry that is very adjacent to the boom in AI adoption, and it's absolutely disgusting how much greed is fueling all this. CEOs and executive teams are frothing at the mouth over all this and they speak with glee about replacing large percentages of their workforce and investing in thousands of new data centers. They simply do not care how much this is decimating certain industries, all they see is massive dividends for themselves and their shareholders.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 26, 2026, 01:31:02 pm »

I think at this point there are no more undiscovered retro gems,

There certainly are, such as games that never released in the US that don't have English language options alongside titles for older PC systems. Although, maybe you specifically said this in reference to the US home console market which is probably more true than it's not.

Sometimes playing the bad games helps us appreciate the good games that much more.

Absolutely, and obviously this isn't limited to video games. If you're someone who has a favorite genre within a particular medium, then engaging in lower-quality contemporaries gives you the opportunity to think critically about what it is you do actually like. Sometimes, people don't know why it is they like a particular aspect because they don't actually have anything bad to compare it to.

With how long YouTube and various other large online spaces have been around, any game you can possibly think of has been discussed to death at this point. There are some fairly obscure PC games I grew up with and even those have at least a handful of dedicated reddit threads (sometimes whole subreddits) or there's a few videos on YouTube discussing them to some degree. Sure, there are probably unreleased games that have never seen the light of day that no one but the original devs know about, but if it's been released, it's known about and the internet has fully thrust it into the gaming community consciousness by now.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 26, 2026, 10:27:28 am »

29. Xyanide (XBOX)

One pet peeve of mine is how freely the word "hidden gem" is thrown around online. At this point, saying hidden gem is more or less just a buzz phrase to bait people into clicking on your YouTube video or Reddit post. The reason I mention this is because over the years of playing countless examples of supposed hidden gems, I've come to discover that the overwhelming majority, probably around 90% of them, range from being wildly mediocre to absolute trash in reality. For most of these obscure titles, there's a very good reason they remained obscure and relatively rare. And while I realize there are exceptions and special cases when it comes to this, most obscure games remained that way because, well, they kinda suck. Case in point, Xyanide on the original XBOX.

Yeah it annoys me too lol. I feel this 100% If they were good games, even if they didn't sell well at the time for whatever reason, collecting is such big hobby now that they would have been found by now.

I think at this point there are no more undiscovered retro gems, but for whatever reason there still seems to be quite a few games that have this reputation for being good, under appreciated, and lessor known, yet I just don't see it when I've actually played them. As I said, I think hidden gem has become a clickbait phrase more than anything, but I also think sometimes people dupe themselves into thinking a game is way better than it actually is due to the game's rarity, value, or desirability among collectors.

Sometimes playing the bad games helps us appreciate the good games that much more.

Very true. I tend to try and play games that have a pretty solid reputation for being good, but I also like to get adventurous and try out stuff that is lessor known, but also have reputations for being at least decent. I'm pretty sure I found my copy of Xyanide before Metal Jesus Rocks posted his XBOX Hidden Gems video, but at the time it gave me hope that game would actually be a gem. After all, I'm a pretty big fan of shumps, so I figured the game at to at least be okay. Nope...

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 26, 2026, 12:33:45 am »

29. Xyanide (XBOX)

One pet peeve of mine is how freely the word "hidden gem" is thrown around online. At this point, saying hidden gem is more or less just a buzz phrase to bait people into clicking on your YouTube video or Reddit post. The reason I mention this is because over the years of playing countless examples of supposed hidden gems, I've come to discover that the overwhelming majority, probably around 90% of them, range from being wildly mediocre to absolute trash in reality. For most of these obscure titles, there's a very good reason they remained obscure and relatively rare. And while I realize there are exceptions and special cases when it comes to this, most obscure games remained that way because, well, they kinda suck. Case in point, Xyanide on the original XBOX.


Never heard of Xyanide? Well, that's because this game is horribly made twin stick shooter released late in the original XBOX's life in 2006. The premise and even the opening cutscene of the game seem very promising, however when you actually play the game, you'll find a horribly designed dumpster fire of terrible gameplay balancing, inability to perform crowd control in a genre where it's absolutely crucial, a practically useless primary weapon and an arguably even worse more powerful secondary weapon, and to top it off, background enemies and visuals which often confusingly become part of the foreground, that frequently result in your ship colliding with another one. Not to mention, shooting anything in the background is about as clunky and inaccurate as it gets. The only reason I even finished this game was due to it fairly short length and also very easy mode slightly mitigating some of Xyanide's most egregious gameplay sins. Otherwise, I would have easily dropped this game well before ever reaching the end of the game, something I still feel like I should have done.


As mentioned, the visuals become a gameplay problem when enemies are flying in an out of the background and foreground while other enemies remain in the background firing at you, and you trying to fire back at them. There are some cool sci-fi visuals as you're blasting away at everything, but overall the 3D visual and gameplay style of this game did not mix together very well. I will also give some credit to the game's cutscenes which while limited do show off some very interesting sci-fi world building and pretty creative ideas. Unfortunately, they're not even good enough to redeem this game or the fact that the visuals are part of why this game sucks too.


Finally, we get to the best part of Xyanide, the music. While nothing special or overly catchy, the OST in Xyanide is still fairly good and definitely goes along with the theme and setting of the game. There are also exposition and various weapon sound effects as well, but they do little to enhance the overall experience of playing this game. I guess you could say the audio is slightly above average, which is among the only things about this game I can say that about.


Xyanide would have been a complete waste of money back in 2006, and it's still an even way bigger waste of money now seeing how it's fallen pray to the retro video game tax. Unless you're just some hardcore XBOX collector and have to have one of the consoles more rare titles in your collection, I'd strongly suggest spending your hard earned cash someplace else. This game is an absolute train wreck of gameplay design and one of the worse games I've finished in quite some time. (3/25/26) [18/50]

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General / Re: Older consoles or handhelds that you regret sleeping on when they were modern

« on: March 25, 2026, 11:45:26 pm »

you don't necessarily need to have grown up at the time to have experienced said consoles back in the day when they where brand new.

I got to play consoles like the genesis as a kid just cause my older cousin still had one. fun times really some whacky games on said consoles always got to play on said console when I visited. same for N64 and the snes.

ps1 eventhough an older gen was plentyfull and quite some folks still used ps1 games on a ps2 even quite some years later, it lasted for quite some time longer than most older consoles as a result in which most friends still had a stash of ps1 games or pirated ones. don't think there was a kid around that didn't play ctr or some of the re games where I was at.

GBA: What's sad is I actually did have a GBA in the early 2000s. I actually got a GBA for Christmas the same year they came out, along with Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 (which wasn't that great tbh). The only games I remember really getting into on my GBA were Advance Wars and later on Pokemon Ruby. Especially over the last couple years, I've developed a newfound appreciation for the GBA, one that has blossomed over time into full blown love. So, so many excellent games were released on it, and I find its graphics and sound to be beyond charming and nostalgic. I just wish I'd spent more time with the GBA back in the 2000s when I owned my original one, but I guess it's better to appreciate something eventually rather than never.

GBA era was something else. speaking of pokemon it was arguably the gen with the best puzzles and mysteries. Them talks about them regi puzzles and using braille on them school grounds or how you could brag if you could breed feebass which was insanely hard to get in these games only appearing in 4 tiles in a huge area that was random per copy. also advance wars against other was an absolute blast. or dbz advanced adventure multiplayer that stuff was goated. also in terms of rpg's the fire emblem games, golden sun the medabots rpg's. very packed system

I'll say this I love the console allot but have seen it's flaws more and more as the years go by so sadly I have appreciated the console a bit less over the years in favor of comparable home console counterparts with more grander 2d games. than again that's just me being less interested in handheld gaming as the years go on. at the end of the day plenty of experiences that are only on gba that ain't really replaced on other consoles and some soundtracks will always hit that nostalgia bug for me thinking back of more simpler times.

I guess there is just something special about experiencing and being fully engrossed within the excitement of a current gen console that cannot be replicated years after it's no longer being produced. It's almost like being in the right place at the right time, and having memories or experiences that only other people that were fully on board the hype train at the time can fully relate to. I completely fee that way with the N64 and pretty much every 6th gen console. I still love going back and revisiting games on the PS2 or Dreamcast, but even playing games for it now, it's just not the same as when I was younger and would get so excited to see some new game come out for either of those consoles, and be even more excited to actually play it. Even if you played a console back when it came out, I guess it's possible to feel like you still missed out of it due to limited exposure or lack of opportunities to actually play it.


With Pokemon Ruby, I didn't actually beat it back around the time it came out. I was in high school at the time and had all sorts of other things going on in my life during that time. I started it, got like four badges, and then sporadically played it for like the next year until I stopped playing it before even reaching the Pokemon league. Still, when counting my GBA experiences back in the day, it was one of them. Speaking of being in high school, there were far fewer of my peers that had a GBA or really had much interest in it. On the flip side, my little brother who is 5 years younger than me was way more into it, as were many of his friends. He certainly had way more exposure to the system back in the early and mid 2000s that I did. I even remember him obsessing about wanting a blue SP when those first came out. Had I been even just 3 or 4 years younger in 2002 or 2003, I feel like I'd likely not be wishing right now that I'd spent more time with the GBA, since the console would have been far more up my ally at the time.

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General / Re: Older consoles or handhelds that you regret sleeping on when they were modern

« on: March 25, 2026, 11:35:32 pm »

I'm usually one of the older people in online spaces, but I guess it makes sense that I actually seem a bit younger than everyone on a forum such this lol

I grew up on Playstation and then switched to Nintendo for the Gamecube and Wii, and then moved over to the 360 for middle and high school. Sega was already basically almost gone by the time I was playing games. I got a PS1 in 98' as my first console at 4 years old, so the only Sega system I could have really even had the chance of playing while it was "modern" was the Dreamcast, and tbh I don't think I ever saw one. My cousins had an N64 I saw a few times but never played myself, mostly just watched them play.

I think you're within a standard deviation of the average age on here, which if I had to make assumptions is probably early 40s. I'm in my late 30s and when I talk about the 90s, it's mostly from the perspective of an elementary school aged kid. I was in middle school in the late 90s.


But between my friends and I most of us had Sega consoles, and a few had Nintendo consoles. Funny enough, it was just my cousin that had a PS1 back in the day. Other than that I didn't really get to play the PS1 all that often. The first time I played the PS1 was on a road trip my parents took me on in 1996 where I played Destruction Derby at someone's house. The damage effects blew my mind back then. Now it's nothing special. I really didn't come to appreciate the PS1 until the console was nearly sunset, however I do remember specific games being shown off in gaming mags I had during the time that really made me wish I had one. Funny enough, one game that made me obsessively want a PS1 for a brief period was Star Wars Masters of Teras Kasi. The idea of a Star Wars fighting game blew my mind back then. Of course, now we know that game is complete crap, but hey, 9 year old me would have probably loved it lol.


I still can't believe that between my brother and I, we had all four 6th gen consoles back when they were considered modern. And it wasn't like we were rich, we just had some excellent birthdays and XMASes around that time I guess lol. My brother mainly gamed on XBOX (he was a Halo 2 XBL addict), while I played Dreamcast and PS2 primarily. I bought a Gamecube around 2003 or so just to play Resident Evil Remake. I only had a handful of games for it back then, half of them being Resident Evil games, but remember also enjoying Smash Melee and a few others too.

Yeah I'm 31, but usually in online spaces I'm an Unc talking to early 20 somethings who grew up on Xbox 360/PS3/Wii, whereas I was already a teenager in that era so we had vastly different experiences with those consoles. Unless they had particularly lax parents, they missed out on the Xbox live party era of gaming (though now Discord kinda recaptures some of that to be fair).

Here though the shoe is on the other foot so to speak. A lot people talking about experiences I never had, because I either wasn't even born yet or was too young to hold a controller lol. The NES for me was an "old" system my parents played. I was born into the 3D era, my first game I remember playing was Crash Bandicoot 3 on the Christmas I got my PS1. I didn't even know Sega made consoles until I was a late teenager and started collecting as a hobby, whereas people here seem to have a kind of nostalgia for them the same way I have it for PS1/N64.

Yeah, some of the bigger online platforms like Reddit are mostly a younger crowd (probably like 25 and younger). In my brief experience on Reddit, it was hard to discuss games on some of the more popular subreddits since no one on there could relate to what I was trying to discuss, or they just had a radically different experience with a specific franchise or game on account of them being young enough to be my son or daughter. Don't get me wrong, I like hearing different experiences, but it's hard when there's a specific type of group think with the younger crowd and if your opinion deviates from that you're either flamed or accused of not being true fan, or just being an "unc" lol. I mostly discuss retro games here and a local Facebook group I belong to where we've all met in person, so discussion rarely becomes contentious like it often does online.


On top of that, discussing games with a younger crowd can make me feel old as hell. I mean, I was in college when the 360 came out in 2005 and camped out with a college friend of mine where he got his 360 at launch. When I hear people saying they got a Wii or 360 when they were 5 for Christmas it just makes me feel dated as hell lol. It's even crazier when younger gamers or YouTuber talk about being in elementary school when the the Switch came out and I'm here like...I was 30 years old with a full time job when that happened...


Funny enough, the NES feels old to me too and I was born when it was near the height of its popularity in the 80s. There are some NES games I enjoy, but so many I just can't get into. 4th gen is about the oldest back I can go and really enjoy most of the games, assuming they're actually good games. I feel like at this point, most hardcore NES fans are ones who grew up with it and played it mostly when they were between 5 and 13. Other than occasionally playing it at friends or neighbors houses, I never really gamed on the NES much until I began collecting, which is when I fully realized the console is a bit to antiquated for my tastes.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Nintendo announces physical games will cost more

« on: March 25, 2026, 11:21:32 pm »

This doesn't surprise me, but what's ultra lame about this is your "physical" game is probably just a key card, so you might as well save money and just get the digital version at that point.

and nintendo is smart about them keycards aswell they short print em near release in which people buy em like crazy and might buy em all out in the next few waves to come.

Poketopia sells for like 50% higher than msrp in the 2ndary market lol.

With these kinda examples it just gives them more justification to go game keycards and apply simular selling strats like most tcg do these days. keeping physical limited compared to demand to get that fomo experience. eventhough it's literally just a coaster that has a code in it to activate a download for the next 10 years till servers are down.

I love Nintendo's IPs, but I sort of hate them as a company now. They've become almost just as sleazy and greedy as companies like EA or Ubisoft. I suppose preying on your consumers has been all the rage for a while and Nintendo was a bit of an outlier for a while. It just sucks to see them become almost the exact opposite of what they were less than a decade ago.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Nintendo announces physical games will cost more

« on: March 25, 2026, 06:03:30 pm »

This doesn't surprise me, but what's ultra lame about this is your "physical" game is probably just a key card, so you might as well save money and just get the digital version at that point.

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General / Re: Older consoles or handhelds that you regret sleeping on when they were modern

« on: March 25, 2026, 01:39:41 pm »

Game Boy Micro, though, tbh, it was already like 5 years discontinued, I mostly regret it because it was still fairly cheap and always wanted one, maybe one day if I feel like saving money for it.

For the most part I don't think I regret something, I do miss when collecting Nintendo GameCube was cheaper because when I used to do it, the console was barely 10 years old, so while it wasn't new, it was still fairly common and some rare games weren't that sought.

I actually lived Nintendo 3DS I sometimes feel it died too soon but I can understand why it did, I want to mention PS Vita but I can't stop thinking that seeing dying slowly and even Sony forgetting it until stop mention it at all could have been a bit rough considering the machine wasn't exactly cheap at the time in my country, but reading old threads and seeing how the community kept the hype alive honestly seem like it could have worth it, is one of these things I do kinda regret missing out, just like 3DS, I kinda wish PS Vita lived a few more years, support I assume we all wishes it had more, ha.

I know some people love the Micro, but for me it's probably my least favorite GBA model simply because it's too small. I found one with the alt faceplates and everything for a steal about 10 years ago, but when I actually went to go play it, it made some games fairly difficult to play, like playing them on an old cell phone. I ended up selling it. My favorite GBA model is the original, albeit with the caveat that it's modded with an LCD screen to fix its backlight issues.


Fortunately I don't have any regrets when it comes to collecting for a console at a specific time when the games were cheaper and easier to find. When I got into collecting, 6th gen consoles were rapidly becoming cheap and undesirable, 5th gen were all pretty much bargained price, and 3rd and 4th gen were still a few years away from their rapid rise. I pretty much found every PS2, XBOX, Gamecube, and Dreamcast game I'd ever wanted between 2010 and 2016 or so, all for pretty cheap. I've been out of the loop when it comes to game prices for a while,  but when I see games that were going for like $20 back when I was heavily collecting for Gamecube go for like $200 now, I seriously can't believe it.

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General / Re: Older consoles or handhelds that you regret sleeping on when they were modern

« on: March 25, 2026, 01:15:20 am »

I'm usually one of the older people in online spaces, but I guess it makes sense that I actually seem a bit younger than everyone on a forum such this lol

I grew up on Playstation and then switched to Nintendo for the Gamecube and Wii, and then moved over to the 360 for middle and high school. Sega was already basically almost gone by the time I was playing games. I got a PS1 in 98' as my first console at 4 years old, so the only Sega system I could have really even had the chance of playing while it was "modern" was the Dreamcast, and tbh I don't think I ever saw one. My cousins had an N64 I saw a few times but never played myself, mostly just watched them play.

I think you're within a standard deviation of the average age on here, which if I had to make assumptions is probably early 40s. I'm in my late 30s and when I talk about the 90s, it's mostly from the perspective of an elementary school aged kid. I was in middle school in the late 90s.


But between my friends and I most of us had Sega consoles, and a few had Nintendo consoles. Funny enough, it was just my cousin that had a PS1 back in the day. Other than that I didn't really get to play the PS1 all that often. The first time I played the PS1 was on a road trip my parents took me on in 1996 where I played Destruction Derby at someone's house. The damage effects blew my mind back then. Now it's nothing special. I really didn't come to appreciate the PS1 until the console was nearly sunset, however I do remember specific games being shown off in gaming mags I had during the time that really made me wish I had one. Funny enough, one game that made me obsessively want a PS1 for a brief period was Star Wars Masters of Teras Kasi. The idea of a Star Wars fighting game blew my mind back then. Of course, now we know that game is complete crap, but hey, 9 year old me would have probably loved it lol.


I still can't believe that between my brother and I, we had all four 6th gen consoles back when they were considered modern. And it wasn't like we were rich, we just had some excellent birthdays and XMASes around that time I guess lol. My brother mainly gamed on XBOX (he was a Halo 2 XBL addict), while I played Dreamcast and PS2 primarily. I bought a Gamecube around 2003 or so just to play Resident Evil Remake. I only had a handful of games for it back then, half of them being Resident Evil games, but remember also enjoying Smash Melee and a few others too.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 24, 2026, 08:15:21 pm »

28. Fantavision (PS2)

It seems like several lifetimes ago that I was a 13 year old kid staring at issues of video game magazines like GamePro, Game Informer, and Nintendo Power pining over games that had yet to come out. The late 90s in particular were a very fun time to be a young gamer, and it just seemed like there was a never ending stream of amazing games coming out and new ones around the corner. I remember being particularly interested in the PS2 before its release and my main source for excitement about the then upcoming Sony console was a magazine released I think by EGM that was just about the PS2. Within its pages there were tons of mini articles and screen shots of games that were going to be available at launch, as well as games that would end up coming out within the first couple years of the PS2's life like Metal Gear Solid 2 and Gran Turismo 3. One game in particular caught my eye. It was a game where the whole point was igniting fireworks in the sky, creating a visual spectacle over night time city scapes and even in space. That game, was Fantavision.


I'm actually a bit surprised it took me this long to finally play Fantavision. Part of this is due to the fact the game is now over a quarter century old and the other part is I've owned a copy of it for the better part of its 26 year life. I'm in the process of during a minor downsize of my game collection at the moment and I decided to place Fantavision on the chopping block, but not before I finally gave this game a whirl to see if it's actually fun to play or instead a dated relic that was little more than a PS2 tech demo at launch. Unfortunately, the game slides heavily towards the latter more than anything else.


That's right, Fantavision's entire reason for existing is showing off just how cool PS2 games could look back in 2000 when both this game and the console its exclusive too were released. While in that regard it does a decent enough job, there were actually way better looking PS2 games when the console came out. Tekken Tag Tournament, Armored Core 2, Dead or Alive 2 Hardcore, and even various sports games come to mind, but there are likely various others I'm not thinking of at the moment. While the game certainly would have captivated me to some extent with its visuals back in 2000s, today it's really nothing special other than a bunch of green, purple, and orange fireworks exploding while a camera rotates around a coastal city at night, around a space station, and around a cool looking amusing part.


Music in Fantavision is even more underwhelming. While there are some decent songs in this game, most aren't particularly catchy, nor do they really add any appeal to this game. There is an announcer that says how big your chain of fireworks was (more on that soon) and when you pick up certain bonus or special items, but other than that there is little else to the audio in this game. Oh, and fireworks go boom...so yeah, there's that too.


The gameplay in Fantavision is not great, but I guess not horrible either. Fantavision's gameplay revolves around chaining three different colored fireworks together by using a variety of special flares and other modifying or special flares to rack up points and create a bigger visual spectacle when you ignite all the fireworks in your chain.  You do this by selecting at least three fireworks of the same color in a row, but you can also string together colors using rainbow colored flares that go up fairly often. Unfortunately, selecting the firework you need quickly can be challenging as other colors easily get in the way, or you'll accidentally negate a chain by accidentally accessing the wrong color. At the same time, you can almost mindless twirl the analogue stick and just press the X button as much as fast as you can and rack up a fairly big chain. The take-home here is that the gameplay is very loose and sloppy, and pretty much just a serviceable distraction to what might as well have just been a movie showing off the then new PS2's graphical abilities.


There are far better puzzle games released during the late 90s and early 2000s, and way better games released for the PS2 at launch. Knowing this somewhat negates Fantavision's appeal or relevance in any way, which is why this game is typically a fixture of PS2 bargain bins. Still, on a personal level I do carry some sentimental feelings towards Fantavision and I'm happy I finally got around to trying it out. Sadly, it's still going into the bin of games I'm planning on selling here very soon. For what it's worth, I'm glad I at least tried the game out finally, but it's certainly not a game worth keeping and certainly not playing ever again. (3/24/26) [28/50]

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General / Re: Older consoles or handhelds that you regret sleeping on when they were modern

« on: March 24, 2026, 03:57:57 pm »

This isn't necessarily anything new, but it's still funny seeing people mention Sega so much when it comes to consoles they wish they'd been able to play more back in the 90s. For whatever reason, Sega was far more a part of my upbringing than Nintendo. Most of my friends had Sega consoles, I had a bunch of Sega consoles, and in general we all discussed Sega games mostly. I did have friends with NES and SNES, and I ended up getting an N64 in 1996, but I'd say that was still a minority of my gaming experience back then. With how dominant Sega was in my personal life back in the 90s you'd like I grew up in Europe of South America lol.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 24, 2026, 01:41:02 pm »

27. Mega Man Zero (PS4)

I mentioned this in my Mega Man 2 review, but up until very recently, the vast majority of my time with the Mega Man series has been confined to the X series. The first Mega Man X on the SNES was my entry point into the series back in the mid 90s, and for one reason or another I just always gravitated towards those games both back in the day and pretty much up until this year. I did play Mega Man Legends several years ago and ended up not caring for that game much, but as for the other non-X Mega Man games I've played so far, I REALLY, REALLY like them. I decided to tackle another Mega Man series I had no experience with and that would be the Zero series.


I decided to start with the first Zero game despite its well known issues and brutal difficulty, mostly because I wanted a fresh take on this series and also due to the Zero series being far more narrative driven then most of the other Mega Man series. I will say right off the bat, Mega Man Zero's infamous difficulty is definitely not overstated as this is probably one of the most challenging, albeit fair, 2D actions games I've ever played. However, my decision to play Zero as part of the Mega Man Zero/ZX Collection on PS4 definitely curbed some of that difficulty somewhat since that release allows for save asset checkpoints throughout the level, whereas the original release of Zero on the GBA didn't have this much needed feature. Essentially in the GBA version you have a limited number of lives and if you used all those up, which let's be frank, you absolutely will, you had to start the stage from the very beginning. I can't even imagine playing Zero like this given the game is already hard enough without having to replay entire levels again after dying 3 or 4 times. Had I played the game without the save assist feature, it would have almost certainly ruined the game for me, but with it, I ended up having a surprisingly awesome time with Zero despite how brutally difficult the game is.


Mega Man Zero's gameplay is really a mixed bag in terms of quality. On one hand, Zero may have the most dynamic, deep gameplay of any Mega Man game ever made. The ability for Zero to use both close range melee weapons and a blaster akin to Mega Man's buster arm create multiple ways of dealing with many of the game's bosses and certain stage hazards. Most boss fights will require you think and act quickly while toggling between using Zero's sword or spear, or your truster blaster. This is also integrated fairly seemingly given the limited control inputs available on the GBA, and how those controls are mapped to a PS4 controller. What benefits the most from Zero's dynamic characters controls are its many boss fights, which are mostly spectacular. The majority of boss battles are pretty hard and really require that you stay alert, learn boss's patterns of movement and attack, and utilize everything at your disposal to defeat them. There are several boss encounters that are outliers to this, either being far more simple and easy, or being brutally difficult to the point of being broken. Luckily, these underwhelming or sadistic bosses only account for a handful of the boss battles in Zero, making this game pretty fun throughout...except when you're getting through the stages leading up to the bosses.


Unlike Zero's bosses which are mostly all well designed and fun to fight, the level design in Zero ranges mostly from flat, bland and boring to poorly designed and terrible. There is little in between when it comes to Zero's stages. Mega Man game stages are often just as memorable or more memorable than the bosses themselves, but here, they couldn't be more opposite. Sometimes I wondered why there was even a stage at all given how much it either dragged down the pacing and my enjoyment of this game, or caused me so much needless frustration over the copious amount of blind jumps, poor enemy balancing and placement, or just gotcha obstacles that were just annoying first time playthrough traps. In fact, while writing this review, I can't think of a single stage in Mega Man Zero I actually liked or found enjoyable. It also doesn't help that various stages are recycled multiple times, making returning to a specific level even more annoying since you know you've already been there once or twice before.


Before moving on to Mega Man Zero's presentation, the game's power up and buff system has to be discussed as well. Mega Man Zero leans slightly into RPG territory with weapons leveling up as you use them. Leveling up your blaster, sword, or spear grants you additional abilities with them, making it easier to inflict more damage on enemies or more efficiently take down harder to reach enemies on walls or in the air. There are also elemental abilities that you can grant weapons which can help defeat bosses faster if you know a specific boss' elemental weakness. Speaking of these weaknesses, they are far less intuitive than in previous X and core series games, requiring you to try out the different elements to find out which one is best for which specific boss. There is also an assist or buff system in the form of these randomly dropped power ups called cyber-elves. The cyber-elves can grant you a plethora of abilities or assist you in certain ways like refilling your health. Some cyber-elf abilities need to be leveled up before you can use them, which is done by feeding them points you acquire throughout the game. Unfortunately, the amount of points needed to use some of the better, more useful cyber-elf abilities is pretty high and will require you grind in order to unlock them. Overall, the cyber-elf system, as well as the elemental system is sorely lacking compared to previous Mega Man games where you obtained cool abilities by beating bosses and could use them on the fly, or your ability to collect health tanks that you could use in a pinch. Those older systems were far more basic, but also just better suited for a game like Mega Man.


The visuals in Mega Man Zero are freain stunning! I adore the art direction of this game, as well as how detailed and awesome nearly every character and enemy sprite looks. There are also a few cutscenes in the game which also look amazing. These cutscenes are part of a greater narrative focus in this game which is presented through pretty good dialogue and also non-cutscene cinematics which really elevate the visual appeal of Zero. If not for the recycled stages and copies reuse of stage element assets, this game would easily have been a 10/10 when it comes to visuals. Speaking of those stages, they all look pretty cool and atmospheric for the most part, but again, their frequent reuse does drag things down a bit for a graphical presentation standpoint.


Finally, Mega Man Zero's audio is pretty rock solid. Songs are memorable, both throwback tracks like Zero's theme, but also all the new music that was created specifically for this game. It's all appropriately high energy and also fairly catchy too. It doesn't reach the caliber of many of the X game's soundtracks, but it's also not far off earlier. There are also some pretty good sound effects which all have a crispness to them and really give the action taking place on screen a special weight to them. Overall, audio is pretty damn good in Zero.


In some ways, I'm actually a bit surprised how much I enjoyed playing Zero. I'm certainly a fan of challenging but fair games, however given how parts of Mega Man Zero work so incredibly well while others fall almost complete flat, I would have guessed this game would have come out the other end in the "meh" territory. Instead, here I am eager to play more games in the Zero/ZX series, especially knowing they only get better after the first Zero. Again, I am going to throw the caveat out there that I'd highly recommend playing this game on the Zero/ZX collection released on modern consoles; especially for Zero, I cannot overstate how much of a dramatic difference the presence of the save assist features makes to the overall experience of playing Zero and from what I've read, fixes what is often considered Zero's number one flaw. But regardless, Mega Man Zero is in awesome action game worthy of sitting alongside its two older brother series. (3/24/26) [36/50]

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General / Re: Older consoles or handhelds that you regret sleeping on when they were modern

« on: March 23, 2026, 10:48:03 am »

don't have much regret on sleeping on the psp as one of the few systems I didn't do much with at the time. Even moreso for ps vita

otherwise didn't really miss consoles when they where modern at the time either played at friends or owned em. from xbox to nintendo

ye know what now that I think about considering dreamcast released around the time of the cube and ps2. do regret missing that one, but since it discontinued that quickly and wasn't that popular it was probably a very ez system to miss at the time.

The Dreamcast really was a flash in the pan and I'm forever grateful I was there to experience it. I was hyped out of my mind leading up to its release and then pretty much for the entire duration of its life. My brother got one in November of 1999 for his birthday and I played it easily 10x more than he did. I regularly bought and rented games for it throughout 2000 and 2001. In fact, I didn't even realize the DC had been discontinued until the later part of 2001. With games like Sonic Adventure 2 getting released posthumously, it was easy to be oblivious to the fact that Sega had already pulled the plug on it. I definitely wish it had been able to hold on for longer, but for what its worth, it was am amazing couple of years that I remember extremely fondly.

15

General / Re: Older consoles or handhelds that you regret sleeping on when they were modern

« on: March 23, 2026, 02:22:15 am »

PSP and Vita I guess? It wasn't so much that I slept on them and more that I was a broke teenager lol Well, for the PSP anyways. I was in Uni and working part-time when the Vita was still "modern" but I just thought that it had no games lol

I haven't started to collect Vita yet as I am still collecting / playing PSP, but I do plan on getting to it eventually.

I hope I come around to the PSP at some point. Funny enough, I recently just sold my Vita and the 10 or so games I had for it. I got a wild hair and bought one from a game store back in like 2014 or so. I played it a handful of times around the time I got it and it's literally been untouched ever since. I decided it wasn't going to get played anytime soon so I sold it. I still have a PSP and a healthy collection for it, however it's just never sparked much joy for me despite playing some pretty good games on it.