CM 93/94 on the Amiga was the one I ended up getting addicted to.

15. The Great Ace Attormey Chronicles (1)

Well that's the first 35 hours done. As with all previous games, the title can be massively long winded, but a remarkable localisation kept me hooked through and through. Very esoteric references including a late game LA Confidential one kept me going, and in classic Shu Takumi style, it pulled all the strings together at the end. I hear the second does it even more elaborately so I am going to get stuck straight in. Loved it.

Imagine if it had been a Dreamcast exclusive in 1998 tho

Hesitates about even trying out Halo: Infinite at launch in case it's not polished enough. Dives headfirst into this tat and plays it to completion. Never change, Mootsy

45. Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
Well, it’s ok. On the plus side, it’s a pretty faithful Metroid style thing and it’s big. On the downside, it’s pretty boring. Very unimaginative. Absolutely nothing outstanding in the design of the game or the way the map opens up or anything. Few ideas. There seems to be a lot of tedious tunnels here so backtracking can become a pain. Even the usually fun, full-powered mop up I tend to do towards the end was dull. The enemies aren’t great. Because the parry mechanic is the only way to reliably dispatch some of them in quick order, you can’t just cane through them in the late game. Even fully powered Samus with a triple plasma cannon has to wait for a lowly wall slug to do it’s attack move so it opens up for a hit. 

There’s forty or so Metroids to hunt. Approximately, 35 of them are all the same three easy monsters you just have to dick around and find. It’s about 7 hours in before any excitement happens at all. God knows how long I played it for. Probably 15-20 hours. Only right at the end does any challenge come in. Then it’s in the shape of three fairly similar bosses. Absolute bullet-sponge enormous bastards that must be shot continually for about ten minutes while avoiding their devastating attacks. 

It does a couple of things pretty well. I liked when you executed the parry attacks right on the bosses which opens up an interactive cinematic to pump them full of missiles. There’s a Metroid hunting section right towards the end where you’ve got to stop them before they spot you or you’re fucked. That’s pretty good, and tense and interesting. Then that’s over quickly and carry on with the game again. 

All this makes it sound like I hate it. Which I don’t. And the second half is better than the first. But it’s very mediocre. The soundtrack doesn’t really come alive, the 3D graphics look worse than the pixel GBA games, the controls feel awkward. It doesn’t have seem to have a single idea of it’s own. But I don’t hate it. It’s ok. And it’s getting judged against a pretty high-standard. Firstly it’s a Metroid. And it’s a big ask to make something that compares favourably to Zero Mission et al. Secondly, it’s a metroidvania which is a genre gushing with top-quality games, and a competent job isn’t going to cut it. And thirdly, it’s recent which means I’m not overlooking flaws that I probably do overlook in older Metroids. It can’t be that bad because I’ll happily play the new one from the same team to see what they do with it. If they’re given a bit of scope to bring their own stuff they could do well with it. 

All these Metroids have their own control quirks, less than great parts, shit bosses but the design just isn’t here in this one. Metroid without the magic.
69%       

46. AM2R: Another Metroid 2 Remake (PC)
It’s better than Nintendo’s effort and they’ve captured a lot that’s good about Metroid. But its hobbyist development process shows through a bit more than I’d like. Quite a few glitches here and there. Bosses are laughably easy. At one point, you come face to face with a newly evolved mega Metroid. Oh no. Dramatic music kicks in. Big moment in the game. Fired some rockets at it and it was dead in seconds. In fact, the bigger they get the easier they are. I like what they’ve done with it though. The proper, stripped back, no frills, retro 2D gameplay. It feels like a product of the 16-bit era almost completely, rather than a callback to it. Like a long-lost Metroid that some Nintendo b-team had inexplicably made for the Amiga 1200 or something. It can’t quite fit into the firmament as a companion to the best Metroids, but there’s no shame in that. 
84%

47. Kunai (Switch)
Another fucking metroidvania, I didn’t even realise before I got into it, I thought it was linear for some reason. But no, another victim of trendy game design templates ruining what should have been a fun, short, 2D action platformer. It is essentially is that – fun, linear levels, but with drawn out sections traipsing around a not great map going following imprecise directions to the next bit. You reach the end of a bit, flick a switch and a door opens somewhere else. There’s not much puzzle-solving or anything. 

It was on for a much lower score before the final hour or two where it goes completely linear and lets the action shine. And those parts where it does that are pretty good. Your little robot man has the Scrooge McDuck pogo, guns, a bazooka and the titular Kunai – dual grappling hooks that, at their best, let you swing about like a modern 2D Spider-man game. Although most of the tunnels you’re ploughing through don’t seem like they’re optimized to take advantage of it. The enemies are pretty satisfying to kill and some of the sections are really quality. But the game should be done in half the time it takes. It’s getting a higher score than it deserves because I really like the bits it does well. 
87% 

48. Lonely Mountains: Downhill (PC - Gamepass)
If you’re going to only do one thing in a game, it’s got to be good. And this does its one thing ok. I like the vibe they’re going for and some of the riding is pretty good. But this Trials-in-3D system has limits. Mainly, poor visibility. You can’t tell the depth of eg a rock that you have to cut behind so you end up clipping it. Back to the checkpoint. 

For whatever reason, environmental immersion or something, the devs have trees and other assets pass over the foreground of the camera as you’re riding about, further obscuring the view. These might come at tight bends, crucial jumps, wherever. There isn’t too much of this but there’s enough. I wasn’t that frustrated when it happened because it’s far more casual than a run through a Trials course, but the double-edged sword of that is that it didn’t draw me in as much and I didn’t really care what time I got as long as I unlocked the next track. 

There’s many routes down the mountain you can take, but the mega shortcuts, the fun ones, down rock faces, the ones you want to do from the first course, when you first see them. They’re inaccessible until you get the one bike that can handle them. And the starter bike is so brittle that you’ve got no choice but to stick to the track and do the wiener shortcuts that shave a second off here and there. It felt like I was on that starter bike for way too long, burning up precious time and goodwill before the novelty wears off. 

The all-rounder bike, the Boar is good when you get it. And the go anywhere Geronimo bike. Finding the ridiculous shortcuts is quite good, and trial-and-erroring different runs. Those are the best bits, where you can fling yourself around over sheer drops, and not worry about the number of crashes you pick up. But I was bored of it well before I unlocked all the tracks and couldn’t be bothered to do the more demanding stuff on the later courses (which don’t vary as much as they need to). I only unlocked three of the bikes but the stats of the others suggest I wasn’t missing much. Good for a few hours.  
66% 

Ban request for monkey for the LMD score unless he joins our TT comp that I'll kick off again next week whilst wearing my badger ss LMD t-shirt.

Went with a 7 for Kunai.

Including a line about how it'd be well regarded if it had been an import only Saturn release, and now I feel seen.

Agree.

Don't do it Nick, it puts a massive dent in my 52 Games tally.  Last October was a write off.

107. Hard Corps Uprising - Xbox 360/Series S (3hrs40mins)

Bought years ago intending to play co-op with retroking.  We tried it once and it kicked our arse(s), scraped through level one on arcade mode and filed away for probably never.  Playing the MD Contra reminded me this existed, and here we are.  It turns out the Rising mode is doable without too much fuss.  I'd previously dismissed the XP grind as a nope, but it allows you to select any unlocked stage and the grind isn't really a problem.  If anything I'd say it gets easier as it goes along as you're not restricted to three lives/three hits for long. 

The game itself is superb.  It's an absolute beast on arcade mode and instadeaths aplenty on later bosses mean it'd be hovering above my skill ceiling I expect, so I'm glad the alternative mode takes the edge off.  It has everything you'd want from a run & gun really, plus a few extra abilities thrown in for good measure.  Excellent bosses, tight controls, sensible checkpointing and really nice visuals all add up to a [9] by my calculations.  One of the very best in its genre, I'm sure this was appreciated by many at the time but it deserved even more attention.  Brilliant stuff, my only complaints are the default pop-gun (which isn't even as bad as I initially thought, it just doesn't autofire quickly), a couple of irritating sections (stealth?  Come on now) and a particularly undesirable pick-up.

The first two stages are the toughest, I strongly recommend giving it another crack.

There's an exploit on stage 2 which helps with unlocks on Rising mode: make sure you're holding the charge/fire blast weapon for the encounter, crouch to the far right of the screen and keep charging a full blast to take out all the mechanical crocodile platforms in a row. If you keep doing it your combo meter keeps going. You'll occasionally have to charge & blast at a bomb dropping out the sky, but that's easy enough to juggle. Do it for 5 mins and you'll have squillions of points to spend on upgrades.

49. Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster’s Hidden Treasure (MD)
Doesn’t quite do the business. Very Sonic-influenced but doesn’t really do much with the character’s speed. Buster also takes an age to get going. And when you’ve got him up to full-pelt you’ll almost certainly come a cropper at the end of it. Either an enemy collision, missing your path in the level or tripping over one of the many comedy props lying around (rakes, cans, etc) which trigger a slapstick animation. It improves a bit towards the end when there’s more platform jumping than running. Overall, it leaves little impression apart from the superb job on Buster’s animations. Fine.
74%

50. World of Illusion (MD)
I think I booted this up a year or two ago straight after playing some old gem and was instantly put off by the slow movement and unsatisfying attack. But I gave it another chance (as Mickey Mouse in one-player, it apparently has different levels with Donald Duck, and a third set with two-players). And it’s alright. The movement is very treacly but the game never enters into areas where you need it to be better. It’s short, simple, easy, great pixel art and animations, not too twee, quite a haunting atmosphere to a lot of it. But the gameplay is dull.  
63%

51. Animaniacs (MD)
I’ve tried a lot of crappy licensed cartoon games from the 8 and 16-bit systems. Most Warner Bros stuff is terrible. Speedy Gonzalez, Daffy Duck, Animaniacs (SNES). All turned off in disgust somewhere around the middle of the first level. So congratulations to Megadrive Animaniacs for making it through. Fuck knows how because it belongs on that same scrap heap.

It looks quite good. And it’s sort of doing something interesting in that it’s a puzzle platformer instead of a regular platformer. It’s bad though. You switch between the three characters and each one has one special ability. You use that special ability to advance past a puzzle or get rid of a baddy. There’s a dog blocking the door. Make Dot blow it a kiss. There’s a bomb placed by a wall. Wacko has to hit the fuse with his mallet to set it off. There’s a bird blocking a platform. Make Dot blow it a kiss. etc There’s many very fiddly sections with Yakko pushing boxes about. It’s tedious but not terrible until about two-thirds in where you now have to start chaining these moves together in quick order. Blow Dracula a kiss to stun him(?) and then leg it over to a button to whack with a mallet to move the platform he’s on before he launches his next assault. Sounds ok. But you have to swap through the characters in sequence and most of the puzzles seemed primed to make you swap to the unnecessary character first. Wait for the game to let you switch again. And then switch again. And then do the thing. And now you’ve run out of time so you’ve got to switch back to the first character and repeat. There’s a lot of that and it makes it stupid and fiddly and crap.
Then there’s all the rest of it. Bad movement, dodgy collision detection, obscure fail conditions, nothing happening of interest. It’s well-animated, I’ll give it that.    
42%

Yeah I think the kid would probably quite like it.

28. Contra Hard Corps (MD) 1hr 30mins

Top notch Contra game.

Outside of some fiddly controls this is nigh on perfect. I really don't like toggling between locking your character in position to running and gunning, its another example of the lack of buttons on the MD pad making a great game feel that bit more archaic than it otherwise would.

At first it seems really tough compared to other Contra games, but this is only due to this games reliance on the slide manoeuvre. You really need to make it second nature to get anywhere in this.

That's pretty much where the negatives end though. There's four characters to choose from, all of which have their own unique weapons to collect. Speaking of which you're no longer limited to two, you can collect all the weapons and choose between any on the fly, only losing the currently selected one when you die.

The game also has a few branching paths, which add to the replayability.

The ending I got seemed a bit anticlimactic, so I did a bit of research and discovered the game has four different endings along with one bad one, and one secret one, making six endings in total.

Like Castlevania Bloodlines the graphics and sound are both outstanding, but what else could you expect from Konami back then, they really were a top developer.

I've yet to play a bad 2D Contra, and this has not let the series down one bit.

9/10

My list

Yeah but it toggles between the two, not a hold/release scheme like the other games, and even worse to change weapons you have to stop shooting. All this with two buttons on the six button configuration going unused.

It just slows things down too much in a game that really requires quick actions, it's why it feels so much harder than it should.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love it, but the controls feel slightly compromised compared to The Alien Wars and Shattered Soldier.