• Finished 9th November 2024
  3/10

Hard to assess this one as your enjoyment will be very dependent on do you enjoy these 5 games. I personally do not really. Even on lower difficulties they feel too hard and arcade for me. They seem like good ports. Fast performance and sounds. No complaints here. But in 1996 and 1997 for a full RRP can you really justify this? 5 games over 15 years old at the time feels very barebones. The controls don't quite work either for games like Robotron. They could have included remakes or even more titles surely. A game for the hardcore fan. Side note - Sinistar is terrifying and has the great voice samples intact. Will I ever play this again? Nah.

• Finished 18th November 2024
  8/10

Lovely graphics and absolutely stunning soundtrack. The first stage is one of the best pieces in the mega drive library. The rest also reaches solid highs. The lore and character designs for this game go far beyond the game itself which almost makes you wonder why they didn't just make an RPG or a Sega CD game with cutscenes. The variety of levels and backgrounds is truly impressive. Overall, this game is just such a vibe.

However, it's not without faults. The lightening attack never really feels powerful enough unless at full charge and waiting for the charge is tedious. The main issue is that quite a few levels throw too many enemies at you and while it ends up not really mattering, it does feel next to impossible to avoid most damage which as a player just doesn't feel great. Some levels are best dealt with by just keeping moving as enemies spawn over and over. Other levels are better played slow. The slower levels feel better overall. Bosses are largely not very interesting and the final bosses are where the game begins to fall apart.

Alisia has a jump recovery animation from larger heights that is trigger from a full height jump too. This causes issues on the final boss where you must jump quickly over his attacks. The solution is doing short hops but this is not very obvious or intuitive to the player. The higher jump will only trigger the crouching recovery every 4-5 jumps. It will occur when jumping from a higher level to lower. I can't help but feel it isn't intentional and more a bug. Manageable but causes a lot of frustration. A sour end to an overall great game that lacks total polish.

• Finished 19th November 2024
  3/10

Lovely big sprites with lots of animation. The End....Fine, this games terrible? Not enough? Ok urm... it is just not very fun. It's the usual 16bit era fighter syndrome. Horrible AI that will not chill or stop assaulting your hitbox space. The characters are cool and creative but the special moves all feel very lacklustre and lack any sort of big feedback that they are doing much. They inputs are also too loose and finnicky, often times I would end up doing a different move to the one I was actually trying to do. The moves feel so meagre I eventually just gave up and started spamming mid and high punches. The backgrounds are very hit and miss, sometimes they look rather good sometimes they look really bland.

The game also for some reason decides you have to fight 3 opponents twice for no reason I could figure out. Add the usually "it's probably better on 2 player" but on 1 player it's pretty naff. How this was put on the mini 2 makes my mind turn to clay. Honestly, I really wanted to like this one but it’s just so incredibly unfun and awkward to play.

• Finished 21st November 2024
  4/10

Initially I was enjoying this game. The first two stages while simple enough are pretty fun. Controls are slippy but it doesn't matter here as they never require too much precision. The game has varied gameplay and the graphics and animations are bright and interesting. The game just spirals down after this. Stage 3 is incredibly boring to replay (and you will). Full of annoying parts ranging from odd perspectives of overhead hazards, misleading backgrounds that look like platforms but aren't, horrible gun turrets that cause many cheap deaths due to no iframes. Stage 4 is awful and totally different gameplay in some poor asteroids shooting level that never feels good. The missile lock on takes about the same time as the ships firing patterns so you can't charge it up, the cursor is also terrible.

That’s the game in general. It mixes up beat em up, platformer, shooter and doesn’t get the controls and gameplay for any them right. The heroes move like they are on ice, hitboxes are dreadful and the jump is incredibly sluggish. Cut to level 5 and the difficulty ramps right up with instant death flame torches to dodge with deadly precision, horrible janky, tanky enemies that just charge into you until you button mash through. It took me most the playtime to get through level 5 then the game actually eases up for the finale. The game also has zero iframes until you die and many deaths are just from getting stuck between poundings or environmental hazards.

The other problem is the bosses, they are awful. Janky with no real patterns and just walk back and forth at random doing their different attacks. This is a real pain for the final boss as you have to jump over her to avoid damage but she may also just decide to move back as you do. Feels unfair but that's the game all over. Largely unfair.

• Finished 23rd November 2024
  4/10

Nice graphics and music for the time. Interesting characters and a novel take having all the other characters brainwashed to explain why you are fighting each other. This is a fighter that predates street fighter 2 and as such plays very differently to all the fighters that came after. The game relies on a grapple system where you grab your opponent by making contact with their hitbox and then pressing a button and the D-pad. Whoever gets it off first has their move performed. The problem is against the ai, it's always going to be the ai at higher levels and difficulty that wins. This is a fundamental flaw that ruins the game. You can also grapple the enemy by stunning them first and then they are vulnerable for a second to a grapple throw.

This is how you will be playing the game but gameplay ends up becoming monotonous and repetitive. Small jab> stun > jump in and throw. Throws are the only real way to do damage too so there is very little choice. The enemy also is able to stand in your hit box while you’re on the floor and immediately throw you again and again. It's very frustrating. All that said, I do think there is something interesting here and that against a human player it might just work better. For a pre SF2 fighter it's got some good things going for it but just not enough for me to ever really want to replay.

• Finished 27th November 2024
  4/10

Beat and saw all 3 endings. An odd sort of port of an older arcade game. The graphics are much smaller but the backgrounds are actually pretty good. The music is pleasant and overall it's a passable presentation. Given there's only 9 stages it feels a bit poor that 4 of them are just pallet swaps of previous opponents. The hit detection on this game feels also really wonky. Most of the fights are beaten by hitting and running or getting into a rhythm with the kick attack while walking into your enemy. It sort of works until it doesn't. It feels kinda random and mostly luck to if you are going to connect or get smacked instead. The game is very short and there's really very little to go back for here. It's a very simple fighting game just punch and kick and a variation on the attacks for short range. That's it. There's also a jump attack but it's so niche use you won't use it. It only connects when the enemy is also in the air which is uncommon.

The most interesting thing here is the betting system where you bet money earned on each round that you will win first try or your opponent will make you lose at least one life. The best ending is easily achieved by betting on the opponent and throwing the match. It's cute but also feels rather silly. Not the worst game I've played but also no desire to play it again. Short, light and passably functional.

• Finished 7th December 2024
  2/10

Is it the worst game on the mega drive? No. Is it good? Absolutely not. The difference between this and other "bad games" is that I can firmly believe a good game exists here, its just marred by appalling controls and collision detection on this port. The graphics are respectable for the genre and year. The backgrounds however are flat and have no animation at all or any parallax. The music is ok but starts to get progressively worse as the one single track goes on and on into the loop. The game does however have really nice voice samples that add alot of character and goofiness to the game. The level design is actually rather good too.

However, the gameplay is so unforgivably terrible it's impossible to recommend. Up and down control the angel you throw with his arm (which I believe was originally mouse control) this is too sluggish and terribly inaccurate and makes the game a chore to play. This could be remedied by not having endless respawning enemies, or using the directions to aim. Platforming is terrible and jumping on any stairs causes death. I found myself dying on one screen because my character was jumping and "touching" the stairs above which trigger his tumble death animation. This is unacceptable. Jumping on ropes is too specific and the end of your jump must land on it or you jump past. I could go on. In the end the game is clunky, unfun and broken. It's a shame because objectively I can feel the frame of a good game (albeit short at about 10 minutes in total if you don't mess up). Avoid.

• Finished 9th December 2024
  3/10

Better than it's reputation as one worst games ever but it's still pretty awful. The concept is quite cool actually. Using numerous different toys to attack other toys seems fun at first and the game has some very charming writing and presentation between levels. However as a fan of the movie it really doesn't capture much of the films essence at all, instead favoring to focus on the films final 20 minutes which are really the worst part of the movie.

Most of the games issues fall down to two large issues. The biggest issue with this game is the level of zoom. The character is too big and your field of vision is much too short which makes it very frustrating and difficult to deal with any enemies offscreen. You have to play the game slowly and cautiously scrolling the screen to avoid running into enemies who erratically run around or one's that shoot on sight with unavoidable "projectile" damage if you are in their line of fire. It really hurts any fun this game could have had. The 2nd problem is that nearly all weapons are a nightmare to aim so attacking anything becomes excruciating.

There are a few "great toys" and lot of terrible ones. The final level is also pretty wretched. Auto scrollers with easy death should be banned from all games as final acts especially when the punishment is having to play the slow paced tedious first 3 levels again. It's playable just about but its just not that fun.

• Finished 9th December 2024
  3/10

Possibly the worst shmup I've played. This game is a fever dream of bizarre choices. The graphics are passable and the opening two levels or feel ok. Then the game just gets really clunky. The power up system is awful. You have 4 sub-weapons but the game in constantly throwing power ups at you. (I mean constantly, sometimes I've had 7 on screen at once during a boss fight). They always spiral down in a fixed bath in the centre of the screen and are very hard to not pick up while playing. You will find yourself just changing subweapons constantly and no idea what you have equipped. One sub weapon is really overpowered and its annoying to keep losing it.

The powerups themselves are tied to RNG. Want a powerup for your primary shot? Maybe you will get 2 back to back or maybe you will spend half the level without any. The same goes for Speed. Such a weird and bad choice. The ship is also painfully slow on all modes except default easy. Dodging anything is awful without any speed and it takes quite a few to make it playable and you may not get any for quite some time.

Now the bizarre bad gameplay is out the way onto the music. This is quite possible the worst soundtrack I've ever heard that isn't just "bad instruments" the instruments are fine but the composition is just so utterly insane. It lulls you in with some sensible tracks then suddenly turns into this weird alien bad late night jazz when everyone is drunk and thinking they are rocking out. It's the little kid playing the demo button on keyboard and trying to join in. It's a marvel to behold. I have never laughed so much at music since Fantasia. This is the Fantasia of shmups except it sort of isn't broken it's just so poorly thought out. There are also some truly cursed boss designs that will stay with me forever. Great for a giggle, rubbish otherwise.

• Finished 11th December 2024
  5/10

Fairly well-made game with many bad design choices. First the zoom is a little too close but it’s manageable. The "combat" is where it fails. 8 characters but most of are very unpowered. The one with the homing missiles is clearly the best and totally unbalanced. You can shoot forwards or backwards if the car is in your proximity. Whereas mines are only backwards and the shotgun character can only shoot in a straight line forward. The mine type weapons that are niche use and are most likely going to miss. The speed boosts feels so brief and useless. Just pick the homing missiles.

Now onto difficulty. This game is tough! A terrible decision was made where any car bumping another from behind will stop the car and drive over them getting a speed bump in the process. Sounds ok? It is not. More often you will find yourself shot at or bombed in the first 10 seconds of a race to then be run over by the other 4 cars over and over unable to move. Many tracks have very thin lanes so this will happen often, usually on a corner as you leap from 1st to 6th in seconds and are now so far behind it's over. Catching up with the AI is often impossible once they get too far away. You can’t attack (even with homing) and trying to catch up with driving alone is usually futile. It's very common for the winning car to have a 10-12 second gap lead from you and the cars behind you.

Most races are decided in the 1st lap and then just holding position by throwing missiles back to keep up front. Even more frustrating you have no continues and if you do not place at least 3rd, you’re done--Game Over. Beating all 24 tracks with no mistakes when things can snowball so easily at the start of a race is utterly hairpulling at times. You're reward for finishing them all? Nothing. Same high score screen as gameover -- lazy! That said, the soundtrack is fantastic, the graphics are pleasant and perhaps in 2 player mode without the pressure of trying to actually beat solo this could be fun. Quite a few tracks are good fun but the horrible windy, thin, harbour tracks kill the game for me and the snow courses where you always seem to be slower than everyone else. The menus are also terribly laggy. Competent, functional game marred by bad design choice after bad design choice. A shame!

• Finished 13th December 2024
  5/10

*It's Wheel of Fortune. The game itself is fun enough but the presentation here is pretty dire. Contestants look hideous, colours are very muted, no music except at the beginning. The UI is clunky and unnecessarily convoluted. The D-Pad moves a cursor around the screen when a cursor is not needed at all. This could have been fixed very easily by having a menu pop up to choose action then a new menu after to choose letters. *

The game also requires you to turn off controller 2 in options manually or you will find yourself stuck on round 2 and unable to use controller 1 to initiate the next game. Just poor playtesting and the game feels rushed (the credits even admit to sleepless nights to getting this game finished). There is also a time limit for taking actions and even trying to "solve" it's quite tight especially if you're solving a puzzle when there are a lot of letters to input. The computer turns drag on and the game could do with running at a faster pace. A very lackluster incarnation of fun game. Playable but I'm sure there better options. Jeopardy is also a much better option by Gametek.

• Finished 22nd March 2025
  5/10

Surprisingly decent graphics (although it is a later game), music is also pretty pleasant. The game however is painfully mediocre and has some interesting ideas that are executed poorly. Each level has largely two enemy types. Walking and shoots projectile. Standing and shoots projectile. All dealt with in the same way. Stage 3 and 5 even reuse the same enemies from stage 1. It's very lazy.

Bosses are interesting and quite fun to figure out but ultimately boring to repeat. The most interesting idea in this game is changing back into Bruce to fit through smaller gaps, but the opportunities to do so are very limited unless you deliberately lose your health and I think it should have been a bigger part of the game. It's really such a nothing game, nothing really good, nothing utterly awful. Skip.

• Finished 27th March 2025
  7/10

Despite liking the series I've never liked this. Wondered if I would mellow as an adult. Nope. The earlier stages are reasonable; however, it soon sours from stage 8. Janky hitboxes, unfair level design and constant instant or rapid death, I don't know where to begin. You can't pick up level items while using the key items—rendering them largely useless (especially the breathing helmet later). I'm still unsure what the dynamite was even for. The invincibility hat is the most important item in the game and almost essential but you have to put it down to pick up level items. The screens are usually chaotic, enemies fly in from nowhere and missiles go across the screen exploding and causing instant death. Each level has several item layouts and its RNG which you’ll get. Some can be as easy with enough key items on the first screen, some much more difficult layout. It's just tedious and frustrating to get the bad RNG.

The final levels has enemies that just spawn in and sit on the entrances to the water, you have practically no choice but to jump in and just take damage and hope you live. To make matters worse, the final stage does not let you use any continues without any warning or explanation. Having the lives cap at 4 also means it's not if you die, it's where you die, that matters. Some levels have many lives and some have very few. Going past score live thresholds will make the final level hard. I deliberately wasted a continue on the 2nd to last level to get my full lives back and reset the score counter. Unbelievable to have to resort to this strategy. Cheap difficulty and frustrating game. A shame as its quite attractive and has pleasant although eventually annoying music. Fun for 15 mins, miserable to finish

• Finished 1st April 2025
  8/10

[Max rank and all medals achieved.] Well made impressive conversion of a PC flight simulator on mega drive technology. The frame rate is very slow but you soon get used to it and begin to get immersed as you flight around shooting bases and bringing down planes with missiles. Amazing soundtrack that accompanies you throughout and really adds to the experience. In the context of 1993 this is a really impressive 3D experience on a console not known for this. However there are a few issues that hold it back. The choice to not let you take off on lower difficulties makes zero sense as it isn't difficult. Instead they opt to thrust you into the air surrounded by enemies (arguably harder).

The targetting system also is a bit tricky as it really struggles to lock onto targets close by unless you have them in your sights, instead favouring to lock onto to targets 50km away. It also priorities the mission target and will auto change lock on and even your weapons when you get nearby. I've missed many a shot due to the target changing at the last moment to the mission target. There is no need to automate this, it is always annoying and never useful. Making U-turns is also rather tricky, trying to line up a target to shot when you've missed is very tedious. Finally the point system feels unbalanced, to get the highest medal you need 12000 points and on the lowest difficulty this is really slow and tedious as enemies are worth much less. That said, it was a good game and my first flight sim on the console. The bar is set very high already. The game is such a vibe especially with the music.

• Finished 4th April 2025
  9/10

Polished presentation for 1990 and an outstanding soundtrack. (Really the soundtrack is top tier). A really interesting and unique gameplay loop that really could have become a franchise or revisited later. Honestly, I want more. A bigger longer game with a save system. I've no idea why this remained NA only nor why it's Japanese release was cancelled. I think this would have gone down well back home along the likes of games like Mega Bomberman etc. A few levels were a little bit tricky and one had a solution which was not explained in the manual and kinda cheap but overall I had a lovely time and would definitely replay. Big recommend if you want something different and feel like you've played all the famous classics. Great arcade type fun.

• Finished 8th April 2025
  4/10

At first, I really wanted to like this game as you slowly explore your surroundings and work out how to play. There is some fantastic world design and atmosphere here. The music is great, the parallax on the first screen still looks great in 1991, but the gameplay is just too rough. The openness of the game falls away revealing a strictly linear game. Hit collision is terrible, the punch attack is too short and unforgiving. Enemies look great with so many sprites but under the hood the entire game is essentially just grotesque enemy rectangles and squares flying in fast from the left or right of the screen or in an arch. It is tiresome and always cheap. Every few steps something will fly in your face, memorisation is the key here.

However, the first 40% of the game can be face rolled as you learn where health pickups are. I had to restart the game so many times I stopped engaging with it eventually and just tanking damage up to the point where health mattered. The more time I spent replaying this game the less I liked it. A huge shame where I think the desire to make something extremely difficulty has had the adverse effect of totally ruining the game. Every 3 hours the game went down another point mentally. The later bosses have bs hit boxes that don’t register if scrolled off screen (but you need to, to dodge). The play expectation is just ridiculous.

The game sorely needed a halfway checkpoint or an extra potion near the end. The game had a few small cutscene descriptions that worked at the opening but then never happened again. You don’t even get an ending. I just don’t understand the thought process here. There's framework for something really nice here but it just needs so much renovating to be passable as a good game. Watch a let’s play and move on.

• Shadow of the Beast: Mashou no Okite (Japanese Version)
  Finished 9th April 2025
  4/10

I had heard this was a better/easier version of the original. I don't exactly agree. It is better in places and worse in others. Every enemy has been changed with new colours or blood added, but some of the designs seem to have lost their feel with the world. The green leafy looking monster that falls out the tree is not orange which loses the point of its camouflage and even the protagonist looks unnecessarily different. The game still feels a touch too fast versus the PAL version to play even if the music is now optimised.

They added an extra sorely needed potion near the end but also seemed to remove the potions respawning so I’m not sure if the trade of is worth it. Bosses are vastly improved as you seem to be able to shoot faster and hit twice the punch attack is also rapid now and much more spammable. TL;DR It's still just overall a bit crap tbh. But hey, they added an ending in now and a unique cool title screen track?

• Finished 10th April 2025
  6/10

Ball Jacks has a really cool concept, rules and design. Colourful game art and some funky music. However, it’s yet another one of those competitive games that just doesn’t feel very fun against the AI. The tricky techniques are very hard to do and the ai as the game goes on becomes incredibly fast causing much frustration. Fortunately, the game infinite continues or I would probably still be playing to this day. The best way to beat most battles is stun and destroy the opponent and then get 4 balls while they are repairing.

However, there are 2 fights where the opponent is invincible, the 2nd of which is in the harder galaxy cup. This fight is insufferable and the hardest in the entire game. It just feels unfair that a very core mechanic is unusable but the ai can still use it against you. The 0.1 second timer on his health is the only saving grace but it’s very hard none the less. The ai on many fights move exceedingly fast and frantically, and can cut and incept your balls with the precision on a computer can have. When you do get through there was a cool twist in the end. I feel this game is much much more fun versus a friend but as a solo experience it would have been much better if it removed the 2 or 3 rounds that felt very overtuned. The ending music tracks are a total vibe though, give them a listen.

• Finished 12th April 2025
  8/10

A very realised action platformer with a lot of nice backstory and lore in the manual and cutscenes. I really enjoyed the world building here and it could have easily been an anime OVA. The pixel art is gorgeous although sometimes some very questionable extremely blown-up pixels are used. Anett animates really well, lots of small details like turning animations and head movements. The sound design’s a mixed affair. Music is really great but the SFX are rather noisy and sometimes annoying. The gameplay starts off well with tight controls and an interesting magic system. Level design is fun and really creative at first and bosses often have some interesting gimmick to figure out. However, after stage 5 the game just really starts to fall apart as it goes on. 6 is short with obnoxious conveyor belts and a very boring boss, stage 7 is a short screen of easy enemies and then the easiest boss in the entire game.

The final stage is an absolute atrocity with endlessly spawning annoying bats that fly into your hitbox and hare very hard to out pace or hit back. Even using the auto targeting magic is frustrating as it takes a long time to charge up. Honestly the level is garbage and it’s a shame as it has interesting design but then fill with these stupid bats. The final boss is also very messy too. I’m not a fan of unavoidable damage and this game is full of nigh impossible situations. The final 1/3 of the game just feels very lazy and rushed which is a huge shame because it was really feeling like something special until then. As the credits rolled I kinda felt “wow was that really it? We’re going to end on this lownote?” El Viento is a game that starts out strong reaches some great mid game heights then just fizzles away into a dreadful climax. It’s absolutely worth playing but brace yourself.

• Finished 13th April 2025
  1/10

Shocking game I’m convinced was conceived just to use the pun Dali Llama. I had heard it had a reputation but went in open minded. The manual had a nice set up with world building and interesting biographies. Things looked promising. The games menus and presentation upon booting up the game are also pleasant and things are looking good. The gameplay graphics are a mixed bag. Gorgeous as a still image but not really very nicely animated. Backgrounds range from innovative (such as the sliding doors stage) to just ugly. Mostly due to lack of decent shading given them this “drawn in ms paint” vibe (albeit professionally drawn in paint.)

Now the gameplay. It’s deplorable. The computer ai is utterly merciless and many fights it will just stun lock you into the wall and spam the same special move over and over leaving your defenseseless. Even if you block it knocks you over. It’s like fighting your kid cousin who just button mashes and drives you insane. The ai makes no sense in its actions, sometimes it just stands there doing nothing hitting the air and backing off, other times it goes all out smashing you into the wall.

To make matters worse, you don’t even have any of your special moves as the game has a system where you “learn” moves after winning some matches. The Dali Llama shows you the move inputs but even then, they are the move inputs for 3-button despite the game supporting 6-button, good luck figuring out how to pull some of them off. Some moves requiring holding the button down (unclear in the demo) others, I never figured out. None of this matters anyway as spamming a simple jump kick and kick again combo into the corner tends to shut up 90% of the games AI.

If you want to use moves next time you play, you need to put in a password for that character. It’s all very confusing and a baffling design choice. Damage values make no sense, some characters seem to hit much harder than others but some characters maybe have a higher defence? Who knows? Who cares? Not me. On my road to beating every Mega Drive game release, people ask me are sports games the worst things you have to play? No. It's these godawful broken fighting games with horrific ai and miserable 1 player experiences.

• Finished 17th April 2025
  5/10

Pretty ugly presentation and sound for 1991. I can't help but compare it to 1989's Tommy La Sorda which looks on par in graphics if not more attractive. The music is also much better too. In fact, the “music” was so bad I actually muted it (which says a lot, as I put up with almost anything).

Gameplay is passable but ultimately not the best. The fielding feels awkward with not enough time to react to where the ball will land. The X is useful but the camera takes too long to scroll so you get very little reaction time when it goes far out. I’m also not a fan of you controlling all fielders simultaneously with the D-pad. If the first line misses the ball the 2nd fielder behind will usually end up in the wrong place now because they moved together. There needs to be some sort of ai assistance or only taking control when they are relevant to the action.

Batting feels ok but it’s feels harder to be tactical or set up grandslams as there is no easy to read in game indication of running speed. Also, if you press and hold the C button first before the Dpad input players won’t run back. You have to press the Dpad first. It sounds like a nitpick but I think it's natural to just hold down B and mash the Dpad as you send each one back. It’s very clunky to do it the other way around and I’m not sure why they would require a sequence as the button doesn’t do anything else during batter running anyway. This applies to fielding and even moving runners along. It just creates this laggy feeling and you get a lot of unfair outs due to players not moving when you meant them to.

Pitchers also lack a fatigue stat which means your only way to guess is that their curveballs aren’t curving so well or their pitch speed decreases. However, unless the computer misses the ball, you can’t see the pitch speed. This is not very helpful.

Pitching is pretty busted as the computer throws some really nasty balls that curve away at the last moment. This would be fine in 2 player but as a human but I’m not sure how you are supposed to react to this. It’s ok though, you can also do this to the computer. In fact, if you just stand on the opposite edge of the batter and pitch all the way out the computer will swing and miss the “ball” pitch every single time, until the pitcher gets fatigue and then just swap pitchers. I ended up beating most of the game this way. A bit ridiculous that the ai could be broken so badly this way. Not an awful game but just very mediocre. I know the series improves from here so probably best to skip this one with better options available to you.

• Finished 19th April 2025
  7/10

Improvements all around over R.B.I Baseball 3. Better graphics, in fact this time around the animation is really nice, with a sort of rotoscope look that doesn’t trigger uncanny valley. The sound is also improved but it’s still just annoying organ baseball music. I muted it after one game but at least it sounds better. There are also some strange animation movies you can have visible on screen while you play which at first seem fun but are largely repetitive and weird. If you enjoy a fake coach making fake signals on loop then sure go for it. I also found it annoying from a gameplay view that the pitcher does these fake out nods and stuff as your trying to move him. Realistic perhaps but interrupts player control and means nothing at all.

Pitching has the same issues from before, no fatigue stat so no way to know when your pitcher is tired except guess work from speed and performance. You can’t break the ai by always pitching wide and curved out this time, however if you stand on the very edge of the square and pitch curved out it will break the batting ai just as it did before. I can’t believe two games have this easy to exploit ai, but I’ll take it.

The fielding is very zoomed which makes it a little hard to see what’s going on. You can’t react fast to the ball as the screen change to the appropriate fielder gives you next to no reaction time because of the zoom. Fortunately, the fielding is greatly assisted by AI but that leaves you feeling like its all very automated. It’s usually better not to touch anything and let the computer take over and just correct as needed but this kinda removes some of the fun and excitement other baseball games have had with fielding.

Batting is still satisfying and you will easily hit it a lot. However, like the previous game, with the lack of visible speed stats I found myself not really playing tactically or setting up grandslams. Running brings my main criticism from the previous game back. If you press and hold the C button first followed by Dpad the players won’t run back to the previous base. You have to press the Dpad direction button first. It sounds like a nitpick but I think its natural to just hold down B and mash the Dpad as you send each one back. It’s very clunky to do it the other way around and I’m not sure why they would require a sequence as the button doesn’t do anything else during batter running anyway. This applies to fielding and even moving runners along. It just creates this laggy feeling and you get a lot of unfair outs due to players not moving when you meant them to.

Finally, just like RBI 3, there is no ending. You win a series and just no password and return to the title screen. This is so lazy and hugely disappointing, no excuses. Overall, this is a competent baseball game that hugely improves on the previous game. There's a lot to enjoy, but it just lacks proper polish.

• Finished April 21st 2025
  5/10

Zoop is a rather interesting and unique idea for a puzzle game and at first, it’s rather fun. Unfortunately, it soon becomes much too hardcore and difficult all too quickly. You can choose to start between level 1-9 but the difficult spikes after level 5 with stages 8 and 9 feeling like puzzle pro level as the speed gets very fast. This isn’t a bad thing on its own but the problem is there is very little content on offer here otherwise. It just feels very poorly balanced around a casual gameplay experience.

I spent 3 hours with the game finally managing to bet level 9 at which point the game just continues with no new backgrounds. I’m not sure what re-playablity this has as even in endless mode the difficulty is so rough you will struggle to reach beyond level 9 anyway. I would have liked a more gradual difficulty curve or where the speed slows down between levels like games like columns or PuyoPuyo do. A sort of puzzle mode or flash columns type mode would also be a welcome addition. The concept here is good but there’s just no substance.

The bigger issue is also how powerups and RNG appear to work. For some reason powerups seem to be entirely RNG with some really bad waves of poor RNG. I found resetting the game would give you the best RNG and continuous play would sometimes result in playing or 30 minutes without a single power up to then reset and get 4 in the first 10 seconds of a level. This just feels like atrocious play optimisation and can’t be the real intent. Powerups are so useful too that if your stuck in a dry spell of RNG it’s going to make the game significantly harder.

You also get points for chaining more colours together but honestly given that the speed is so fast and your objective is to remove a fixed number, it seems not in your best interests to bother with this mechanic and just to destroy anything you can. Double numbers for chaining would have been a better idea. A flawed game and I can just see so many ways to have improved it. Fun for 20 minutes but then left with little desire to replay. The music is great though and worth adding to a playlist.

• Finished April 25th 2025
  1/10

Pro Moves Soccer is the worst football game I have ever played. From the rather hideous art design to the horrifying controls, nothing works. On paper there are good ideas here. The double tap to increase a speed boost is cool but broken and begging to be used constantly (I hope your aging thumbs are ok). The edit team feature is really neat and the idea of gradually getting money to buy better players and clawing up the ranks is cool. However, you have to play as a backyard club football group against the likes of Brazil, Germany, Argentina, etc. There are no small teams and every opponent has vastly superior stats to you.

Winning nets you $2000, drawing only $1000 and winning the small cup $30,000. Most players after the first starting basics costs over 90,000 each so this soon becomes very grindy an tedious. Placing 2nd somehow in the world cup netted me $100,000 which was rather nice. My advice? Just use terrible cheap players and buy 2 or 3 very expensive offensive shooters. You can beat this game with some technique and one solid player.

The ball control on this game is awful, the players run around like they are on ice. I’ve seen on magazine review joke did they just recycle an NHL Hockey engine and boy can I believe it. Every player has momentum and this odd turning animation and they slide around with horrible inertia. Sliding tackling is a 50/50 flip to if you will get called out on a foul, and most tackling by collision either misses or doesn’t work (maybe because of low stats?) All goal kicks, throw ins etc seem to always result in the CPU getting the ball. The CPU will foul you constantly which can be useful for getting some penalties in (if the ref can be bothered to call them).

The worst part however is shooting. I spent the first 9 hours or so of the game unable to figure out how to ever make a shot. The players seem to have no skill at all including the CPU (who often fluffs shots completely too) I’ve had moments I’ve ran in a straight line and just pressed shoot to have the ball go flying off a hard diagonal completely missing the goal posts, to no logic I could ever understand. The goal keeper can save just about any ball unless he is quite literally nowhere near it. His ability to save balls that have even travelled behind him is incredible. Some awful communication of graphics and hitboxes here.

If you must play this game, first you disgust me, but fine...here is how. Run up to the goal with your fastest expensive shooter, make two anti-clockwise circles in front of the goal then boot it diagonally. This will usually make him follow you out of the goal leaving it open and with a bit of luck your player will kick it. This game is toss. I’ve seen it all from the opposition just falling over for no reason and sliding down the pitch erratically, to the random ref who seems to very often ignore penalties completely.

In fact, the penalty system is probably the best part of this game and possibly my favourite penalty system in any soccer game I’ve played (crazy right?). Most football games feel like a fools errand against an input reading ai. However here, you move the cursor around and kick when ready, but the ability to spin the cursor around erratically will stop most cheating ai’s and makes it actually feel fair.

While some people commented at least the music is good on the menus, (coming from the composer of popular tracks as Sub-Terrania and Batman & Robin), personally I thought it was noisy and completely off tonally, It generally just annoyed me when it suddenly started blasting for brief periods between matches or during team editing.

Avoid, burn, burn all who have touched it, including me.

• Finished April 29th 2025
  6/10

A pretty shallow fighter with an interesting gimmick. Deadly Moves has you fighting several fighting masters around the world in order to grow your own stats and take on the final boss. You can replay fights and grind them out and most fights are not too difficult and each sort of has fairly easy exploit or way to punish you can figure out. I would have preferred if each fighter had a particular stat it was useful for though as I found myself just grinding the same two fighters mostly because they had the ones I needed. I’m also not sure why the game has credits because having a password totally nullifies the point of this.

Graphics are rather pleasant but the animation frames are terrible. Choppy, nasty and rather inexcusable. The backgrounds are actually quite decent and and one or two even have a cool 3Desque effect being pulled off with parallax that looks cool. However, I can’t help but feel maybe they should have focused on performance of gameplay and not on the backgrounds. The character designs are very uninspired and largely feel like shameless street fighter rip offs, Vega type is here, Chun-li, Ryu, and Blanka/Dalsim, that also goes to the music with parts sounding like budget reworkings of Ryu’s theme.

The fighting is also really shallow and uninspired. You have very few moves. Punch, Kick, Throw, and then 2 special moves the fireball and some upward thrusting hilariously badly animated attack. That’s all folks…unless you count crouching or jumping variations of punch and kick. No combos, no high low attacks…zip!

Deadly moves seems to have a bit of a reputation for being not very good and I can definitely see why, however it’s probably the most fun and least frustrating time I’ve spent playing a 1 player fighter game so far on the Mega Drive as most fighters usually have horribly nasty ai. Yes, it’s shallow yes it has no replay value, but I just appreciated it not having utterly abysmal input reading AI. It’s all just a bit lazy and yet it’s also very inoffensive, but I think you would get very bored fast with it especially on 2 player where the genre is supposed to shine. Play it once for 10 mins, have a giggle then go do a crossword for further thrills. OLE!

• Finished May 3rd 2025
  1/10

Where to begin with this mess of a football game. Ok here goes. ECS has pleasant enough graphics and mostly decent music (although it just doesn’t really work for me personally but it’s not bad at all) At first it seems ok, just a touch slow but the more you play the more you realise how bad it is. The dribbling is infuriating, as you try to move around the ball will often just fly off your player for no reason. Want to turn 180? You basically can’t with any haste. Even picking up the ball can be a chore or tackling a player as it wants pixel precision on the balls hit box. Interesting they seemed to have been aware of this issue as it’s fixed on the NA and JP releases of World Trophy Soccer and J.League Champion Soccer.

Passing is slow and clunky as the ball often bounces back off the recipient and into the CPU. Trying to get a pass off before you get tackled is very difficulty as it feels like there is always some delay. Shooting mostly goes where you want it to but getting past the defence is tricky. Actually, the easiest way to score is to do a lob from the centre line and then head it in after in a straight line. Sometimes you can even just shoot from far away and it will slowly roll in as the goal keepers fumble about.

That brings me on to the goal keepers--they are dreadful. You can score from the centre sometimes as the ball bounces over them. You’re goal keeper is equally trash and lets in goal after goal and there is nothing you can do about it. The CPU does the same type of goal time after time. Watch in horror as it walks up, passes to another CPU, causing your goalkeeper to dive out of the net for no reason, and shoots into a totally open net. You stand there frustrated unable to prevent this. The CPU can and will also shoot and score within 2 seconds flat from kick off. Sometimes scoring immediately after just scoring.

Controlling your players is a nightmare, you have two choices, automatic changing to the person closest to the ball which often isn’t who you want to be. Trying to tackle the CPU as they move between several of your players becomes maddening as your player control changes several times between different players and you run the wrong way. It is a terrible design decision. You can turn this off, but the problem is your non-controlled team members have no ai at all. Nope, none. They just move around the pitch pretending to look busy moving sort of near the ball. They will never tackle, they will never collect the ball, in fact they will move away if it gets too close unless you take control of them. This makes defending exhausting and near impossible as you are essentially just 1 man. Chasing after the CPU to tackle and hoping your team mates will cut them off? Nope. Want to change to that person to cut them off? You can’t because they are not “person closest to the ball”. It’s just bad game design.

Speaking of bad choices, the penalty system is embarrassing. You can control the shooter apparently with the dpad but he seems to kick anywhere he feels like. On defence as the manual states: “you cannot control the goalkeeper.” The mind boggles. Sit back and hope RNG falls in your favour then I guess? Penalties in these games are kinda luck based at best anyway but this is a new level of silly.

After just finishing Pro Moves Soccer I didn’t think there could be anything worse. Legends say that somebody is still holding European Club Soccer’s drink to this day.

• Finished May 3rd 2025
  8/10

Evander Holyfield boxing is a very solid game with fantastic presentation, great music and some of the best graphics from 1992. Honestly just the title splash screen of Evander is stunningly detailed. The game just feels polished in terms of presentation in every screen. In game the characters sprites are huge and detailed and the ring has this really impressive 3-D effect as you move around from corner to corner. The crowd behind you are all nicely animated and gradually increase as you climb to higher ranks.

The controls work well with one button controlling your left arm, one for your right, and one to block. A combination of the two executes uppercuts. It feels like there’s a lot of moves and variation of patterns to work with to break through the AI is combos. At first, it feels like there’s a lot of depth but as you play more you realise that most of the AI can be broken with a simple one-two lower to upper combo. This is easily spammable with a high-speed stat knocking them into the side of the ring where they’re unable to break free. To be honest, this was a relief as some of the AI can be incredibly aggressive and fast and I was struggling to deal with them without getting severe pain in my hands.

The main issue I had with the game is the time each takes, as every round is roughly 3 minutes of real time, this means a single fight can be over 20 minutes long. This is very exhausting as you’re trying to mash buttons with your fingers. It’s tiring even if you’re taking a more cautious defensive approach as fights often go on to 5,6,7+ rounds. Some even potentially as much as 12.

Later on, the AI is very aggressive and fast and trying to knock any of them out can be very difficult especially when they have high stamina stats and in some fights even if you do knock them out, they will get up sometimes as many as 4 or 5 times. When they do get up they usually switch to a harder aggressive attack for the remainder of that round. This just makes fights drag and personally I would’ve preferred the experience to be more condensed with stamina not regenerating so aggressively and the damage done to the head or the torso to be more permanent instead of recharging in between rounds. This is probably a game better played in short bursts.

That said, career mode was really fun. It’s fun to increase your stats inbetween each match. Although I think another problem here is that the stats don’t seem to really indicate the difficulty of an upcoming fight choice. An opponent may have high stats, but that AI is actually rather easy. For example, Evander Holyfield himself was actually easier than some of the lower-level opponents. The speed stat is often the one to watch out for combined with a nasty ai profile.

Making your own character and rising to the top is fun and with the solid gameplay on offer here I can imagine 2 player fights are a real treat with a friend. A less aggressive human player would be really fun to try to guess each other’s moves and block. I recommend but be sure to take breaks or your hands will be screaming.

• Finished May 3rd 2025
  5/10

NBA showdown is the final entry in the playoff series before it transformed into NBA live and for a game made in 1994 I expect the graphics to be much better. In most aspects the game just feels like either a step down or sideways from previous entries. The framerate seems choppy and the choice of colours is very questionable. Skin tones have this really ugly pink and the purples are all very harsh, it looks like a late 80s DOS game colour scheme. It just doesn’t look good maybe worse than the original Lakers Vs Celtics in 1990.

The entire game just feels off and it’s kind of hard to put your finger on why. It’s essentially the same game as before but with the lack large improvements it just feels like the game is becoming rather dated and deteriorating. I also found it much harder to do slamdunks this time around than in previous games and just my general sense of enjoyment was lower. Even on the default easy difficulty it felt tougher to keep up with the CPU. In the previous titles they usually force you to play on a harder difficulty for tournament mode but it still felt ok.

It’s not all terrible though. The menus are well presented. The music is really good outside of gameplay and the commentator screens add a bit of fun to the experience and I liked the addition of players chaining points to be “on fire” and have a higher %. The game speed has also been increased but this kinda causes it to be a bit more hectic than the slower paced previous entries but I'm not sure i can fault the game for that. But, ultimately that’s about all it adds unless battery backups excite you. It’s just a very forgettable game and I’m struggling to find much else to say about it. Disappointing end to the Playoffs series that feels like a reductive entry compared to previous games. I’m not sure it’s worth the upgrade and feels like a hangover until the later released NBA live 95.

• Finished May 4th 2025
  6/10

The first in the EA FIFA football series and it still feels rough around the edges with a long way to go. The presentation is nice and the music is good, but it feels like a faster paced gameplay of football has been somewhat compromised for better graphics and an isometric view.

The ball physics feel good, but I had issues with the passing system. Rather than just tapping the button to pass, you have to hold and then release the button. To me this feels like it takes too long. One way to get around is to hold in advance as you receive the ball and release later to pass. This felt a bit awkward to me and if you want to change your mind and do a shot instead you can’t because you’ve already committed to pass. I’m not sure how much of this is my inability to play the game well but I feel like if I’m still struggling a few hours later even if there is a skill gap then it should be more user friendly for such a fundamental part of the game. I found passing in other games such as J.League series perfectly fine.

I’m also not keen on the choice to have the change player button also double up as a steal button. A lot of the time I’m pressing to try and steal the ball but end up changing to a different character far away. The game also seems to make some very bizarre choices often choosing someone not even in view on screen when the ball is travelling fast. The sliding tackle felt sluggish to come out so I stopped bothering with it. I really enjoyed the shove move, which you can’t realistically use unless you have fouls turned off, but it’s really funny to use as you shove players around.

Shooting actually feels rather good although I found it pretty difficult to actually get close to the goal. I liked the ability to curve ball in the air. A slight nitpick but there is also no ingame clock while you are playing that I could see which can be frustrating when you've no idea how much time is left if you're desperately trying to tie a game.

Overall, it’s okay, and to be honest I’m not really a fan of the genre anyway, but between the change character buttons and the slow clunky graphics, everything just feels a little bit chaotic and the passing just doesn’t feel there yet. The game feels very on par with the J. League early entries, although the goalkeeping and sound quality is much better here. I wish there was a combination of the two games with J. League, passing system and FIFA’s overall presentation. Room for improvement but trying hard.

• Finished May 4th 2025
  8/10

At first Jammit appears to be a rather throwaway janky game, but after a while it actually becomes rather fun. The gameplay is really simple, but the different challenges in each level add a lot of variety to the mix as you play through each level trying to get more points with different criteria and rules. The challenges are designed in many ways to actually force you to learn how to play the game. At first. I was finding it very difficult to slam dunk, to the point I was dismissing it as broken, but once one challenge forced dunks only, I got better at it and realised I just needed better timing.

I really enjoyed stages where you can only score by make shots from moving X marker. I thought it would be frustrating but in actuality the game is incredibly forgiving and the x has a much larger hitbox than you would think. This is a great choice and it makes the game feel exhilarating rather than obnoxious and compensates from the clunky controls.

However, not all the challenges are fun. The poison challenge has you trying to get 21 points but avoiding a specific number or you will lose -10. This is fine but on the penultimate stage it’s gets combined with a mechanic where every shot worth two points results in three forced free-throw shot attempts worth one point each, and this will usually force you into landing on the poison numbers 13 or 20. Even if you want to deliberately miss a shot you can’t with ease as the computer will force a throw eventually and often score for you. I found it very difficult to miss here. it’s a frustrating and unnecessary challenge that made the game track on an extra hour. One way to get around this is by shooting a three-point throw, which is probably what the game intended but I found the success rate, very low and very frustrating.

Making matters worse is this level has two opponents instead of the regular one. The game engine cannot handle this and the frame rate tanks for the entire stage. It’s miserable and I’ve no idea what possessed them to include such a terrible level that struggles to even run. The game returns to regular fun in the final level, but unfortunately this really soured my experience on the game as a whole to the point I was tempted to knock off a point.

The betting system supposedly determines difficulty but I never noticed much difference and went all in to avoid having to do the same challenge several times to drain all their funds. It just felt redundant. It would be much better off just playing a single match and winning and having a difficulty setting in the options. The password system negates the need to win money back anyway as if you lose you can just restart. I’m not sure why you would want to continue on trying to win back thousands of dollars when you could just reload.

The music isn’t necessarily memorable, but it works in the context of the game What really shines through are all the voice samples which had tons of personality to the game and I had me and my twitch chat laughing at all the silly trash talk. Jammit is the Mortal Kombat of basketball games--it’s stylish, it’s stupid, it’s over the top and memorable, but the core gameplay is low key not actually that good. That said, if you’re having a good time, then who cares right? Ooowee!

• Finished May 5th 2025
  7/10

FIFA 95 is a step up in all aspects from FIFA International soccer. The game speed has increased and the game flows much better without compromising any of the graphics. The sound design is really good and the crowd wearing team colours and chanting difference sounds depending on teams add nice touches to the experience. Details. Even the menus have had a huge makeover and look incredibly slick.

It feels like the game has benefited largely from being a sequel update and has the luxury of just building upon everything previously established. The passing feels tighter this time around and even my previous complaints such as the lack of an in-game clock have been fixed. No passwords this time with the addition of a battery back-up which even boasts up to 4 different saves for your tournaments or leagues and speaking of tournaments; there are quite a few to choose from this time, including regional tournaments or a global one.

Much like the previous game, I found it challenging to get near the goal in order to shoot and many games resulted in a draw, going to penalties. I find penalty systems in this era of football games really never work well against AI and here is no exception. I found it incredibly difficult to save goals from the computer, sometimes even pressing the right direction didn’t seem to save it as he was too slow. Upon shooting I also felt like it didn’t always go the direction I had pressed. I lost so many games to penalties it was very frustrating.

I’m also not keen on the prompt each match to choose which team you control or the ability to change during any point in the game. It’s very easy to choose the wrong team by mistake while rushing through the menu prompts and not notice. The customisation is cool, but I’m not sure it’s needed as even if you win as the other team, you will still result in a game over so it seems a largely pointless.

I also encountered some strange occurrences in which the game results screen was wrong. On the points table it showed my team as winning the qualifying round, but in actual fact I had lost and it was a different teams point data. Overall FIFA 95 is a much better game but it’s still not my cup of tea. I try my best to seek the positives in a genre I just really don’t like.

• Finished May 5th 2025
  2/10

This one is really hard to assess. It’s a very mediocre attempt at trying to translate the Where’s Wally/Waldo series of books into a video game. The game has you briefly searching across 5 different stages to find Wally and a magical scroll. And that’s it. Occasionally you can encounter a bonus challenge to find some special object, but there is just a total lack of any meaningful content. There’s a single mini game where you control the dog and fly on a carpet collecting bones. It’s just as lacklustre as everything else.

The entire game can be finished in less than 10 minutes (and you practically have to because of the stage timers.) My total time was 22 minutes but I went through both normal and expert modes and also lost 5 mins to a game glitch where I couldn’t start the next level and had to start over. To put this for sale is practically a scam. It should’ve had at least 20 different levels and even the levels it does have are very short with very little variety within them.

The challenge level is very low and the entire game feels so very minimum effort to the point that I can’t even be arsed to say anything more about it either. It’s shit, play something else. Read the book--it’s cheaper and has more pages.

• Finished May 6th 2025
  4/10

The controls are strange and the passing is pretty awful. In, Madden each receiver in a particular strategy is mapped to one of the 3 buttons allowing for split second decision making depending on who is open. Here you have to cycle through each receiver with a button and it just doesn’t work at all. The field goal kicking and kick off bars also feel very clunky. It has a typical gauge like others but it starts at the top and goes down instead of up and you will often miss the initial timing and don’t have time to wait for it to go up again.

Choosing a strategy is confusing and requires a deeper knowledge of the sport to know what you are doing. Strategies are displayed with a very barebones UI. Unlike Madden, there are no recommended plays to choose from and no distinction visually between a running play or pass. I’m fairly new to the sport and found it very unfriendly to a more casual player. Defense in particular felt really tough going and very hard to make any sensible guess what sort of approach to take.

It just feels like an attempt to copy better American Football games but without any of the understanding to what makes them good. It also lacks any content whatsoever, as your only mode of play is a single match versus either a CPU or human player. No tournaments or leagues here. Its biggest success is making you appreciate how well made and revolutionary the original Madden on Mega Drive was.

And yet after saying all of this, its actually playable. While my experience with the genre is limited, I feel like even the worse American Football games still end up somehow playable against bad entries in other sports genres. Maybe it’s the slow stop start nature of them. For all its annoyance you can manage to win. Is it worth playing? No. But is it painful to play? No.

• Finished May 8th 2025
  6/10

RBI baseball 93 is a very lazy mild upgrade on the previously released RBI 4. It seems like there was only about nine months between the two games and it really shows. The graphics are exactly the same as far as I can tell, save for some new lines on the lawn, and the animations movies are recycled to the point that you wouldn’t even know which version is which. The only thing I could notice was perhaps the fly ball looked different and the home run movie altered.

There are some new additions to the game, but nothing that I think warrants and entirely new edition. There is a new team edit mode and a new defence practice mode that allows you practice fielding various types of hits. It’s a really nice addition, but this is really not enough and these features could have waited for the upcoming RBI 94 released 9 months later. This game just feels like a hold over game.

The previous game introduced a Game Breaker mode is actually really fun. You have 15 different scenarios that you can try beat such as being down 5 runs in the final innings. This game brings it back which would be great, except the 15 scenarios are exactly the same. This is inexcusably utterly lazy. It would’ve been so easy to have made new scenarios. For this one for that reason alone I have to mark this game down considerably.

RBI 93 is the epitome of the criticism of sports games getting year after year carbon copy releases. If you haven’t played the previous game the this is the better game. But if you have RBI 4 there is nothing here worth upgrading for. The fielding is still not great, and the controls are still clunky for moving around the bases.

• Finished May 9th 2025
  5/10

Champions World Class Soccer is a very strange football game that gets some things right and some so very wrong, yet somehow manages to be a fairly playable experience. The mediocre the graphics look okay as a still image but in motion have horrible animation and choppy frames. Releases on the Mega Drive were doing much better at this point.

A welcome aspect for me is that It’s pretty easy to score compared to other games and you can shoot from a variety of different places and still get an easy goal. It does kind of feel realistic that it should be difficult to save a goal. I later realised that if you stand in a particular spot and kick diagonally, it will always go in. I’m not sure if that should be a criticism and so many football games have this issue.

That said, getting to the goal is not so easy until you realise that you can run with the ball at the bottom of the pitch and pass directly up across the width of the pitch to the other side and back down again and most of the AI will not have time to move to prevent you from moving in to shoot. On the flipside, your goalkeeper is equally terrible. If the CPU reaches your side, it’s very likely going to go in, and here’s where more issues arise. Defence is bad. Your team members do nothing unless you take control of them directly. They lack any sort of decent AI and will never attempt any action or the sliding tackle. They will never tackle or defend, unless you take control.

The sliding tackle also has a very strange collision detection. Your players hitbox seems to be much larger than it looks. Diagonally tackling generally misses but tackling horizontally, even if you’re not on the same line, will hit. On the other hand, passing on the game actually feels pretty good, it’s just a shame that the defence is so terrible.

Finally, the biggest criticism is reserved for the penalty shootouts, which during my entire playthrough I could not figure out the controls, through despite reading the manual. I could not make my goalkeeper dive properly and when he did it was always too short and or even the wrong way. The entire system remains a mystery to me. It seems to be as much of a mystery to the computer as well who regularly ran one way to then suddenly dives off in the other and miss. This resulted in ridiculously high scores of 16-16 before the computer would finally get the upper hand. I never saved a single goal in the entire game and never won a single penalty shootout.

So, what we are left with is a functional but not very good football game. It’s it unplayable? No. Should you play it? Probably not. But if find yourself forced to, at least it won’t be too painful.

• Finished May 11th 2025
  8/10

Greatest heavyweights improves on so many things from Evander Holyfield‘s Real Deal Boxing. The background graphics have been updated, there are new voice samples, an announcer, and the game has added new features such as combos on your attacks with every 4th hit doing a knockback and more damage. There are lots of little touches to presentation like the HUD on impact and everything really heightens the sense of collision and feedback when you hit the opponent and your punches feel really weighty.

The career mode is back with the defence stat removed, which to be honest felt the least important and largely ignorable in the previous game anyway. The game also introduces different height statures with short medium and tall dictating different benefits for speed or reach. The career mode is still fun but soon becomes rather difficult especially when fighting the legends, and that’s where I found myself enjoying this less than the previous game.

Fights drag. The harder fights really, really drag. The previous game was difficult, but you could often sort of cheese a lot of the fight for better or for worse. This game has removed the ability to stun lock for the apartment in the corner with a new mechanic where whenever you punch somebody in the corner you get knocked back too. The opponent will also fall back every 2nd punch. This is very frustrating as you now have to keep stepping forwards constantly. The game introduces a new four hit combo where every fourth connecting it will send the opponent back reeling and do more damage.

However, it’s not easy to do without stepping forwards because of how you or the opponent will bounce back. The AI also is very good at interrupting and blocking even after being hit. I found the speed stat in this game to be far less useful. The computer seems to always be able to reach further than you or faster even when you have max. Towards the end of the game, as fight legendary greatest heavyweights, it’s very hard to do damage and fights will usually play out to up to the seven round and onwards.

It’s a true test of endurance and your hands will be screaming. I’m not sure this is great gameplay and the requirements of repetitive but calculated button mashing may win you the title of greatest and also RSI. Most AI can be beaten by some sort particular sort of pattern that you can do, whether it be just mashing an upward punch on short opponents or just the reliable but tedious punch down up down up, step forwards, repeat, weaving an uppercut if your feeling frisky.

Initially, my criticism from the previous game seemed to be fixed as fights started off short and the damage felt much higher than before and you don’t recover as much health in between rounds. This was a great thing however in conclusion it’s hard to decide which is the better game as I feel like for all the improvements made here it also made some changes, I wasn’t keen on. I think if you like one you will like the other but they are by no means in the same game. This is a very polished game wish a very demanding, tiring skill set. I’d type more but my hands are killing.