First Impressions: Roguelikes

July 5, 2025 - 6 mins read

I hopped on the roguelike bandwagon recently because of some friends, specifically variations on the classic tile-based format (although I also put a fair amount of time into Slay the Spire alongside these). Pretty quickly I got sucked in by the short run length and critical thinking required to succeed, and having extremely quick combat that prioritizes positioning and item usage helped mitigate the tedium that other turn-based combat systems fall into.

Zombie Revenge

June 30, 2025 - 6 mins read

Despite releasing a couple years prior, Zombie Revenge pioneered Devil May Cry’s signature bullet juggling, all the way down to the enemy splaying out in the air as they bounce. In Zombie Revenge’s case, the rigid combo system with minimal interruptible frames makes the gun mandatory for linking strings, especially since it’s the most reliable OTG in your arsenal, and almost every full string forces a knockdown. It’s not merely a tool for styling on enemies either; it takes good timing to shoot a downed enemy in the window where they’ll pop back up for a juggle, as the game removes the property after a period of time or a failed attempt, and spacing the followup can be vexing depending on where they landed.

Ufouria: The Saga

June 26, 2025 - 4 mins read

Originally the start of the eclectic Hebereke series,1 Ufouria had an unassuming localization for the European market that left it with few western fans until emulator-fueled retrospectives came along. After I dug past the first hour, I was shocked to find a sophisticated metroidvania structured hiding behind the ho-hum platformer up front. Ufouria gates its mechanics around different characters that must be “recruited” by knocking some sense to them in a quick boss battle (you and your friends have crash landed in a strange world, and said friends all have amnesia).

Cosmic Smash

June 22, 2025 - 5 mins read

A group of veterans with credits on both Namco’s Ridge Racer and Sega AM3’s Sega Rally, the short-lived studio Sega Rosso plopped this into arcades at the turn of the millennium just after their back-to-back titles NASCAR Racing and Star Wars Racer Arcade. This side project, Cosmic Smash, is coolly minimalist in its series of abstract corridors and translucent blocks, all of which melt to black at the end of each level within the veneer of an interstellar subway tunnel.

Super Castlevania IV

June 18, 2025 - 5 mins read

I’m reluctant to do the full-throated condemnation of the expanded toolkit here because, outside of a comparison against the NES Castlevanias, it’s still restrained. Simon doesn’t move particularly fast, his jump height is fixed, and he still can’t jump off of stairs. The Ghost ’n Goblins games had presented more significant challenge with looser handling and free, rapid-fire projectiles, but they also leaned into dynamic enemies and random placements. Super Castlevania IV doesn’t just tack the other way on this, it falls short of even the game it’s ostensibly reimagining.

Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory

June 4, 2025 - 6 mins read

An oddball Fromsoft-esque title with a similar sort of interplay between loadout, upgrade currency, and death mechanics. You play as a robot that can be equipped with weapons/armor on your head, arms, chest, and legs. Pressing the corresponding face button uses the equipment mapped to that body part, although the leg equipment is exclusively passive (the cross button is mapped to your chest). Using equipment raises the heat gauge for that body part, and when the gauge is full, the equipment is disabled until the gauge has fully drained.

Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru

May 30, 2025 - 5 mins read

Although often inaccurately compared to Link’s Awakening,1 Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (officially translatd as The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls), resembles something more like Freshly Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland, where cartoony dust-cloud autobattles replace the hack-and-slash and the adventure elements lampoon the genre. It’s less built around “setup-punchline” humor or anything truly absurd, and instead it leans into a light-hearted atmosphere where no one seems to take anything of consequence particularly seriously.

Lumines

May 22, 2025 - 6 mins read

Mizuguchi’s work incorporates musical elements without tethering it to rhythmic execution challenges. The player becomes an equal contributor to the creative tapestry of the soundscape rather than reciting canned phrases or demanding precision. As you move, rotate, place, and destroy blocks throughout Lumines, your actions directly accent the soundtrack and create new polyrhythmic layers over top of it, leading to a temporally fluid pacing that ebbs and flows with the eye-catching, psychedelic backdrops.

Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Bad Dream

May 13, 2025 - 10 mins read

Also known as Scary Dreams1, Buster’s Bad Dream has slipped under the radar thanks to its incredibly delayed release stateside, its outdated cartoon license, and its overall limited presentation. If anything, the game has had more discussion as a prototype of sorts for Astro Boy: Omega Factor, both of which were programmed by Yaiman (Mitsuru Yaida, best known for leading Gunstar Heroes and the Bangai-O games). However, where Omega Factor and many of Treasure’s other titles focus heavily on setpieces, Buster’s Bad Dream’s restraint helps it stand out for those more interested in pure combat.

Banishing Racer

May 10, 2025 - 3 mins read

One distinguishing factor of vehicle games that tends to get lost in genres tied to humanoid avatars is that turning around can be rather difficult. When you’re driving a car, you have the option of either doing a 180° turn, subject to all of the dynamics that a tight turn involves at speed, or stopping to shift into reverse. Banishing Racer applies a rudimentary version of this on the 2D plane, where the main car refuses to ignore inertia and going backwards requires overcoming the forward force.