Reviews

NES

Contra (NES) – Review – The NES Cartridge That Still Spikes Your Heart Rate

Some videogames merely entertain; Contra for the Nintendo Entertainment System kicks you out of a dropship, stuffs your nostrils with 8-bit cordite, and then dares you to whisper the word casual with a straight face. Classic or overrated relic? (Yes. Also no. Let’s not pretend nuance exists when Spread Gun particles start flying.) It’s absurd and indispensable in the […]

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SNES, Reviews

X-Kaliber 2097 (SNES) – The Weirdest Beat-’Em-Up You Skipped

Why does a future-noir brawler starring a sword named after a Camelot heirloom exist on the Super Nintendo? (Because the ’90s were legally obligated to ship at least one game per fiscal quarter containing the letters X and K side-by-side, obviously.) From its first splash screen X-Kaliber 2097 looks like someone stuffed Final Fight, a stack of Marvel comics,

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SNES, Reviews

X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse (SNES) – Capcom’s Danger Room Odyssey on the SNES

We already know the SNES vault teems with genre classics, Super Metroid’s atmospheric isolation, Chrono Trigger’s time-bending epics, Street Fighter II’s button-mashing ballet, but every once in a while, a title sneaks in, flings open the Danger Room doors, and dares you to survive a pixel-perfect mutant meltdown. Enter X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, Capcom’s 16-bit love

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Amiga, Reviews

Abandoned Places: A Time for Heroes (Amiga) – Bread Crumbs, Paprika Runes, and the Hungaro-Amiga Dream

We already know the Amiga catalogue is a kaleidoscope of demo-scene flexes, bedroom curios, and at least three different chrome-teapot tech demos, so why does Abandoned Places: A Time for Heroes still feel like that oddball cousin who shows up to the family reunion in chain-mail, quotes Dragonlance at the snack table, then politely asks if anyone can resurrect

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SNES, Reviews

Wonder Project J (SNES) – Nurturing Empathy in a 16-Bit Pinocchio

We already know the SNES is stuffed to the brim with heroic quests and sprawling RPG sagas, but then there’s Wonder Project J, Enix’s audacious venture into robotic child-rearing that somehow slipped through Western localization nets (no “please import me” stickers included). Is it a bizarre oddity, a quietly brilliant classic, or just another overpriced

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