SNES

How many Super Nintendo carts kick off by letting a sentient tree slap you around, follow that with a thunder-powered warthog waving a butcher knife bigger than a Buick, then demand you swap a flopping carp for a pogo-spring just to keep the plot moving? Exactly one, and you are staring at it. Young Merlin feels like […]

Why did Nihon Falcom, usually the straight-A student of late-eighties action-RPGs, suddenly flip its carefully annotated notebook onto the cafeteria floor, swivel the camera ninety degrees, and let Adol Christin pogo across the screen like a red-haired Mario who has just discovered power-metal vinyl and tighter jeans? We already know the boring corporate explanation (creative

We already know this, yet I can practically hear you playing coy behind that tab: Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel is the Super Nintendo cartridge that looks like a normal side-scrolling mascot, then whips out a shuriken, belly-flops through the sky, and claps your expectations harder than a 300-page shōnen cliff-hanger. “Aero the Acro-Bat’s edgy rival gets his

We already know this, but I will say it anyway because the world keeps forgetting: Zool: Ninja of the “Nth” Dimension on Super Nintendo is what happens when Sonic the Hedgehog drinks three cans of Surge, slams into a piñata factory, and decides the shattered candy shards are adequate camouflage. Bizarre premise? Absolutely. Underrated? More than a

We already know this, but I refuse to let the point slip beneath the sofa cushions of pop culture: Zoop on Super Nintendo is the bright-pink platypus of 16-bit puzzlers. It waltzed into 1995 wearing hyperactive chevrons, declared itself “America’s Largest Killer of Time!” (yes, Viacom’s marketing department typed that with a straight face), and then dared us to