Wizards & Warriors X: Fortress of Fear (Game Boy Review)

January 30, 2026 by Indie Gamer Chick 7 Comments

Wizards & Warriors X: Fortress of Fear
Platform: Game Boy
Released January, 1990
Developed by Rare
Published by Acclaim
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

Well………. At least it looks good. I’ve played enough old school Game Boy releases now that I shouldn’t be surprised anymore by fantastic graphics, but I constantly am anyway. Don’t get me wrong: this is no Nemesis (as seen in Konami Shmups: The Definitive Review) but there were a few places where I was impressed with the graphics. Not so much the gameplay.

I thought the first NES Wizards & Warriors was barely okay. I thought its sequel, Ironsword, was one of the worst games I’ve played, and it certainly had the worst sword combat I’ve ever experienced. This Game Boy title, technically the third game in the franchise but called Chapter 10 for some reason, is sadly closer to Ironsword than the original and one of the worst Game Boy titles I’ve ever played. Now Wizards & Warriors isn’t exactly the most beloved game and is probably one of my more eyebrow-raising YES! verdicts, so I recently replayed it. I wanted to make sure my review session wasn’t some kind of fever dream. It wasn’t, and I’m still willing to argue that the NES original doesn’t deserve to be vilified. I think a lot of the contempt for W&W out there has to do with the misleading cover art that features a shirtless beefcake barbarian style “Warrior” when such a character doesn’t exist in the game. Not even close. Also, yeah, the sword sucked back then too, but I don’t even consider the sword to be the main weapon in the original game. The boomerang-like Dagger of Throwing, which you get about a minute or two into the first level, does all the heavy lifting for the combat and pairs perfectly with the jumping-based level layouts. (shrug) So yeah, I like the first Wizards & Warriors. I also get why people wouldn’t, and it’s not hard to figure out where the series went wrong.

Once again, the problem is that the entire game is based around this sword that just isn’t satisfying to use. For this Game Boy release, take Ironsword’s combat, which was meant to be the primary attack method of the original game, and subtract the ability to skewer enemies while jumping, giving the player even less versatility than ever before. That had been the most effective attack in the sequel since there was no Dagger of Throwing. In Fortress of Fear, there’s NO jumping attack at all and, as always, there’s no OOMPH to the combat at all. Your sword’s sprite and the enemy sprites don’t feel like they exist in the same dimension, and the underwhelming armpit fart noise when you hit them doesn’t exactly make me think they’re being impaled by sharpened metal. Enemies don’t even blink to register damage. THIS is the new “worst sword combat ever” game. And now I’m also convinced the Dagger of Throwing was a last-second addition to Wizards & Warriors 1 that they resented adding to the game. How else do you explain Rare not realizing how important it was besides outright spite?

You can do a big, cutting vertical slice but it’s slow and doesn’t do more damage than a basic jab with the sword that’s twice as fast. So, wow, Ironsword was somehow made worse. Unbelievable.

If fans of the original are disappointed in the combat, just wait until they realize even the genre is different. Despite the hero and several enemies from the original game appearing with nearly identical sprites (like the eagle above), Wizards & Warriors X isn’t played in a way that fans of the series would expect. Instead of having to explore, locate keys and grind-up resources, Wizards & Warriors X is a linear side-scrolling platformer. What the fudge? This style of combat isn’t suitable for that at all! That would have been true even in the best circumstances, but the level design is so basic and bland that it’s surprising nobody making the game realized what a stinkeroo it was. The designers leaned far too heavily into the idea of building levels around hold-your-breath long jumps onto tiny moving platforms. Of, if not long jumps, outright blind jumps. Sometimes I mean that literally, as you’ll actually land on the moving platform but it’s positioned just below the view of the playfield. It’s like they drew the maps for the dimensions of a normal 80s/90s picture tube TV only to realize the Game Boy used a different aspect ratio. It happens a few times and it’s so inelegant. So are the amount of necessary jumps that have unavoidable falling damage.

This game couldn’t even do doors right. If a door is on the left wall, you can’t see it. So you have to bump into doors.

And the bad decisions keep coming. There’s chests and keys like before, but only two items of substance are found in the chests. One is a shield that, as far as I can tell, does nothing. Allegedly it halves your damage, but I didn’t notice it working. The “Boots of Jumping” increase your jumping height and length, but they’re lost if you die. Since collision is bad and your attacks are worse, with enemies seemingly tailored for jumping-based combat that wasn’t included, you’ll die a lot. It took until the final level of the game for Wizards & Warriors X to even get a heart beat since the level is set-up like a maze. But it must have just been the gas escaping postmortem because like two minutes later I beat the game just moving straight and taking doors when I came to them, then just stabbing the last boss blindly (and dying four times in the process) until he died.

The last boss has no room to dodge.What’s even dirtier is that in order to get to these platforms, you have to jump from a higher platform and accept fall damage. That happens a lot in Wizards & Warriors X. The game literally does nothing right from a gameplay perspective. The only nice thing I could think of to say about it? “It’s better than Castlevania: The Adventure.”

The total time investment is about 20 to 30 minutes. I want it back. I even kind of regret having to concede that the graphics are really good, because when a game that’s this bad looks as good as Wizards & Warriors on Game Boy does, it becomes almost sinister. Nobody sets out to make a bad game, of course, but when a bad game looks fun in still photos (such as the kind on the back of a box, for example) it feels cynical to me. So Fortress of Fear’s negative reputation is well-earned. Horrible game. It’s astonishing how far this potentially huge game franchise fell after the first title. Did anyone involved in a sequel not realize how much all the fun in the first game relied on the ultra-satisfying Dagger of Throwing? I’d say “one of these days, I need to play the first Wizards & Warriors without ever getting it.” Then again, with Ironsword and now Fortress of Fear, I’ve already sort of done that twice, haven’t I?
Verdict: NO!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Wizards & Warriors, Wizards & Warriors Fortress of Fear, Wizards & Warriors Fortress of Fear Review, Wizards & Warriors Game Boy, Wizards & Warriors Game Boy Review, Wizards & Warriors Review, Wizards & Warriors X, Wizards & Warriors X: Fortress of Fear, Wizards & Warriors X: Fortress of Fear Review

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park, aka Athletic Land (Colecovision/MSX Reviews) Plus Bonus Reviews of the Unreleased Atari 2600 Version and Athletic World – The Indie Sequel for Game Boy!

January 26, 2026 by Indie Gamer Chick Leave a comment

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park
aka Athletic Land
Wait! Don’t Go! I swear this isn’t a joke review!
Platform: Colecovision and MSX
Released in 1984
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

(Colecovision) Can you tell how deliberate I was in picking this picture first? By the way, Cabbage Patch Kids was the first toy that caused Black Friday riots. Not stampedes, but actual f*cking riots! The dolls were the biggest hit Coleco had EVER had in their entire company’s history. Far more profitable than Colecovision (it’s not even close), but they’re also proof positive that Arnold Greenberg was one of the worst CEOs in the history of gaming or toys. He was awesome at “step one” and not so awesome at any step that followed. Every single hit product Coleco had once he took over in 1975 he eventually turned into a loss leader. Colecovision gave birth to the Adam Computer, the business Greenberg REALLY wanted to be in and pushed hard for even though they had no infrastructure for home computer development or manufacturing (it’s not remotely close to the same infrastructure a game console utilizes). Then he ignored engineers who told him it wasn’t ready or any good and pushed it into production. Today the Coleco Adam is largely considered the one of the worst computers ever. Cabbage Patch Kids went from BILLIONS in sales to record-setting inventory crush in a three year span when he ignored established toy trends. Coleco was the #1 toy maker in the world in 1984 and bankrupt by 1988. The guy who greenlit all those hit products also didn’t have a clue about managing them. But hey Arnie, thanks for Colecovision. I do loves me some Colecovision.

You’d probably figure Cabbage Patch Kids would be a game for young children. An “edutainment” game along the lines of Reader Rabbit, right? Nope. Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park is basically the Colecovision’s version of Pitfall!, the David Crane classic (yes, I’m aware Colecovision does have a real port of Pitfall! too) mixed with a little bit of the reality competition Ninja Warrior with challenges like skipping across pillars and trampolines. It’s also one of those games people like me discover and are always shocked to find out it’s “really good!” that, upon revisit, I’ve dropped down to “it’s fine.” It’s still a remarkable achievement given how early this was in the genre though and an underrated showcase for what would soon be gaming’s #1 genre.

(Colecovision) That is one smug looking main character. If this game had been more popular, the fish would have gone down as one of the most notorious gaming antagonists. Trust me on this. I’ll also note that the last jump is one of the most deceptively difficult challenges in gaming. Any attempt at jumping off when the platform is anywhere but the lowest it gets or maybe one tick above the lowest will result in a death. Now a modern game would probably do a better job of conveying that and maybe have a line or maybe the platform itself lights green for jump and red for don’t jump. But for a platformer made early in the genre’s learning curve, this is impressive.

In the game, you scroll one screen at a time to the right and jump over and across different things. Make no mistake about it, this is a shameless Pitfall! rip-off, in style and substance. And, like Pitfall!, Cabbage Patch Kids’ problem is the genre has come so very far from the trail that it helped blaze. As an early platformer, there’s only a handful of challenges here that are mixed and matched, but they’re not always optimized for maximum gameplay. Actually, “a handful” isn’t entirely accurate, because when I actually counted-up the amount of things Cabbage has that can kill you, I was kind of stunned. By my tally, there are ten possible primary hazards (eleven if you count the timer) and seven supplementary hazards that can be mixed-and-matched with them. In the above screenshot, in addition to the moving platforms, I had to avoid the dreaded fish. In a screen with the trampolines, I might be hopping across mini-ponds that have the fish while also avoiding spiders that fall from above.

(Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park for MSX) This is a “sock it to you” level: water to jump over with fish jumping out of the water, spiders raining down on you, and a camp fire right at the end that you have to jump over (a tight squeeze between it and the final pond) that also spits fireballs at you.

So they actually squeezed more millage out of the obstacles than I realized and props to them for that. But, once you have the timing down, Cabbage Patch Kids is really just requires patience. With the fish, the fire, the ropes, the spiders, and the moving platforms, it’s just a matter of waiting for an opening. Within an hour of starting, the only obstacle that consistently got me killed was the fire, and only when it’s positioned like it is in the above screenshot, where there’s barely any room to jump over it. Because it fires projectiles, the timing of when it’s even safe to stand on the space between it and the water is tricky. Maybe that’s where the Cabbage Patch Kids license actually factors in and this is baby’s first platformer. Probably not since some of the screens are pretty hardcore in the amount of stuff they throw at you. They also missed several chances for risk-reward temptations. Plus there’s the occasional head-scratching empty screen. Those really weirded me out, because the empty screens happen even deep into the game. Here is one on the 68th screen of the game.

(Cabbage Patch Kids for MSX) There was literally no challenge on this screen. Just walk right and don’t stop to smell the flowers since the timer is still running. Or maybe the challenge is sensory deprivation, and the object is to not be lost in isolation of your own internal madness. Probably not since I didn’t die on it once.

Sometimes my readers get angry or confused by my constant usage of “it’s fine.” Which is strange because “it’s fine” always means, at the very least, “I had more fun than not” which is an automatic YES! because that’s my criteria at its most basic. And Cabbage Patch Kids is fine, truly! I’m giving it a YES! and everything. But yeah, I mostly use “it’s fine” for games that I or others have overrated. In the case of Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park, it’s a solid platformer that was ambitious for its era and does a good job with the limits it had, but the fun isn’t endless and it’s certainly not an all-time great. Even if it’s not making gameplay mistakes, it’s just too limited and too easy to clock. My only real gameplay annoyance was how rigid the trampolines are to use. You want to hold RIGHT and press the jump button when your feet are about to make contact.

(Cabbage Patch Kids for MSX) This apple is the only bonus points item in the game and it only appears in trampoline levels. It only scores 200 points, which is nothing when you consider you get 2,000 points just for finishing a group of ten stages. Hell, sometimes I genuinely think the apple is impossible to get if it’s in the wrong position on screens with spiders/coconuts. I’m kind of fine with that too because it feels like it’s there to tempt players. What the game could have used to give it some extra score-chasing mileage is more risk-reward chances. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if every screen had a fruit. Having only one feels like it was there because an executive said “add some items to collect! Kids love that sh*t!”

At first I thought Konami realized they burned a pretty damn decent action game on Cabbage Patch Kids of all things because they re-released this for the MSX under the name “Athletic Land.” Except it appears to be the other way around. Athletic Land was either already out or already nearing the end of development (release dates for MSX being fickle) and Coleco had a good working relationship with Konami, plus the MSX and Colecovision are very, very compatible. To put it in perspective, the MSX emulator I use is also my Colecovision emulator. Either way, Konami just quickly flipped Athletic Land to Cabbage Patch Kids, and it’s a good thing they did because that gives this a fighting chance at a modern re-release if Konami ever decides to put out another MSX collection. Three volumes of ten MSX games were released for the original PlayStation exclusively in Japan from 1997 to 1998 (that were combined and released as one big set for the Sega Saturn) and Volume 2 has Athletic Land. Great sign that this is a modern re-release candidate. The problem is that Athletic Land is visually just a minor upgrade of the Colecovision Cabbage Patch Kids game while the MSX Cabbage Patch Kids has some pizzazz and is the only game that lets you custom-create your character. In the three screens below, Coleco Cabbage Patch Kids is on the left, the MSX version is in the center, and Athletic Kids is on the right.

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park for Colecovision

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park for MSX

Athletic World for MSX

Note that all three of those screenshots were taken on level 36. Now, I’m not sure if it’s just the placebo effect, but I think Athletic World might be slightly, slightly harder than the other two in terms of timing, but if it actually is, it’s negligible. Overall, for such an early platformer, Athletic Land/Cabbage Patch Kids aged remarkably well. Plus it controls a little better than the original Atari 2600 Pitfall!, though it’s very picky about what jumps land and which ones don’t. I jumped a little too early once hopping onto the first log on a screen and died from the jump somehow. It probably counts as walking into the log, which is fatal. I only did it once and never again because I learned my lesson. So while it’s not age-proof, Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park/Athletic Land is fun enough for thirty minutes, making it an ideal addition to a compilation. Not an all-time classic, but for sure one of the all-time hidden gems. I kind of feel sorry that the game is tied to Cabbage Patch Kids. I imagine a lot of kids who were too cool to play a game based on dolls never bothered to give it a try. Their loss.
Verdict: YES! YES! and YES!

BONUS REVIEWS

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park
Platform: Atari 2600
Unreleased Completed Prototype
Designed by Ed Temple
Developed by Coleco
NEVER BEEN (officially) RELEASED

My first GAME OVER came on the 4th screen of the game. Yeah.

Oh the Atari fans are going to hate this review. Apparently Cabbage Patch Kids is considered one of the best unreleased prototypes, but I’m not there. It IS impressive, don’t get me wrong, but the jumping physics are very strange. Like, some of the weirdest I’ve ever played. You don’t actually have to press a direction when you jump. You’ll move forward automatically, but the actual trajectory of the jumps are these high, shallow arches. It’s so weird. You kind of have to just play it to appreciate it. The game is certainly tailored around it, though. All the platforms or waterholes are spaced correctly to accommodate the actual length you travel, and you can change direct mid-jump too. That’s the only way you can do a straight up-and-down jump.

Cabbage Patch Kids (Atari 2600)

While all the obstacles are here, the trampolines are much harder to use, and there’s less of them (thank god). The character looks like someone wearing bunny ears, the sound effects and music are a dental drill to the eardrums and the bees look more like the disembodied torsos of women. Plus, collision is a little bit on the picky side, but on the other hand, you can get away with some things you can’t get away with in the other versions. Like at one point during the log platforms, I jumped directly from the second-to-last log to the ground and didn’t die. Also, you don’t die from jumping off too high a point on the moving platforms. But what really killed Cabbage Patch Kids 2600 for me was that the angles of the gaps are much easier because of the automatic movement. Once I stopped trying to move on my own and realized the game did the hard part for me, I went from losing all my lives on the fourth screen to barely needing to do any work at all, and I just stopped having fun. It’s a good effort, truly, but I didn’t like this at all. Sorry, Atari fans, but Alligator People is still the superior 3rd party unreleased Atari prototype.
Verdict: NO!

Athletic World
Indie Remake of Athletic Land/Cabbage Patch Kids
Platform: Game Boy – Super Game Boy Enhanced
Released April 12, 2023
Developed by MHZ Games
Download the ROM – Pay What You Want
Link to Store for Physical Copy

Leave it to an indie developer to make the greatest game in this series!

What a damn impressive effort Athletic World is. The name is a bit confusing since Athletic World is also the name of an unrelated NES game that was designed for use with the Power Pad. But, make no mistake, THIS Athletic World is exactly what an early-era Game Boy port/sequel of Cabbage Patch Kids/Athletic Land would have been, and it’s an outstanding game that would make the original designers proud (at least I hope so). It adds new obstacles, and the timing of the moving obstacles is much, much more fine-tuned to create an optimized challenge. So, I want to get the message out there, to anyone who aspires to make a modern tribute to a classic game, download this ROM, get a pen and paper, and start taking some notes.

Athletic World kept surprising me. After over 80 stages and having gone a while before any new obstacles were introduced, I was organizing my thoughts and shaking my head at how well made this was and BOOM, another new obstacle: a snake. Huh.

First off, the authenticity of an early-era Game Boy title is astonishing. Every aspect of this feels exactly like a launch-window game for that platform, but in a good way. Athletic World has charming sprite work, sound effects, and a good chiptune. The designer didn’t take advantage of having more resources available to them than a designer at the time might have had. I’m not some kind of purist and often point out that there’s nothing inherently noble or sacred about the limits developers had because, make no mistake, studios of that time frame would have crawled on shards of glass to have higher storage capacity. But because Athletic World is such a simple game, I think it actually lends charm to the experience. Other than including Super Game Boy features, Athletic World has a small file size and feels the part, but it works because it’s the gameplay that’s optimized, not the appearance.

This is one of the new obstacles and it looks so simple. It’s just a tiny little stick on a rope that swivels (right before I hit publish Angela said “I think it’s supposed to be a tire swing.” Maybe?). If you can actually hop on it, I never figured out how (and not for a lack of trying, I assure you). It’s really hard to clock by itself. It’s rarely by itself, too.

All the obstacles of the original games are back, but the jumping physics aren’t. Jumping is much shorter and stiffer in this one. The bouncing balls and other obstacles can’t be survived just by jumping straight up and down. You have to be moving forward or backward, and the obstacles take advantage of this. The biggest change isn’t the new obstacles, but how fine-tuned all the obstacles can be. I said about the Coleco/MSX games that once you have the timing down, it’s just a matter of waiting for an opening. While the same theory applies here, that window is much shorter. The genre might be platforming, but the action feels more like a Frogger-style cross-the-road game at times and you’ll likely find yourself wiggling back and forth waiting for things to line-up in a way that you can make your short jumps.

Weirdly (perhaps sadly) the blank screens return, only instead of being absolutely nothing, your cat (or a dog if you play as the boy) is waiting for you. Sometimes it leaves a bonus fruit for you, and sometimes it takes a sh*t and if you step on it you lose 700 points. I’m not joking. Cute clapback to the original, I guess, but I wish these would have been dumped altogether. Heh, dumped. It’s funny because you’re jumping over sh*t.

The new obstacles are mostly winners. One of them sees you clinging to the side poles that you slowly start to lose your grip on. I never died on that screen or even came close and had to deliberately wait and see how long it takes to lose your grip, so perhaps that should have been reworked. The swinging stick I already showed off is the hardest new challenge, and there’s also disappearing platforms and a new style of dive-bombing bird. This game also has a climax too! After 99 screens, you have to follow your pet and rush as fast as you can through ten screens (just don’t try to copy the pet, since they can jump on things that kill you. Learned that the hard way). You can’t wait for an opening because you’re being chased by bees, but this is where the fine-tuned design shines brightest. And after you finish this and get the game’s ending, guess what? There’s a second quest that’s much harder. Hot damn, this developer went all-out. My biggest complaint is that, once you reach second quest, there’s no option to skip straight to it if you turn the game off. If the developer reads this and there’s a cheat code, you need to alert GameFAQs.

It’s actually well done. Again, he did a great job of fine-tuning.

So, this really is everything you’d want a sequel/remake to Athletic Land if the franchise had lasted past the MSX. It even has the Konami code in it! While I was playing Athletic World, I kept thinking “I really hope the developer is proud of this game.” I mean, I sincerely hope that about every indie game I play, even the ones I don’t like, but Athletic World succeeds on so many levels and is probably doomed to remain obscure. Why wouldn’t it? A fan-made Game Boy tribute to a game already deeply under the radar? Christ, I’d be stunned if this sold 100 copies (my friend Saud ordered one of the physical carts right before I published this, so make it 101). Yet, its existence fills me with joy. Athletic World is, no joke, one of the best Game Boy titles I’ve reviewed yet. It makes very few mistakes, pays proper tribute to an older game, and it does all that while perfectly mimicking a specific style of game on a black and white platform. Most importantly, Athletic World remembers that there’s no better way to show your love for a game than making a better version of it. CELEBRATE THAT! How can anyone who loves gaming not feel a little warm inside that something like this could exist? Athletic World is everything good about indie gaming tributes with none of the bullsh*t, and I love it.
Verdict: YES!
And seriously, give it a try and if you enjoy it, kick the dev a few bucks, or hell, order a physical copy!

The Goonies (MSX Review)

January 23, 2026 by Indie Gamer Chick Leave a comment

The Goonies
Platform: MSX
Released December 23, 1985 OR Early 1986
Developed by Konami
Released Only in Japan and South America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Do you know what sucks about The Goonies for MSX? On the off-chance the NES versions of Goonies 1 & 2 get a re-release (and I think it could happen, either directly from Konami or via a middleman like Limited Run Games) the MSX game will be left in the dust when it has a legitimate claim to being the best game in the series, depending on the type of game you want. Goonies II is one of the best early Metroidvanias, but if you want a quick and dirty retro PC style platformer that plays really well, this could be the best game in the franchise. So, if you enjoy this review, show it to your favorite retro game publishers so the MSX build doesn’t get left behind. My heart already aches for MSX’s lack of modern clout, but licensed games for it are likely never getting a second chance because they’re so far off the radar that I doubt anyone will bother. Let’s change that as a community! Talk about MSX with retro publishers. Talk about how these games aren’t just stripped-down titles, but unique titles with their own gameplay merits. It’s really up to everyone to create awareness of this platform to modern publishers.

Ah, the MSX. I’ve really come to appreciate it for its unique takes on established games. Whether it be an exploration-based version of the original Castlevania or one-off sequels in the Gradius franchise (MSX was arguably the big winner of the 76 game Konami Shoot ‘Em Ups: The Definitive Review), this is a platform that practically demands my attention. So when I found out that its version of The Goonies was heavily modified from the Famicom game, I was intrigued. Technically I don’t have a review of the console version of the Goonies up, but I do have one for its arcade counterpart, Vs. The Goonies, which is essentially the same game, and I wasn’t a fan. The Goonies for MSX seems similar, right? It has almost the same chiptune version of “Goonies R Good Enough,” a similar cave setting, an unsatisfying attack and items that are hidden in arbitrary places. But worry not, because Goonies on the MSX is far and away the superior Goonies 1 video game and one of the best MSX titles I’ve played yet. It doesn’t do a lot and it doesn’t last very long, but it still manages to be basically non-stop fun.

Don’t let the “EXP” meter fool you into thinking this has RPG elements. When you kill an enemy, the EXP meter fills up a little bit. When it fills up all the way, you get a little bit of health back.

The Goonies on MSX is just a lite-on-frills platformer set in a maze. The game is divided into five levels and the object is to collect all seven Goonies in each level and then find an exit. The Goonies are behind locked doors, but keys are just lying around. You don’t have to kill a single enemy to collect one. There’s no bombing doors like in the Famicom version. The catch is you can only hold one key at a time, but that’s not a problem at all. There’s A LOT more keys than there are locked doors. Maybe too many, actually. Even on the fifth and final level there’s literally caches of keys that went almost entirely unused. However, not every locked door has a Goonie. Some will have potions that restore your health, while others might rarely trigger the hidden items. Worst case is a door might be double-locked, but I never had to travel too far to get the second key. The final door on each level is marked with a skull and crossbones, but once you have the seventh Goonie, just return to it and walk through it to beat the level. There’s no bosses, so really this is just a search for the Goonies.

Sadly, caves are the only setting. They usually are either red, blue, and green to make each section distinctive. Exclusively in level four, one of its areas had yellow caves, and I almost fainted from sensory overload.

Notice that giant skull in the above pic? It’ll swap you around to different areas of each level. Every screen is marked with a different “scene” number which is confusing and unhelpful. Thankfully the different areas in each stage are short, making backtracking as non-annoying as I’ve ever seen in any game. The numbering of the scenes might throw you off at first. The first door you encounter in a level could jump you a few scenes ahead of where you would expect to be, but you can always go backwards if you need to. Fans of drawing your own maps will probably really dig this one, and it’s a cinch thanks to the MSX’s limitation that prevents scrolling.

You can see what the final door looks like in the upper-left corner. You might encounter it quite early in a stage. Also, notice those water sprays? They’re practically the chief antagonist of the whole game.

The hidden items are back and some are hidden in arbitrary spots again. Sometimes you might have to jump where a waterfall is, kill X amount of enemies on a specific screen, or punch a specific rock. The items can really nerf the game too, including preventing the Fratellis from attacking you. There’s also hidden items that are actually whammies and do things like make endless ghosts spawn (you REALLY don’t want that one) or increase the attack speed of enemies and the Fratellis. I have no idea why they did that. Some items eventually wear out, too. The first one I found was a helmet, and then halfway through the third level I noticed it was gone. Others are permanent, including the whammies.

There’s so many skulls that levels can feel overwhelming at first, but since each area is pretty small, it’s hard to get lost. Backtracking never ate up more than a minute or two and most areas have multiple pathways to navigate. You also don’t die from falling so you can skip the slower vines and just jump down if you need to.

And that’s really all there is to Goonies MSX. As basic as it is, the level design is actually the highlight of the game. Levels are like labyrinths, but other than the numbering system, they’re not that confusing and it’s actually a lot of fun to clear out each new area. Finding a new Goonie is always satisfying, and if I had to complain, I guess I wish the items were hidden behind locked doors instead of shoved in arbitrary places that require arbitrary actions to unlock. They certainly had places they could have put them, because there’s way too many healing potions behind locks. Since you heal from killing X amount of enemies, I think they could have ditched some of them and replaced them with more logical placements of the items behind locked doors. Hell, they could have also created more reasons to use keys, like placing more locks on the doors that have the overpowered items, like the ones that prevent damage from gunshots or waterfalls. On the other hand, the over abundance of keys did ensure a zippy pace. The game flies by and never has a chance to get boring. I wish there had been a hard mode or a second quest, because I would have done it.

The Fratellis use the Mikey sprite, only painted a single color. It makes them look kind of like Mr. Game & Watch. But they use the same attack patterns as they do in the NES games, including one that shoots music notes at you.

The biggest drawback is the combat still sucks. You have to punch all enemies when they’re right next to you. The punch has limited range and is your only option since you can’t even get a slingshot in this game. Or, if you can, I never found it. Thankfully most enemies have easy-to-clock attack patterns and die from a single punch. The Fratellis work the same way they do in the Famicom games, where they can’t be killed and instead are only knocked out for a few moments. The rats are replaced with skulls, and there’s also bats, skeletons, and spongy-ass ghosts that you’ll want to just run away from since they don’t chase you from screen-to-screen like the Fratellis do and they take multiple hits to kill. ANY variety in the combat would have been welcome, but it’s not a deal breaker. Again, the breakneck pace, unusual for this style of game, voids any frustration with the combat.

As you can see at the bottom of the screen, I had so many items by the end of the game that I didn’t have room for anymore.

Goonies on MSX isn’t going to change your life or anything, but it’s a damn solid waste of an hour or two. It’s a wonderful example of “less is more” because it strips out the tiring need to grind-up bombs like in the Famicom game and just focuses on navigation. Since jumping is done by pressing UP, it took me a little while to get used to the controls, but after that? I guess I just dig this type of exploration-based item hunt. Of course I wish the game offered a bigger variety of settings and music, but as far as stripped-down ports go, this is one of the better ones out there. It’s a simple game, though. I think they could have toned back the amount of keys even if that means having to backtrack more, because the game is probably too easy. But it’s fun, and that’s all I care about. Assuming Konami ever does make a deal to re-release the Goonies titles associated with the NES/Famicom, I know it’s a long shot but I hope they remember this version. As I said in my Tempest 2000 review (in Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story – The Definitive Review), sometimes a +1 is a positive thing. Goonies for MSX would be a marvelous +1 throw-in bonus for a 2 in 1 Goonies pack that’s anchored by the underrated classic Goonies II. And by the way, 2026 is the 40th anniversary of the Famicom original. I’m just saying!
Verdict: YES!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Goonies Game, Goonies MSX Review, Goonies video games, MSX, MSX Games, MSX Reviews, The Goonies, The Goonies MSX

Kickle Cubicle (NES and Arcade Reviews)

January 18, 2026 by Indie Gamer Chick Leave a comment

Two in one review today and I’m going in the opposite order that I played them.

Kickle Cubicle
aka Meikyuu Jima
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released June 29, 1990
Developed by Irem
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Kickle Cubicle (NES)

Back in my first year of IGC, so many puzzle games were compared to an NES game called The Adventures of Lolo that I ended up buying it on the Wii Virtual Console. I liked Lolo a lot (a Definitive Review might be coming), and that led to recommendations of other Lolo-like games. One game that came up with semi-regularity was Kickle Cubicle. Years later, I sampled it while running through NES games and really liked the gameplay and thought “yep, this will be a contender for best NES puzzler.” And this is why sampling doesn’t work. Kickle Cubicle on the NES is way too easy. Unlike something like Lolo or Baba is You, once you get a feel for the logic of Kickle’s puzzle design and the limited amount of twists that can be done with it, all you have left is a solid sort-of action/sort-of puzzler. But maybe I’m not the target age. More on that later.

Seriously, some of the best graphics on the NES. Tons of moving characters, too. It’s very impressive from a technological point of view, and it helps that the character design is memorable. Great animation too. How come nobody talks about this one?

See the little blue blobs in the above puzzle? They’re your blocks. You have an unlimited freeze breath that turns them into ice cubes. Ice cubes pushed into the water permanently become land. The catch is an ice block can’t be pushed only one space ahead. They will always travel in a straight line until they either hit the water and become land or hit another fixture, such as a rock and stop. Your other superpower is the ability to create unlimited ice pillars that act as stoppers for the ice blocks. Their catch is that some of the spaces on the grid not only prevent the blue slime things from walking on them, but you can’t place pillars on these spaces either. Using your two magic ice tricks, their limitations, and a variety of environmental assists like hammers that you can manipulate to redirect the ice blocks and springs that bounce the ice blocks, you have to collect three magic bags to clear a stage. The main game has a whopping 67 levels, 4 bosses, and if you want, 30 additional bonus stages. But it wasn’t until the 17th level of the post-game stages (pictured below) that I actually had a puzzle that was a genuine head-scratcher, and really there were only a few more stages after I beat it that I struggled with.

I should note that Kickle Cubicle has an absurd amount of downtime. Upon completing each stage, you have to watch the level collapse into the water, wait for the game to count-up your bonus points (the points system being a relic of the coin-op that’s completely unnecessary for the home game), then you see a map screen which does nothing because the stages are linear, then it takes you to the next stage. Why is it like this? Well, because the Famicom version is non-linear. When you beat a stage, you have to manually float yourself to the next iceberg, select it (and not accidentally press the map button), and it’s just a slog. How could such a clever game have such a DUMB idea? So if you want a faster-paced version of the concept, play the coin-op. It offers more challenge anyway. In the slideshow below, you can see how many steps there are between levels.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As for the levels themselves, maybe it’s because I beat the arcade version before I beat the NES game, but I found the puzzles in NES Kickle Cubicle to be among the easiest in any game I’ve ever played like this. Whether it be Lolo, Baba is You, Sokoban (aka Boxxle) or any other logic puzzler, the genre can be cracked by simply figuring out what the last move is and reverse engineering from there. Cubicle’s biggest problem is that the nature of its design usually makes the final move so self-evident that there’s not very much puzzle left. Because kicked blocks move in a straight path and don’t stop, it’s usually pretty easy to figure out. Unlike a game where you push blocks along a grid one space at a time like Baba or Lolo, “straight line” puzzlers like this or Slayaway Camp/Friday the 13th Killer Puzzle are among the easiest to reverse-engineer. Take this puzzle, and mind you, I’m writing this paragraph in real time as I play this level for the first time. This isn’t an early stage. This is Special Level 21 out of 30.

It’s actually a unique level because it’s only the second time a stage utilizes the idea of the hammer blocking your path. You can only push the hammer’s head from the sides. The little circles in the ice can’t be walked over or have a pillar placed on them, and the ice cubes don’t plug them up to become land. BUT, but the ice cubes will pass over them and continue on until they stop. My objective is to clear the path to the bags, but if I kick an ice block into the bottom hammer which will knock it into the top hammer, the bottom pathway becomes the one blocked by the hammer. There’s also a series of springs along the path. The final move is obvious, as I just need to be on the right side of the hammers when the ice cube strikes them. First, I do a single hammer cycle, then I push the block out of the way while it’s ricocheting off the spring (the only time you can push a moving block, as there’s a small window that allows it).

The red blocks shatter the ice if a moving block hits them on the pointy end. Now I just need to move the bottom hammer out of the way, and I do this by first moving the top hammer’s position. I want it facing upward.

The three rocks above the starting area will act as a way to catch the ice cube, then I kick the ice cube so that it begins to bounce off the springs.

Now I just have to avoid the ice cube and point the hammer down while the Cube is moving right to left, so that I have enough time to set the hammer and clear out of the way, since the hammer will kill you if you’re in the area around it when it’s activated. That part’s easy. I simply need to stand off to the right side and the path will be cleared.

And that’s it. Took me about five seconds to spot the “final move.” The rest is just following the steps that get there in reverse. “What’s the second-to-last move? What’s the move to get you there?” and so forth. And because of the mechanics, there’s not multiple different options for each of those steps. If you pause the game and work out from the last step, you should be able to eventually reach where Kickle is standing. There’s usually only one option with no branching paths. There’s very few levels in Kickle Cubicle where the final step is open-ended. It only has a couple gags it can go to in an effort to try to trip players up, but once you’ve done them once, you’ll immediately recognize the same puzzle design later on, and then there’s nothing left to “solve.” The very next stage looked daunting for about five seconds, but by ten seconds, I knew the solution because there’s only one space that can be the “final move” and, what do you know? Hanging right above it is an odd little cubby hole for you to hide in and a spring directly left of the space below it.

I marked the “final move” with a circle and the cubby hole with a star.

All that’s left is to move the block around, and since you can’t pull the block, it’s easy to figure out what sequence of gaps and walls are the correct one since one move usually places the block against a wall in a way where the block can’t be used.

The weird thing is, the arcade game had fewer basic enemy types and much tougher puzzle design. At one point, I spent a couple hours on-and-off on one puzzle in that game and couldn’t come up with a solution. Nothing like that happened on the NES game, whether I played the US or Japanese puzzles. Part of that might be the grid is much, MUCH smaller on the NES. In the home version, the grid is 15×13, compared to the massive 23×14 playfield of the coin-op. The toughest levels in the coin-op utilized the bigger screen. Not that it’s tightly designed, necessarily. I had three instances in the coin-op where I’m fairly certain that I beat a stage in a way not intended by the designers, including the final puzzle stage before the last boss, because I discovered that if you push the hammers at the exact right moment, it’ll stop the block without harming you OR redirecting the block. That trick doesn’t work on the NES, by the way, but I still had two instances where I know I won in a way not intended. In the screenshots below, I never even used the bottom right hammer but the little bomb enemy pushed the final bag to within my reach. The actual final move was to use that hammer to hit the cube up to make a land bridge. When I noticed the bomb was moving the bag to the right of the screen, I wondered if I could cheese the design, and I could.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m taking a dump on Kickle Cubicle for the NES, because I genuinely think it’s a quality game. It’s just not a particularly challenging game for me. I think the average puzzle fan will massacre this game, but if not for the absurd gap between stages, I don’t think they’d get bored. Plus, Kickle NES does offer some challenges the coin-op doesn’t. Enemies like clowns that throw balls at you or sparks that bounce around and have to be avoided aren’t in the coin-op. The sparks especially have some of the more difficult levels because they’re based around timing and feel more like the type of challenge that Lolo had. The four bosses are also very different from the coin-op. The fights are much more basic. They throw a giant ice cube at you that becomes the ammo you push back at them, and you avoid their charging moves and shove cubes into them. The coin-op’s bosses are much more clever (until the final boss, who has the classic attack pattern of “spam basic enemies and projectiles until dead.”), but the fights are fun enough. As a warning, the Famicom version’s bosses take more hits and the fights become kind of boring for it.

Just don’t expect this to stretch your gray matter to the limits. If you want a real challenge, you’ll need something like Lolo or Baba is You. The stages that are truly mind bending are few and far between, at least in the home game. On the NES, I never had a single moment where I got stuck and then felt stupid because the solution was so obvious. But there is an audience I think Kickle will be perfect for: young people. The puzzles featured in Kickle Cubicle feel like they’re perfect to introduce children, say, 8 to 14, to the logic puzzle genre. Calling this “baby’s first puzzler” is too extreme. This isn’t Highlights for Children. It’s a step above that, but an important step. I hope my friends at ININ Games and Irem are reading this, because they should seriously consider a re-release for Kickle Cubicle as a two-in-one package. You might want to also consider ROM-hacking in some new levels. I actually would have added a Kickle ROM hack to this feature but apparently none exist. So, before I render a verdict, let’s jump to the coin-op!

This is the final level of the post-game content regardless of whether you do the NES or Japanese version, and it was the first time I needed a while to work out the solution and ended up losing multiple lives.

Kickle Cubicle
aka Meikyuu Jima
Platform: Arcade
Released June, 1988
Designed by Hiroya Kita
Developed by Irem
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

Not exactly the type of game you expect to play in an arcade, huh?

There’s a strong chance you’ve never played the coin-op of Kickle Cubicle since it never was released outside of Japan. Now, while I briefly sampled the NES game about a half-decade ago, this review was originally supposed to be for just the coin-op since I figured it had a better chance at a re-release. When I turned on the NES game later, the levels seemed similar but there was no sense of urgency like there is for the arcade version. I mean that in the literal sense too, as the timer in the coin-op feels like it runs a lot faster. I timed-out exactly once while playing the NES game and it was very, very late in the special levels. For the arcade game? I timed out quite a few times.

Now part of that can probably be attributed to getting my sea legs. There’s a formula to the type of puzzles you see in Kickle Cubicle and during my playthrough with the coin-op, I hadn’t experienced every twist there is to using the springs, hammers, or the chicken enemies. The chickens are part of the NES game too and sometimes mess up your progress by kicking the block, but at other times, they’re part of the puzzle and you have to figure out how to manipulate them into doing an out-of-reach kick for you. The other possible excuse is that the humongous playfield (again, 23×14) makes it harder to reverse engineer the path to that final move. Plus, the timer changes depending on the stage, and I had to remind myself this is a coin-op and it’s probably quite cross with me for not dying more than I did. To my credit, a lot of the levels aren’t “puzzles” in the usual sense. Like this:

What do I keep having to tell you people: NEVER trust the chicken.

In that level, the chickens create a timing-based gauntlet for you to run. There’s a fast-moving spike at the end of the path that’s trapped by an ice block, but the ice blocks will eventually melt if you don’t keep them frozen with your breath. It’s the timer within a timer because if you take too much time, the block will melt and the spike will kill you. Okay, levels like this don’t really fit in with the puzzle theme and are probably a feeble attempt to drain lives since the level up to this point haven’t exactly been challenging. Here’s another stage like, where once you shove the block, you have to run the full circumference of the playfield before the hammers hit the ice cube back into you.

“Run mother f*cker!”

My question is “why is this a coin-op?” This is not a genre that should be played using quarters and standing at a cabinet. The coin-op does have four tiers of adjustable difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Hardest. I played on whatever the default was once, then after playing the NES game I went back to the coin-op and tried it on HARDEST. It added a couple extra enemies and the timer seemed shorter than before, but I also got more 1-ups when I beat bosses than before. Even the bosses didn’t seem harder. Speaking of which, they’re a lot different from the NES game. The four NES bosses are cute and solid for the genre, but they’re kind of samey. The bosses in the coin-op each feel unique. They’re not fantastic battles or anything, but I prefer the coin-op’s to the NES’s.

For the first boss, you have to shoot the blob on the end of its tail to have a means to beat it.

The weird thing is, you’d expect the coin-op to have a bigger variety of enemies and the NES game to have a tighter focus on the puzzles themselves, but actually it’s the opposite. The clowns, turtles, cannons, and guys invincible snowmen that also have freeze breath from the NES game are not here. There’s also a couple more levels that are based around what I call “intercepting” puzzles than in the NES game, probably thanks to the bigger playfield size. This was as hard as the game gets. The idea is that the place you need to create a bridge is completely inaccessible with walls or pillars, so you have to cause two ice cubes to collide from opposite directions to line them up with the spot where you can create the bridge. Getting the timing down, even when they’re usually generous with the size of the area where a bridge can be made, is tricky.

This is an example of an interceptor level.

I think the problem with the arcade game is that it takes too long to warm-up. It’s not until you’re halfway done with the game that the level design really starts to feel like it leans heavily into puzzles and not a meager top-down action game with puzzle elements. For the last half of Kickle Cubicle, there are some decent brain teasers to be found, and the game is generous. You can continue if you game over (there might be a limit to this but I opted for save states instead of lives) and, unique to the coin-op, progress carries over between lives. If you die, your next life will be played with all the land you’ve created still intact, even on the hardest setting. The NES version makes you start over from scratch. The arcade version also controls perfectly, while the NES version has one minor issue with the timing of placing a pillar. If you’re moving while you attempt to place it, you’ll step onto the square and cancel it out. Otherwise, both versions control intuitively and responsively. The arcade game is probably the better bet for puzzle veterans, though be prepared to need thirty minutes before you reach the really meaty puzzles. If you play both the arcade and NES games, you’ll see plenty of look-alike puzzles, but they play different enough to make experiencing both versions worthwhile.

Arcade

NES

While I personally preferred the coin-op, I had a hunch that Irem, intentionally or otherwise, created the perfect entry-level logic puzzler for kids ages 8 to 13 with the NES game. I wanted to test that, and I had the perfect subject. We’re working on a big pinball feature for The Pinball Chick, but yesterday Sasha The Kid, on the verge of turning 10, gave me a little bit of her time to try out Kickle. It’s not entirely her first puzzler since she’s got Baba is You on her Switch, though she hadn’t really gotten into it. Maybe I got it for her at too young an age. I thought Kickle would make a better starting point for her. You know what? She liked it a lot, and I can’t express how satisfying it was to see her work out the solutions to the puzzles, store the solutions in her memory, and start to clear stages at an impressively faster pace. She also proved my theory that Kickle is a better starting point for puzzlers. As I was writing this, she was giving Baba is You a second look without me even asking her to, and Aunt Cathy was wiping tears. So, you know, thanks for that, Kickle Cubicle.
Verdict: YES! and YES!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Kickle Cubicle, Kickle Cubicle Arcade, Kickle Cubicle Coin-Op, Kickle Cubicle Famicom, Kickle Cubicle NES, Kickle Cubicle Nintendo, Meikyuu Jima Arcade Review, Meikyuu Jima Famicom Review, Meikyuu Jima Review

Starship 1 (Arcade Review)

January 15, 2026 by Indie Gamer Chick 1 Comment

Starship 1
Platform: Arcade
Released July, 1977*
Designed by Steve Mayer, Dave Shepperd and Dennis Koble
Developed by Atari
Originally Utilized Yoke and Thruster Controls
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

*The Killer List of Video Games and other sources list 1976 as the date, but GameFAQs and Wikipedia list a July, 1977 release date so that’s what I went with. This is another game meant to be a bonus review for Atari 50: The Definitive Review – Part Two but since that might take a while to finish, I’m posting them separately. Besides, these games deserve to stand on their own.

So why am I reviewing Starship 1? Well, I saw the Japanese flyer for it in Atari 50 and my jaw literally dropped.

That is so f*cking cool looking, isn’t it? How can you not geek-out over that? It’s just so COOL! I can’t imagine how exciting it must have been to see that in an arcade in 1977. How could anyone pass up a chance to try it? Frankly, I’m stunned this isn’t considered a legendary game based on the cabinet alone. Yet, I’d never really heard of Starship 1 before seeing that flyer in Atari 50. That seems like an ominous sign that the game isn’t very good, right? Well, spoiler: Starship 1 actually isn’t a bad little game at all. It’s a little game for sure and one that I couldn’t put too much time into due to epilepsy concerns, but I enjoyed my time with it. So why the hell didn’t they include Starship 1 in Atari 50? It can’t just be because of the controller, right? They included steering wheel-based games like Fire Truck, Sprint 8, and Super Bug. There has to be a reason. Then I saw it in action.

Oh. Yeah, now I get it. Fun fact: Apparently Starship 1 is the owner of the first “easter egg” (cheat code) in gaming history, though my father and I spent the better part of a half-hour trying to get it to work and couldn’t.

Yep, you’re shooting down ships that look exactly like the Enterprise from Star Trek, which was the inspiration for the game. And Starship 1 isn’t being coy about it, either. There’s also ships that look kind of like Klingon Birds of Prey plus the game literally mentions “The Federation.” It’s a reminder that Starship 1 was made in the wild west days of arcades, where Atari had the chutzpah to ride the wave of Jaws popularity with a game called Shark Jaws, with “Shark” in teeny tiny barely visible letters and “Jaws” in gigantic, all-encompassing letters. By the way, I intended to review Shark Jaws for Atari 50’s bonus reviews and couldn’t get it working, and it likely cannot work on MAME at all. There’s so many games that have no widespread presence for people like me that are interested in gaming history. It’s insane that in 2026, you can’t just play any old 50 year old game from the comfort of your home, even if you’re willing to pay for the privilege. And people used to think the Disney Vault was a nightmare. Yeesh.

My father said “it’s amazing Atari didn’t get sued over this.” Indeed.

Anyway, unlike a lot of coin-ops, you can’t “win” at Starship 1. You’re paying a quarter for an immersive 60 second experience of getting to pilot the not-Enterprise, shooting at four types of baddies while dodging their blasts that look like little circles of static. The standard Enterprise-style spaceships score 50 points. These weird looking space cats score 100 points, while the fast moving saucers score 200 points. The Birds of Prey are rare enough that we didn’t encounter them EVERY game, but when you do manage to see them and shoot them down, they score a whopping 500 points. There’s an impressive-for-its-time sense of size and scale thanks to the sprites getting larger as they get closer to the screen. The effect looks similar to Wolfenstein 3D a full fifteen years before that came out. There’s no animation to the sprites besides the scaling-up, but it’s still impressive given the era and limitations. After sixty seconds are up, the game is over regardless of how well you played. If there’s a way to continue on, we never found it. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would want to? Start over and go for a higher score. That’s the point.

I get why they skipped this for legal reasons, but there’s also a lot of features that, simply put, can’t carry over.

Starship 1 isn’t a particularly difficult game, hence the strict 60 second timer. It’s one of the first games that was meant to be an experience more than a test. “It’s the Star Trek Experience before that was a thing,” my father said, though he never saw this game either. The actual coin-op used a state of the art yoke for analog controls with a thruster for speed. Starship 1 was also one of the first cabinets to use what’s called the “pepper’s ghost” effect to create the illusion that the image was floating in space. By having the monitor lay horizontally in the cabinet and using a mirror that’s half-silvered, it creates a convincing illusion of an image floating in the air. You’ve certainly seen it before, as it’s the same trick that was used by Atari in Asteroids, Taito in Space Invaders, and the famous Sega laserdisc game Time Traveler, not to mention all the “holographic” ghosts in the Haunted Mansion ride’s ballroom scene are really the world’s biggest use of the effect (though that record might have since fallen).

It almost looks like Nyan Cat, doesn’t it?

So, playing this on MAME or as a hypothetical Atari 50 release means losing a lot of the charm, and this on a game that relies a lot on charm. Again, I can’t imagine how exciting it must have been to see that in an arcade in 1977. I wouldn’t be around for another twelve years, but if I ever see this at a gaming museum, this is on my “must play” list because what I got out of this review is but a fraction of the intended Starship 1 experience. But ignoring all of that, there actually is still some satisfying gameplay to be had. Not a lot, obviously, but this is one of the rare historical curios that retains some satisfaction thanks to a well-designed primary weapon. Hitting your shots is exhilarating, period. I didn’t expect that.

I have no idea what that’s supposed to be. According to a video I found, on MAME planets show up a lot more frequently than they do on a real machine. Another example of “the charm is lost.”

So a home release of Starship 1 makes little sense because this was promising you that, for your quarter, you were going to get an experience unlike any other available in arcades. Except, well, I kinda liked playing this. So did my father. As limited and stripped of its selling points as it was, playing this with a PS5 controller with no holographic effect, hey, it controls great, the shooting is satisfying enough, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. If anything, I think the game is a little too generous with the photon torpedo. When time is up, your score is your score and if you want to go again, you have to pony-up. “You having fun?” I asked my father, and he stared at the screen and said “yeah. You?” I nodded and said “yeah. Huh. Who’d have thought?” I get why, for legal reasons, they probably thought including this was a bad idea. But Starship 1 was a revolutionary first-person game worthy of historic consideration, both for its contributions to the first person shooter genre AND on its gameplay merits in the 2020s as a scoring-rush style mini-game. I guess the phasers must be set to “stun” because I’m stunned this got a YES!
Verdict: YES!
If you’re interested in the history of actual Star Trek video games, one of my best friends in the whole world, author Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, wrote a book on them! Star Trek Video Games: An Unofficial Guide to the Final Frontier is a fun coffee table-style read and, at the time of this review’s publication, you can get it on Amazon for 58% off! It’s also available on Kindle but, like, come on! It’s a coffee table book! You want to own THE BOOK, and $16.59, it’s a steal, folks! I’m not a paid shill, just a big fan.

If you got to play a real version of Starship 1, I want to read about it in the comments! Come on, arcade goers of the 1970s and 1980s! I need to live vicariously through you!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Arcade, Arcade Reviews, Atari, Atari Arcade, Atari Arcade Games, Retro Gaming, Star Trek Games, Starship 1, Starship 1 1977, Starship 1 Arcade Review, Starship 1 Atari, Starship 1 Atari Review, Starship 1 review, Starship Atari, Video Games

Cloud 9 – An Unreleased 1983 Atari Arcade Game (Review)

January 14, 2026 by Indie Gamer Chick 4 Comments

Cloud 9
Platform: Arcade
Unreleased Completed Prototype
Designed by Paul M. Resch
Developed by Atari
Originally Utilized Trackball Controls
NEVER BEEN RELEASED

Originally this was going to be a bonus review for Atari 50, which I’m FINALLY devoting real time to. Part One has been up for a while and covers the original games created specifically for Atari 50, along with Yars’ Revenge for the Atari 2600 since it ties directly to one of those games. While I work on Part Two of the Definitive Review, which covers the special features and the arcade games, I figure I should get some content up, and as far as I can tell, no website has ever done a critical review of this game. So, that’s kind of neat, right?

Digital Eclipse, this is one you really should rethink putting in Atari 50 as a curio. It’s not amazing or anything, but it’s certainly worth a look, and it should not be banished to oblivion like it has been. I’m guessing the hold-up is the art assets like the cabinet, bezel, etc. I have faith you can come up with something, even if you just junk the original 1983 art and create something new. Only one cabinet was made (maybe, I can’t find a lot of info on it) and my argument is since it was technically unreleased, that means technically there’s no “official” art and you can come up with whatever you want.

Cloud 9 is so obscure that it isn’t even mentioned in Atari 50. It was originally intended to be Dona Bailey‘s follow-up to Centipede under the name “Weather War” until Bailey bailed because the tech didn’t allow all her ideas. Paul M. Resch took over, but Cloud 9 was apparently killed in route testing with even worse results than Akka Arrh, and there’s scant information about Cloud 9 out there. From what I could find, Cloud 9 was tested at a single location where the game was met with a disastrous non-response, and that was that. Like Akka Arrh, I get why that happened. It’s a gallery shooter developed long after that genre’s peak, with abstract enemies that just don’t stand out. This thing looks boring, doesn’t it? Here’s the scoresheet. Yawn, right?

“36 year old woman yells at clouds” could be the headline, but really, a game where you shoot clouds that have no personality feels doomed to fail in the wacky world of 1980s arcades, doesn’t it. Would it have killed them to put a frowny face on them? Maybe eyebrows slanted down to make them really angry? It’s just too generic and wouldn’t have stood out.

The gameplay is like Space Invaders where aliens are replaced with aerosol. You have to shoot clouds and avoid their raindrops, lightning strikes that cause fire, plus various generic enemies. Unique to the genre, you start off the game in an entirely enclosed area and have to shoot your way to the surface to shoot the clouds. My father immediately recognized I would dig this a lot since it means you literally begin each game by creating your own strategy. At first, I thought he was right too, but rain doesn’t kill you. It only stuns you, and you need to clear bricks out to have a chance at killing the basement demon. So really, the bricks are just in the way.

The raindrops don’t kill you but rather just stun you. That becomes a problem when they increase their fire rate. From the fifth wave onward, you sort of have to bob and weave and shoot at their sides because they spew a continuous stream of projectiles with no elegance. Thankfully it’s one of those games where you can walk through one side of the screen and you pop out the other. You’ll need it for both the clouds and to avoid the fire which sometimes chases and sometimes doesn’t.

Cloud 9 went the opposite trajectory of Akka Arrh in that I liked it a lot at first, but the more I played it, the less excited I became, and ultimately the game was clinging onto its YES! for dear life. Each background is broken-up into four different waves, and the problem is once you finish the first round of four waves, the difficulty dramatically spikes, but the fun doesn’t spike with it. There’s a secondary threat in the flooding basement that’s a non-entity in the first four waves, but that water fills up much quicker from wave five onward. When the water passes the basement, you die, and that’s where the game has a big problem. The basement angle feels like a band-aid because the surface hazards don’t provide enough challenge. But jeez, it can flood too quickly. Every drop of rain that reaches the top of the basement causes the flood to go up a tick. You can use your body to intercept the rain (deliberately or otherwise) but eventually waves will start with it flooding up too much.

In addition to the flooding, the clouds are capable of healing. The clouds shrink with every shot, up to three times,

A bigger problem is that the clouds can quickly regain lost size and even respawn after death. It’s the respawning part that really hurt Cloud 9 the most in my eyes and almost dropped this into the NO! pile. There were moments where I killed a cloud only for it to immediately return, with no rhyme or reason why it was happening. Now it’s not a deal breaker by itself. A similar problem is the one blemish on Sega/Gremlin’s unsung classic Carnival, but that game has tons of fun targets and the best scoring system of any shooting gallery game. Cloud 9 isn’t as good or addictive as Carnival, and the fact that a dead target isn’t DEAD-dead if you don’t finish a level fast enough is so annoying. At first I thought maybe there’s actually a set amount of clouds you have to kill since it does seem to eventually stop, but that can’t be it since, when clouds return from the dead, they start as the smallest size. It feels like it comes down to luck and accuracy whether they respawn or not. In my final run I beat level 13 in just a matter of seconds when I seem to have been possessed by the spirit of a green beret and couldn’t miss.

Having a variety of playfield limitations based on the background is a novel idea. In this stage, you can climb these mountains for closer shots at the clouds. I like the idea, but it does become frustrating when some stages don’t have the climbable backgrounds. Also note that sometimes the character is red and sometimes it’s blue. You can give up one hit point when you’re blue, and you can regain that hit point by submerging yourself in the flooded basement. You DO NOT have time to do this in later levels.

On the other hand, the trackball controls are excellent, the shooting is quick and smooth, and the action is non-stop. It also has one of the most accurate uses of “handicap” for continuing among Atari coin-ops. When I had my (then) best run and ate a game over, the continue system allows you to start at the level before the one you lost on. When I beat that level again, the handicap bonus it gave me put my score where it had previously been, more or less. It’s much closer to being the correct score than any other game that uses this system. So while it did frustrate me quite a bit, Cloud 9 did manage to barely cling onto a YES! It fought tooth and nail to ruin itself, but it turned out fine. And I should note that, had this been in Atari 50, I would have awarded bonus value for a rare historic curio, so they really should add it to Atari 50 in a future update.

Barely a YES! is still a YES!, though it was close. By level 17, I think it’s safe to say it’s not so much a rain anymore as it is a tropical storm, and the act of digging yourself out of the basement is no longer a cute novelty. It’s now f*cking annoying. Look how high up the water is before I even dug myself out!

Okay, so the characters are generic and forgettable and it becomes maddeningly difficult thanks to the flood increasing at an unreasonable rate. I’d say it makes sense this failed in route testing, except there’s actual fun to still be had here, warts and all and the problem seems to be that nobody even wanted to try it in the first place. That’s understandable, too. Look at those graphics, again. They’re not bad graphics, but by 1983/84, gaming characters had evolved. Personality was now a big part of the arcade game experience, and this is very much lacking in that area. I can’t imagine a game where you fight the weather itself appealing to children of any era without putting in effort to give that weather personality. Again, something as simple as putting faces on the clouds would have done wonders for this, and they needed a new hero sprite. But Atari could have used Cloud 9 as a template and re-sprited it as something else. It doesn’t HAVE to be clouds you fight. I totally get why the route test failed for Cloud 9, but like with Akka Arrh, that one route test shouldn’t have been the forever death of the game.
Verdict: YES!
Do me a favor and share this review across social media! Let’s get Cloud 9 added to Atari 50 as a community!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Atari, Atari Unreleased Arcade Game, Atari Unreleased Games, Cancelled Arcade Games, Cloud 9 Atari, Cloud 9 Atari Arcade, Cloud 9 Atari Arcade Review, Dona Bailey, Games cancelled in route testing, Gaming, Lost Arcade Games, Rare Arcade Games, Unreleased Arcade Games, Video Games, Weather War, Weather War Atari, Weather War Dona Bailey

Punch-Out!!: The Definitive Review – 7 Full Reviews for Punch-Out!! and Its Sequels, Spin-Offs, and Rip-Offs

January 9, 2026 by Indie Gamer Chick 6 Comments

I couldn’t get the Commodore 64 game Frank Bruno’s Boxing working. In case you didn’t know, it’s an unauthorized rip-off of Super Punch-Out!! that predates Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! by a couple years.

Punch-Out!! is a legitimate contender for my favorite Nintendo franchise. Actually, the only bad one really is the original coin-op. That would be more impressive if there were more games in the series, but I’ll get to that in a moment. I wanted to start my 2026 at IGC with something big. I was going to JUST review Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, which is one of my favorite video games ever, but I figured “why not do all the pre-Wii Punch-Out!! games?” And if you want my thoughts on the Game & Watch, be sure to read Game & Watch: The Definitive Review, though I should note the Punch-Out!! Game & Watch, sometimes called simply “Boxing” is nothing like Punch-Out!! at all. In fact, the formula used in that game evolved into Urban Champion.

Probably a good idea to cancel an 8-bit/16-bit boxing Definitive Review. Boxing games usually aren’t very good. I’ve tried a couple times to review Rocky for the Sega Master System. I’m a HUGE fan of the movie, the first sequel, the fourth sequel, and I even liked Rocky Balboa and the Creed films. Rocky III and Rocky V suck. The Sega Master System game is for sure the Rocky V of video boxing. It’s bad. It doesn’t belong in this review, and honestly, I don’t think I can possibly get an interesting review out of it. It’s such a nothing game.

I originally intended to include other games in this, but my family vetoed Teleroboxer for the Virtual Boy due to flashiness and eye strain, and my friend Dave talked me out of doing other boxing games. Some of them were literally impossible for me to recreate with my emulator because the coin-ops had unique inputs (Sega did a few that tried to mimic the feel of throwing punches). Others, like the Master System game Rocky or James “Buster” Douglas Knockout Boxing for the Genesis, I really don’t think deserve to be compared to Punch-Out!! because it’s apples and oranges. Those are actual boxing games, and Punch-Out!! is much, much more than just boxing. But I wanted at least one “bonus” review so I found a very good ROM hack of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! to close this feature. So there’s seven total reviews in Punch-Out!!: The Definitive Review. I hope everyone enjoys! Here are the games reviewed:

Punch-Out!! (Arcade)
Super Punch-Out!! (Arcade)
Arm Wrestling (Arcade)
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (NES)
Power Punch II (NES)
Super Punch-Out!! (SNES)
Phred’s Cool Punch Out 2 – Turbo!! (NES ROM Hack)

HAS PUNCH-OUT!! RETIRED ON ITS STOOL?

Even non-gamers get references to Punch-Out!! in pop culture. It’s astonishing to me that Nintendo isn’t doing anything with this franchise.

So why isn’t Nintendo doing anything with Punch-Out!! Around this time last year, reports came out that it was due to the roster being filled with ethnic stereotypes. Next Level games later denied reports about this and instead said the format has been taken to its limits and there’s nothing “unique” to do. Either way, I really don’t want to get into politics or political correctness. Anyone who has read me over the last fourteen years can probably guess that I find these things exhausting at this point. BUT, I figure this would be a good place to point out that Nintendo obviously can’t think the situation is THAT bad because Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!! are both available on Nintendo Switch Online. If the franchise has been vanished the cornfield, it seems weird to still have the old games with the same characters widely available, doesn’t it? Plus Hamster Co. sells the arcade Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!! as part of the Arcade Archives series. Hell, I even suspect that the Wii Punch-Out!! will be re-released before the 2020s are up, possibly with some small modifications. But those are legacy games and the Wii is now old enough to be “retro.” The Wii Punch-Out!! game is over a year older than Angela, for God’s sake.

I kind of hate that there’s so much focus on negative stereotypes because it takes away from Punch-Out!! having one of THE great African-American characters in gaming. In a franchise defined by boxers who, let’s say, don’t exactly follow the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, Mr. Sandman has no time for such tomfoolery. He’s one of three characters who appeared in all four formats (Arcade, NES, SNES, and Wii) and the only Punch-Out!! character who doesn’t cheat or have any aspect of his style, appearance or personality that is illegal under the rules of the sport. Mr. Sandman is just a bad mother f*cker. I was so happy he became the last boss of the Wii game. I liked that it came down to a boxer who wins by boxing. I think he should have been the final pre-dream fight of the NES game because Sandman’s fight is much harder than Super Macho Man’s. Well, except his triple uppercut is probably easier to dodge than Macho’s spinning punch, but one move shouldn’t decide who goes last. I think Sandman has harder timing than Macho for most punches. I know I needed more attempts to beat him than Macho the first time.

So is Punch-Out!! well and truly dead as a franchise? Assuming Nintendo is skittish about the stereotype situation, just ditch basing the characters around nationalities and create new characters that aren’t fated to age badly. Or, instead of new characters, use old ones, but old ones from different games. One of the most popular franchises in gaming of the 21st century is Smash Bros. That could provide the template for Nintendo to revive Punch-Out!! Everyone loved the battle against Donkey Kong at the end of the Wii game, right? There you go! Imagine how many copies a Punch-Out!! where you box Link, Mario, or Samus Aran would sell. Captain Falcon could FALCON PUNCH Little Mac on Little Mac’s home turf. Kirby could eat him. 36 MILLION copies were sold of Smash Bros. Ultimate. Even if this hypothetical Punch-Out!! sold one third of that, it would be considered a smash hit and almost certainly bring back a lot of old school gamers to Nintendo. I can’t think of any franchise as universally beloved, critically acclaimed, and best-selling that is completely shut-out of modern gaming like Punch-Out!! is. What the hell are you doing, Nintendo? Three console games and it still feels like you’ve barely scratched the surface of what Punch-Out!! COULD be. Knuckle-up already and bring it back! ON WITH THE REVIEWS!

GAME REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account, at least for the games themselves. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

Punch-Out!!
Platform: Arcade
Released February 17, 1984
Designed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives

Glass Joe will EVENTUALLY throw his hat in the ring as a contender for the greatest opening stage in video game history. Here, he’s just an early sign of how unresponsive this whole game is.

I reviewed the coin-op Punch-Out!! a little over seven years ago. I didn’t like it then, and while I’m willing to admit I was wrong about Vs. Super Mario Bros. (and I used to have a snobbery streak a mile wide) I was spot-on about the coin-op Punch-Out!! Everything that a person could love about the three console games seems to be here, only it doesn’t really work. If you expect the counter-punching format from the home games, boy are you in for a disappointment. Not that it’s missing entirely. You move left and right to dodge attacks, but the actual act of throwing leather is frustratingly unresponsive. It just takes FOREVER to get the hang of because “counter-punching” in this game literally means counter-punching. You throw a punch, they block and counter-punch, then you might be able to counter-punch and get some stunned punches on your opponents.

You can see in this picture that Bald Bull’s eyes are yellow. No, the hard drinking didn’t finally get to him. This is “telegraphing” but consider those quotes to be of the sarcastic variety. The boxers will just sit still and run out the clock unless you throw a punch, and then you will be the one to trigger them “telegraphing” their punch, which they’re already doing because they’re winding back. What the f*ck do you think he’s doing in this picture? Stretching? Squeezing out a turd? I hate this game.

But whether I played Punch-Out!! on Arcade Archives or MAME, it didn’t matter. The controls are incredibly unresponsive. Many button presses go unanswered, and it reduces Punch-Out!!’s good intentions into a mindless button masher where you’re happy when you land a string of punches. I have problems with the offensive game, but even the defensive one is problematic. Sometimes something as simple as raising or lowering your guard can have a delay in it, and every time I changed my defensive stance, it felt like I was punished on the offensive side of the equation by being unable to throw any punch for a second or two. Maybe they were trying to make it feel more “scientific” or “boxing-like” but it really just came across as responsive. When I don’t like popular games, I get accused of “playing it wrong” but in the case of the coin-op Punch-Out!!, I was constantly questioning it.

Pizza Pasta probably comes the closest to feeling like one of the NES or SNES fights. He does the same “lethal dry hump” move that Aran Ryan uses in the SNES game, and after he finishes he throws a big uppercut. If you dodge it, you can unload on him and he remains stunned EVEN IF you throw the special punches.

Eventually I did at least get good enough to beat all six fighters without cheating, though only about 10% of it felt like the home games that I fell in love with. And it’s not simply the gameplay I dislike. For a boxing game, there’s no sensation of violence at all. The NES game had punches that gave off a violent, impactful vibe and the uppercut in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! is so satisfying. Getting punched in the NES game feels devastating too, as it should. The NES game does 8-bit violence just about as good as the console is capable of. None of that is present in the coin-op original. Even when you charge up the KO meter and throw uppercuts and right hooks, it has no OOMPH to it. Neither does getting punched. It feels like people fighting with oversized novelty gloves. Feathery play-fighting, and that’s being generous. Finally, I thought half the roster of fighters were forgettable and generic. Piston Hurricane (who would be much better in the SNES game), Kid Quick, and Pizza Pasta have pretty dull designs and Kid Quick’s fight is just very bland. It’s almost hard to believe they stripped this game down and still managed to turn it into a timeless, cherished NES classic. Punch-Out!! does have jaw-dropping graphics for 1984 and I’m sure it was attractive to arcade goers, but it’s just very fun, you know?
Verdict: NO!

Super Punch-Out!!
Platform: Arcade
Released September, 1984
Designed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives

I expected more of the same, but instead, this is inching closer to what the console games would be.

Super Punch-Out!! is a no-doubt-about-it improvement over the original in basically every way. The previous game was apparently developed as a result of Nintendo having a surplus of monitors, so who knows how much their heart was really into it. With Super Punch-Out!!, it sort of feels like the development team realized that they were onto something and leaned heavier into the more fun aspects. The counter-punching relies more on left-right dodging instead of using your gloves. The big, slicing uppercuts and hooks that the console games would make famous are thrown more frequently here, and finding an extended sequence of wide open “stunned” punches is basically the main object now. The controls are still often unresponsive-feeling but even that’s not as bad. Super Punch-Out!! is immediately, noticeably better.

And actually, the offensive game is now based around the stunned punches.

And it also feels much closer to the console franchise in terms of personality. Annoyingly, the already sparse roster has been cut from six opponents to five, but these five are big in personality and they, you know, cheat. Well, Dragon Chan does (and technically in boxing you can’t ever face away from your opponent, so Super Macho Man’s spinning punch is very illegal). This required an additional dodging move, the duck. Weirdly, I only remember needing it for three out of the five boxers: Bear Hugger, Dragon Chan, and Super Macho Man. Also, Great Tiger doesn’t do his famous “teleporting” move and really just feels like a faster version of Piston Hurricane, complete with the “Hurricane Punches” move from the original game. You can actually feel that they’re starting to experiment and get a sense for what Punch-Out!! SHOULD be, but as an authorized enhancement kit for the original coin-op, they were limited by the problems the original game had.

Just think: by decade’s end Nintendo would be making a deal directly with the U.S.S.R. for the rights to Tetris. I wonder if they knew about “Vodka Drunkenski” at that point. If not, maybe the Steins could have poached their deal by bringing a copy of Super Punch-Out!! with them.

If the first game was a prototype for better things to come, Super Punch-Out!! is the game that confirms Nintendo recognized that and had ideas for how to get there. Punch-Out!! should be about everything but boxing. If it feels like you’re obeying the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, well, it’s kind of boring, isn’t it? Here’s where it gets really weird: I couldn’t wait to be done with the first coin-op. The second game added something to the upper screen: K.O. Time, IE how long you need to knock a boxer out. This added SO MUCH replay value. I was still frustrated by the controls, but nowhere near to the degree I was the first time around. When I knocked out the unfortunately named Vodka Drunkenski in 44 seconds and change, I literally let out a cheer. The time trials also clued me in that I wasn’t fighting Dragon Chan right, as even on my fifth fight against him I failed to put up a good time.

I heard a lot of chatter about Super Macho Man being tougher than Mr. Sandman, but honestly I thought Super Punch-Out was exponentially easier than the original, including the final fight. It doesn’t really FEEL harder until the title defenses. More responsive controls do that every time, you know?

There is a downside to the time keeping: the rematches after you beat Super Macho Man don’t record times, so if you want to treat Super Punch-Out!! like a time trial game, you have to not continue when you get knocked out during the title defenses. Speaking of which, the second wave of fighters I found to be much harder in this game. Hell, I lost the Bear Hugger fight a couple times, and I never actually made it to the second Macho fight. I decided to not reload for rematches because I wanted to challenge my fastest times. That’s what put Super Punch-Out!! over the top for me. While all the problems with the lack of authentic-feeling, painful violence returned from the original, Nintendo got close enough to the Punch-Out!! that *I* fell in love with to win me over.
Verdict: YES!

Arm Wrestling
Platform: Arcade
Released May, 1985
Designed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

This was the very last ORIGINAL Nintendo coin-op. Also, “Stud Horse?” Seriously, is Texas Mac bragging about how well he’s hung? It kinda sounds like it.

Arm Wrestling is one of the few Nintendo coin-ops that Hamster hasn’t brought to Arcade Archives, though I have no clue what the story on that is. I mean, Arcade Archives released Sky Skipper (which I reviewed on my 30th birthday), a game that never got a wide release and which only one unit is known to still exist. A game that rare, and rare specifically because of bad route testing, gets modern love but Arm Wrestling doesn’t? That seemed ominous to me, and then there’s the fact that Arm Wrestling has been shut out historically by Nintendo on the same level as StarTropics and Zoda’s Revenge. No references in any other game. Not even a wink in the Smash Bros. series or a microgame in WarioWare. So, I was a bit nervous, but truth be told, I think I like Arm Wrestling more than Sky Skipper. Maybe. As I type this paragraph, I’m not actually finished with my play session. I’ve only beaten all five fighters once, but Arm Wrestling is positively exhausting, like one of those button mashing Track & Field games. I doubt any game wearing a Nintendo label has been this physically taxing, at least not without some kind of Power Pad or Balance Board.

There’s an excellent guide to the surprisingly complicated rules of Arm Wrestling at GameFAQs. If you give this game a shot, you’ll want to at least read through the basics because Arm Wrestling is NOT intuitive. At all. Even that guide I’m not entirely sure is right. It says that I should press two buttons when the bubble has a “!!” in it but that didn’t do sh*t for me. The only thing that worked for me was pressing RIGHT and I still rarely got 100% of the bubbles.

I can honestly say I’ve never played anything like Arm Wrestling before. Well, that’s not entirely true. This is considered part of the Punch-Out!! franchise for a reason and shares DNA in that both are about counterattacks. But instead of throwing leather, you want to mostly tap the joystick LEFT to try and muscle your opponent’s arm down. Eventually they’ll make a move that’s telegraphed by a facial expression or some other telltale sign, at which point you want to counterattack by quickly pressing RIGHT instead. Doing this will stun them like a Punch-Out!! sequence, at which point little bubbles will appear above the fighter that require you to hit the POW button. A “!” bubble requires a single press while “!!” might require two presses or it might require pressing RIGHT. I honestly never figured it out, but I know that just pressing buttons always seemed to fail. A money symbol does no damage to your opponent but scores points. If a skull appears, you have to wait it out. A “?” is a 50/50 chance for points or a skull. Did you get all that?

Two of the five fighters (Mask X and Alice & Ape III) require you to perform a pull. Mask X’s pull is done by pressing UP. Alice’s “pull” move is basically an instakill and has to be stopped by pressing RIGHT. It’s sort of like the Bald Bull’s Bull Charge, only if you didn’t get up if he hit it.

As noted in the above picture, there’s more to it than just jerking left and right on the controller. Two of the fighters require special finishing techniques to beat, and a few have Punch-Out!! like moves you have to dodge, including the final fighter spitting fire at you. Okay, so Arm Wrestling is unintuitive and physically exhausting to play, but I…….. kinda liked it. It’s also an innovator in a few ways. You know the Mario Kart “hit the gas at the right moment to get a boost” thing? Arm Wrestling did it first! Every match has a starting pistol. If you hit LEFT before the pistol, you get a foul. Two fouls is a game over, but if your timing is true and you hit LEFT on the exact right frame, you can score super quick KOs on opponents. The time trial system from Super Punch-Out returns, and honestly I think it’s more potently addictive here. Plus, unlike Super Punch-Out!!, the second wave of fighters ALSO has time trials that are exclusive to the rematches.

An hour ago, I lost this fight over a dozen times. Now I’m beating it in under 12 seconds, and it’s exhilarating.

And those rematches are no slouches. I literally could not beat the first fighter, Texas Mac, in the first rematch. His fighting style is totally different. When I was just about to wrap-up this review, I went back for one kick at the can, and not only did I defeat Texas Mac II using the Mario Kart trick, but I won the fight IN FOUR SECONDS! I literally screamed.

This was the last fight I won.

Arm Wrestling isn’t perfect. I never got the hang of defending against the skulls. I never got the hang of the timing of the bubbles at all, really. In the rare instances where there was a mix of “!” and “!!” bubbles, I was always surprised when I actually got all five correct. I’m also suspect Hamster took a pass on this because it’ll be bad for analog sticks. I’m guessing even the most durable arcade units took a LOT of abuse from players, which probably explains why Arm Wrestling is a rarity. Still, it didn’t deserve to be historically blanked like it has been. It’s loaded with personality and has some of the most unique gameplay Nintendo has come up with. Yet, it can’t even get a microgame in the WarioWare franchise. I won’t suggest that Nintendo is sitting on a goldmine, but as a unique novelty game, Arm Wrestling deserves better.
Verdict: YES!

You’ll note that I didn’t mention the, ahem, infamous sound effects. For over fourteen years now my readers have given me endless sh*t because I often play games muted. Well, have a listen to what I muted this time. HAH HAH! WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?🖕🤪🖕

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
aka Punch-Out!!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released October, 1987*
Directed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
Available with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)

*A version of Punch-Out!! without Mike Tyson/Mr. Dream was released September 18, 1987 for the Famicom in Japan. Sort of. Only 10,000 units were made but only as prizes for special events or drawings. In this version, Super Macho Man is the final fight. Mike Tyson actually IS in the game code and requires a Game Genie to unlock, and he replaces Glass Joe. Heh, imagine if that’s how it really worked. Talk about tough love training.

I’ve played Punch-Out!! and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! to death. “I need something to make it fresh for me” I thought, so I tried the PlayChoice 10 version (the first time I’ve ever played PlayChoice 10, I think), only the colors on it are, ahem, loud. So I stopped and swapped back to the NES because, no joke, my eyes started to ache.

You know what blows my mind the most about Punch-Out!!? I’ve always known that there’s really only six body types, with King Hippo being the sole one-off and the other ten fighters each being the twin of another (all the Punch-Out!! games but the Wii one do this), but I’ll be damned if it isn’t easy to forget because they did such a good job of hiding it. Like, Glass Joe and Don Flamenco don’t feel alike at all. Neither does Piston Honda and Mike Tyson. It wasn’t until I paid really, really close attention during this review that I started to “feel” the similarities besides the shape of the sprite. Before paying close attention, the only pairing that felt too similar was Mr. Sandman and Ball Bull, who both spin their hands before throwing a punch and look hilarious when you slug them in the gut. There’s also no hiding that their hooks look identical, though oddly I found the uppercut spite to feel unique, even if it really isn’t. For this review, I actually looked for shared moves for the first time and they weren’t hard to spot. Like Von Kaiser and Great Tiger both have an easy-to-exploit weakness when they duck. Glass Joe and Don Flamenco both have the same hilarious knockdown animation where they change directions a few times. Soda and Macho’s big, cutting uppercuts look and feel identical. Yet, my mind is blown because, if you’re not LOOKING for them, it really never does feel completely like a palette swap. There’s eleven fighters, period.

Super Machoiski

Soda Popman. Just seeing if you’re paying attention.

If there’s such a thing as the competition for the best job of “stripping down” a coin-op, the NES Punch-Out!! has to be the outright winner, right? Given the limitations of Famicom, especially when this started development, the “vibe” of the coin-op with huge characters and an emphasis on counterattacking was not only retained by actually optimized in a way the coin-ops never were. In terms of graphics, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! probably had the biggest character sprites seen in a game console up to this point, and they don’t feel like a “cheat” like the gigantic bosses of Contra. These aren’t bits in the background being with an invisible hit box that creates the illusion of size. If the sprites were ugly, it wouldn’t matter. But they’re strikingly memorable and create a real sense of threat. One thing that neither coin-op successfully conveys is a sense of being hopelessly outsized and outmatched. In the NES game, the opponents feel HUGE and you feel so very, very small, and on behalf of small stature people everywhere, thank you Nintendo for that. The violence is also vastly improved. Punches feel authentic and savage, thanks in no small part to some of the best damage sprites 8-bit gaming ever saw.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (Japan, USA) (Rev A)-260108-042310

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (Japan, USA) (Rev A)-260108-044159

From spit flying out to Bald Bull and Soda Popinski’s “slot-machine eyes” to just looks of painful surprise, punches feel impactful and important. Since it’s a boxing-themed game called PUNCH-Out!!, getting the violence right is a pretty important thing. And then there’s the match design, where dodging left and right allows a chain of stun-locked punches and it’s SO SATISFYING. In addition to sussing out patterns, you can preemptively stop an attack with a well-timed punch. Doing so often earns a star and allows an uppercut. Again, the coin-op had some weak-ass vibes to its power shots. In Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, the sound design and the graphic of Little Mac building up momentum before throwing the punch AND that excellent revving-up sound effect make it one of the all-time satisfying video game attacks. There’s multiple “all-time” accolades for Punch-Out!! Heck, the game starts with one of the all-time great opening stages in Glass Joe. Nobody thinks of him as a “stage” but he’s the perfect introduction to the gameplay. I’d put him right up there with level World 1 Level 1 in Super Mario Bros.

If I have to make one complaint about Punch-Out!!, and I sorta should since it’s my job, I guess I wish it made more logical sense when the opponents are able to dodge the uppercut. For the last five or six opponents, sometimes it feels like they all whiff. I’m fine with missing if I don’t have them stun-locked, but if you’re going to allow the opponents to dodge the big uppercut, stop giving out stars. It feels like punishing players for good gameplay. (shrug)

So what else could I possibly complain about? Well, I guess I wish there were a lot more fighters. There’s a hidden second quest that requires not only a password but a special way of inputting that password, but all it does is take you to a very slight remix of the World Circuit that includes the King Hippo and Great Tiger fights from the Major Circuit. If this changed up the fights themselves, it’d be awesome. It doesn’t. As far as I can tell, the only difference is losing a fight is a game over with no option for a rematch. I guess I could also complain about the logic of “winning by decision.” It’s based on a points system that makes no sense and is the final element that shatters the illusion that Punch-Out!! is a sports game. You could pummel someone into a coma and never get punched once, but if you don’t reach a scoring benchmark, they’re awarded the victory. Some of the points required are so high that I can’t imagine a person can reach them without winning by TKO (or even KO) before the bell rings at the end of the third round, and none of the title fights (or Mr. Sandman) allow victory by decision. I’d say “I wish they got rid of them entirely” but the first time I beat Mike Tyson (well, Mr. Dream, same diff) it was by decision and made me feel like a world beater.

I don’t have a problem with Mr. Dream. I really don’t. I get it. My complaint is “THIS IS THE BEST THEY COULD COME UP WITH?” He’s SO generic looking.

Okay, let’s talk about the rampaging elephant in the room. No, Nintendo is never going to re-up with Mike Tyson. One thing you have to remember is that the deal that landed them Tyson was lousy for him and would never happen again. At the time they made the deal, Iron Mike hadn’t even won his first World Heavyweight Championship yet. As the story goes, Minoru Arakawa was having a drink after hours at the 1986 Winter CES and on the bar’s TV was a match between Tyson and a guy named David Jaco (it HAD to be that match, because it’s the only one that lines up with the CES story). Tyson was just starting to become nationally known and the boxing fan Arakawa, like everyone else who witnessed Tyson, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Tyson’s body was atypical for a heavyweight. He could be described as “compact strength” in that his muscular build was packed into less space than you would expect. He also had unimaginable speed for the weight class combined with his absurd punching power. He was a completely new style of heavyweight boxer. I wasn’t around for the meteoric rise of Tyson, but my father and AJ were, and they both shake their heads with disbelief when they talk about what it was like to witness it. “When he burst onto the scene, it really felt like he was changing what a heavyweight boxer would look like. But it’s been forty years and there still hasn’t been another combination of a squat frame, speed, and power. There will NEVER be another Mike Tyson. Heavyweights might do some of the things he did, but none of them do EVERYTHING he did.” Minoru Arakawa must have agreed with my father.

My timing is not what it used to be, but it’s a LOT easier to beat Tyson with today’s emulators than the one I used on my Wii back in the day. I fought Tyson eight times for this feature and won twice. I think that means I get a match with Evander Holyfield next to decide who is the greatest Tyson slayer of our time. I promise I won’t bite.

Predicting that Tyson would eventually claim a version of the world heavyweight championship wasn’t exactly as bold or risky as some people make it out to be. During Tyson’s rise in the mid-80’s, the heavyweight division was relatively weak following the retirement of Muhammad Ali and the biggest champion of the transitional era, Larry Holmes, was not a popular national figure (“most underrated boxer of all time” says my father). The welterweight division was where most of the fandom was at with guys like Sugar Ray Leonard. But Arakawa predicted, as did everyone else who saw him, that Tyson had a clear path to the heavyweight championship and his presence, charisma, and domination would revitalize interest in the entire sport. What’s beyond belief is that Tyson’s people agreed to the deal Nintendo offered. The price? $50,000 for three years exclusivity. Not $50,000 a year. $50K, up front, no royalties. Within a year, you wouldn’t even be able to buy a meeting to pitch to Tyson’s people for that price. It was a horrible contract for Tyson even by the standards of the era, and any “yeah but Nintendo was taking a risk” talk is mostly bullsh*t. If there’s such a thing as inevitable in sports, it was Mike Tyson: World Champion in the winter of 1986, and his handlers should have told him $50K with no royalty was a crap deal.

You have to give them credit for a VERY lifelike Mike Tyson sprite. No need to use your imagination with this one. It looks just like him. It’s worth noting that the Jaco match that Arakawa witnessed was only Tyson’s 16th match. Just like today, there were multiple governing bodies that each promoted a world champion along with two unofficial world champions, the Lineal Champion and the Ring Magazine Champion, both of which are taken very seriously. HBO had organized a unification series for the alphabet belts. It wouldn’t be until a dozen matches after Arakawa’s CES story, on Tyson’s 28th match and now under Nintendo contract, where he would be able to claim a world championship, the WBC version. His 29th match would see him also win the WBA title, and his 31st would let him claim the IBF title to be the “Undisputed” Heavyweight Champion of the World. Except it was totally disputed because Michael Spinks had never been beaten in the ring and held The Ring Magazine and Lineal Championship. It wouldn’t be until his 35th match when he beat Michael Spinks in 91 seconds to become the no-doubt-about-it Undisputed Champion. By the way, if you watch the match, Spinks looks like his life is flashing before his eyes before the match even starts. Mind you, Spinks had never lost a match in his professional career and he looked positively terrified. I’ve watched boxing my entire life, with some of my earliest memories being of sitting on my father’s lap while he explained the sport to me, and I’ve NEVER seen a guy with the accolades of Spinks look like he’s about to call the whole thing off like that. My father is right: Mike Tyson will never happen again. We’ll get a second coming of Michael Jordan before we get a second coming of Mike Tyson.

What I can’t believe is that there’re people who refuse to play Punch-Out!! without Mike Tyson, like he alone made the game worth playing and not the outstanding mechanics, authentic violence, revolutionary graphics, or the over the top roster of characters. I wonder if a lot of these stubborn people even beat Mike Tyson? It’s not the most interesting fight in the game. I think the Mr. Sandman fight really is the highlight. If they insist that it was Tyson’s game, I have news for them: he wasn’t even in the original Japanese release. In fact, there is no “Dream Fight” in that version. The game ends with Super Macho Man. It was one of five versions of Punch-Out!! I played for this feature, and there’s subtle differences in that original “Gold Edition” release.

“Gold Edition”

US releases.

Gameplay differences though? I mean besides having no Dream Fight? Nope, there’s none. It’s the same game. And that speaks the highest volume to how good Punch-Out!! on the NES is. I just played through it FIVE TIMES in a single day and I never got bored. Even though I know how to win every fight, I can still play it and have a good time. It might have aged better than any game released for a home console in the 1980s. This gameplay is age proof. I’m fairly certain stuff like Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros. 3 will still be fun in a hundred years, but I can’t actually guarantee it. I can with Punch-Out!! Even non-boxing fans love it, and that makes sense. It’s not a boxing game. It just has a boxing theme. What genre does it belong to? Who knows? Who cares! It’s Punch-Out!! I don’t ever render verdicts based on historical importance, but since Punch-Out!! is cruising to an easy YES!, I want to point out that Punch-Out!! represents an underrated leap forward in game technology thanks to the MMC2 chip that allowed for the bigger sprites. It looks like a carton probably more than any game that isn’t on laser disc up to that point. That’s one of many reasons why it’s timeless, and not because of Mike Tyson. And by the way, I think this aged better than the SNES game. Stay tuned for that.
Verdict: YES!

By the way, Tyson publicly stated his wish to return to Punch-Out!! years ago. If it didn’t happen immediately after that, it ain’t ever happening.

Power Punch II
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released June, 1992
Developed by Beam Software
Published by American Softworks
Sold Separately on Steam
Available on Evercade Piko Interactive Collection Vol 1.

Beam Software doesn’t have a reputation for quality games. But, let it be said they at least gave us an excellent Itchy & Scratchy Game Boy title (which I reviewed in Simpsons Games: The Definitive Review Volume Three). It’s like all the unplayable crap they made before that built up to that one game. And it really is fantastic. Go play it. Don’t play this.

Please note that nothing I say in this review is directed at Piko. I’m fine with re-releasing old games. It’s God’s work, even if $8.99 is a ridiculous price tag for THIS. I’m also not blaming the programmers for it, either. They didn’t do the marketing for this. They made a sh*t game, but that happens all the time.

I’ve mellowed out a lot over the years, but every once in a while I’ll play a game that makes my blood boil. What can I say? I hate cynical games, and Power Punch II is maybe the most cynical NES game. If Where’s Waldo or Action 52 doesn’t have that title, it’s Power Punch II, which is clearly trying to imply a direct connection to Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! In fact, the original version of the game was even going to have Mike Tyson in it before all his legal problems started and he was removed from the game. There is ZERO question that the intent of all parties was to deliberately trick consumers into believing this was a sequel to one of the best selling and most beloved video games of the 1980s and that a similar quality should be expected. That really pisses me off. Unlike stuff like Where’s Waldo, I actually think in the pre-internet days that average consumers and not just unknowing parents could be fooled by this one. The Tyson name combined with the screenshots of a game that looks kinda like Punch-Out!! probably would have worked. Where they lost any plausible deniability of their intent to deceive consumers came when they had to remove Tyson, they changed the name from “Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch” to the much closer to Punch-Out!! sounding name “Power Punch II.” You’ll note there is no Power Punch #1, but does Mom and Dad know that the original game is called “Punch-Out!!” and not “Power Punch?” What a disgusting thing to do.

Mike Tyson's Intergalactic Power Punch (USA) (Beta) [b]-260109-001242

Mike Tyson's Intergalactic Power Punch (USA) (Beta) [b]-260109-001258

If the game behind all this was any good, maybe it wouldn’t be so infuriating of a business practice. But coming from Beam Software, Power Punch II is of course a horrible game. This might look like a knock-off of Punch-Out!! in screenshots, but the gameplay never comes even a little close. There is no fine-tuning effort at all in this game, and no sense of OOMPH to the punches. There seems to be a very vague attempt to recreate the counterattack system, only with looser movement parameters. The first opponent you can just throw hands with, with no sense of finesse and no dodging/countering to speak of. The second opponent turns Power Punch II from just bad to outright boring and bad. The f*cking thing keeps backing away from you and the only way to actually win is to wiggle back and forth and hit it one jab at a time since it counterattacks every punch you throw when it’s up close. And it was all downhill from here.

Anyone who praises the character models……. seriously? You think THAT looks good? It looks like Mac & Me is going through a midlife crisis.

It’s rare I do one of these reviews and decide to quit before I finish the game, but I had no interest in seeing Power Punch II through to the end. Absolutely no effort was made towards creating a quality game. It’s the gaming equivalent of a “mockbuster” made by The Asylum, only video games in the 1990s were expensive and it’s not inconceivable a kid who was a big Punch-Out!! fan got stuck with this for their allowance money or as a present over a better game because they thought they were getting the actual sequel to Punch-Out!! I have no problem with studios making terrible games. It happens every day. I have a big problem when you try to tie that game to a legacy you didn’t build and don’t deserve, and Power Punch II goes out of its way to do that, literally. They did it with the celebrity endorsement that fell through. They did it by attaching a sequel number to the end of the name. They did everything possible to make people believe this was the next game in the Punch-Out!! franchise except make a quality game. Disgusting, guys. Shame on you!
Verdict: NO!

Super Punch-Out!!
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released October 24, 1994
Directed by Makoto Wada and Yasuyuki Oyagi
Developed by Nintendo
Available with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)

I didn’t attempt the “pause” trick, and most certainly not because I couldn’t get it to work. Cough.

Reviewing games that I spent a lot of time with in my formative years is always tough, but Super Punch-Out!! is REALLY tough because I got so hooked on it once upon a time that my experience playing it in 2026 bears no resemblance at all to the first time I played it. The fighters that once seemed so intimidating and insurmountable landed a combined total of two punches on me over sixteen fights. And hell, it’s actually possible to beat all sixteen fighters in under fourteen seconds each. Some of them can be beaten in under six seconds, and most can be in under ten seconds. It’s actually not even that hard to learn how to come close. It’s simple pattern recognition with a touch of RNG luck (and a trick using the pause button). Super Punch-Out!! is the easiest game in the franchise to figure out the timing for. By far, actually.

Once upon a time, I could NOT beat this guy. He was by far the fighter that took me the longest to beat. Today I beat him in 21 seconds and change. By the way, I think Super Punch-Out!! ending on two identical, generic muscle guys is a weak ass finale. Nick Bruiser is one of the all-time letdowns of a final boss, and really I think both Bruiser Bros. are too generic. I think a better ending would have been shifting them to the 2nd and 3rd fights of the special circuit and making the game end on Hoy Quarlow. What an amazing, unexpected twist it would have been to reach the final fight and have it be a 78 year old man with a walking stick and a record of like 999 – 0 or something along those lines. It would have made him one of the all-time great finales in gaming. He’s the toughest fighter in the game. He should be treated as such.

I’ve said something to this effect before, but besides other games in the franchise, the video game Super Punch-Out!! shares the most DNA with is actually Shadow of the Colossus. Both games are, more or less, boss rushes based around taking down much bigger, stronger, more capable opponents. Even the opponent count is exactly the same, and both games are damned by losing a significant chunk of the replay value once you know how to win, leaving only time trials as the main reason to come back. Well, except Shadow of the Colossus offers a gigantic world to explore for sightseeing. For Super Punch-Out!!, once Time Trials run out of steam, you have to find your own fun.

Okay, let’s do that. For this review, after beating Super Punch-Out!! with a 16-0 record and needing barely 30 seconds to beat most opponents (I did need 55 to beat Rick Bruiser), I replayed it all the way through, only I didn’t use a single power punch and I didn’t use any interrupting counterpunch. I only dodge-countered and threw random punches. If I accidentally did an interrupt, I rewound it and allowed the punch to land as punishment.

By the way, at sixteen fighters, this is the biggest game in the franchise, except it’s really not. The Wii game’s thirteen rematches aren’t just remixes, but whole new fights. Even the Glass Joe rematch is legitimately difficult, at least the first time. It’s something the older games like this could have REALLY used, and then after them, there’s one last big surprise that made the Wii game probably the best in the series. If only they would re-release it.

As I noted at the end of the NES game, I think it aged better than the SNES game. Even when I didn’t throw uppercuts or hooks, the speed of the enemy punches is much slower and the challenge just isn’t there. I’ll still struggle with some attacks in the NES Punch-Out!!, from Soda and Sandman’s uppercuts to Super Macho Man’s spinning punch. Similar attacks in Super Punch-Out!! are much, much easier to dodge, and there’s more defense options. Ducking is a cinch and moving your defensive stance up and down is intuitive. Because of the slower speed, I never had stress timing dodges too much. The first time you play Super Punch-Out!!, you’ll certainly struggle with some of the fights. A few decades ago, I got my clock cleaned even in early fights and needed multiple attempts to beat every one of the back eight fighters. If I didn’t lose over twenty times to guys Mad Clown, Narcis Prince, and Rick Bruiser, I’d be shocked.

After losing to Mad Clown about a billion times (give or take), I kind of cheated. When he’d throw the balls, I’d pause the game to see where the gap was. Tell me I’m not the only one who did that!

Really, once you know each guy’s attack patterns, there’s not a whole left for Super Punch-Out!! to offer except the time attack. Without throwing a single power punch, I was still able to beat most fighters (but not all) without getting punched once. Did I still have fun? Sure, but not as much as I thought I was going to have. Not even close, and I think what fun I did have is more of a credit to the formula itself. The Punch-Out!! formula is cathartic, you can’t completely zone-out while playing it, and being a tiny person defeating gigantic bullies is boilerplate wish fulfillment. The Punch-Out!! formula itself is the bulletproof thing, at least once it transitioned to a console franchise. The content of a Punch-Out!! game is practically incidental. It’s why I can tolerate generic characters like the Bruiser Bros. or Gabby Jay, but for the record, I think Super Punch-Out!! probably has the weakest roster of the console trilogy. I think EVERYONE would have preferred Glass Joe to Gabby Jay, I think Mad Clown should have been dumped in favor of King Hippo, and as noted in the caption above, I think the Bruiser Bros. are lame as f*ck and Hoy Quarlow should have been the final boss.

To Super Punch-Out!!’s credit, even the weaker character designs usually include one memorable aspect. Heike Kagero is near the bottom of the barrel in terms of character design, but that hair whip move is unforgettable. Still, I can’t help but wonder if this fight was meant to be Great Tiger at some point with the “Mirage Dance.”

Don’t get me wrong. Super Punch-Out!! does a lot right. I marveled over how convincing the palette swaps were in the NES game, but somehow I never noticed that the SNES game does the same thing for all but two characters as well. I mean, of course I realized Bear Hugger and Mad Clown used the same body, and the Bruiser Bros. needed no explanation, but I swear to God it wasn’t until I played today that I realized everyone else but Narcis Prince and Hoy Quarlow share a body with someone else. The pairings are Gabby Jay & Bob Charlie, Piston Hurricane & Aran Ryan, Bald Bull & Mr. Sandman (and they did in the original coin-op as well, duh), Dragon Chan & Heike Kagero, and Masked Muscle & Super Macho Man. I’ve played this for years and I never realized that and now I feel stupid. But, to my credit, none of the fights feel like palette swaps. The Dragon Chan and Heike Kagero fights couldn’t be more different. This has to be right up there with the ninjas in Mortal Kombat in the palette swap hall of fame.

Playing this now, I literally can’t believe I ever struggled with some of these fights. Like Narcis Prince? Even without throwing uppercuts, once I knew how to beat him, he was so easy. I didn’t use an uppercut or an interrupt and still beat him in under a minute with just normal punches. Still, I love his “OWWHOW!” cry when you knock him down. It’s so satisfying to hear.

If not for the fact that I can specifically remember how much I enjoyed Super Punch-Out!! the first time I played it, this would be one of the weakest YES! verdicts I’ve ever given. Again, I had fun but I’m pretty sure this will be the last time I ever play Super Punch-Out!! The magic is, simply put, gone. And I mean gone gone. In order to jog my memory on what my original experience was like, I had to avoid using the fun punches. So Super Punch-Out!! doesn’t hold up like the NES or Wii games. I don’t necessarily think it’s impossible to get bored with this. I played the NES game five times for this feature. I was ready to be done with Super Punch-Out!! halfway through my second run today. It’s too easy. It’s too slow. It’s too clockable. I just played all sixteen fights and didn’t throw a single power punch. My record? 16 – 0 again. Was it worth doing? Not really, actually.

OOF, that was close. This was the only exciting thing that happened playing Super Punch-Out!! today. You know, part of me wonders if this would have held up better if it used the NES’ star system. The meter makes building up an uppercut too easy, and you get unlimited uppercuts until you get hit. Maybe that’s too much of an advantage to the player. Also, I think there’s too many opportunities for interrupts. Even when I was deliberately trying to avoid doing it, I interrupted eleven total punches over the course of sixteen fights just by trying to throw random punches. Most of those came in the World and Special Circuits where the punches come in faster, meaning there’s more opportunities to interrupt-stun.

I did get punched more than twice, and in fact, I got knocked down three times. Bald Bull, Super Macho Man, and Rick Bruiser each got me once with a one-shot knockdown, but otherwise, not one single fight even reached the second minute EXCEPT Nick Bruiser, who I beat with about thirteen seconds left before running out of time. In over fourteen years of writing game reviews, this was without a doubt one of the hardest I’ve ever had to do because I have to go off memories from over a decade-and-a-half ago and remember that, yes, I had the time of my life playing Super Punch-Out!! once. Now, if you’ve somehow never played it, ignore this review, get off your butt, and play it. Super Punch-Out!! is, simply put, fantastic, at least when you play it the first time. Unlike other Punch-Out!!s, there ain’t going to be a whole lot left once you know the game, and it’s not that hard to memorize. By the way, that’s fine. Not every game has to hold up to the scrutiny of endless replayability, and frankly, not every game NEEDS to be replayed at all once you finish it. Give me one unbelievable day with a game over a lifetime with a middling game. Super Punch-Out!! IS one of the all-time greats and it aged well, and once you know what to do, it’s not exciting anymore.
Verdict: YES!

Phred’s Cool Punch Out 2 – Turbo!!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Unauthorized ROM Hack of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
Released April 20, 2010 (Updated March 25, 2016)
Developed by Master Phred
Link to Patch at RomHacking.Net
I use THIS TOOL to apply patches.

Yep, that’s Rick Bruiser! You fight him twice before fighting Nick Bruiser. The first Rick fight is one of the easier ones in the game. The second one? Not so much.

You knew I HAD to do a ROM hack in this feature. Actually, given the popularity of Punch-Out!!, I was genuinely, no bullsh*t stunned that there aren’t a lot more. I mean, people have worked actual magic on Super Mario Bros. 3 to turn it into virtually whole new games, but there’s been tons of Mario games over the years. Since Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, there’s been only two sequels. Apparently, the lack of ROM hacks isn’t due to a lack of interest. I’m not versed in this stuff but from what I’ve gathered, Super Mario Bros. 3 specifically lends itself to this form of game development as a ROM hacking building block in a way Punch-Out!! doesn’t. Re-Spritings Punch-Out!! is relatively easy, but using it as a template for new-feeling gameplay isn’t. So the fact that Phred’s Cool Punch Out 2 – Turbo!! even exists is kind of astonishing. Don’t think of it as a NEW version of Punch-Out!! but rather a remixed version that changes the speed and tinkers with some of the punches. But boy, does it tinker with them in a way that works.

I’m guessing there’s a lot of inside baseball in this game. I don’t know the story on the developer or the original characters in this. I sincerely thought the manager was supposed to be Dante from Clerks and Ken Barryhil was supposed to be the Angry Video Game Nerd. YOU SEE IT TOO, DON’T YOU?

First off, you feel the “turbo” part of WAIT give me a second…………

Okay, NOW it looks like the Angry Video Game Nerd. Where was I?

You feel the “turbo” part of “Cool Punch Out 2.” The speed is dialed up, which I was worried would make the game feel unresponsive. It doesn’t at all and works WONDERFULLY. That uptick in the speed of gameplay by itself would have probably made this worth a look as a curio, but then Master Phred messed around with the punches in a way that works. Take a remix of Glass Joe/Don Flamenco based around Disco Kid from the Wii sequel. Disco throws off-speed punches that pack a lot of power behind them, but the timing is unlike anything in the NES Punch-Out!! The Bruiser Bros. from the SNES game are here and their punches are especially hard to dodge, some of which barely have any warning at all. I’d be impressed if someone could plow through all fifteen fights on their first try based just on their Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! experience and knowledge. I don’t think it’s even possible. This plays on your expectations, and it does a pretty good job of doing so.

The remixed version of Super Macho Man, who now looks like something out of Futurama, still throws the spinning punch. But the pattern leading to that is new, and the timing is different.

Mind you, nobody is throwing a NEW punch. Everything in Cool Punch Out 2 is done using the already existing assets within the game. The designer couldn’t make the new version of Glass Joe throw Piston Honda’s rapid-fire punches. He couldn’t make Soda Popinski do Bald Bull’s bull charge. He also couldn’t seem to change the rules of the game, which means the Bald Bull fight where you have to score an uppercut STILL needs to be won by an uppercut even though it’s now Rick Bruiser, and this game’s King Hippo stand-in can’t get up when he’s knocked down, nor could he have a different fighting style or even a weakness. For that reason, it’s inevitable that some of the fighters feel like very little has changed.

King Hippo is replaced by Doc Louis. The fight was changed as much as I imagine the developer could humanly do. The “Hippo Dance” that King Hippo rarely does is now done frequently, but you still punch him in the mouth and then the stomach. It’s worth noting the amount of damage done is reduced significantly, which prolongs the fight. I needed two rounds to win. Also, like every fight, the timing is different enough to feel fresh.

So it’s Punch-Out!! with where the punches are tweaked ever so slightly. But, like From Below (a Tetris game staged during a giant squid attack) already proved, small changes can yield BIG gameplay results. It’s a lot of fun, but certainly not perfect. I don’t think the game scales very well. I kept waiting for something shocking to happen in the first Rick Bruiser fight, but it was so easy it could have been a minor circuit fight. Stars are more plentiful in this game. Too plentiful, probably. Not only are there more opportunities for them, but you can now bank seven stars instead of three AND you start every fight with two. To counter this, a lot of the fights are now based around limited stamina. I’ve never turned pink so many times playing Punch-Out!! as I did in this game.

The Tyson fight has been remixed, with the first round having a particularly difficult pattern. Instead of trying to one-shot you in the first minute-and-a-half like in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, the new final boss actually has a brutal jab combination for the first minute-and-thirty AND THEN he throws the big KO shots. Okay, so the design was pretty disappointing, but the fight feels very fresh. I was really impressed with this whole effort.

If you set your expectations correctly, I think any Punch-Out!! fan will enjoy what Master Phred has accomplished here. I remember being excited when I found the code for “Another World Circuit” in Punch-Out!! and then being disappointed that all the fights were identical to the ones I’d already done, with only two Major Circuit fighters added to the existing World Circuit lineup. Frankly, when I found out about that code, I was hoping for something like this. So, while I was disappointed by the drought in Punch-Out!! ROM Hacks out there, the one that’s a full remix IS absolutely worth a look. It’s not going to change your life or anything like that, but it’s the “second quest” that fans of the original game have probably wanted for a long time. It turns out, even with all the limitations of ROM hacking that comes with Punch-Out!!, you can get a lot of mileage out of something as simple as playing on the expectations of the timing of a punch.
Verdict: YES!

“Blarrh, I’m a vampire!” You see it too, right?

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, PC Reviews Tagged with Arcade Arm Wrestling Game, Arm Wrestling Arcade, Arm Wrestling Nintendo, Arm Wrestling Nintendo Review, Mike Tyson NES, Mike Tyson Punch Out, Mike Tyson's Punch Out Review, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, Nintendo, Nintendo Arcade Review, Nintendo Arm Wrestling Arcade Review, Phred’s Cool Punch Out 2 Review, PlayChoice 10 Punch Out, Power Punch II Review, Punch Out Arcade Review, Punch Out Coin-Op, Punch Out Gold Edition, Punch Out NES Review, Punch-Out!!, Punch-Out!! arcade, Super Punch Out, Super Punch Out Arcade Review

What I’m Playing – I Gotta Go “P” as in Pinball and Punch-Out!!

January 6, 2026 by Indie Gamer Chick 4 Comments

“DADDY, COME BACK HOME” with a picture of Mario. Folks, Mario is a dead beat dad. It’s canon!

I haven’t done an IGC review since Luigi’s Mansion over a week ago. I spent the last week of the kids’ Christmas vacation playing Zaccaria Pinball with Dad, Angela, and Sasha The Kid (capital T, like Sonic The Hedgehog). We’re hard at work on a Definitive Review of the 40 table Zaccaria Pinball Retro set, which is notorious for appearing to be an incredible deal (40 tables for $5? REALLY?) but actually being mostly of low quality and based around 1950s style boardwalk pins. It used to be a 27 table set, but in 2025, they added 13 very odd tables. Some are genuinely experimental, like Pool Champion Retro (pictured above) while others have no outlanes or challenge elements at all beside the drain. Sasha The Kid dubbed them “shooter’s school” tables. One of those shooter’s school tables actually did score a CLEAN SCORECARD, meaning none of the seven Pinball Chick team members who cast a rating vote went negative on it. It took 19 tables to get that far, and there’s only potential for one more. We were hoping to finish it by now but instead we’re barely halfway through. But that review is coming to The Pinball Chick, and I promise in 2026 I’ll try to update TPC more. What makes it special is Jordi and Dave participated and we even have a newcomer, Matt. That should be up in a couple weeks at the latest.

I, for one, really liked Pool Champion a lot. It’s weird and Oscar the Grouch is furious over the circular walls, but I can honestly say I’ve never played a table like it. It’s not amazing. Actually, it’s often infuriating, especially since the outlanes are totally unprotected. It’s one of forty tables that the now seven person Pinball Chick team will be reviewing soon at The Pinball Chick.

As for content for this site, I’m hard at work on a Punch-Out Definitive Review. It won’t have the Wii version, but it will have AT LEAST Punch-Out!! (Arcade), Super Punch-Out!! (Arcade), Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (NES), and Super Punch-Out!! Plus, I’m planning a few surprises, such as the game pictured below. I guess it’s not a surprise anymore, huh? Since these games are very short even if I replay them multiple times, this won’t be like the Llamasoft feature that takes me all month to finish. I hope everyone enjoys it! It’ll be published by this weekend at IGC. If you have ANY suggestions that belong in the Punch-Out feature as bonus reviews, leave a comment. I’ll give you a clue to the other two besides the pictured game. One is for the NES and one is for the Sega Master System. And why the hell is Texas Mac bragging about how well he’s hung? “Stud Horse.” Oh EVERY guy says that.

This has the most head-shaking sound effects I’ve ever heard in a coin-op. It sounds like two old people making love in a shower. Not that I know what that sounds like.

Filed under Uncategorized Tagged with Pinball

Luigi’s Mansion (Nintendo GameCube on Switch 2 Review)

December 27, 2025 by Indie Gamer Chick 3 Comments

Luigi’s Mansion
Platform: Nintendo GameCube
Released September 14, 2001 (JP) November 18, 2001 (US)
Directed by Hideki Konno
Published by Nintendo
Available with Switch Online Expansion Pack EXCLUSIVELY on Switch 2

I ain’t going to win any friends with this review.

My first day one Nintendo console was the GameCube. I was SO excited, even though 2001 had already broken my heart twice with new game machines (and the early demise of Dreamcast). The Game Boy Advance’s screen was like playing video games with three pairs of sunglasses on and the Xbox’s controller was NOT made for the hands of an already-small-for-her-age 12 year old girl. But that’s okay because that GameCube controller felt custom built for me and there’s no way Nintendo would ever bungle a launch lineup. All I can say is THANK GOD for Super Monkey Ball and Star Wars: Rogue Leader. And then Super Smash Bros. Melee came out a few weeks after launch and THAT dominated my next couple months of playtime and was everything I wanted from a new game on a new machine and more. So my GameCube worked out just fine in the end, and so did the Xbox and GBA (just not THAT GBA). Eventually, I did finish all those 2001 day one launch games. All except one. I never got around to finishing Luigi’s Mansion until I did this review. I’m not even sure I beat the second boss.

This is either the first boss fight or how fans of Luigi’s Mansion will react to this review.

I remember Electronic Gaming Monthly had an Xbox versus GameCube issue and someone actually gave Luigi’s Mansion a 5.5, which was jaw-dropping for a Nintendo-published game. Literally shocking. But it only took me about an hour of playing Luigi’s Mansion to get where they were coming from and, actually, I thought a 5.5 was generous. As a 12 year old, I thought Luigi’s Mansion was a boring all around experience, and now as a 36 year old, I feel the same way. It feels like a ten second long proof of concept hardware trailer that was stretched into a full length game. Because that’s exactly what this is. They took the 10 seconds of Luigi in a haunted mansion footage from Spaceworld 2000’s GameCube tech demo (the same one that got people hyped for Zelda before the cel-shading) and turned it into a full-length game. It’s kind of stunning that Nintendo didn’t throw every resource they had at making sure a Mario game was ready for launch. Apparently Hiroshi Yamauchi’s last request before stepping down as president of Nintendo was “make a Mario game for our new game machine!” Presumably he also asked “why don’t you have one already? Are you f*cking stupid? Don’t you remember how Virtual Boy did with no (real) Mario game to send it off?”

I thought “Game Boy Horror” was trying to play a launch day Game Boy Advance.

But hey, I liked the idea of Luigi in a haunted house as a kid. I was as hyped for that Spaceworld footage as anyone else. I wasn’t expecting a Mario game, and good thing for that because there’s no running or jumping in Luigi’s Mansion and the primary method of combat is basically tug-of-war. So much tug-a-war. First, you have to stun-lock the ghost by pointing a flashlight at it, and when its heart dings, you have to suck it up with a vacuum by holding the opposite direction the ghost pulls. And, well, that’s basically the whole game. Just do that over and over and over and over and over again. If you don’t like the combat, you’re going to be bored with Luigi’s Mansion. If you like it, you won’t be. It’s really that simple. I thought it was boring as a kid and I still think it’s boring now.

God, the Nintendo fans are going to have aneurysms with this opinion, but, yeah, I think the character designers are really forgettable and generic. I just didn’t like anything about this at all. And before you burn down my house, remember that I’m not a Nintendo hater. Read some of my other Nintendo reviews. Try Mario Wonder, the Switch remake of Mario RPG, Yoshi’s Island (from the same director as this), and hell, just go to my retro review index. I even gave the lazy as all f*ck Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition a YES! because I had more fun with it than not. So I think Luigi’s Mansion has no redeeming qualities. So what? It’s okay to not like one Nintendo game, you know?

There’s just not enough twists on the ghost catching formula. The idea is supposed to be that the “portrait ghosts” take extra steps to expose their weak spot. Like the guy in the above chair? He’s not visible if you face him. You have to turn around and wait for him to yawn, and when he does, THEN you can stun lock him and suck him up the same way you do basic enemies. All the portrait ghosts have 100hp and could take multiple stun-locks and suckages to capture. And again, the actual combat is exactly the same as it is for the basic enemies. It just gets so old, so quickly, and that’s before you factor in things like poison mushrooms. They spawn spontaneously during boss fights (and are also hidden in some fixtures in the rooms) and shrink you in size. I don’t care so much about the health ping. It’s easy enough to get health back. But you can’t operate your vacuum while shrank. It’s not hard to avoid damage once shrank, but it takes too long to grow back. It’s one of many, many aspects of Luigi’s Mansion that feels like it only exists to pad out the run time.

Safe bet that the team behind this were gigantic fans of the Haunted Mansion rides at Disney theme parks. Many of the gags are straight from the ride, including this candle bit. There’s also the whole mansion setting and portrait theme, a fortune teller with a crystal ball, dancing ghosts, a graveyard, a music room, suits of armor, and ghosts seen through shadows. Really, all that’s missing are the busts and the stretching room. This isn’t a knock on Nintendo, BTW. So, in a way this is kinda the third game I’ve reviewed based on that ride, including Adventures in the Magic Kingdom for the NES and the Super Famicom exclusive Mickey no Tokyo Disneyland Daibouken. So does this mean in another twenty years we can look forward to Waluigi’s Pirate Adventure? Because that would slap. And if you’re a Nintendo fan who has never rode the Haunted Mansion and are rolling your eyes at me right now, Disney+ actually has the full Haunted Mansion ride point of view. Watch it and tell me I’m wrong. Yes, the Tokyo version of the ride is basically identical. Hell, even the music is kind of similar to Luigi’s Mansion at times.

Every ghost portrait ghost is caught by the vacuum and the sucking mechanic. No exceptions, not even the bosses, whether it makes sense or not. At one point, you meet a fortune teller and the object is to retrieve five of Mario’s personal items and bring them to her. When this is done, she asks you to use your suck her up. “All right! At least with this one I won’t have to watch the number 100 tick off yet again.” Wrong. She still resists the vacuum and still has 100hp. Why? She literally instructs you to capture her. She’s going willingly. Shouldn’t the gag be that she has 1 hit point, or none? It makes no sense.

Maybe this is how ghosts do foreplay.

And that’s what my general problem with Luigi’s Mansion is. Anything potentially clever is kind of ruined by reverting back to the same, tired mechanic that’s used on all enemies great and small. Plus, on the Switch 2, I’m not entirely sure it worked as it’s supposed to. I was constantly getting the dings for stun-locking ghosts and then immediately cuing up the vacuum, only the ghosts vanished in the transition to the vacuum. Maybe that happened when I was 12 too and I forgot, but once I switched off a GameCube controller (a $70 accessory, mind you) and moved to the Joycons, it didn’t happen as much. Oh, it still happened. It happened a lot. This isn’t the “pulling back to suck them in” part but just initiating the combat itself. For whatever reason, the flashlight felt less effective than I remember it being.

I do have one nice thing to say: for such a darkly-lit game, it’s not as flashy as you would think.

And what I said about the flashlight above really only applied to the generic basic enemies. I don’t remember it ever being a problem for any of the “portrait ghosts” that are the main objective of the game. In general, I assume the combat is supposed to feel very frantic and wacky but I thought it was underwhelming and repetitive to the point of exhaustion. Eventually the basic enemies can be dealt with by using the different elements you can suck up into the vacuum which are water, fire, and ice. Some enemies require one of those three things, when it was optional, I preferred using the elements because it worked every time, unlike the vacuum. The problem with that is there’s no PUNCH to using those elements. No feeling of doing damage. You just watch a number count down and then the ghost dies when it reaches zero. They don’t even really react to it. They just kind of stop and fade out with no satisfying death animation.

I’ve jokingly called this “Luigi’s Tech Demo” for years but that’s really what it is. It’s meant to show off how cool the GameCube is. And this IS a massive upgrade over the jaggy Nintendo 64. I actually was surprised by how low resolution this looked. I hadn’t played a GameCube game in a long time. This certainly didn’t hold up as much as Wind Waker did. I mean, it’s not a deal breaker or anything. It looks fine.

And then there’s the Boos. One of the main objectives of the game is to unleash a cluster of fifty boos into the mansion, then find them and suck them up. They don’t put up fights as much as the other ghosts (some of the Boos don’t attack at all), but they can have as much as 300hp. That sounds like busy work by itself, and that’s before you get to what they CAN do: run away, leaving the room entirely. I was using save states to reload them, but eventually I gave up on that and started chasing them into hallways and other rooms. A ghost that has 300hp might require you to follow it back and forth into a room over a dozen times. It just creates more busy work, and again, it’s the same thing you’re already doing with basic enemies and portrait ghosts.

I think the vacuum could have been satisfying if they significantly dialed back the HP on the ghosts. If there was a quick, snappy pace to it, hell, for all I know this could have been one of the best games ever made. But the way they did it just makes it feel like a grindy slog, especially since the ghosts just reset if you don’t catch them in a single pass. The only positive thing I can say is “at least they don’t require you to repeat every single activation step.” Faint praise.

If the mansion offered anything but the combat, like a genuine sense of exploration or getting lost or hidden things, I’d have liked it more. But it doesn’t. The “puzzles” in Luigi’s Mansion are really rudimentary stuff, and there’s really no room puzzles at all in the “you’re locked, how do you get out?” sense. Everything is based around the ghosts. But haunted mansions are almost never JUST about the ghosts. There’s two “hidden” rooms. One of them you fall into from the roof and the other you enter by scanning a mouse hole with the Game Boy Horror, which is like the game’s radar.

Besides the “speedy ghosts” I did get everything in the game, including all 50 Boos. Initially I finished the game with 49 out of 50. There was a hidden room I missed and my OCD got to me while writing this review. Worth the effort? Not really, but at least I’ll have this to figure out how much the sequels improved the game. Which I assume they must have because it can’t get much more boring than this.

But activating the ghost battles isn’t exactly something that requires you to have a seat on your thinking couch. Move a curtain with the vacuum. Move an airplane on the ceiling with a vacuum. Spray a sleeping ghost with water. Spray a bathing ghost with ice. Spray a frozen ghost with fire. Even late in the game, there’s a ghost that you just have to wait for it to basically say “boo.” Activate all the musical instruments or clocks in a room by pressing the A button next to them. The engine is just too limited to do anything more complicated or clever. If you can’t manipulate it with the vacuum or with a single press of the A button, the game can’t handle it. That’s probably just as well. The most complicated enemies require you to clog the vacuum with a ball that you then can launch back at them, it’s pretty haphazard. The controls in general are. Even then, I wish each ghost had a unique capture method instead of vacuum.

Like, these guys WOULD be fun battles since they fight back and feel boss-like (but they ain’t bosses). Except the method of capture is the same for them as it is everyone else. It gets old.

I guess I pictured in my mind a Clue-like mansion (or maybe the Winchester House, which I totally recommend visiting at least once) with lots of hidden rooms, secret passages, booby traps, and puzzles. Instead, it’s the facade of a haunted house, with all the expecting trappings but barely any of the interactivity I would hope for. A lot of the rooms look interesting and have lots of furniture and fixtures, but you don’t really do anything with them but shake them (sometimes it looks like he’s dry-humping them. At least I hope it’s dry). If they have money or health refills in them, it flies out inelegantly. Maybe a drawer or door opens or a chandelier sways, but that’s basically the extent of what you can do with the setting. At one point, I had to walk on a treadmill to get a key and the moment stood out so much I couldn’t believe it because so much of it just sits there doing nothing.

Another weird thing, at least for me, is how the Boos are the central focus of the game, yet they don’t look like the portrait ghosts at all. The portrait ghosts are the only eventful parts of the game, so when you think about it, shouldn’t the portrait ghosts be Boos playing dress-up instead of being humanoid ghosts? Especially since the last boss is also just an ordinary looking Boo with a crown on his head. Maybe his expression is a little more sinister, but he’s just a Boo, right?

So, I thought Luigi’s Mansion was a mostly empty game with boring combat and a plodding pace. I literally didn’t like anything about it. Even the bosses were snoozies. The first one, a giant baby, was probably the most memorable. The second one I honestly thought looked just like the basic enemies, and the third one IS just a giant Boo that you have to lure into the spikes of unicorn statues. Then the last boss is also a Boo but he’s the last boss because he has a crown on his head. Well Boos are like 94% head anyway and it’s not like he’s going to wear the crown on one of his flippers, but at least he also operates a robotic Bowser so that the game can feel climatic.

That’s the second boss. Brought to you by AT&T because they phoned that sh*t in.

I was wrong though about Luigi’s Mansion being cynical. Hey, I can admit when I’m wrong. No, I think the problem is the game was rushed out because they didn’t have a Mario game or anything remotely Mario-like for the GameCube launch. Luigi’s Mansion is a very simple game. Simple combat. Simple puzzles. Nothing too complex. Nothing ambitious at all, really. Maybe the least ambitious Nintendo launch game ever made (well, besides Mario’s Tennis on Virtual Boy). One of the biggest general complaints about Luigi’s Mansion is that it’s too short. That’s kind of bonkers because it’s one of the most artificially padded games from Nintendo I’ve played. If not for the poison mushrooms or tedious life bars, this might have only taken a couple hours to finish.

Honest to God, this guy felt more boss-like than two out of the four big bosses. He also had one of the more involved “puzzles.” You had to suck up the foot he was eating, then capture the waiters who would bring him more food, and THEN dodge his attacks when he had a tantrum, and THEN he was ready to be captured. Hell, I thought he WAS that floor’s boss. It felt like an event.

I don’t happen to think the layout of the mansion was optimized in the way, say, a Zelda dungeon is. But even if I ignore that, the game does so many things that grind the tempo to a halt. After you beat the giant Boo boss, it takes you back to the lab to turn the portrait ghosts into paintings. The next thing that happens? You have to manually walk back to the spot where you just fought the giant Boo on the third floor, at which point lightning strikes the mansion and knocks the power out. This is done as an excuse to restore basic enemies to the floors you’ve already cleared (basic enemies stop appearing in any room with the power restored), at least temporarily. You can go to the basement and restore the power. Why couldn’t the lightning strike have been a cut scene after you beat the Boo? Or why couldn’t the circuit breaker to the house be somewhere else? I guess the reason I found Luigi’s Mansion to be so boring is because nothing about it feels optimized. If you enjoyed it, hey, it’s okay. I like plenty of things that people find to be boring. I watch competitive ballroom dancing and everything.
Verdict: NO!

They went to all the effort of programming these upside-down gravity swap panels that you can step on and then they totally underutilized them. I think like two rooms in the entire game use this. To me, this is the prime exhibit in “they had a lot more plans that had to stay on the drawing board.” And really, I think this is the only time that you use this to reach something. You have to drop down on a table to reach a chest. Wait, isn’t Luigi the better jumper of the two? You mean to tell me he can’t reach up and open a chest on a table? Yeah yeah, I know, because then it wouldn’t be a game. But this upside down mechanic could have made for some interesting maze-like design. There’s none of that type of thing in Luigi’s Mansion. Rooms are just boxes that you wander around in. There’s no sense of a labyrinth of mystery. It’s just a shell. I expect more from Nintendo by 2001. This came out after Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, etc. And even 2D games had evolved past this by this point. (shrug)

Filed under Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch Reviews, Retro Reviews Tagged with GameCube reviews, Luigi, Luigi's Mansion, Luigi's Mansion 1, Luigi's Mansion 1 review, Luigi's Mansion review, Luigi's Mansion Switch Online, Nintendo, nintendo-switch, Switch Online Expansion Pack Reviews

Marvel Cosmic Invasion (Review)

December 24, 2025 by Indie Gamer Chick 4 Comments

Marvel Cosmic Invasion
Platform: All Current Platforms
Released December 1, 2025
Directed by Fred Gemus
Developed by Dotemu
Published by Tribute Games
$29.99 Hulk-Smashed baddies in the making of this review.
This review was played on a Nintendo Switch 2.

SOME SMALL ROSTER/BOSS SPOILERS AHEAD

Yeah, don’t sweat it. You’ll get lost in the fog of war playing this. I must have attacked my own teammates once or twice every stage. And that’s to say nothing of how many times I walked off the goddamn Bifröst.

Yep, this unofficial sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is everything you want in a Marvel brawler. Old school fisticuffs with new school sensibilities. The fifteen starting characters (you know DLC is coming) all feel completely different from each-other and have unique fighting styles and move sets. HUGE move sets. It could take you a while just to get the hang of one character, let alone fifteen. But even if you have no gaming skill at all, it’s okay. This game’s a cinch for everyone! During a recent get together I threw on Marvel Cosmic Invasion, handed out four controllers, and mostly just watched. I wanted everyone to get a turn, and the sheer joy that everyone had was something to behold. There were a lot of kids and their parents, and what made it cool was the parents recognized the gameplay from their own childhood while their kids were hyped because Marvel is scorching hot right now. Frankly, this feels like a better use of the genre than Ninja Turtles because there’s just so many superheroes to choose from and such a wide variety of superpowers to mine for moves than you can get from four nearly identical reptiles.

After the big group-wide session was finished, we had knocked out this much of the unlockables.

Technically, you don’t just pick one character in Cosmic Invasion. You take two characters and can swap to your second superhero on the fly at any time AND you can execute double team moves with the press of a button. Each character has their own life bar too, so it’s really hard to die. Unless some twerp you’re playing with takes all the health even if they’re full, DAD! Sure, you can mash buttons if you want, but it only takes a little practice to be able to pull off combos. In theory if you’ve got the right group of people, you should be able to easily juggle enemies from one player to another like no brawler ever before. I do have one petty complaint about that: the juggling can continue long after you’ve inflicted lethal damage on an enemy. That sounds like it could be fun, but it eventually became obnoxious while playing with psychotic children who thought it would NEVER get old to keep bouncing the lifeless carcasses of enemies while everyone else waited for them to actually walk forward and continue playing the rest of the game. There was at least one kid every stage who did this, to the point that everyone waiting for their turns had to yell “STOP JUGGLING AND MOVE!” It should never have come to that. Again, cute in theory, but annoying as all hell in practice.

For the most part, MCI (what an unfortunate acronym) avoids having enemies linger on the edges of the screen, which is my #1 brawling pet peeve. But, it does still happen, and a couple bosses even feel tailored around it, like Thanos Finnegan. He has a ballsack on his chin-e-gan. Killed half the universe but they came back again. Poor old Thanos Finnegan-egan-egan.

Other than the juggling stuff, if there’s a means to keep the beat-em-up action from becoming stale, it was probably done here. I can’t stress enough how unique each character in the game feels, which is especially impressive given the roster size. However, I’m not the biggest fan of upgradable stats in arcade-style brawlers. For something like Castle Crashers? It’s fine, I guess. For stuff like this? The problem with them is that upgradable stats discourage players from swapping characters in the middle of a quest, which means it has the exact opposite effect of what a large roster of characters is meant to do: keep things fresh. Go ahead and swap, but you’ll be playing level six or seven or eight with a character still on their base stats. GO AHEAD! SWAP! What, you don’t want to anymore?

Some of the dialog is so self-referential and fourth-wall breaking that you would swear it was meant for Deadpool.

And also, I guess I have to mention that the roster was very disappointing for basically everyone. Missing from Marvel Cosmic Invasion: Thor, Hulk, Captain Marvel, Bucky, Doctor Strange, Falcon, Blade, Starlord, Groot, Gamora, Deadpool, Daredevil, Punisher, Ant-Man, Vision, Black Widow, Colossus, Nightcrawler, War Machine, Beast, Drax, Cyclops, Gambit, Wasp, Shang-Chi, and the entire Fantastic Four, among others. Kind of annoying since characters nobody wanted like Nova, Phyla-Vell (well Sasha the Kid liked her at least), and f*cking Beta Ray Bill (are you kidding me? Over Thor?) are in this. I’m not entirely sure how balanced the characters are. Whoever used She-Hulk seemed to have had the most fun, as she has a wide range of attacks while also having some of the hardest-hitting moves. In general, the whole game does an excellent job of feeling like strikes are impactful and violent. Now, there is a catch: some characters fly, and some don’t. Sometimes enemies feel like they’re tailored for flying heroes, but if nobody is using a flyer? It can get a little frustrating. They kind of reminded me of the Baxter fight from TMNT in that it was hard to line-up with the flyers properly.

There were like twenty people over at our house during that first play session, and two things happened that broke my heart. This isn’t a bit I’m doing as a joke. I literally mean “I got a pit in my stomach” heartbroken. The first thing was that several kids opted out of playing because they had already watched their favorite Twitchers or YouTubers playing Marvel Cosmic Invasion and somehow had gotten everything they needed out of this without ever picking up a controller. Why have fun playing a game when you can watch someone else have fun? I couldn’t believe it. It actually made me almost sick to my stomach that a lot of kids would rather watch some idiot play games instead of playing themselves. By the way, those kids then went on to smugly spoil all the hidden characters, level details, and boss fights for everyone else. They were the absolute worst, to the point that my normally jovial father, seriously the nicest guy in any room he’s in, said something to the effect of “no more games when these Twitch kids are around. They can’t take a hint to not ruin it for everyone else.” And they really couldn’t. Not little kids, mind you. Ages 11 to 14 or 15, and I guess it was their way of showing how smart they were to everyone else that they remembered what happened in a video they saw that week. They kept it up the entire time and simply didn’t give a sh*t how annoying it was. The second heartbreaking thing was that every single kid saw the missing characters as the cynical cash grab for future DLC packs that it was. There’s interviews with the development team that say they really just wanted some oddball selections, but why do that at the risk of alienating fans of MAJOR comic characters unless you were certain you could make up for it later with DLC? For the kids, there was literally no question in their minds that both the missing heroes and the missing supervillains (no Doctor Doom, no Green Goblin, etc) were missing because they’re going to be up-sold later. Again, not a bit I’m doing. There is something tragic that kids are that jaded about why games are the way they are. If that doesn’t hurt your heart, I don’t know what will. I hate cynicism, but it was totally justified and likely accurate. Gaming shouldn’t be cynical for children. It should be magical. I hate that it’s come to this. I know that it’s a business and they have to make money, but don’t turn kids into cynics. It’s not cool.

So what’s there to complain about? Well, besides the juggling and some of the weird character selection options? Honestly, I don’t know what more anyone could want out of a brawler. I guess the tutorial took forever and almost caused the game to get shut off during that party. And some of the extra goals in the game aren’t awesome. Hitting X amount of a specific move using a specific character on a specific level being a check mark? What if nobody picks that character? Or sometimes the goal is not taking any damage from a swarm of enemies. Those goals became so distracting, especially since you have to pause the game to see what the goals are, that we all voted to not attempt them anymore. We also took that pledge when it was just me, Dad, and Sasha the Kid replaying this for this review. And everyone seemed to agree that some of the bosses were letdowns, especially the final boss. I think everyone was so unimpressed with Annihilus as the finale that they really thought someone else would be the final boss (except my nephew who thought he was “very Shredder-like”). Oh and the whole battle against Silver Surfer was a groan-inducing slog that had everyone listless. Actually, none of the bosses that become characters are exceptional. BUT, there’s also a ton of fantastic boss fights in this. I can’t stress enough: we were NEVER bored playing this. It was just so good.

I guess I kind of wish there had been more things like these turrets that you can smack to take out waves of enemies. For the most part, the environments are REALLY well done. I don’t think any 2D game EVER has as many one-off visual gags as Marvel Cosmic Invasion has. There’s so many little winking nods to famous Marvel stories and characters. And luckily we had a few kids who told us when those things were coming before they showed up on the screen. Even after we asked them not to. All while their witless parents had a thousand yard stare, hopefully contemplating all their birth control choices that led to this.

Probably the strangest thing I can say about Marvel Cosmic Invasion is that I was kind of over it as soon as I finished. That seems weird, because while I was playing it, I was thinking “this is probably the best brawler ever made! It does everything right.” I mean, it doesn’t, obviously, but it comes close enough that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could hope to top this take on a 90s style brawler. It’s like an all-star game of all your favorite arcade fist-throwers. Yet, now that I’ve kind of played it twice (during the party I only played two or three levels), I don’t really want to play it ever again. I have no interest in more levels or DLC. I’m good. I had a great time while it lasted. Me, Dad, and Sasha the Kid had fun running through it so I could actually do a proper review. I usually enjoy competently made brawlers, and this goes far beyond competently made. It’s a masterclass in cathartic beam ’em up action.

“MJ is going to be SO MAD when she finds out what we’re about to do. This is her thing. Meh. Maybe she’ll be down with it.”

But it’s also an empty calories game. This genre was perfect for arcades for a reason. It’s video game junk food. That’s fine, by the way. Gaming is a big tent and there’s room for brawlers. For a while, this genre was the dominant genre at this very blog because they’re really easy to review. Give me a variety of eye-catching set-pieces (even if they’re facades), a variety of moves, and OOMPHful hits that feel legitimately violent and I’m a happy camper. The only way you can screw it up is not enough variety, or moving off the formula too much, like what happened with the Digital Eclipse Power Rangers brawler that I didn’t like. Even then, their heart was in the right place. Brawlers can get tiring. I enjoyed playing through Invasion’s fifteen levels. Doing that twice sounds exhausting to me. Maybe that’s why the genre works. I guess that’s why I’m annoyed by upgradable stats in games like this. Who on Earth would want to play this over and over again? It’s perfectly fine for a game to be a one-and-done. Besides, you need good games like that to make those good games you do want to replay again and again mean something. It should be special when a game has replay value. It should be equally special to play a game that’s fantastic, tons of fun, and has no replay value at all.
Verdict: YES!
This is Cathy Vice reminding you to help control the annoying child population. Have your mate spayed or neutered! Whether they like it or not. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Filed under Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch Reviews, PC Reviews, PlayStation Reviews, Xbox Reviews Tagged with Marvel Cosmic Invasion, Marvel Cosmic Invasion Nintendo Switch Review, Marvel Cosmic Invasion PlayStation, Marvel Cosmic Invasion Review, Marvel Cosmic Invasion Steam, Marvel Cosmic Invasion Switch, Marvel Cosmic Invasion Switch 2, Marvel Cosmic Invasion Xbox

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Wizards & Warriors X: Fortress of Fear Platform: Game Boy Released January, 1990 Developed by Rare Published by Acclaim NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

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Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Parkaka Athletic LandWait! Don’t Go! I swear this isn’t a joke review!Platform: Colecovision and MSXReleased in 1984Developed by KonamiNEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

BONUS REVIEWS

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the ParkPlatform: Atari 2600Unreleased Completed PrototypeDesigned by Ed TempleDeveloped by ColecoNEVER BEEN (officially) RELEASED

Athletic WorldIndie Remake of Athletic Land/Cabbage Patch KidsPlatform: Game Boy – Super Game Boy EnhancedReleased April 12, 2023Developed by MHZ GamesDownload the ROM – Pay What You WantLink to Store for Physical Copy

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The Goonies Platform: MSX Released December 23, 1985 OR Early 1986 Developed by Konami Released Only in Japan and South America NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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Kickle Cubicle aka Meikyuu Jima Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released June 29, 1990 Developed by Irem NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Kickle Cubicle aka Meikyuu Jima Platform: Arcade Released June, 1988 Designed by Hiroya Kita Developed by Irem NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

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Starship 1 Platform: Arcade Released July, 1977* Designed by Steve Mayer, Dave Shepperd and Dennis Koble Developed by Atari Originally Utilized Yoke and Thruster Controls NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

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Cloud 9 Platform: Arcade Unreleased Completed Prototype Designed by Paul M. Resch Developed by Atari Originally Utilized Trackball Controls NEVER BEEN RELEASED

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HAS PUNCH-OUT!! RETIRED ON ITS STOOL?

GAME REVIEWS

Punch-Out!! Platform: Arcade Released February 17, 1984 Designed by Genyo Takeda Developed by Nintendo Sold Separately via Arcade Archives

Super Punch-Out!! Platform: Arcade Released September, 1984 Designed by Genyo Takeda Developed by Nintendo Sold Separately via Arcade Archives

Arm Wrestling Platform: Arcade Released May, 1985 Designed by Genyo Takeda Developed by Nintendo NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! aka Punch-Out!! Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released October, 1987* Directed by Genyo Takeda Developed by Nintendo Available with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)

Power Punch II Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released June, 1992 Developed by Beam Software Published by American Softworks Sold Separately on Steam Available on Evercade Piko Interactive Collection Vol 1.

Super Punch-Out!! Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System Released October 24, 1994 Directed by Makoto Wada and Yasuyuki Oyagi Developed by Nintendo Available with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)

Phred’s Cool Punch Out 2 – Turbo!! Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Unauthorized ROM Hack of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! Released April 20, 2010 (Updated March 25, 2016) Developed by Master Phred Link to Patch at RomHacking.Net I use THIS TOOL to apply patches.

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Luigi’s Mansion Platform: Nintendo GameCube Released September 14, 2001 (JP) November 18, 2001 (US) Directed by Hideki Konno Published by Nintendo Available with Switch Online Expansion Pack EXCLUSIVELY on Switch 2

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Marvel Cosmic InvasionPlatform: All Current PlatformsReleased December 1, 2025Directed by Fred GemusDeveloped by DotemuPublished by Tribute Games$29.99 Hulk-Smashed baddies in the making of this review.This review was played on a Nintendo Switch 2.

SOME SMALL ROSTER/BOSS SPOILERS AHEAD

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Wizards & Warriors X: Fortress of Fear
Platform: Game Boy
Released January, 1990
Developed by Rare
Published by Acclaim
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park
aka Athletic Land
Wait! Don’t Go! I swear this isn’t a joke review!
Platform: Colecovision and MSX
Released in 1984
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park
Platform: Atari 2600
Unreleased Completed Prototype
Designed by Ed Temple
Developed by Coleco
NEVER BEEN (officially) RELEASED

Athletic World
Indie Remake of Athletic Land/Cabbage Patch Kids
Platform: Game Boy – Super Game Boy Enhanced
Released April 12, 2023
Developed by MHZ Games
Download the ROM – Pay What You Want
Link to Store for Physical Copy

The Goonies
Platform: MSX
Released December 23, 1985 OR Early 1986
Developed by Konami
Released Only in Japan and South America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Kickle Cubicle
aka Meikyuu Jima
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released June 29, 1990
Developed by Irem
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Kickle Cubicle
aka Meikyuu Jima
Platform: Arcade
Released June, 1988
Designed by Hiroya Kita
Developed by Irem
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

Starship 1
Platform: Arcade
Released July, 1977*
Designed by Steve Mayer, Dave Shepperd and Dennis Koble
Developed by Atari
Originally Utilized Yoke and Thruster Controls
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

Cloud 9
Platform: Arcade
Unreleased Completed Prototype
Designed by Paul M. Resch
Developed by Atari
Originally Utilized Trackball Controls
NEVER BEEN RELEASED

Punch-Out!!
Platform: Arcade
Released February 17, 1984
Designed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives

Super Punch-Out!!
Platform: Arcade
Released September, 1984
Designed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives

Arm Wrestling
Platform: Arcade
Released May, 1985
Designed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
aka Punch-Out!!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released October, 1987*
Directed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
Available with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)

Power Punch II
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released June, 1992
Developed by Beam Software
Published by American Softworks
Sold Separately on Steam
Available on Evercade Piko Interactive Collection Vol 1.

Super Punch-Out!!
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released October 24, 1994
Directed by Makoto Wada and Yasuyuki Oyagi
Developed by Nintendo
Available with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)

Phred’s Cool Punch Out 2 – Turbo!!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Unauthorized ROM Hack of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
Released April 20, 2010 (Updated March 25, 2016)
Developed by Master Phred
Link to Patch at RomHacking.Net
I use THIS TOOL to apply patches.

Luigi’s Mansion
Platform: Nintendo GameCube
Released September 14, 2001 (JP) November 18, 2001 (US)
Directed by Hideki Konno
Published by Nintendo
Available with Switch Online Expansion Pack EXCLUSIVELY on Switch 2

Marvel Cosmic Invasion
Platform: All Current Platforms
Released December 1, 2025
Directed by Fred Gemus
Developed by Dotemu
Published by Tribute Games
$29.99 Hulk-Smashed baddies in the making of this review.
This review was played on a Nintendo Switch 2.