Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth Platform: Nintendo Wii via WiiWare Released October 27, 2009 (JPN) December 28, 2009 (US) Designed by Keisuke Koga Directed by Toshiyasu Kamiko, Akihiro Minakata and Keisuke Koga Developed by M2 Published by Konami NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
You didn’t really think I was going to let the Halloween season go by without reviewing some Castlevania games, did you?
Originally, this review was going to be Castlevania 64, which I did start and played for almost ten whole minutes before I needed a break. A big break. Like, one the size of two or three full playthroughs of an entirely different game. Also, by “break” I mean the type of break like when a squabbling couple says “I think we need a break” because “I never want to see you again” is too blunt a thing to say while emotions are high. BUT, for this…..break….. I chose a different Castlevania game that was exclusive to a Nintendo platform and is awaiting its first re-release. So, like…. would it be cool if I decide to not restart Castlevania 64 and just move on after this? Thanks. I feel much better now 🙂
But it doesn’t matter if you remember it or not because Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth has almost nothing in common with it. Just like how Castlevania Chronicles isn’t really a remake of the original Castlevania or Dracula X isn’t really a remake of Rondo of Blood. Gosh, this series has a lot of non-remake remakes, doesn’t it? It’s an especially baffling choice because Adventure’s reputation isn’t exactly on the same level as Dracula’s Curse. I have no idea what would possess someone to shackle a decent, fast-paced game like this to the name and legacy of a game famous for being slow, sluggish, and overall horrible.
I’m actually taking an alternate route in this picture. The game offers a lot of those. I walked away believing that’s a bad thing.
So what does Castlevania: The Adventure and Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth have in common besides the name “The Castlevania Adventure?” Well, the top upgrade for your whip is a fireball. Even that’s completely different in how it works. In the Game Boy original, you have the fireball until you get damaged. While you also lose the fireball off a single hit in the remake, now the fireball will eventually wear off no matter what. So the one thing the two games share is actually the one downgrade in this version. Go figure, right? Or maybe unlimited fireball would make the game too easy or eliminate the need for the knife, aka the sub-weapon nobody likes anyway. And, uh, that’s the list of similarities in its entirety.
And they both star Christopher Belmont and I assume have the same story. I mean, if you actually care about the story of Castlevania. Since the original game didn’t have a cutscene or anything and presumably the entire “story” came from the instruction book, who cares what the name of the guy with the whip is? While I love the gameplay of the series, friends, I honestly don’t care one bit about the story. It’s just too ridiculous for me to take seriously.
Literally everything else is different. The original Adventure had four completely linear levels. ReBirth has five levels. Ignore everyone who says “six” because there is no sixth level. Just a staircase and a hallway that leads to Dracula. That’s not a level. I’ve seen title screens that take longer to get through.
This Castlevania leans a little into slapstick by allowing you to kill enemies by dropping chandeliers on them. I tried to beat the Grim Reaper by eye gouging him but my fingers got stuck.
Every non-Drac level also has alternative paths that fundamentally change the game’s flow with different set pieces and vibes. Those paths, besides the bosses, were the weakest aspect of the game for me. Oh, not the content of those paths. Actually, I thought the strongest level design usually was contained within those alternate paths. But, that means you only experience some of what I felt was an overall well designed but unspectacular Castlevania game each time you play it. That’s just the first of many problems related to those paths. Like this:
I didn’t want to use a guide. I wanted to see if I could find the keys that open the doors on my own. Some of them were pretty damn well hidden, yet the game actively discourages exploration. I literally forgot I was being timed, so when this happened, I sat frozen in shock for a few seconds AND THEN I threw a tantrum and launched my controller through a window.
I honest to God don’t think I ever previously timed-out in a Castlevania game, but I was killed by the timer in the third AND fifth levels of Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth. Hell, the third level’s timer got me in both the first and second playthrough. GOD FORBID in a game with hidden keys and branching paths all over that a person has enough time to look around. My favorite version of Dracula’s Curse is a ROM hack that eliminates that game’s branching paths, so you have to play all fifteen stages. What I wouldn’t have given for that type of experience in ReBirth. I played through it three times for this review, and each time it felt like I was missing something. I was.
Sometimes the art style is inspired, and then there’s moments like this level where the platforms you stand on look like they’re in the background.
Another reason is that you can’t just pick the path. Oh no, it takes an item to do it. While I found one path by breaking through a wall, most required keys. The key takes the spot of the sub-weapon, which means you have to play the game without access to all the fun parts of the game to activate the paths. F*ck that! F*ck that in its undead ear! In a game that’s only five levels long, I think the branching path idea, well, f*cking sucks.
As unbelievable as this sounds, the famous Castlevania drawbridge moment is, in this game, a branching path that requires a key to activate.
Even if you’re a fan of those, seriously, wouldn’t the game have been better if they cut the split paths out and turned them into separate levels? There’s enough content in this game to stretch the five levels out to seven or eight. This is a back-to-basics Castlevania game. I don’t want to f*ck around with alternative paths. I want to just beat levels. What the f*ck is wrong with that? And it’s not like one branching path leads to an entire different level, like with Rondo of Blood. It’s just a series of forks that lead to the same bosses. BUT, those forks play completely differently. The themes change. The vibe changes. I don’t like how ReBirth was structured at all. Not one bit.
While the eyeballs are probably in this game because the Game Boy original had eyeballs, these ones don’t explode. In fact, they only seem to be in this game because people remember that the Game Boy games had giant eyeballs.
And, while I’m complaining, I might as well just say that this has the dullest bosses of any Castlevania game not named “Simon’s Quest” or “Haunted Castle.” They’re just generally unmemorable in design. Like I kind of figured this….. thing in the picture below was meant to be Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and according to the Castlevania wiki, I was right.
Way to get in under a deadline, M2.
But it’s so generic in appearance that it didn’t work as a big, climatic moment at all. Maybe you can get away with that type of design if you’re making a Gumby Halloween special and you have a REALLY low budget, but for the purposes of a Castlevania game, that doesn’t work. Earnest cheese works. There were a couple winners, like the over-the-top golem where you can’t even see its head until you kill it and have to whip its tummy.
Okay, so they could have come up with something more sinister looking for the furnace that makes up its stomach.
I know that bitching about the looks of bosses is shallow, but I mean, there really isn’t all that much to whine about with ReBirth and this is a review site. Overall, this is a pretty damn decent Castlevania game. A very short one that feels like it was slightly half-assed, but decent. I think it could have been better than decent if they had dropped the branching path crap and maybe just leaned into the cheese. But, when ReBirth wants to go for white knuckle action and nail-biting close calls, it doesn’t f*ck around. There’s some inspired stretches in this game. Like this:
Oof, that was close.
Angela walked in the room while I was playing this and said “you’re literally on the edge of your seat.” It’s true, too. Too bad there’s only five f*cking levels, none of which maintain a consistent pace thanks to those branching paths. Given the fact that ReBirth had THREE directors, part of me wonders if they got into a fight over direction and the large forks in the level design are some form of compromise. That would explain the inconsistent tone. Just make a slightly longer game and promote one of the mini-bosses to a level big boss.
Hell, I thought this generic vampire (which, it turns out, is NOT Carmilla) WAS the level 4 boss.
I think fans have slightly overrated ReBirth, as a lot of people talk this up like it’s one of the better Castlevanias, but I’m not even close to that. I’d actually put this third-to-last among the ones I’ve reviewed that I’ve awarded a YES! to, with only Game Boy nothingburger Castlevania Legends and MSX oddball Vampire Killer ranking lower. I think a lot of the fandom for it is probably based on the low expectations one would have for a remake of Adventure. The idea of remaking that game is so dumb that I can’t believe it wasn’t dismissed out of hand, but then again, Haunted Castle got remade as well. I think I’ll save that one for next year’s Halloween.
That’s Dracula’s final form in this game, which again, doesn’t match what you’d expect from a Castlevania game. That looks more like Loki’s final form.
So yeah, I had fun with Castlevania ReBirth, but probably not as much as some people expected. It controls well, has some very good level design, and yet it’s one of the weaker Castlevania games for sure. It’s too short and I doubt I’ll remember anything about it in a year, as it’s lacking in memorable moments or stand-out bosses. But will it get a re-release? I think it might be thrown in as a +1 to an unrelated Castlevania collection. There’s still some “classic” Castlevania games that haven’t been re-released, namely the 3-D games and the Lords of Shadow trilogy. If I had to guess, I would guess a set that contains Castlevania 64, Legacy of Darkness, Lament of Innocence, and Curse of Darkness will happen, and this would be a really good +1 for that set.
It’s kind of bland looking too, isn’t it? The sets just aren’t well dressed. They’er not ugly either. They’re just sort of there, you know? ReBirth feels like a quick, cheap, budget-priced Castlevania dumped onto Nintendo’s first international digital distribution platform as an experiment that Konami had no faith in and told M2 to not waste any amazing ideas on. Seriously, that’s the vibe I got from it.
BUT, I also wouldn’t be shocked if Nintendo has talked with Konami about adding Castlevania 64 to Switch Online. If that happens, I still think the two PS2 games are probably going to get their own set, and ReBirth has a big enough cult following to probably get included anyway. Outside of a collection? Eh, probably not a good idea. This was 1000 Wii Points when it came out. I just had flashbacks about Wii Points and Microsoft Points and had to make sure that 1000 Wii Points equaled $10 USD. It did, and I think Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth is worth maybe half that today. This is a $5 game at best.
This is Castlevania Resurrection for the Sega Dreamcast, or rather the alpha-build 1999 E3 demo or something like that. I messed around with it for about fifteen minutes. It’s not even remotely close to finished. I’d say this build is BARELY playable and probably should have never been shown off to press. The game was cancelled and, going off this build, yeah, I can tell why. But it’d make a neat bonus feature for a 3-D Castlevania collection. What does this have to do with the game I just reviewed? Well, Sonia Belmont might be the mother of Christopher Belmont. Or possibly Trevor Belmont. Or she might not exist at all since the Game Boy title was declared non-canon.
Castlevania ReBirth feels like it was tailor-made to be a +1 to a collection instead of a stand alone game. Today, it feels like a relic of the era where companies thought digital exclusives should be half-games. I wonder if that’s why it’s only five levels long and full of branching paths. Maybe Konami was putting the screws to M2’s plans and thought a lowly digital exclusive shouldn’t give players full value. “Why would anyone buy our full priced games if you’re putting out ten level games for under $20 on Wii?” I could imagine such a boardroom conversation in 2009. Now it’s only seventeen years later next Grand Theft Auto will only exist digitally and the first new mainline Castlevania game in over a decade is a mid-priced release that I bought digitally. Times change, for better and for worse. Verdict: YES!
Wario Land: Shake It! aka Wario Land: The Shake Dimension (Europe) or Wario Land Shake (Japan) Platform: Nintendo Wii Released July 24, 2008 Directed by Madoka Yamauchi Developed by Good-Feel Published by Nintendo NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
You would be surprised how tough it was to get interesting screenshots despite how beautiful the graphics are capable of being.
It’s almost hard to believe it’s been over eighteen years since Wario starred in a non-WarioWare game, but it’s true! Shake It! for Wii could very well be the finale of the Wario Land franchise. And, it’s kind of easy to see why. While I’m a huge fan of Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 and Virtual Boy Wario Land, the series had seen better days in the 2000s. A Nintendo DS game, Wario: Master of Disguise is among the least popular Nintendo mascot titles. Wario World got a “mixed response” and personally, I hated it. Wario Land: Shake It got a lot of 7 out of 10s when it released, which might not sound too bad until you remember that the scale for first party Nintendo games bottoms out at 7 and goes (10) excellent (9) good (8) okay (7) the driver of the car that ran over your dog.
It’s the tired and true “invisible platform” sequence. Only, there’s no falling deaths in Wario Land: Shake It, a fact that’s very well established by the time you reach this point. So there’s no stakes at all here AND it’s kind of obvious that a treasure is probably at the bottom of the screen. While they did come up with the occasional clever puzzle, the overall design logic is baffling.
Wario Land: Shake It! is one of the rare games where the main gimmick is “look how damn pretty this is!” I’d say Shake It is all style and no substance, except the style might actually be part of the problem. With character design and animation from the famous anime studio Production I.G, it seems good looking, but by the time I finished the game, I no longer believed even that. The first reason is that Wario Land: Shake It is kind of barren. The variety of enemies, set pieces, and hazards leaves a lot to be desired, which I guess is the price you pay when you have a non-gaming studio hand animate everything. The weird thing is, Shake It! has a fairly large assortment of unused enemies, some of which were the typical “early versions of existing enemies” but some of which looked pretty ambitious. Since the levels often feel empty and lifeless, more things to smack around or dodge probably would have helped. Alas.
Step one: find a money bag. Step two: find a spot like this where the coins don’t go flying for miles when you actually try to use the f*cking thing.
The other main gimmick is the variety of motion controls, back when those were still new and annoying, as opposed to now where they’re tired and annoying. Like the name suggests, most of the motion controls are just shaking the controller. When you use Wario’s normal dash attack on a money bag, you get a single coin out of it. But if you pick up the bag and shake it, coins literally spray out it for a second or two. That really sucked as an idea, by the way, since the coins vanish into thin air after too short a span. You can also shake the hell out of enemies, which for the normal baddies usually results in them dropping life refills. A few other enemies need to be shaken to solve puzzles, though “solve puzzles” requires quote marks that are suing me for working overtime.
“Solve puzzles” (we settled out of court) in this context means there’s bricks that you can’t break because they require bending over or aiming downward and that triggers Wario’s crippling arthritis, so instead you perform this wanton act of animal cruelty on a chicken. After shaking the ever loving sh*t out of it, it’ll take off running and somehow break through all the blocks. I almost feel bad about it, but the chicken did try to kill me. I keep saying:Â never trust the chicken.
In addition to several other reasons to shake the controller, shaking is also how you cause little earthquakes. That’s what the -W- meter at the top of the screen is, and it’s basically the game’s main move. If you’re not shaking the controller, you’re probably tilting it left or right. That’s how you aim where you throw, which is the f*cking worst. Even late in the game, with plenty of experience, I still found this to be clunky and unreliable. Like seriously, I regret using Wii controllers for this review. After beating the game, I tried a few levels and bosses with a normal controller and motion controls mapped to analog sticks (and “shaking” mapped to a button) and it played so much better. I mean, it didn’t exactly save the game or even close, but it didn’t suck to play it anymore.
For this, the second-to-last boss, you might only have a small window to grab a bomb, aim, and throw. Having to fumble with a Wii Remote for aiming is not ideal, but back in the Wii days, motion control was required, or else.
And there’s also a handful of gimmicky vehicles that use the tilt controls, the main one of which is a submarine that has three out of the twenty main levels devoted to it. Those levels play like shmups crossed with the dam level from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES IF that was played with tilt controls and they’re just the absolute pits. One of these would have been barely tolerable, as the combat is lackluster and the level design is repetitive. Having three of them, none of which are locked as bonus stages, is f*cking unhinged. I can’t stress enough that all three submarine levels are lowlights in a game that already doesn’t have very many highlights. There’s a couple rarer contraptions like a mine cart or a jetpack that aren’t so bad, but they also don’t have full stages dedicated to them. Well, actually the Jetpack does (apparently it’s actually a bucket) but it’s locked as a bonus stage.
Mine Cart
Submarine
Jet Pack
Which actually brings me to both the best and the worst part of Wario Land: Shake It: a whopping twelve levels are “bonus levels” that you have to find items to unlock. There’s only twenty non-bonus levels in the game not counting the tutorial level and the six boss fights. It reminded me of Super Princess Peach, which has roughly the same percentage of bonus levels (a little over one-third of the total levels in game) AND, like with Super Princess Peach, the level design is mostly a boring, overly-simple slog until you get to those bonus levels, where the developers finally pulled the stick out of their ass. It’s too bad they hid the maps that unlock the bonus levels in utterly arbitrary locations, like so:
Yeah, there’s actually an item that unlocks a whole extra level in the above screenshot. After you give the ground a good fisting, it just appears out of thin air.
I’m sorry, but that’s lame as f*ck. There’s absolutely no way to logic-out the locations of the twelve bonus stage maps. In fact, you have to wait until after you beat the game to even know which levels have the bonus stage maps. Also, after beating the game, the maps will suddenly be marked by having the ground sparkle where they’re at.
It looks better in motion.
And yeah, the best levels in the game, by far, are the bonus levels. That’s not a virtue, by the way. I, for one, think it’s f*cking annoying that any game makes you have to work to get to the good stuff. There was also a better unlock method. Each level has three hidden treasure chests. Like I said with Wario World, I preferred how Super Mario Land 3 and VB Wario Land handled treasures: NOT EVERY LEVEL HAD THEM! It actually gave the game a treasure hunt vibe and made collecting a treasure piece feel like a big moment. If they insisted on having three for every level, make that one of the unlock conditions for the bonus stages.
This is the first Wario game I remember playing where I lost interest in 100%ing the game. Even Wario World didn’t do that to me, though to my credit that game was crazy easy to ace.
There’s also “missions” in Wario Land: Shake It that are often there for the sake of forcing replays of levels that I, frankly, would never want to play again. I mean, they bored me the first time with their complete lack of challenge and emptiness. I did make a good faith effort at first to play along and complete all the goals. Things like “finish a level with X amount of coins” or “beat the stage without taking damage.” But then there’s things like this:
I’ll call your attention to the goal of beating the stage without falling into the water. Because, if you also want to nab all three treasures in that stage, you actually cannot beat the stage without falling into the water. I don’t mean “it makes it harder.” I mean it’s physically impossible. This is one of many stages that you can’t gloriously 100% on your first try, so I just quit caring. (shrug) Don’t take it personal, missions. I also quit trying to get every treasure too.
The pipe on the right leads to a treasure, and there’s no way to nab it AND not go into the water to get back to the stage. They literally built it specifically to prevent that and force multiple replays of the level. If only they had spent the same amount of effort on making a fun game as they did on making a trollish one.
I might have gone back and at least grabbed all 99 treasures, but this game blocks you from quitting the stage once you’ve gotten the things you missed. You actually have to finish the stages for it to count. If Wario World had been the same way, I wouldn’t have aced it, either. There doesn’t seem to be an alternative ending for this Wario game and thus there’s no real incentive to get all the treasures or missions besides the satisfaction of a checkmark for a level that probably bored me in a game that I didn’t really like at all. When the levels are bland, you have to give me a better reason than a checkmark to replay them.
My favorite “puzzles” usually involved the launchers, but if I hadn’t had access to save states to make my f*ck-ups go faster, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed what little I did find well designed about Wario Land: Shake It.
Shake It needed peppier combat, a LOT more enemies and better level themes. Honestly, I don’t know what the point was in hiring a movie studio to do the graphics. None of the facades are convincing because they’re all so generic and bland. Like, yeah, the character sprites are great. But look at level themes.
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They’re not all that bland or generic, but most of them are. It reminded me of Road Runner cartoons, where apparently the only creatures that exist are the ones on the screen. I don’t buy for one moment that these levels are part of a populated ecosystem. And it has nothing to do with the decision to have an anime look. Plenty of games have the same style and do a better job creating atmosphere with it. The problem is the art direction, instead of coming from a place of inspiration, feels like a sales gimmick to make up for an uninspired game. Compare it to how Wario games looked when the series started.
The two YES! games seen above were made with vastly inferior technology and VERY limited color palettes.
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (Game Boy, 1994)
Virtual Boy Wario Land (Virtual Boy, 1995)
And yet, they both feel more real and more alive than a game with artwork made by one of the most critically acclaimed animation production companies in the world. They might as well have saved money and just made the game with sprites. At least that way, they could have done a better job of fine-tuning the gameplay. Then again, Wario Land: Shake It needed a personality transplant in general. There’s no power-ups and only two “transformations” in Shake It, which is really odd for the 2D Wario franchise. The previous three Wario Land games were heavily based around “transforming” Wario into different forms to solve puzzles. That really only happens in this game by dumping snow on him or setting his ass on fire. I mean that literally, and eventually he’ll become engulfed in flames and be able to burn through fire blocks.
Admittedly, this is one of the few puzzles that I actually enjoyed. The fire stuff is easily the best gameplay elements of the game.
But the fire moments are quite limited, and the ice ones are even more so (that’s fine, as those were no good). The other main gameplay hook is the “exciting” escape sequence that caps off every level. Once you reach the end goal, an alarm sounds and you have to get to the door, usually with the aid of pipes that launch you. The idea isn’t really that fresh, as they copied from Rare’s Saber Wulf. I don’t know if the original PC version did that, but the Game Boy title I had as a teenager did it, and did it much better Shake It. The best usage of the escape in this game is when two of the levels are based entirely around the escape. But the problem is, you guessed it: both those are bonus levels that have to be unlocked.
This is the first stage designed like that, and the best, and the only stage where I had a close call with the timer. I reached the exit with only about ten seconds left. Usually I had well over a minute.
So yeah, I think Wario Land: Shake It! is pretty bad. Hell, I said “it looks good” while playing it but I’m not even sure I agree with that. Who cares how good the backgrounds or enemies look when they have no personality and the levels are so samey and wrong for the franchise? Again, when the Virtual Boy is curb stomping you in the looks department AND turning in a superior game, something is badly wrong. But look at this:
Virtual Boy Wario Land my give you sore eyes, but at least it’s not an eyesore.
I honestly think that one screenshot has more personality and charm than the entire game of Wario Land: Shake It. It feels more finely crafted. It’s almost paradoxical, isn’t it? Wario Land: Shake It was almost certainly the most expensive production in the Wario franchise, but it doesn’t feel expensive or hi-tech. It feels cheap. It feels rushed. It feels completely uninspired. It feels generic. It’s lacking in charm. So the already weak gameplay and flat, dull level design is made even worse by the art style.
This, the game’s fourth boss, was the other boss that gave me a hard time (the fifth boss was the other). Again, the window it’s actually vulnerable is too small. And actually, when I stop and study the enemy designs and especially the boss designs, jeez they’re pretty bland too, aren’t they? Okay, so only the Wario sprites are decent. That’s literally all the artwork did was make Wario look okay. They could have just saved the anime stuff for cut scenes.
In short: Wario Land: Shake It! is BORING. So boring it likely killed the franchise for good. Okay, so I do kind of have a hunch we might see a 4K remastering of Wario Land: Shake It! on Switch 2 in the near future. It’s exactly the type of Wii game they re-release these days as a schedule filler. But I’d honestly rather they just make a new game.
Nintendo hasn’t exactly done this with Wario lately.
I don’t know how Nintendo lost their way with Wario, but with games like this, Wario: Master of Disguise and Wario World, it’s easy to see why they moved completely onto the WarioWare franchise for this character. It really does seem like Wario Land is a dead franchise, but it doesn’t have to be. What do the three middling-at-best games I just listed have in common? None of them were made by Nintendo. Wario World was made by Treasure, this was made by Good-Feel, and the putrid Master of Disguise was made by Suzak Inc. Now, as a reminder, Wario Land as a concept was so good it usurped Mario Land as Nintendo’s premier 2D handheld franchise. I mean, holy crap! Do you realize what an accomplishment that is?!
I’m burned out on Wario for now, but I will return to this franchise next year. Cross my heart. But, I don’t really remember liking Wario Land 4 (pictured above) either. I’m pretty sure I enjoyed Wario Land 2 and 3, I think. It’s been a while.
Those first five Wario Land games (1 – 4 + the Virtual Boy game), aka the ones good enough to END the Mario Land franchise for multiple generations, were made by Nintendo R&D 1, which today would be Nintendo EPD. The series didn’t fall down the crapper until Nintendo started passing it off to other companies that didn’t seem to understand the character or the design mentality that made the series work. You know what I think? A treasure hunt like Super Mario Odyssey or Donkey Kong Bananza starring Wario could be sick. I don’t think the Wario Land franchise is dead. I think it’s homesick. Verdict: NO!
And, since Wario isn’t allowed to have a happy ending, the bottomless bag of coins is stolen from you post-credits. F*ck this game.
Isles of Sea and Sky Platform: Nintendo Switch and PC Released May 22, 2024 (PC) Released October 8, 2026 (Switch) Designed by Jason Newman Developed by Cicada Games This review was played only on Nintendo Switch $17.99 (normally $19.99) is grateful for the lack of a death counter in the making of this review.
I think Lolo took one look at this and was grateful for his forced retirement.
I guess I must have been feeling nostalgic, because it’s been quite a while since I reviewed an indie game. I was actually checking the Nintendo Switch eShop for retro collections when I saw this in the new release section, and it demanded attention. I mean, look at it! It’s just so ambitious! An open world, non-linear crate-shoving puzzler with a seafaring theme similar to Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker? That sounds awesome, right? And, at its best, Isles of Sea and Sky is exactly what you want it to be. I just wish it wasn’t so damn abstract at times.
At the time this screenshot was taken, it was impossible for me to finish this puzzle and grab the star in the lower right corner. Remembering where certain puzzles are and figuring out the moment they become open to solving is arguably the main aspect of the game.
First off, non-puzzle fans need not apply. If the type of puzzle seen in the clip below isn’t your jam, you might as well stop reading now. Despite being open world and nonlinear, nothing Isles of Sea and Sky does from a gameplay perspective is going to blow your mind and make you reevaluate your stance on puzzle games. If you’re thinking “that looks just like Zelda!” it’s actually barely like Zelda at all. Zelda has the occasional box puzzle. Isles of Sea and Sky is all puzzles, all the time with no combat, bosses, or even dialog.
By the way, there is a story, but it’s told entirely visually. There’s also the occasional monster too, but even when there is, they’re still block-shoving puzzles. There’s other kinds of puzzles too, and actually, the entire point of the game is kind of a puzzle. Isles of Sea and Sky is made specifically to cater to the old school gamer who bitches about games holding hands too much these days. Right from the very start, you’re given no instructions at all for this one. You’re not told where to go. The game doesn’t even tell you what the goal is. You’re placed in a simple puzzle on a starting island, and then it’s up to you to figure out what to do and where to go from there.
This early puzzle gives you the gist of the main concept: hit gongs. When you hit the gongs, their corresponding blocks disappear. If you reset the room, those blocks will return. HOWEVER, like in the above room, if you were to grab the key and then hit the reset button, you would still have the key. Breaking those green blocks with the arrows is also permanent. Some puzzles require you to do one set of actions that breaks a block, then hit the reset button and do something different now that those blocks are removed forever. Any item grab is permanent. Hell, you don’t have to survive the process of getting the item or need a way to be able to escape the room. The only actions that aren’t permanent are crate pushes and gong hits.
Don’t worry, though. There’s no action buttons to push. In fact, besides movement, you don’t push buttons at all unless you f*ck up. One button undoes the previous move or moves and is quite extensive. You can sometimes undo moves even if you left a room. There’s also a room reset button, and if you press it by accident, it can be undone. There’s no lives and you have unlimited fails to solve everything. Oh, and sometimes the rewind/reset buttons are worked into the puzzle design, though even the puzzles themselves adhere to the nonlinear mentality. It’s entirely possible to enter a room that has puzzles you can’t solve now but will be able to later, but sometimes you can solve half of a room now and the other half later. It might take you a while to realize that, though.
It looks like one of the Game Boy Color Zelda games, but gameplay isn’t even a little similar.
The actual point of the game is to awaken four elemental gods on four separate islands by collecting six of their specific gem stones. When you have six (and there’s a LOT more than six) and return to the God, they open up some kind of special block that adds to the puzzle design. There’s also an item on each elemental island, and, while I’m sure there’s probably some kind of trick to finishing the game without the items, I can’t imagine how one could do it. Then, you have to return to the starting island and solve four more puzzles to beat the game. You make progress by collecting stars and keys that allow you to open up more of the game’s world. The closest the game comes to linear design is using the stars to gate you out of areas you’re not ready for. In theory, at least.
This is what I call a “treasure tease” in the Zelda franchise. I stumbled upon this island very early on, but you can’t partially solve it until you’re about halfway through the game and can’t solve the whole thing until you’ve collected the item from the fourth island. And then the game doesn’t even tell you what the crystal ball does.
I got the game’s ending with 67 stars. Afterward, I went back to my save file and checked out a few more of the smaller, non-essential islands that I knew I never finished completely, ultimately bumping my star count to 74, which still isn’t even a little close to 100%ing the game. There’s actually 120 total stars plus a surplus of extra god gems. Like, I found a big cluster that had one of each type on a random island post-credits. To give you an idea how much stuff there is to do, including “post-game” content, I saw the end credits without ever knowing what these do:
I was calling them arrowheads but maybe they’re bird beaks. Maybe they’re lumps of coal. Maybe they’re Cthulhu’s tear drops. (shrug) Also note the star gate with “35” in this picture.
It turns out that they’re the gems you need for the fifth God on a special “dark” level that I think requires you to finish the game first. After the credits, I remembered “oh right, there’s an entire fifth island with mirror puzzles I walked out of.” The island is locked until you get 45 stars, but once I opened it I realized that I was probably going to get an item that let me jump over holes. And I was right. So I returned to that area and found out what those paperweights do.
This is an optional post-game island.
I think you have to beat the game to activate this.
And you need nine of those black stones here.
The thing is, those black stones meant NOTHING up to this point. The game never told me what they do or why they would be important, and honestly, I didn’t care. While I’m sure a lot of people will really enjoy that the game has no dialog or instructions and stays abstract and vague the entire length of the f*cking thing, the problem that comes with that is a lack of tight design. After a while, I was really sick of the vagueness and lack of direction and wondering if I was in a section of the game I wasn’t supposed to be in. There’s a LOT of content in Isles of Sea and Sky and some jaw-dropping awesome puzzle design. But, it’s presented in a way that I don’t really want to 100% because I don’t want to wander around aimlessly hoping to stumble upon puzzles I haven’t done.
There is an undeniable joy in finding new levels, and there’s a TON of smaller islands to explore. Again, you can tell the people who made this were fans of Wind Waker and wanted to invoke the sense of exploration that game had.
Actually, there were a LOT of things that I never solved in Isles of Sea and Sky while still getting the end credits. In 2025, the PC version got an update that included a lot of bonus content. I didn’t play the original build so I’m not sure what’s the new stuff that was added, or if the Switch even got that stuff at all. But there was a puzzle in the water level involving seashells that I never solved or even found out what the point of the seashells was. There was something involving seagulls in the ice/sky level that I never solved. I didn’t find all the music notes in the fire level OR the ice/sky level, and I really don’t care to keep looking. I enjoyed Isles of Sea and Sky, but not so much that I had to ace it.
Here’s a tip: if the snakes in the upper left and right corners have red eyes, that means there’s a hidden path (or something else hidden) still to be uncovered in a level. I didn’t even notice this until after the game and was using the shaking of the Joycons.
While the puzzle design is amazing, the gameplay can be janky. Hidden pathways like the ones seen in the above screenshot you get just by walking into them, and I discovered the existence of hidden paths in Isles of Sea and Sky because I accidentally triggered one via loose controls. In other words, I found something because I took more steps than I intended. It wasn’t a one-off accident, either. Don’t get me wrong: I was usually actively searching for a pathway when it happened. BUT, there were many times where I was focused on finishing a puzzle and discovered hidden paths just because of the loose movement controls. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever played a game in my life where I found more hidden things by accident. It makes me wonder if the controls were deliberately made to be loose and inaccurate in order to aid in the discovery of the game’s secrets. I hope not.
The fire level has three rooms where you have to outwit monsters and shove blocks into them. I really enjoyed these and wish the other main islands had stuff like this.
Did I have fun? Yep. More fun than not? Also yep. But I’m fairly certain I would have enjoyed the puzzles and overall design of Isles of Sea and Sky a lot more if the game had made it more clear what the requirements for victory were, or what certain items do, or hell, even what levels you WANT to be be in and which ones you want to avoid for now. The lack of direction all but assures the game will get off to a slow start and have a lot of self-inflicted downtime. It’s artificially slow at times and it didn’t have to be, since that slow start and all the aimless wandering is in “service” to the no instructions, no direction, “figure it out yourself” mentality.
The hero is celebrating the discovery of a music note. Each of the four main islands has six of these “hidden” though if you look closely you can usually see where they are.
BUT, once you start solving puzzles and get a feel for what puzzles can’t be solved until later in the game (and thus waste less time staring at them), Isles of Sea and Sky becomes a very good game. One that might have come close to reverting back to slow and tedious at the end. I was actually grateful to learn that some of the larger scale puzzles are totally optional. I didn’t really care at all about the giant musical instrument puzzles and never actually completed the last two.
I didn’t finish this puzzle and I’m grateful I don’t actually need to, because this crosses the line into being an outright slog to get through.
Had a Facebook follower not clued me in that I didn’t actually NEED to solve the seagull puzzle in the sky/ice level, I’m not entirely sure I would have finished the game at all. To be honest, I was kind of getting bored by the more convoluted puzzles that require you to turn some boxes into bombs that have a fuse based on how many steps you take. Later still, you have to push little tornadoes that you then can control independent of the hero. I had the most fun with Isles of Sea and Sky when it was just pushing boxes. The more complicated the game got, the more I was ready for that game to be over.
For what it’s worth, they’re not necessarily boring. Just convoluted.
Okay, so I wish Isles of Sea and Sky was more streamlined. I don’t necessarily think the game scales properly even if you stick to just the main islands in the correct order they’re meant to be played. You see, the more convoluted the puzzles get, the easier it is to recognize which ones you can’t finish yet. During the water level, I genuinely wasn’t sure if I was going to get an item that let me swim, but in the sky/ice level, it was very obvious (and had been for a long time) that I was going to get an item that let me jump over holes. I’d figured that part out before I even got to the ice/sky island. Additionally, the tornadoes also make it easier to figure out where the “final move” of a puzzle is and reverse engineer from there. I think Isles of Sea and Sky (what a dull sounding name) was MUCH stronger during the first two elemental islands, then it kind of tapered off.
I’m sure this “U” has some significance.
With that said, I easily got $20 worth of entertainment out of Isles of Sky and Sea. It’s an elite puzzler that also does an excellent job at the non-linear exploration elements. Okay, so I personally think the game would have been better served with tighter design that focused a player’s attention, which would have allowed for proper scaling. Apparently a lot of the more abstract puzzles come from that 2025 update. I likely won’t ever go back to finish them, but that doesn’t mean I disliked the game. I’m walking away from Isles of Sea and Sky having gotten the end credits and being totally satisfied with my purchase.
Please don’t ask me to explain what the story was about. The princess kept slapping me when I met up with her, but then I think they made love, then they transformed into Moana and Maui or possibly the Navi from Avatar, and also there were Power Rangers too, at least from what I could gather. Oh, but it’s not pretentious. No sir. Not at all.
I bought Isles of Sea and Sky expecting nonlinear, open world box shoveling puzzles, and by golly, those were everything I wanted them to be. MOSTLY enjoyable, and even when the game slowed down, I wasn’t forced to play the really out-there puzzles to get the ending. So yes, I enjoyed Isles of Sea and Sky, and if you’re into games like Lolo or Baba is You, I think you will enjoy it too. And hell, if you’ve got more patience than me, apparently there’s another full game’s worth of content after the credits. It’s like a brainy indie version of Super Mario Odyssey, only without the variety or jumping or bosses or….. Okay, so it’s nothing like Mario Odyssey except for the amount of content, but I think you got my point. Verdict: YES!Â
Super Mario Odyssey Platform: Nintendo Switch Released October 27, 2017 Designed by Futoshi Shirai and Shinya Hiratake Directed by Kenta Motokura Developed by Nintendo $59.99 in the making of this review.
I don’t know if any game has ever walked a tighter line between “genuinely quirky” and “trying too hard” as much as Mario Odyssey. This could have gone SO wrong, and instead it’s probably my favorite game ever. Probably.
That sh*it is boring and probably the low point of the entire game, and there’s no sense in even trying for a high score because Nintendo doesn’t police cheating on it. There’s a famous trick where you can capture letters and arrange them in a way where you don’t need to jump at all. I’m guessing all the people on top of the leaderboard used that tactic. For me at least, that means it’s impossible to take any of the leaderboards all that seriously. But I was still pretty happy with how I nabbed the worst power moon in the game. This was my third time playing Super Mario Odyssey all the way through, and this time around it only took me about five minutes after it became available to score all 100 jumps, and I did it by actually jumping. I had to push buttons and everything!
I probably should have said “worst moon before the post-game content” as everything about Darker Side’s final challenge can f*ck right off for how boring it is. I get they were going for “ultimate test” but it’s too long and just not very fun, you know?
While I gave Super Mario Galaxy a YES!, I had a few controversial opinions about it, the most inflammatory of which is that I found the bosses to be generic. Mario Odyssey introduced an entire breed of new boss characters: evil wedding planners. Seriously, that’s what the Broodals are, and it’s a little redundant because all wedding planners are evil, but I think they’re technically evil evil wedding planners, meaning evil beings planning an evil wedding. Unlike the bosses of Galaxy, for whatever reason I totally buy these as Mario characters. I’ve been kind of hoping to see them show up more, but they didn’t even get referenced in Mario Kart World. Sad, because they were decent enough boilerplate “jump on their head” boss fights.
Perhaps it’s the sheer volume of crap to do. In Odyssey, you’re not choosing a mission from a hub world and returning once you’ve nabbed the goal, which are moons this time around instead of stars (except post-game, when one level does give you Mario 64 stars, complete with the same theme). While the game does queue you towards story beats, there’s a lot of flexibility to explore as soon as you reach a new level. There’s moons EVERYWHERE in Mario Odyssey. Then, after beating the game, even more moons are added, so when Mario Odyssey is over, it’s not over-over.
This is a post-credits map of Cap Kingdom’s power moons that I haven’t found yet. Every single X is another power moon. Well, there’s just as many before you beat the game, too.
Not counting the ability to purchase unlimited power moons after you beat Bowser, there’s 836 total power moons that can be located within the game’s fourteen main story kingdoms and three post-game kingdoms (it’ll tally as 880 counting the multi-moons). Last year I called Donkey Kong Bananza an unofficial sequel to Mario Odyssey, but actually Mario Odyssey has more of its main mystical objects to locate than DKB, which has 777 total bananas to be found. Thirteen of Odyssey’s levels also have between 50 to 100 purple coins hidden, some of which are crazy easy to find and some of which took me hours of searching, and I never got bored with any of it.
Well, maybe I shouldn’t have said “never” since I was pretty bored collecting the post-game achievement stars from Toadette. I’m not sure why they waited until after you beat Bowser when they could have awarded these when you travel between the levels instead of reminding players of the same small handful of control tips over and over. One of the first things I did after the credits rolled was enter the castle so I could talk to her and collect my bonus stars because I knew it would be a while before I got to play the game again. It took me quite a while (nearly twenty minutes) to collect every star I earned. She hands them out literally one at a time, and it’s agony.
It was a scavenger hunt style game, Banjo-Kazooie, that got me deeply into gaming when I was 9 years old. Maybe Odyssey hits so hard for me because it’s essentially one of biggest scavenger hunts in gaming history. If you’re into that sort of gameplay, I doubt any game has ever done a better job at it. I can also understand why people would be raising a skeptical eyebrow. The obvious question is “if there’s THAT many moons, doesn’t finding a new moon lose its sense of accomplishment after a while?” I personally didn’t think so, but obviously not all moons are created equal. During the main quest of the game, each new level has a moon you can buy from the store for 100 normal coins:
It’s basically a 100 coin tax on a new level and, yeah, kind of lame. But nobody is really considering those “event” moons in the same way completing the linear story is. Almost immediately following this, I scored multiple moons in a matter of just a few minutes. I mean, hell, at one point I nabbed a moon while being able to see another moon just behind it. And by the way, according to a now offline article that I found referenced on the Mario Wiki, the reason there’s so many moons in this (and presumably Bananas in Donkey Kong Bananza) is so that players who are killing only a couple minutes of time in handheld mode can still accomplish something of substance. You know what? That’s a hell of a good reason to have so many, don’t you think?
Although both this moon and the one you can see in the background are acquired using Bullet Bills, neither feels similar. One is gotten by having the bullet crash into the block that contains it, and the other requires you to capture a Bullet Bill and ride it out to the pillar it’s on.
Okay, maybe it’s not the most exciting thing ever, but I found almost every moon to retain a sense of satisfaction. I don’t think they went overboard at all, because this is the Mario collectathon taken to its logical conclusion. Plus, I kind of like that some of the moons are crazy easy because it meant I could play the game with some of my less skilled family members. But really, I enjoyed the search because I’m someone who can’t stand seeing her nieces and nephew being taken to the annual Easter egg hunt because I *know* I would do a much better job of picking up eggs than any of the twerps who aren’t “too old” to participate. Well, there’s no draconian age 12 cutoff for THIS Easter egg hunt. This is MY kind of game.
You can buy the locations of the moons for 100 coins and get clues by talking to a parrot. here, these butterflies are circling around the location of a moon.
If you want to beat the game with the minimum amount of power moons, you’ll need to get 124 out of a possible 462 moons before the final battle with Bowser. Since there’s a max total of 880 moons (plus in the post-game you have to buy at least 119 more at 100 coins a pop to max out the 999 count), that means there’s almost a full second game’s worth of power moons post-credits. That’s INSANE, but set your expectations accordingly. I noticed that many of the post-game moons lacked a sense of polish or elegance. Like take this room for example:
For this challenge, you have to navigate invisible platforms using only the goop spit out by piranha plants to see where they’re at. If you can kick a rock into the mouth of the piranhas, you can possess them and spit out more goop, but the goop is also deadly to the touch, so Mario has to clear it out with the hat. It seems like a reasonable challenge, right? Actually I thought the room was way too easy, with the pathways being too large to add any sense of risk. Weirdly, this room shows up twice in the game, and the second time is way too hard since the replay is done without the cap. Players have no way to clear the goop and, if you mess up with the fickle rock kicking part, you have to just sort of accept damage. Okay, so I wasn’t the biggest fan of the capless reruns.
The gimmick with this post-game room is using the air currents to hit far-away switches while also avoiding being pushed off yourself. It SOUNDS like a typical Mario-like challenge. But, I don’t think it worked, as I should have died a couple times and didn’t get pushed around by the air at all, and the platforms were too wide and lacking in any sense of challenge. My gut tells me they probably didn’t fine tune this room much and gave-up on it early, at least if my theory is right.
Few titles have as much free after-game content as Odyssey, so it’s hard to complain too much about the quality of bonus material. Had I just counted only the moons I collected before beating Bowser (and for this play session, I got every single one of them, plus every purple coin), I think I would still consider this my favorite game ever. But after the credits rolled, I got another week worth of playtime and didn’t even get every post-game moon! I’m only quitting because I need to get a review up! That’s a lot of bonus content! Even in 2017 you would expect this type of thing to be paid DLC, right? So why wasn’t it? My theory is that the developers paid close attention to what power moons the testers enjoyed the most and what ones just weren’t working, and rather than junk the lower-ranked ones, they just kept them as bonus content but probably didn’t bother to fine tune them.
This one involves knocking posters off the wall. For whatever reason, they had a person nearby say “ugh, what an eyesore all these posters are, hint hint hint hint hint.” Okay, they didn’t say it like that but it made it too obvious how to nab the star. It would have made more sense to have the hint be somewhere else, which would have lent itself more to the exploration element that I thought made Odyssey so addictive and replayable.
I have some circumstantial evidence to support this theory. Remember the footraces from, you know, nearly every 3D Mario game before Odyssey? Hell, the second ever 3D Mario mission was racing a Koopa to the top of the game’s first level. They’ve always been my least favorite “levels” in 3-D platformers, BUT I totally acknowledge they have fans and are a staple of the genre for a reason. Those types of power moon missions are in Mario Odyssey as well, but this time around, the footraces (called “Koopa Freerunning” in this game) are 100% post game content. Except, I don’t think the developers thought that was going to be the case because those races come with online leaderboards.
I was so proud of myself when I realized I could still hijack flying goombas and just flutter my way to the goal, but then I saw I was ranked #11 out of my 12 online friends who actually played this mission. Well f*ck me.
Again, these types of missions are established tropes in 3D platformers, so I thought it was weird the only races up to this point were ones with R.C. cars or these bizarre bouncy-ball races in the snow level. Oh, and for the record, I also thought were f*cking terrible. Seriously, can we please outlaw racing in platform games?
Horrible and lame. I admit, one of the reasons I walked away from 100%ing the game and settling for 700 or so power-moons is because the thought of playing more of these made me shudder.
As for the footraces, in the history of Mario games, none are quite as loose or janky as the ones in Mario Odyssey. The level layouts just don’t lend themselves well to this style of gameplay. It totally makes sense why they’re bonus features this time around and not main courses because, sorry fans, they kind of suck. But, sucky or not, setting up online leaderboards isn’t a nothingburger. It’s not exactly a smoking gun but I think it’s compelling evidence that Nintendo didn’t know until the 11th hour which moons would be played during the main quest and which moons would be bonus material.
Other power moons that appear after the credits I think might have been cut for being too hard. This is such an example. Most of my deaths here came from the controls changing which direction is which depending on where I released the analog stick. I know a lot of people were screaming in agony at this moon.
I can’t stress enough how much I enjoyed finding (most) power moons regardless of whether it was before or after the end credits. It helps that the game’s levels are ones you want to spend time in. Before the credits roll, you’ll play fourteen levels, and the scope of those levels can be measured by how many purple coins are hidden in them. Two of them, Cloud Kingdom and Ruined Kingdom, are basically mini-levels of little consequence that don’t even have purple coins at all. Even post-game they really feel like they just take up space on the level select screen and probably should have been folded into other stages.
Ruined Kingdom probably only exists because it’d be weird to fight a f*cking Dark Souls dragon in the Luncheon Kingdom.
Six of the levels only have fifty purple coins hidden in them: Cap Kingdom, Cascade Kingdom, Lake Kingdom, Lost Kingdom, Snow Kingdom, and Moon Kingdom. It feels weird to say these are essentially half-levels, but it’s technically true. Thankfully, out of the six half-levels, only Lost Kingdom actually feels like a half-level. There’s no bosses or major story segments and the map is tiny in scope and scale. Oh, and it’s still a ton of fun to play. It just feels uneventful. The other five levels are nearly equally as small in size as Lost Kingdom, but because of how they’re staged, they never feel small in scope.
Both times I replayed Mario Odyssey, I was startled by how small this area is. In my brain, I can’t make myself remember this level as anything but huge, even if that’s not really true. There really isn’t a whole lot of level here. Maybe it’s because what little space you’re given is jam-packed with memorable sequences. I also admit that I was disappointed that you can’t dislodge this giant skull. Wait, why is the triceratops skull bigger than the actual t-rex you can possess? How big was this f*cking thing?
The larger levels have 100 purple coins, and there’s six of them as well: Sand Kingdom, Wooded Kingdom, Metro Kingdom, Seaside Kingdom, Luncheon Kingdom, and Bowser’s Kingdom. And some of those names are a little misleading. Wooded Kingdom feels more like exploring the ruins of a steampunk utopia. The forest theme is incidental, as you never shake the post apocalyptic vibe while navigating it. And I loved every moment of it. It’s a contender for my favorite level in any game.
The “kingdoms” have their official kingdom name but also the name of the location. So while this is the “Wooded Kingdom” the name of the level is actually “Steam Gardens.” A little on the nose, no?
The only thing that makes me wonder if it really should be a contender for “best level” is that there’s a “basement” where you’re stalked by a T-Rex. The suspense vibe works, as I did get killed a couple times when I was unable to shake the T-Rex. BUT, the actual layout of this area is kind of dull. I wish the developers had leaned heavier into the horror vibe with more scary enemies than just a single dinosaur, and maybe packed the layout with more trees, and maybe made it foggy. Something truly spooky, you know?
It doesn’t help the horror element that the T-Rex has a ridiculous hat on, but that’s there to prevent you from just being able to hijack it with one throw.
There’s two other “all-time great level” contenders. Metro Kingdom, aka New Donk City, could have been an unprecedented disaster. Sticking Mario in a realistic concrete jungle had the potential to feel gimmicky, especially when that city is then populated by what appear to be sentient shopping mall mannequins.
Hey wait, I saw this episode of Doctor Who.
But it works! The level seems so unimaginably big that it’s hard to believe you could hope to find all 100 purple coins in it, but actually Metro Kingdom was one of the few 100 coin levels that I got all the coins before nabbing the last moon (I mean the last moon pre-Bowser). Metro Kingdom also has what probably is the most famous and memorable segment in the entire game: the musical number. It’s funny that it’s so beloved, because the actual level design of this entire segment is pretty bland. I think this sequence, officially called “A Traditional Festival” should be studied in game design school, because it would let prospective game designers know how much presentation matters.
The big musical number at the end of Metro Kingdom’s story progression is just about the coolest set piece in Mario history…………….. BUT, make no mistake, all the pomp and circumstance is doing a historical amount of heavy lifting.
But there’s a third “best level ever” contender. Bowser’s level isn’t the typical fire and lava castle that you would expect. Instead, Bowser’s Kingdom is themed like Feudal Japan, and it’s structured completely different from all other Odyssey stages. In terms of layout, it has a lot more in common with Super Mario Galaxy in that the level is broken up into a variety of bite-sized chunks that you have to activate context-sensitive points in the map to travel between.
God, it’s so cool looking that I feel slightly guilty that I made Mario play this stage while dressed like a clown.
However, unlike Mario Galaxy, the bite-sized chunks of Bowser’s Castle are still designed for exploration. You’re incentivized to find ways to get on rooftops or to jump blindly off the sides of buildings. It’s f*cking awesome and yet another contender for not just best level in the game, but best gaming level EVER.
And, to top it off, the boss of this level is a parody of Megazord complete with explosions going off in the background when it forms. Wait, so does that make Super Mario Odyssey the best Power Rangers game ever? I mean, it’s not like that’s a high bar to clear.
The other levels aren’t slouches either. I’ve never been a fan of the desert stages, and this time around the desert level is the largest in the game. Is that the one I disliked? Nope, actually Sand Kingdom is so good in terms of its design that it feels like a milestone in 3-D platforming history and the only reason I’m not including it among the best stages is that I feel there’s a little too much dead space.
I can totally understand the criticism against the 2D segments, as they’re mostly toothless and a little too self-congratulatory. I don’t disagree that they needed more challenge to them and a bigger variety of enemies or even power-ups, but I also usually found these to be welcome breaks that show up just when players likely need a break for the 3D exploration.
The one and only level among the purple coin stages that I wouldn’t hold up as an all-time classic is Luncheon Kingdom. I think they were trying to visually invoke the Nintendo 64 with its simple, blocky structures and stark colors, but the end result is that Luncheon Kingdom is bland at best, and a f*cking eyesore at worst. But it’s not just ugly to look at. The layout and navigation, along with the lackluster variety of challenge rooms and the boring capture elements, made this easily the worst area in what is probably the best video game I’ve ever played in my life. And even this, the weakest full stage in the game, is probably better than any level in Mario Galaxy.
This is the one and only time I feel Mario Odyssey’s vibe crosses the line into “trying too hard.” I’ve stated before that I don’t think the Nintendo 64’s breed of nostalgia will be aspirational, and Luncheon Kingdom will be what I cite as proof of that until the end of time.
Mario Odyssey works because you’re not just doing basic Mario running and jumping to explore. The action gimmick with Odyssey is Cappy, a sentient cap that you throw at enemies. As just a straight-up weapon, Cappy is one of the more satisfying boomerangs in gaming. But the actual hook of the game is that any enemy or object that Cappy lands on allows Mario to possess it and take control. It sincerely feels unlimited, but actually there’s only fifty-two possible objects in the game that you can take control of, some of which really didn’t NEED the cap. Taking control of enemies and animals? Fun stuff.
Cheep-Cheep
Lakitu
Moe-Eye (yes, that’s how its spelled)
T-Rex
But various rocks, pegs, and cars that show up once, that you only move a teeny tiny bit, also count towards those 52 things. Hell, technically a pair of puzzle rooms where you have to go off memory and match a stock picture of a Goomba and Mario each count for one of the 52 possession objects. I mean, come on, that really isn’t what I had in mind for this mechanic, you know? Also I might need new glasses.
And even Yoshi in the post-game content is possessed instead of ridden. Wait, why is it that Yoshi has to be possessed, but I can climb onto the Jaxi or Vespa? Whatever. Thankfully, in those instances where you do get to take control of classic Mario enemies, it’s usually pretty fun and adds to the sense of exploration. Most importantly, the controls almost never take a hit despite the play style completely changing. When you take control of something like the Uproot, you would think it would have a big learning curve to it. Actually, these became some of my favorite sections in the game.
I’d be happy playing a game that was just this character.
Add it all together and Super Mario Odyssey is just the perfect platforming adventure. It maintains one of the fastest tempos of any action game that I can remember, and this despite having dozens of play styles and a huge variety of level design archetypes. Hell, even underwater, ice, and fire elements are a cut above Nintendo’s best work. If Mario Wonder was the sum of Nintendo’s accumulated 2D knowledge, Odyssey is the culmination of their 3D experience. Everything led to this moment, and it’s everything you could want in a platforming game. Even the afterthought garbage is so good that it should keep you going long after the credits roll.
After you beat the game, you get to rematch all the bosses, only they’re harder. And yes, this boss is puking at you, and you have to climb the puke to hit it. Hey Nintendo, didn’t you once refuse to promote Conker’s Bad Fur Day because of this type of thing? Boy, time really does make hypocrites out of everyone, doesn’t it?
So, if you’ve somehow been holding out on playing Mario Odyssey, my pitch is this: I never used to replay linear games, but I’ve played through Mario Odyssey three times over the last nine years and it’s the rare game that lost none of its luster on replay. The only reason I stopped this third one before getting every power moon is I have other games to review. It’s rare in another way, too: it’s perfect for all ages and all skill sets. Apparently Miyamoto felt Nintendo had lost their way with Mario and wanted a 3-D Mario game that appealed most to their core audience, as opposed to the more casual fans that Galaxy and 3-D World were aimed at. You know what? If that’s really the case, that’s the only aspect of Mario Odyssey I think failed, because this is the perfect game for anyone and everyone. My favorite game ever? Yeah, I think it is, and while it seems silly to put Mario Odyssey up against works of art like Portal or Shadow of the Colossus, I think I might still go with it as the greatest video game ever made. Verdict: YES!
Super Mario Galaxy Platform: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Switch Released November 1, 2007 (Wii) October 2, 2025 (Switch) Directed by Yoshiaki Koizumi Developed by Nintendo Included in Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 or Sold Separately $59.99 caught a falling star and put it in her locket in the making of this review.
“I’m going to be excited and nostalgic for this any second now. Annnnnnnnnnnny second now.”
Back in 2012, I said that Super Mario Galaxy was one of my ten favorite games ever and that, quote, “It will be special to me forever.” Of course, I answered the question “would I ever play it again” with a firm “no.” Well, wasn’t I just wrong in every way a person can be wrong? I did replay it again over the last couple weeks, and it wasn’t special at all. Oh, I wasn’t bored or anything, either. Mario Galaxy was a lot of fun. But the game I remembered as a milestone never showed up. There were no highlights and honestly I thought the level design was uniformly forgettable. I’ll never forget the gravity, but what they did with it? (shrug) So what happened?
I realized that my brain mostly remembered the gravity and not necessarily the layouts they built around the gravity.
The above screenshot sums up the primary gimmick of Mario Galaxy: gravity is your bitch. You’re not just hopping around platforms, but under them. Screwing with gravity is a time honored tradition in games, but the way Super Mario Galaxy did it felt fresh in 2007. It even still feels kind of fresh in 2026 because it’s tinkered with in pretty much every way it can be. I won’t deny that I experienced a childlike glee in the whole thing that made me overlook that this was basic level design with the twist being simply the angle you’re walking. Like, how many times can you run around a tiny round planet? A lot, apparently.
Even the big final battle against Bowser takes place on a series of tiny round planets and feels nearly identical to previous battles you’ve already done.
But while the levels are just basic platforming levels with a twist in the angle, it never comes across like a facade. Even if it kind of is. Hell, this is even taking into account that sometimes the gravity screws up and makes you run around in a circle. It happened to me a lot, and I died a few times from it (and I wasn’t alone). So it turns out my Wii controller wasn’t on the fritz in 2007.
“Walk across every button” has been done to death. “Walk across every button and, oh yes, the buttons appear to be a vertical wall you’ll bind to when logically you should fall” is the twist.
If the gravity works and aged (mostly) well, why didn’t the game I loved at the age of 18 ever come close to showing up at the age of 37? I just don’t think the level design is what I’m looking for in a platformer anymore. It starts with the fact that Galaxy has one of the worst hub worlds in the franchise. There’s minimal sense of exploration to it, and the layout is so unmemorable that it’s kind of easy to lose track of which main port has which level. There’s forty total levels, and since levels offer a lot less missions and overall content than both Mario 64 and Sunshine, a drop down list for those who don’t give a f*ck about the hub would have been appreciated.
By the way, calling levels “galaxies” is kind of insane given the fact that none of the levels in Mario Galaxy are very big and a few can even be beaten in a minute or two and then offer no other content. Seriously, if it took me two minutes to finish “Boo’s Boneyard” on my first attempt, I’d be surprised.
This isn’t Peach’s castle from Mario 64 or Delfino Plaza from Mario Sunshine, where there’s a joy in the exploration and discovery of new rooms or new nooks and crannies. Rosalina’s Comet Observatory f*cking sucks as a hub world. Nothing is really “hidden” except a couple extra lives. The sense of exploration that was so rewarding in the previous two 3D Mario games? That’s gone, and I mean GONE-gone. And that tracks with the rest of the game.
Whereas I feel Mario 64 and Sunshine were about exploration and triggering a sense of vertigo, Mario Galaxy is more like a series of quick, narrow-in-scope bite-sized linear, point-A to point-B segments that are glued together to create the missions, making it feel closer to the 2D games. Actual wide-open levels like you saw in the previous 3D Mario games? That doesn’t really happen here with only a couple small exceptions early in the game.
Most of the time, there’s only one path to take, so your enjoyment will be based on how exciting you find that path. Again, I had fun. Lots of fun. But I look for other things in 3D platform games now. I don’t want a 2D experience in three dimensions. I want to explore.
When the levels are more open, they’re still certainly nowhere near as big as the levels in previous games were. The overwhelming majority of the individual segments are pretty small and funnel you directly to the warp star that shoots you off to the next planet. It’s not like these segments are directly connected. Usually they’re separated in a way that makes them unreachable unless you do the linear activating sequence.
Even when levels look like they might be a little more “open” they’re typically walled-off in a way where there’s not much to explore and there’s strict transition spots between chunks.
As a result, I didn’t enjoy the sense of discovery as much even in limited instances where it was there. Take the first level where you can become Bee Mario. It LOOKS like it’s going to be a Mario 64/Sunshine like-map. It’s not. It’s segmented into three distinct areas that present only a few, if any, chances to go off the beaten path and f*ck around.
And one of the only times you can, what’s hidden? A star? A hidden level? Nope, just a pipe with a cube-maze that pays off star bits. Once you realize how many of these things they hid in the game, they start becoming kind of downer every time you find one.
The game just needed more stuff to collect, in my opinion.
So despite the crazy physics, there’s something about the levels that feels too limiting and rigid. You feel like you’re being queued through the experience in a way you never felt in Mario 64 or Sunshine. That probably makes it sound like I hated the experience. Just so I’m clear, I actually did have a lot of fun replaying Mario Galaxy. It’s seriously a very fun game with a few nice set pieces and bosses. But nothing about my 2026 experience made me wonder if I was playing one of the ten best games I’ll ever play.
While I can’t believe I’m saying this, the truth is I had a lot more fun replaying Sunshine. For all the problems of that game, I felt it offered a much bigger variety of stuff to do. I might even think Mario 64 is better just on variety alone. Mario Galaxy is like all the boilerplate Mario challenges, only wrapped around a cylinder or sphere. Once you get over the idea that you’ll do some areas upside-down and some areas vertically and some will require a full circumference of a sphere, the actual meat and potatoes of the game is old school 2D.
How basic are we talking? I thought the ice levels were the best in the game. THE ICE LEVELS! That never happens!
I guess the structure of the game didn’t excite me as much as it once did. Finding an alternate transport star off the path sometimes felt like a downer because I didn’t want to go through the process of playing the level again at all. Some levels, really glorified side-levels, only have one or maybe two stars total. Primary levels only have three main stars, aka the missions. That’s it. Three. There’s also “prankster comet” levels that add extra challenges, but they’re mega-sized pains in the ass since you can’t just activate them willy-nilly. The comet has to be orbiting that “galaxy.” A dumb idea in 2007 that aged badly. So did the life count. Every time you turn off the game, you lose your entire stockpile of lives.
Spring Mario is the worst power-up in the history of the franchise. In an already gimmicky game, it’s SO gimmicky. It feels like an alternate bonus challenge and not something that’s a primary mechanic for a level.
In fairness, I didn’t exactly just play Mario Galaxy in optimal conditions. I’ve been unwell for a couple weeks and played Mario Galaxy two or three stars at a time, then napped, then played some more. So maybe that’s why nothing really stood out. Except, how I played should have worked for the game. It didn’t, and I’m hard pressed to remember any non-boss fight that made me sit up and think “that was actually incredible.” The vibe is incredible. But what it does with the vibe? Not so much.
Okay, I didn’t really like the one-off or two-off gimmicky levels like “blow the bubbles through the maze” as seen here. I would have rather had a large platforming maze to find my way through.
The game is just always really, really good but without any true highlights. The power-ups kind of suck. Bee Mario is underwhelming. Spring Mario sucks. Fire Mario and Ice Mario wear out too quickly and are too limited in usage. Boo Mario sees even less usage than either flower does. This type of “nothing sticks around long enough to bore” rapid-fire style platformer works for 2D Mario games. Both Super Mario 3 and Super Mario Wonder utilized it to great success. Mario Galaxy’s levels are technically bigger, but despite the space setting, they never felt large to me. I just never really thought the level themes or set-pieces were all that amazing.
It doesn’t help that Rosalina looks almost identical to Peach in her character model AND she’s a bore. Like, the story is that she laughed all the stars into existence. So let me get this straight: this emotionally vacant, dead-behind-the-eyes husk of a woman allegedly went into a laughing seizure and created the cosmos. Bullsh*t. I don’t believe this person has ever laughed once in their entire existence. I assume it’s a coping mechanism to make up for being abandoned by her parents, who presumably left her for dead, or possibly mistook her for being actually dead. I mean, how would you tell with her?
If it isn’t the bite-sized chunks and lack of exploration, I think Mario Galaxy’s standing plummeted with me based on how generic so much of the design is. It’s not just that this game’s princess is a different character who looks nearly identical to the already established princess, but like, for whatever reason this Mario feels like it’s one of the least experimental or bold in the franchise. As if the designers burned through all their courage with the gravity and played it safe from there. Imagine if Mario 64 had that attitude with 3D. Who knows where we would be?
Meanwhile, the new characters besides Rosalina look like they could be from any platform game BUT a Mario game. Look at three of the new bosses pictured above. All three are really fun boss fights, don’t get me wrong, but something about their design makes them feel detached from the Mario franchise, and not in a good way. They don’t feel like new Mario characters. They feel like generic cartoony bosses. The one in the middle looks like what the last boss would look like in a video game based on the board game Fireball Island, for God’s sake, and the other two could be Spyro or Banjo bosses for all I know. Galaxy somehow feels like every Mario game, and yet the least Mario-like game in the series.
Even the tacked-on Wii pointer with the starbits I found to be not as fun or useful as I remembered it. I only really used it in top down sections, like the annoying race against the Boo, where I used the pointer to get rid of the bombs that I was just trying to plow through like a moron. This is probably the star that took me the most attempts to get.
I finished with 76 stars and I didn’t even come close to the 240 total in the game, and I’m fine with that, as honestly I’m ready to be done with Galaxy and jump to Mario 3D World or Super Mario Odyssey. The magic from my youth was gone, and I really only kept playing long enough to beat Bowser so I could do this review. Maybe Galaxy 2 will be where I find the more bold design. In 2012, I paired 2 with 1, and that’s how it’s sold now. But I need a break from weird gravity before doing that one. I guess the best thing I could say about Mario Galaxy is that, besides the comets or Spring Mario, there’s no low points. (checks notes) Christ, there’s a lot of comets though, isn’t there? Okay, so that’s not actually the complement I thought it was. What I’m trying to say is I had a LOT of fun, and yet, it was nowhere near as much as I thought I would. Now I know why they made Galaxy the sequel to the movie, because that’s what watching it was like. Verdict: YES!
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap Platform: Game Boy Advance Released November 4, 2004 (JPN) January 5, 2005 (US) Directed by Hidemaro Fujibayashi Co-Developed by Capcom and Nintendo Published by Nintendo Available with Switch Online Expansion Pack
I like that they don’t pussyfoot around with the mine tracks. Boom, shotgun takeoff at breakneck speed, and Link can walk off the sore neck afterward. Whiplash? Pssh, that’s why he’s the hero! Do you think the asshole at the shop who charges 200 rupees for 30 seashells could be thrown from a mine cart at 80mph and then continue on without so much as rubbing his neck? I think not!
I wanted to play Minish Cap for the first time in twenty-one years because, frankly, I didn’t remember much about playing it as a teenager. I remembered certain aspects like the Kinstones, the limited usage of the shrinking aspect, that you fight a giant Octorok, and how small in scale the game felt (no pun intended). But I didn’t remember anything about the dungeons or even the items. Not one single detail. My brain completely deleted the gust jar and digging claws, the boxes and jars used for growing and shrinking, and even the main villain. But back in 2005, I was still recovering from life threatening injuries sustained in November of 2003 and had basically just started gaming full-time again. The main thing I did remember was liking Minish Cap a lot and thinking it was one of the better Zelda games.
One of the few clever usages of the shrinking mechanic is climbing into Armos knights and turning them on/off. Usually, Nintendo games feel like they mine a game’s key gimmick for everything it’s worth. That is NOT the case with Minish Cap. I feel like they barely scratched the surface with the growing/shrinking stuff and, actually, the shrinking stuff is kind of arbitrary.
Metroid: Zero Mission was another game that I played during the same binge that I first played Minish Cap, and it was kind of in the same boat in that memories of it besides basic things just didn’t take root. Zero Mission is also the reason I put off this review. One thing I did remember about Zero Mission was thinking it was a masterpiece and one of the best games I’d ever played. It’s not. When I replayed Zero Mission for an IGC review, I still had fun but I was also really disappointed, too. So I’ve had one question on my mind: “am I a bad person for wanting to catch a fairy and then shake the hell out of the bottle, or is it okay because fairies are just another breed of unholy abomination that populates Hyrule and the whole ‘restore life’ thing is clearly a ploy to give them better public relations than, say, Moblins or Wizrobes?” Wait, I meant “since I can’t remember sh*t about Minish Cap, did I overrate it too?”
Oh, and I remembered fighting this. Sort of. I remembered that a giant green ChuChu was the first boss, but I completely forgot about how you fight it, and I forgot that you rematch an electric version of it later. The rematch is pictured above.
Graphically, Minish Cap is trying to look like a 2D version of Wind Waker, which is another game that’s a lot smaller in scale than you expect from a Zelda game. In my memories, Wind Waker felt simply massive, but the overworld is lacking in consequential locations and the actual dungeon count was really low. I still enjoyed it, but I was legitimately startled by how wrong my own memories of the game were, to the point that I’m now terrified to replay the N64 games. But I wasn’t worried about that happening with Minish Cap. I remembered a small-in-scope Zelda game, and now that I’ve 100%ed the game, I can confirm that’s exactly what it is.
I have a question: if the scale when using the shrink boxes changes to this, and there’s levels based around being this small when you play them, why can’t Link just hover above the level at full size, stab his sword down, twist it a couple times, and then wipe the element off his blade? Why does he have to go through the rigmarole of finding the map and the compass and the special weapon? Just stab the level!
The overworld of Minish Cap is like an abridged version of the Zelda map. All the tropes are here: the town, the swamp, the forest (complete with fog effect), the rugged mountain area, Lake Hylia, the graveyard, etc. But a person can travel even without warping from place to place in just a couple minutes by foot. Oh, they’re mostly well constructed. Mostly. There’s a few letdowns, like the graveyard also combines the Lost Woods concept but the actual scale of the area before you enter the lost woods gimmick is compact and can be explored in a minute or two. The fields that surround the center of the map are even smaller. It’s like condensed soup. Zelda boiled down to the bare essentials, but what’s here does feel fairly packed with content.
Minish Cap has a decent but unspectacular variety of overworld enemies.
I’ll give credit for a game that’s overflowing with treasure teases. I don’t know if they have a name or what else to call them. “I see something that I know I can’t get right now, but oh boy am I excited for when I get the item that lets me do it!” That’s a treasure tease. The Zelda franchise is built around this concept, and for its small size, they packed a lot of these moments into Minish Cap.
Gaining the ability to push those bookshelves is actually a big moment that takes a while to reach. You can see that you’re going to do it, and a character even teases that there’s an item that lets you do it, but you’re going to have to wait until much later to be able to. Okay, so it’s weird that Link can lift a gigantic f*cking seed over his head without any item needed to open the game’s second level but you’re still going to wait quite a while to push a bookshelf, but whatever. They set it up well. Too bad the majority of setups have lousy payoffs.
But, they overstuffed the game with these teases and vastly undelivered on payoffs to them. This is largely tied to these doohickeys called “kinstones.” Kinstones are broken discs that come in four colors and a variety of shapes, like so:
And the game wants you to locate someone who has a matching disc and fuse stones with them. When you walk up to someone (or a wall, because sometimes it’s a f*cking wall) and they have the ability to “fuse kinstones” a little thought bubble will appear that tells you what the reward for this fuse is. If you press the L button, you’ll go to a screen where you have an opportunity to fuse stones with them. If you’re carrying a stone that fits their stone, they fuse and something will happen somewhere in Hyrule. It might spawn a treasure chest or a golden enemy, open a previously inaccessible walkway, reveal a hidden door, and a variety of other surprises.
When I say “you’re constantly getting kinstones” I am not exaggerating. They’re everywhere! There’s usually multiple in a level.
It’s not the worst idea, but the execution is the worst, because there’s not actually a fixed amount of kinstones in the world. For the most part, only the yellow kinstones are context sensitive plot devices that are functionally like keys for the overworld and necessary towards completing the game. If there’s a yellow kinstone, you’ll get it exactly when that is the next area of the game and not a moment before and you absolutely will never have extra ones.
This is your reward for completing every fusion in the game. So let me get this straight: all the figurines that you collect in one spot in the town nabs a piece of heart, but the fusions that you have to explore the entire f*cking world for gets you a goddamned trophy?
For the other three colors, the game gives players way more kinstones than there are people or things to actually fuse kinstones with. Apparently there’s 100 total fusion moments in the game. After I activated the final fusion, I still had 136 unused kinstones. That means I had collected a total of 236 kinstones, over twice as many as the game actually requires. They’re dead inventory. The Hyrule version of Skylander or LEGO Dimensions figures. That would be like finishing a game with 136 unused keys. It’s a satisfying mechanic rendered VERY unsatisfying.
Granted, a lot of these were purchased, one way or another. But that’s another problem: too many rewards are kinstones. For example: there’s three tiers of rooms in the hotel and the clerk promises a reward for each tier with the purchase of a night’s sleep. Regardless of how expensive the room you stay in is, you get a kinstone for all three price points, every single time. I assume “rarer” ones are in the more expensive rooms, but look at my inventory. None of these f*cking things are all that rare.
I legitimately think the kinstone concept is the worst one in the history of Zelda from an execution standpoint. Of the 100 fusions in the game, 9 are gold ones that happen on a set schedule. Of the 91 remaining ones, 24 of them reward a fusion of a kinstone with ONLY more kinstones, in some form or another (a chest or a merchant selling them). After beating the game, I went around to find the kinstone fusions I missed. When I got to the final two, I was also missing three pieces of heart to 100% the game. I knew one of those pieces of heart was going to be from getting all 136 figurines in the town, but the other two I was sure must have been from fusion. Nope. The last two fusions I did placed treasure chests in the world that gave me a different kinstone.
Just like the light rings in the water from Wind Waker, they ruined a good idea with overindulgence. Kinstone collecting and fusing SHOULD have been exciting, but the lack of tight design around them takes the zing out of them. Plus, some of the characters in the game can fuse with you multiple times, and 16 out of 49 green fusions, along with one red and one blue, are determined completely at random, along with which reward they unlock. I think it would have been so much more interesting if every character had a unique fusion item. Would that have complicated things? Maybe, but hey, we’re smart. We can grasp that an item belonging to Smith goes to the character named Smith.
This was the last thing I had to do to 100% the game: grinding up seashells 30 at a time for 200 rupees.
And while I’m whining about tight design, there’s 44 pieces of heart, but one of them I’m almost certain you can’t get until after you beat the game. It’s this one:
(flips bird) By the way, it’s actually just a coincidence that I finished fusion part of the game with the same amount of stones leftover as there are figurines to collect.
The game teases this piece of sh*t heart right from the moment you’re able to fully explore the town. But to get it, you have to collect every single figurine from a capsule game in the corner of the town. Only, you can’t actually spend money at this game. Do you remember the secret seashells from previous Game Boy Zelda games? Those are the currency for this one part of Minish Cap, and you don’t spend them on the capsule game. You bet them to increase the probability of getting a new capsule. This is the one aspect of Minish Cap I cheated via rewind with and discovered the game is semi-rigged. You’ll get the same capsule every time until you pass a threshold. Early on, I didn’t bet my shells wisely, so my last hour with Minish Cap was spent grinding coins via another gambling game (yeah, I cheated there too) so I could spend 800 rupees for 120 shells to win toys so I could get a piece of heart I didn’t need anymore.
This is BORING! And why can’t I just rob the place, huh? I have a bow! I have a sword! I have bombs! Let me do one armed robbery, Nintendo! I won’t do it again! Pinky swear!
And the kicker is that the house with the heart piece belongs to a Richard Branson satire (not f*cking kidding) who, after bragging about how rich he is, is so impressed with the amount of time you wasted getting Zelda’s most tedious and boring collectables that he lets you steal 600 rupees and his heart from his home. All those worthless kinstone fusions and THIS is how they decided to pay off this treasure tease that you saw right at the start of the game? Despite its small size, Minish Cap manages to fail to deliver on so many promises that it’s stunning.
But, those are just the side quests. The actual adventure is a different story. The big gimmick with this Zelda game is the ability to shrink at designated spots. It’s a fun gimmick, no doubt……. But don’t get too excited. The actual tiny Link exploration only happens in designated areas that, ironically, usually aren’t large in scope. Take this spot in the mountain, before you reach level two. I’ve circled the area where the game zooms in on tiny Link.
You shrink in the rock with the hole in it, and can move around freely, but you can’t actually do anything besides grow big again or enter the area that I circled.
Once you shrink down, you’re so small on the screen that the game has an indicator to point you out, along with any of the Minish tribe that happen to be nearby. But when you enter the little mountain pass that circled above, the game activates a brief set piece where you run down a straight corridor while avoiding rain drops.
And that’s it for that section. It does make for an exciting one-off set piece that lasts, oh, fifteen seconds, maybe twenty. But it’s also pretty basic and not memorable. That’s the shrinking aspect of Minish Cap in a nutshell. It’s very gimmicky, but the actual gameplay red meat feels too narrow and short, to the point that I wonder if it was the smartest idea to base the entire game around it at all.
It makes for a good excuse to have common enemies stand in for bosses, but again, why fight them like this? Why not grow and kill them with one or two swipes, and then shrink back down and collect the macguffin? And don’t say “so the game can happen.” At least do the Yoshi’s Island thing and have a wizard cast a spell that grows the enemy and buffs them.
Places where you can transform are usually roped off in a way where escape is impossible, which they sort of HAD to do to make sure players didn’t use this ability to softlock themselves. So, even tall grass, a doorway or a crack in the pavement will stop you. Yeah, it’s not exactly like a Link to the Past’s “two completely different worlds in one game” is it? Hell, locations you have to shrink to enter like the Minish Village or the Minish Mines in the mountain are functionally just normal villages that require an extra step to enter. For those locations, the shrinker is right there next to the entrance. And the shrinking also leads to many other eye-rolling moments. One of the places you shrink are upside down pots, like seen in this picture to the left of Link.
By the way, this is yet another moment where you can see a treasure chest for basically the entire game but can’t quite reach it until the game opens up much later on. The pay off for this treasure staring at you…. MOCKING YOU…… is a f*cking kinstone that you likely already have a dozen exact copies of. F*ck you, Minish Cap!
Those pots start normally, but you can’t just flip them with the same two hands you’ve been using to fight monsters and save the world with. Oh no. You need a magic item to flip THOSE pots. The most comically lame item I can remember in a Zelda game: the Cane of Pacci. An item with the sole ability of flipping things. Link does have thumbs, right? I can suspend my belief and say, yes, Link actually does need to shrink and fight giant sized versions of enemies in dungeons that are, in theory, so small that he could step on them and pick through the rubble to find the magical element to defeat Vaati and save Hyrule. But he can’t flip a f*cking pot? It’s heavy? There’s other people! They know you’re trying to save Zelda! Ask them for a hand!
Weirdly, this thing isn’t while you’re shrank. That’s a giant sized Goron who gives you the Mirror Shield, which reflects enemy attacks. He only wakes up when you activate the right kinstone. HEY, a kinstone that doesn’t suck! But waking him up isn’t enough. You have to then do a special quest for him to get the mirror shield. What is that quest? (checks note) Beat the game. This is post-game content. Wait, really?! So, what happened? Was the mirror shield part of a deleted dungeon or something?
Over the course of the game, there’s really only one major moment that’s heavily set-up that gives you a taste of how good the concept of shrinking could have been, and it’s the quest to get the item that lets you shove objects while being small. It happens in the central village and you can suss out what route you’ll need to take is long before you’re equipped to do it, but it’s well foreshadowed and executed perfectly. I so wish the game had more of that. So while the shrinking has its moments, including a few VERY satisfying side quests, it feels like an upjumped dungeon item that somehow got star billing.
This is what I’m talking about.
Of course, the main reason I play Zelda is the dungeons. If Nintendo were to ever put out “Legend of Zelda: Oops! Only Dungeons!” I could seriously live with that. I think most fans could. There’s only six full-size dungeons in Minish Cap, and the first one is like baby’s first Zelda dungeon. It’s basic even by the standards of a tutorial dungeon and I was just bored out of my skull like you wouldn’t believe. I sincerely thought “oh no, I’m not going to like Minish Cap and Nintendo fans are going to be so mad at me.” Thankfully the other five are a lot of fun and probably saved Minish Cap by themselves.
Hell, I even liked the ice level, which also doubles as the water level, where a large section is based around navigating a lily pad through the stage.
And I even enjoyed items like the gust jar, which I’m not even sure why it’s called “gust jar” when it mostly sucks and only blows a little, literally. “Vacuum Jar” makes more sense. I liked the digging claws too. The cane was stupid as f*ck, but, hey, I liked the Superman cape, especially when they came up with cute gimmicks for it, like one spot where Link has to use a fan to assist with the jump. I’m not sure why Hyrule’s superheroes wear capes like superheroes in Earth’s fiction do. Is there a Hyrule version of Superman? Come to think of it, wouldn’t that be Link?
You’ll believe a pointy-eared child can fly!
I wasn’t sure if Minish Cap was truly unmemorable or if it was just me. I think it’s probably a little of both. I struggled to write this review because there’s very few moments that actually stand out in Minish Cap. The main villain, Vaati, is one of the most forgettable big bads in a major gaming IP. Not a single puzzle stumped me except one: I didn’t realize you could pick up this giant seed. Well TECHNICALLY it’s a normal sized seed and I just happen to be small in this picture:
In my defense, by the time you reach this point, I already realized there were book cases in the town that I couldn’t shove as Minish Link yet BUT would be able to with the right item, and for whatever reason, I didn’t press the lift button next to seed because, I assumed, I wasn’t strong enough to lift anything yet. So I tried everything with this seed but lifting it. I assumed there was something I was missing. I probably spent close to thirty minutes going back and forth trying to figure out what exactly that was before throwing in the towel, hitting up Google, then returning to the seed red-faced and embarrassed while also muttering “that makes no sense.”
The light arrow is given to you not in a dungeon but from (checks notes) some guy. This is one of the worst inclusions of the bow in the Zelda franchise. It’s not set up at all and just happens in the overworld, and then the light arrow isn’t necessary towards the game. It’s a total afterthought. So, like, why not do THIS as a tough fusion thing?
That was the only part I needed help with besides the last three heart pieces post-game. None of the dungeon puzzles were that hard, and the layouts were some of the easiest to navigate in Zelda. Hell, the swamp was harder to find my way around than any dungeon. While dungeons were fun, as Zelda dungeons tend to be, there’s no “oh my GOD!” moment in any of them, with one exception: this boss, the highlight of the game and one of the best 2D bosses in the franchise.
This giant flying manta ray is flanked by a smaller, blue flying manta ray. You hop across them, create duplicates of Link so you can then hit the eyeballs that are open at the same time. It’s exciting, challenging without being unfair, and different from the typical Zelda bosses in both theme and execution. But is it memorable? It doesn’t look like a Zelda boss, or feel like a Zelda boss, and I already totally forgot it once before. While playing its level, for the life of me I couldn’t remember a single detail about the boss. Not one.
I also didn’t remember anything about Vaati, aka the worst last boss in the franchise, who is presumably evil for having an eyeball where his crotch should be. He could hook up with Dracula from Castlevania Bloodlines, aka “mouth crotch” and search out nose crotch, ear crotch, and chin crotch to form Crotch Voltron.
But ultimately, I never thought any element of exploring or puzzle solving, whether it was the overworld or any of the dungeons, was all that clever. Minish Cap is Zelda: The Zelda Game. It looks exactly as good as it needs to look. It has a roster of enemies exactly as big as it needed to not get slammed by critics. It has the bare minimum amount of dungeons to not feel like a rip off. It’s Zelda kept just exactly at subsistence level. It’s one of the strangest gaming experiences I’ve had because normally I’d be so pissed about a game that aims as low as this does. But I can’t really get all that angry at Minish Cap because it’s a lot fun. I think that probably speaks more to the Zelda formula than the raw content of Minish Cap. Zelda as a franchise is so good that THIS is lesser Zelda. Wow!
Ah, see, it’s not the MASTER SWORD. Oh no, it’s the Four Sword in this game, so that’s different, right?
I wasn’t kidding when I called this “abridged Zelda.” That’s literally what it is. It’s the boilerplate Zelda game with all the expecting fixings and none of the highlights. The action is fine. The exploration is fine. The dungeon design after that first level is fine. That’s not to say it doesn’t excel in other areas. It controls great. The combat is nice and crunchy. It’s also a beautiful game when it needs to be. Like, look at these screenshots:
Golly, that’s gorgeous. It’s not always that good looking, but again, it’s almost like it knows exactly when you’ve reached a part where it needed to visually strut and do the heavy lifting for a game that’s otherwise often lacking in inspiration. Because, in gameplay terms? Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap never rises very far above fine, except for one damn boss that isn’t even the last boss. It gets a YES! because it never sinks too far below “fine” either. The kinstones, figurines, and heart pieces might have annoyed the sh*t out of me, but those are the distractions that I think only matter if the main parts are bad. The overworld. The dungeons. Well, those are fine, so Minish Cap is fine. How fine? Exactly as fine it needed to be, and not a drop more. It’s THAT Zelda game.
I think Vaati, aka the last boss, is generic and lame and a major letdown. It doesn’t help Minish Cap’s case that it just has a terrible villain and a terrible final battle that refuses to end. Nothing from the moment you start the fight against Vaati’s first form until the end credits rolled worked at all for me. I think that’s largely on the character being very bland as a final boss. It made me appreciate what they accomplished with Ganon. I know some fans scream bloody murder, but I personally believe Ganon in the first NES Zelda is one of the all-time sh*tty last boss fights. Maybe the worst of any Nintendo game. You are literally stabbing blindly at air and hoping the invisible Ganon is in front of you. No finesse at all. Horrible. What were they thinking? That probably should have been the end of the character, but the sprite was just good enough and the “hit him with a silver arrow to kill him” bit memorable enough to continue with him as the series antagonist. Ganon in Link to the Past was probably the best boss in the game and felt appropriately last-bossish, and now everyone considers Ganon one of the great villains of gaming. These days, he can be a pig, or a thief, or a Mumm-Ra cosplayer and it usually works. I sincerely don’t mind that they keep going back to Ganon. Ganon is awesome. Vaati sucks as a boss and a big bad. Never again, Nintendo. Stick with Ganon.
I’ve wanted to play this since reviewing Metroid: Zero Mission and it turns out this is to the Zelda franchise what that game is to Metroid: it checks all the boxes it needed to, and it checks them well, but it only checks the boxes. It had no ambition beyond that. I would never have picked up on that as a teenager. Both Minish Cap and Zero Mission feel like games that aren’t made to dazzle anyone who is deeply experienced with their respective franchises. They feel like they’re made to satisfy fans while leaving any truly good ideas on the table for a bigger, more important game later on, and preferably one that costs more than a GBA game does. Minish Cap and Zero Mission feel like games scaled down for the Game Boy Advance in not just size but scope. That’s the sense I got. It’s like someone looked back on that one time Nintendo released two brand new Game Boy Color Zelda games on the same day (and they originally meant to do three, jeez) that each were full-sized (and huge) 2D Zelda adventures, with ten dungeons each and said “whoa, whoa, let’s not do THAT again! We ain’t running some kind of adventure charity over here!” Verdict: YES!
Wario World Platform: Nintendo GameCube Released June 20, 2003 Directed by  Kouichi Kimura & Hitoshi Yamagami Developed by Treasure Published by Nintendo Available with Switch Online Expansion Pack EXCLUSIVELY on Switch 2
“I hope doing this piledriver move never gets old!”
After Super Mario Sunshine, I guess I hadn’t gotten the idea of searching for treasure out of my system, so why not turn to THE treasure hunting Nintendo character? Plus, Wario World is actually made by Treasure, as in the legendary studio made out of Konami cast offs. Prior to Wario World, I’d only reviewed one other Treasure game: McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure (yes, as in THAT McDonald’s) for the Sega Genesis that was seriously one of the best 16 bit platformers I’ve ever played. Go read McDonald’s Classic Video Games: The Definitive Review for that review. If Treasure didn’t phone-in a Ronald McDonald game, there’s no way they would do that with a Nintendo IP, right? RIGHT?!
“That doesn’t look too bad.” Oh, but it is.
Calling Wario World a 3D game is a little misleading. I don’t think it’s truly 3D most of the time. I’ve heard it described as 2.5D. I’ve heard comparisons to Crash Bandicoot. Either way, the game is framed so that it feels like a 2D game that has depth. “Isn’t that 3D?” No. It’s closer in gameplay to a top-down 16 bit game. A throwback to SNES/Genesis collect-a-thons, with a fixed camera angle that offers only a little wiggle room. When I say “fixed camera” I mean strictly the angle. The camera follows you, so don’t expect old school Resident Evil. Think more like a Zelda game or something like Super Mario RPG. There is absolutely no “looking around” in the levels themselves. You can view a little in front of you, and sometimes you can tilt the camera at a downward angle, but this type of looking:
Super Mario Sunshine (2002 – GameCube)
Well, you just plain can’t do that in Wario World, and I never experienced a single instance in any level overworld where I found the limited camera options to be useful. Even a level based on using reflections in a mirror, where you’re specifically told to use the camera angles, I didn’t think it helped. Hell, changing the default camera angle usually made things worse. But that’s not always the case, as the bosses and puzzle rooms can feel closer to the type of 3D game that was well established in the early 2000s. Wario World has eight levels, and each level has eight trap doors that look like this:
Doing a butt stomp into the trap door takes you to a “puzzle room” and in those rooms, you can do a full 90 degree rotation of the camera. It’s still not a free camera, but you can also tilt the camera downward (never upward) or make the game take place entirely from a bird’s eye view, and sometimes it’s actually helpful.
By “sometimes” I mean I felt I had to use it once. It was in this room, which is the very last puzzle room in the game. And I only used it here because it’s the biggest room in the game and consists entirely of narrow walkways. Going top-down made this downright easy to navigate.
So, right out of the starting gate, Wario World feels like a relic in terms of style of game. A massive, massive downgrade from the humongous levels of Super Mario Sunshine. But hell, it’s not 2003 anymore and I’m all about exploring different styles of games, so what might have hurt in 2003 doesn’t matter in 2026. Despite that, I found Wario World to be a total slog and one of the worst Nintendo-published mascot games ever made. I literally can’t believe Treasure made this, because Wario World is f*cking boring.
This, the second level of the game, is the one decent level and the only one I had to do significant backtracking to 100%.
For whatever reason, the game leans into Wario as a sluggish, lumbering oaf. Okay, so he’s fatter than Mario, but so what? He could jump and platform around every bit as good as Mario in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 and Virtual Boy Wario Land. Then, following those two games, for Wario Land 2 and 3 Nintendo turned the character into a high concept “you can never die” puzzle platforming experience where Wario changed form based on allowing enemies to hit him (I’ll review those soon).
Falling off a ledge doesn’t result in your death. Instead, you’re taken to a penalty room where you have to punch boxes. All but one box will have a bomb. The correct box, which more than once was the only one left after I broke literally every other box, will have a spring that returns you to the surface. You don’t lose health, or at least I don’t think so. Instead, you lose coins if the ghost rhinos grab you or if you touch the water or whatever that is. Since coins are everywhere, I never came remotely close to finding out what happens if you lose your coins. This was just a massive waste of time.
So there’s a precedent that Wario is every bit as limber and capable at platforming heroics as Mario. That’s all out the window here. Wario can barely jump and the pitiful level layouts do well accommodating that, IE they’re not exciting to navigate at all. He also doesn’t spring off enemies and has to rely on ladders or these little balls scattered throughout the world to climb even small structures. Very rarely, you might use an enemy for climbing, but those moments are few and far between. It’s also one of the poorest controlling Nintendo games in that the timing feels….. off.
Behold: the treasure hunting aspect. The majority of these are just laying around somewhere.
But Wario’s games are about finding treasure, right? Well, about that………
In Wario World, each of the game’s eight levels (not eight worlds. EIGHT LEVELS) has eight treasure rooms that are guaranteed to have a crystal in them, so 64 total red crystals. You need X amount of crystals to unlock a level’s exit and face the boss, but you’ll just naturally pass by enough puzzle room doors to get them if you don’t go for 100%. There’s also eight statue pieces per level, some of which are in the puzzle rooms and some of which are “hidden” on the levels. Another 64 things. There’s eight separate treasures per level that have to first be spawned by hitting their corresponding button and then locating the platform the chest is on:
Sometimes a button requires a little backtracking to find its treasure platform. Thankfully the buttons and platforms are color matching and once you nab the treasure, the platform turns gray to show it’s claimed.
And sometimes the buttons are up against a wall and have to be activated by having an enemy thrown at them. So I’ll call it 64 for the buttons + 64 for the treasures themselves. Finally, there’s five elf things trapped in boxes in each level, and again, sometimes they’re in the overworld and sometimes they’re in the puzzle rooms. There’s forty in total and, apparently, they’re the only thing that changes the ending. As per tradition, Wario World has multiple “endings” though your reward for 100%ing the game is a f*cking static screen of Wario sitting on a throne.
Oh f*ck off with that lazy sh*t. Seriously, really?!
But the journey is the reward or whatever. 64 + 64 + 64 + 64 + 40 = 296 total things to find in Wario World. Gosh, that sounds like quite the treasure hunt, right? Yeah, no, as maybe two dozen total things require a little bit of off-the-beaten-path searching to locate them. Most of the crap you’re looking for you’ll pass along the one and only main path in each level, with MAYBE a small hint of having to walk up and down to spot something.
Wario in Baby’s First Treasure Hunt.
If it actually requires searching, it’s not THAT much searching or backtracking. Sometimes you’ll pass a treasure platform and then the button for it is a little further up ahead. If the elf boxes or statue pieces aren’t in levels themselves, you’ll probably find them right next to the crystal in the puzzle rooms. It’s baffling. Less than a handful of times, the puzzle rooms separate the crystal from whatever the other reward is, but not in a way where you have to do additional challenging things.
The “puzzle rooms” are more like ultra-stripped-down versions of the “pure platform” challenges in Mario Sunshine.
And the puzzle rooms are completely toothless bores. If you fall off the edge in those rooms, there’s NO punishment besides having to start over. You don’t lose any health. They’re the most rudimentary of platforming challenges. Maybe two or three out of sixty-four in the game put up an actual fight or made me stop and think about how to tackle them. And locating them isn’t exactly hard. Because the levels are fairly linear in their layout and branching paths don’t branch off too far, I could count on one hand how many times I needed to actually look around to find things I missed.
The Christmas theme goes to waste too.
Thankfully, if you miss stuff and need to restart a stage to 100% it, you can quit and return to the hub as soon as you gather the treasure and it still counts. So, total times I needed to significantly backtrack? Twice in the entire game: once in the second level for a single statue piece and once in the Christmas/ice theme because there’s a slope that you can’t climb up once you’ve passed them. It took me like five minutes to get what I was missing. The rest of the stuff I got just by spotting it through normal progression. The treasure hunt is a complete failure.
If the puzzle room has steel doors, like seen here, you must piledrive an enemy through it to enter it. Or, instead of an enemy, just the little weightless bombs the enemies fire at you. Holding ANYTHING that you can slam will work to open these doors. Since enemies respawn (sometimes you have to walk away and come back a couple times to make this happen) this is just busy work that adds NOTHING to the game. Sure does pad out the run time like a champ, though. See, that’s why they give you the big bucks, Treasure. You think of things like that.
So if that’s the case, what’s even the point of Wario World? They seem to have been aiming to make a brawler-platforming hybrid. The game constantly spawns the same tiny handful of enemies that are reskinned to look different on each level, but functionally they’re the same two or three basic enemies you were introduced to at the start of the game. You can punch and tackle them to kill the smallest ones. The medium or large ones have to be “finished off” by using a power move.
By the way, this clip is the entire Wario World experience in a nutshell: fighting the same couple reskinned basic enemies you met less than a minute into the first level while you “locate” a chest full of coins, a puzzle door and a treasure chest just by literally crossing paths with them along the level’s main path. Astonishing in how uninspired it is, really.
I’d say the brawling was probably the main focus, except it’s just too limited. When enemies are seeing stars, this indicates you can pick them up and do a power move. For example, you can jump in the air and do a piledriver, which not only kills the thing you’re smashing but does splash damage to everything around it. It’s the quickest and lowest effort of the power moves. Or, if you’re stupid, you can throw them, but this has to be charged up and aimed. The piledriver doesn’t require charging or aiming. Just pick-up, jump, and press a button for maximum splash damage to everything around you. You can also swing them, and I’ll get to that. But that’s the extent of the combat.
This seems to have been the sole idea the development room had and they had to base an entire game around it.
Now the game does reward you with coins for throwing enemies at other enemies or hitting piledrivers off higher and higher ledges, but coins are literally everywhere. The infinitely repawning enemies drop them, and if you leave a puzzle room and come back to it, all the coins are restored and the treasures you got out of it are replaced with chests full of coins. But unlike previous Wario games, coins don’t boost the ending you get. Neither do the statue pieces, which instead increase your health by a half heart if you get all eight out of a level. The treasures are useless on the Nintendo Switch 2 since, on the GameCube, they unlock samples of MicroGames from WarioWare Inc.:Â Mega MicroGame$. The only thing that affects the ending is the boxes with the elves. So combat is both the focus of the game and usually unnecessary towards progress. After a while, I found myself avoiding combat sections.
The one clever bit in the game happens twice. In one level, you have to knock out evil flying magnets and throw them at steel walls to turn them into platforms. In the final level, they do the reskinning trick and turn the evil magnets into evil flying garden shovels that you throw into dirt walls. It’s not the worst idea, but it’s wasted in this game.
Technically the game is split into four worlds that each have two levels and a big boss, but the worlds have no connecting themes at all. Like, the final world starts with a magic mirror level, and then the final level of the game is a totally uninspired Ancient Egypt theme. AND BY THE WAY, TREASURE: the desert/Egypt theme is very well established as a mid-game theme. Especially in the Mario universe, where Wario, like it or not, will forever be compared to. You can’t end a game on a desert level. It makes an already short game feel downright sawed off.
And it actually feels exactly like a mid-game level too. There’s NOTHING special or unique about it. It’s the boilerplate desert style level. Like the mirror level that starts world 4 would have made so much more sense as the climax of the game because at least it has a unique gimmick.
And what’s frustrating is none of the levels feel like they have their own personality, with two exceptions and one of those doesn’t last. The first is a creepy circus level. Oooh, that’s a titillating theme for a Wario game. Imagine what you could do with it! Except, again, almost all the enemies are just reskins of the same enemies you’ve been fighting from the start. Same attack patterns, same weaknesses, different looks, and that muffles the potential for the theme to land because if the enemies are just a facade, logically the set dressing will feel like a facade too. And that’s exactly what happens. Then, halfway through the level, it turns into a generic city theme anyway. Look! This screenshot is from the circus level!
It’s like they ran out of ideas for a circus so they just stopped. Wario World is like drinking a glass of flat soda. There is something missing with the experience. There’s no pizazz. No kick to it. All the levels feel samey because the themes are superficial and mostly feature the same kind of enemies and puzzle rooms you’ve been fighting all along. The mirror level is the most notable stage in that you’re supposed to use your reflection to navigate, and for about ten seconds, it does an interesting thing where you can only see enemies by their reflection. It sounds great, but the actual level design isn’t ambitious at all. It’s so basic that it makes you realize they never actually got far past the “use your reflection to navigate” pitch. It’s basic, because they didn’t really think it through.
That’s just so lame, you know? Not once in the entire game did I look at something and say “that was really clever” or “that was really elegantly crafted.” That last one really bugs me. You expect Nintendo publish games to be elite in terms of craftsmanship. Maybe they thought “well, it’s Wario so we don’t need elegance.” The character is inelegant. Fine. But the worlds Wario has been established to explore have always been thoughtfully designed. They didn’t bother with that here.
This might LOOK cool, but it’s just the hub world, which has no hidden stuff to find. EVEN THOUGH THE PAUSE MENU HAS THE SLOTS FOR THEM! In retrospect, that was an ominous sign of how bad the entire game would be.
For me, the swinging attack is the element that shows they just didn’t care. Knocked out enemies can be picked up and swung around, taking out other enemies or activating switches. The game leans so heavily into this that almost every level has a segment where you’re locked into fighting wave after wave of enemies for 60 seconds, usually with columns nearby in order to do the spin attack (even though some enemies block literally every shot from them). But you have to physically rotate the control stick, so it doesn’t happen instantly. And then they incorporated it into the navigation, like so:
In that clip, I didn’t slip off the platform, but you can, and it’s actually easy to do so. To do these things, I had to literally place my controller down and then spin the analog stick because anything shy of spinning perfectly will likely cause you to wobble off. At other times, there’s dials that you have to rotate, sometimes clockwise and sometimes counter clockwise. Using enemies to solve puzzles is fine, but the cartoonish violence vibe they were aiming for doesn’t land at all because the controls are so fickle and sloppy. There’s no joy in these moments.
To damage this tree, you have to knock the acorns off it, then butt stomp the ground to cause them to roll at an angle where you won’t hurt yourself picking them up, then you have to throw them back at it. But the collision is imprecise and I usually took damage anyway. It feels like a game that’s still in its beta stage. I just can’t believe the same people who turned out a masterpiece starring Ronald McDonald could make such an amateurish mascot adventure FOR NINTENDO. It’s actually weird Nintendo said “this is fine.” It’s really not. It’s a pretty bad game, folks.
So the treasure hunt is a total fail. The combat is repetitive and pointless. The levels feel hollow, with poorly executed themes. What else could they possibly f*ck up? Well, it’s Treasure and Treasure makes awesome bosses, so SURELY they didn’t screw up the bosses? Actually, Wario World’s bosses are some of the most janky and inelegant I’ve ever played against. This is where I actively question if Treasure’s heart was in this or if this whole game was a holdover from the PS1 era that they inserted Wario into years later or what (apparently this came about because Nintendo and Treasure enjoyed making Sin & Punishment together). Each level has a boss at the end, and then every world has an additional boss, then there’s a final boss. So how many bosses are good? One, and it ain’t the first big boss, which is this thing:
The scale is awesome, but the the battle isn’t exactly the art of video games at its peak.
I was totally pumped when I saw the huge scale of it, but then the actual battle feels like an enemy that’s much smaller. The only addition to the normal combat is having to grab its tail and do a butt stomp to it. You don’t really do anything all that clever to fight it. Most bosses you still cause damage by picking up and doing the throw or piledriver to them. You might have to wait for an opening, but the combat feels, more or less, identical to the exhausting and repetitive combat that wore out its welcome during the levels.
And this somewhat hurts when the game does do clever bits. That mirror level I talked about? That stage’s boss is a play on the “follow the cup” thing that’s usually a bonus game in these types of releases. I’ve never seen it turned into a boss battle. Cool. After you do the normal punches to the boss and avoid his attack, he’ll retreat to one of three cups. Then the cups mix up and you have to follow it and select the right cup. Oh, and he’ll hide inside the correct cup so after selecting it, you then have to punch the cup in the air to knock him out of it. They should have made THIS the damaging move, but they’re really committed to the “mad moves” bit so you have to pick him up and piledrive him here (or do a charged-up throw).
A for effort, at least this one time.
But the bosses don’t scale right either, and sometimes the big bosses don’t feel any more or less special than the stage bosses. Like the second big boss is a two headed dragon that you punch like a basic enemy, then get out of the way and let the other head fry it. I didn’t even realize I was doing damage to this because it’s one of the few enemies you don’t execute the power moves to.
This was ALMOST clever, as the boss can attack by spitting out dozens of platforming sticky balls that, if you cling onto them, will pull you out of the battlefield and cost you health. But I beat this thing in about a minute on my first attempt. OKAY, so it took me down to my final hit. (shrug) I won, didn’t I?
The actual battle features sloppy attack patterns and strange timing between the two heads. And besides that, the scope of the battle doesn’t feel bigger than the two stage bosses you need to beat to unlock it. While I don’t think either fight is particularly good, they were a lot more memorable in their character models and felt a little less sloppy. Look at the screenshot above and then look at the two below. Would you be able to guess which is the world boss if I hadn’t already told you?
Level 3 Boss
Level 4 Boss
So Wario World was a total letdown for me. I actually had this when I was a kid and I remembered basically nothing about it outside the piledriver. I don’t think I ever played past the second level, but I didn’t remember it being bad, exactly. I think it’s in the same boat as Luigi’s Mansion: one of those games I put off playing because nothing about the first couple stages held my attention. But, unlike Luigi’s Mansion, I think I always assumed it would get better and I just wasn’t far enough along. Boy, was I wrong. I was SO bored playing this in 2026. I was hoping it was a slow riser that would eventually make me nod and say “okay, they had SOME inspiration.”
One of the best examples of lacking polish is the Medusa fight. It drops these rocks that you have to throw into volcanoes that cause them to erupt which causes it to crash so you can punch it, pick it up, and piledrive it. Except, there’s a pronounced delay in when the eruption happens. Like they thought it was too easy so they programmed in wonky timing with the movement of the boss flying overhead and the thing you activate to knock it out of the sky. But it doesn’t come across as challenging. It comes across as f*cking amateur hour programming.
Instead, Wario World comes across as one of the most cynical Nintendo releases, and probably Treasure’s worst game (though I’m going to need to review a lot more to certify that). At best, Wario World feels unfinished and uninspired. At worst? Hell, the worst thing I can say about it is the worst thing I can say about any game: it has no heart at all. It clearly doesn’t come from a place of inspiration. It exists to fill out a release schedule. You can tell from the puzzle rooms alone, because they’re so interchangeable and lack any imagination or stakes.
It’s like they didn’t have enough ideas to fill eight per level. Then don’t make it a hard rule that each level must have eight. You know, in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 and Virtual Boy Mario Land, there was no guarantee a level had one of the game’s treasures, and that made locating a piece of treasure a little more special. They didn’t shoehorn one into every level for the sake of a checklist. Incredibly, the relatively primitive Game Boy or Virtual Boy adventures with the same character have way more personality in their settings than a less technically limited game made by two of the most revered companies in gaming. Wario World has no charm, no personality, and given the circumstances, I’d be hard pressed to name a more disappointing video game. Verdict: NO!
Let’s face it: the only thing anyone remembers about this game is the pause music.
Super Mario Sunshine Platform: Nintendo GameCube Released on July 19, 2002 (JPN) August 26, 2002 (US) Directed by Yoshiaki Koizumi & Kenta Usui Developed by Nintendo Available with Switch Online Expansion Pack EXCLUSIVELY on Switch 2
This type of thing is the good stuff, in a game that’s overstuffed with plenty of bad stuff.
Believe it or not, Super Mario Sunshine was my first day one console Mario game. Well, my first mainline Mario game that wasn’t part of the Mario Advance series. That means, even though I became a full-time gamer at the age of 9, I didn’t get my first day one Mario game until right after I turned 13, and it’s the Mario game that most people would probably call “the weird one.” Despite being promised for Switch Online around the Switch 2 launch, it took a while for Mario Sunshine to arrive, but I finally replayed for the first time in nearly a quarter-century (well, I did start a game in Mario 3-D Collection but didn’t keep playing long), and had a lot of fun. And also nearly threw my controller about two dozen times, give or take.
You certainly fight too many of these sludge plants early on, and it gets old fast.
The funny part is, even I remembered Sunshine as the Mario game where you had to spray gunk off various playfields and walls, but the reality of the game doesn’t quite match that. The overwhelming majority of Mario Sunshine isn’t about cleaning up levels. Oh, those are there, and there’s a learning curve to using the sprayer, but most of the game is an exploration-focused platformer. There’s seven primary levels, each of which has eight chapters that end with you nabbing a star or “Shine.”
“Shine, come back!”
Despite being only the second 3D Mario game and the direct sequel to Mario 64, Sunshine is a massive improvement over that game, at least mechanically. The camera is a LOT better, among other things. In fact, the camera works so well 95% of the time that the 5% of the time it completely sh*ts the bed and simply does not work, it’ll have you inventing brand new swears.
“YA GROGFROCK’N WHORE!”
Thankfully the controls were adjusted to make the game work on the Switch. On the original GameCube, you had to lightly press one of the shoulder buttons to move and squirt. BUT, on Switch, they mapped “run and squirt” to its own button. So if you were worried about winning the battles against Shadow Mario, hey, all you have to worry about is how tedious, repetitive, and boring those segments are.
Every 7th chapter (out of eight) in each of the seven levels is entirely based around chasing and squirting Shadow Mario, along with another pair of “chase and squirt” missions in the game’s hub world, and they ALL suck. Just the most samey, dull mission. Sunshine feels like the Mario game where the people in charge were told “no” the least because when it’s bad, it’s really bad.
For the most part, the water pack named FLUDD is a platforming tool that allows you to hover and, eventually, blast high into the air. The “rocket nozzle” feels like a big deal when you locate it in most levels, as it opens up (and often quickens) exploration.There’s also a “turbo nozzle” that I used less than a handful of times and honestly they could have removed it from the game and lost nothing. Meanwhile, the primary starting nozzle, the hover nozzle, is just about the most genius and intuitive platforming enhancement in 3D gaming. It was fun and intuitive to use in 2002, and it holds up in 2026.
For all the crap the water pack gets, I had basically no adjustment period for using it to hop around. It was like the last twenty-four years never happened. I wish that was the case since I enjoyed being 13 a lot more than I enjoyed being 37.
Unlike my experience replaying Zelda: Wind Waker, where my brain deleted the majority of things I disliked about the game in the decades since I first played it, I remembered everything that I hated about Mario Sunshine, specifically the maddening challenge of some of the missions. Each level has eight primary chapters, though you only need to beat the first seven on each to face off with Bowser. Even with modern emulation tomfoolery that Switch 2 includes, IE save states, the challenge was still insane. So insane that I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to go for a 100%. I finished the game with 89 Shines 90 shines and that’s fine by me.
I remember HATING the red coin challenges as a child, but this go around, they were almost certainly a highlight every time they showed up. Well, except when they’re bonus missions, where I found the time limits too strict. Attempting the first one was such a miserable experience that I immediately decided to skip all of them.
I think it’s safe to say they went a little overboard with some aspects of Sunshine. There’s far too many timing based challenges where I wonder who exactly play tested the thing. The worst chapter was one where you have to ride a Yoshi and squirt Cheep-Cheeps with fruit juice because it turns them into platforms. I assure you that I didn’t have a stroke and just type out gibberish there. That’s literally what you do, but the platforms you create aren’t on set paths. They are, however, moving platforms. EVEN USING SAVE STATES, I think it took me an hour to finish the chapter, and the entire time I was thinking “they intended people to start this mission over from the beginning if they screwed up even one jump?! Are they sadists?” The answer is, yes, they might actually be sadists.
I breathed out a sigh of relief when it was over, though I just barely made it before the Yoshi vanished.
That’s the thing that bothered me about Sunshine: the game’s hub world and the seven primary levels are all well constructed and lend themselves well to exploration, but there’s so many BORING chapters where the boredom is based almost entirely on bloated difficulty. Back in 2002, a single mistimed jump in the Yoshi sequence would have you starting over, which means climbing out of the water, returning to the dock, retrieving the fruit to wake the Yoshi from its egg and beginning the massive journey to the star all over. It’s a long way to the goal and the timing gets more and more fickle as you go along. F*ck that. Seriously, WHAT THE F*CK?! WHO TESTED THIS?!
And on top of all that, Yoshi has a time limit, limited ammo, and the platforms you make move, so it’s not like you can pace yourself.
When time limits are involved, Mario Sunshine tends to suck. It’s not universal, but it’s close enough. Personally, I think Mario Sunshine is at its best when it’s you, the water pack, a whole lot of climbing and looking for things. Chapters based around making you explore high into the sky are exhilarating. The game sets off an even more satisfying sense of vertigo than something like Shadow of the Colossus. It’s an incredible experience when it’s based around the sky.
Yes, more of this. (taps wrists) Put it in my veins.
These segments work out so well that I’m left completely astonished that the people who created them didn’t recognize when something was f*cking boring, like chasing Shadow Mario down for the eighth time or having to roll a watermelon without touching a single tree or one of the two billion enemies between the start and the goal. I’m always kind of baffled when good games become boring, but it’s especially jarring in Sunshine because they seem to have grasped that the vertigo was the game’s bread and butter. MOST of the game builds around this idea.
Sometimes the blue coins are fun to nab, especially when, again, they’re built around vertical exploration. Blue coins like this one are a hoot. Blue coins where you have ten seconds to cross a continent and the camera f*cks up so badly that you’re not even sure where it’s at? Not so much.
And those segments work so well that, when you move away from them, the game immediately suffers. It’s not just the primary levels, either. Of course, there’s the segments where you lose the water pack. Every chapter has one or two such segments, which play a remix of the original NES Super Mario theme to let you know these are the “pure” platforming parts of the game. Sometimes they involve spinning platforms. Sometimes they involve a lot of wall jumping. Hell, one is shaped like a giant Pachinko machine.
Usually the “pure platforming” stuff still has some kind of gimmick. Like this entire segment is fashioned like a slide and is probably one of the easier ones.
Personally, I thought these got really old, really fast. I didn’t care so much about losing the FLUDD. It was the fact that the sense of exploration was off the table, as these are (mostly) straight forward “go from point A to point B” moments. Mario Sunshine is so much better than Mario 64 when it focuses on looking around. I sincerely enjoyed looking for the blue coins (you can cash in ten of them for a Shine), and hell, I even enjoyed gathering 100 normal coins for a bonus star. Okay, sussing out which chapter is the one to go for 100 is annoying (some have more coins than others), so I didn’t do it for every level. But it’s not a deal breaker. What is nearly a deal breaker is the fact that grabbing the 100 coin star ends the level and sends you back to the hub world, so you can’t really do anything else. Why’d they design it like that? It makes no sense.
Usually the 100 coin Shine is then placed on the other side of the globe from you. You know, it wouldn’t have killed them to just hand you it.
I don’t think it’s just the FLUDD and the toxic waste that makes Mario Sunshine the weird one. Sunshine is haphazardly paced and lacks memorable bosses. My brain had completely deleted memories of the giant Wiggler, the manta-ray that divides into smaller ones, or the King Boo that you defeat by feeding it peppers. Actually, the only boss that I did remember from 2002, the giant Blooper, is repeated two more times when the original fight would have been enough. So really, even the good bosses are run into the ground. And hell, even the final encounter with Bowser (set in a giant hot tub) feels like it happens out of nowhere and is completely forgettable.
And I beat it on my first attempt too, so all the save states I laid down with the intent to cheat were a waste of time.
Actually, the whole ending sequence made me wonder if they had no clue how to end it in a satisfying way, so they just didn’t bother and phoned it in. After you defeat the final Shadow Mario chapter, the hub world floods and you follow Shadow Mario into a volcano that’s a relatively short final level. Some of the chapters where FLUDD is taken from you are longer than Sunshine’s entire ending sequence. When I say I was startled that the game was wrapping up, I mean it. The entire finale takes place in a long corridor with a few instakill spikes and fire traps and then an extended boat sequence where colliding with any rock is an instakill. And after that, you get the rocket nozzle and launch yourself up a handful of cloud platforms that have no enemies or other obstacles, and then you reach the final boss. Talk about going out on a whimper.
The kicker? It’s a BORING final level, especially compared to the excellent Bowser stages in Mario 64.
Having just spent a few days with Mario Sunshine, I get why it’s not among the most popular Mario games. Even though it was the #3 best-selling GameCube release (behind only Smash Bros. Melee and Mario Kart: Double Dash), a lot of people didn’t like the FLUDD, and I’m not really going to argue passionately that they’re wrong. I liked the hover aspect and the rocket, but the sludge cleaning and the combat? Well, I could do without, because it’s completely lacking in elegance. Sometimes, the combat with the FLUDD feels like it barely works at all.
Even the first big boss (and its rematch, seen here), there’s an inelegance to the combat. It doesn’t really feel like I’m drowning it with water. It feels like I’m hitting a solid target and the boss is growing fatter, but the two things feel disconnected. I just didn’t “buy it.”
I’ll also credit much of the dislike to the settings. Even though levels have gimmicks (IE one has a theme park, another a hotel), every level is still in a tropical, seaside setting with the same generic villagers. Compare this to the massive variety of themes that Mario 64 had and it feels like a major step backward. You would think a theme park setting is a great idea for a Mario game, but half the level is a completely separate tropical beach, IE that thing half the levels and the hub world itself have.
This screenshot was actually taken in the theme park level. What, can’t you tell?
Once you enter the theme park section of this stage, regardless of which chapter you’re in, I’m pretty sure you can’t return to the beach. As for the rides themselves, they’re not really all that interactive. The highlight isn’t the roller coaster, which sucks, or the Ferris Wheel, which you can’t even get in the carriages. No, in an entire theme park setting, only the two swinging ships feel truly “interactive” in the way you’d expect a Mario theme park level to be. What a letdown.
The best idea they could come up with for a roller coaster was not one but two target shooting segments, and neither of them is particularly fun.
So Mario Sunshine is plagued with samey levels, a lack of a balanced challenge, and an ending that’s given the bum’s rush more than the final couple seasons of Game of Thrones. But, I still had more fun than not, and really, it’s not even close. Oh, I’m not going to argue it’s an unsung masterpiece. I’d even say that the lack of variety (real or imagined) paired with the inelegant combat makes Mario Sunshine feel like it’s a third party game that somehow scored the Mario license. “Well, we were HOPING for the SpongeBob license but hey, we’ll settle for making a Mario game. I guess.” Like, the required-by-law level themed around the Boos is a hotel that’s not even outright themed like a haunted hotel.
“What if there was a hotel with a casino that was haunted by boos?” “As long as there’s a beach in front of the hotel and sludge to clean up.” “We’ve got, like, a dozen other beaches in the game. There’s other places people go on vacation besides beaches, you know?” (shakes fist) “I SAID PUT A BEACH IN FRONT OF IT!” “Fine, then I’ll, like, add a ghost manta ray on the beach that poops electric slime and splits into smaller manta ray ghosts when you squirt it or something.” “As long as it happens on a beach.” “Sigh.”
And I had an incredible time exploring the hotel. It really feels like they squeezed it for everything they could. There’s all kinds of hidden rooms, secret pathways, trapdoors, etc. But then there’s a casino section inside the hotel where just some guy blocks your entrance to it because it’s not supposed to be part of the chapter you’re playing right now. Then the actual casino is very limited and not really anywhere near as fun as exploring the hotel had been. There’s nothing clever about it at all, really. You just spray the reels on not one but two oversized slot machines with the FLUDD, then spray panels of a not-puzzle puzzle until they’re flipped the right way. Yawn.
Part of the unlock method is just spraying the reels until they match up. Nothing clever about it at all.
Then the King Boo fight is a slog as well. Even though it takes place on a giant roulette table and he has a slot machine that decides his attack pattern, none of it feels like it meshes well. Again, I just get this weird vibe that no idea was ever said “no, let’s try something else” to. So one of the best levels in the game has an entire section that sucks and a boss fight that didn’t really work for me at all. That’s the Mario Sunshine experience in a nutshell. Two-thirds of it is really fun, sloppiness and all, and one third of it ranges from boring to misery.
In theory you can just grind on this boss, deliberately avoid attacking him and score 100 coins via his slot machine. Again, haphazard.
Oh, there’s more than enough good game here for me to give it a YES! I think I fell just short of outright loving Mario Sunshine. Of the GameCube’s “big three” it was the weakest of the three for me and I’m guessing most GameCube owners. As a child, I loved Metroid Prime and Zelda: Wind Waker, but I’m fairly sure that I never even finished Mario Sunshine and walked away from it without regrets. Had I not been able to cheat, I would have likely done the same thing in 2026. I fully admit I used save states during this play session, mostly to eliminate the agony of falling and having to re-climb large sections of the game. I turned what could have been a months-long play experience into one that lasted just a few days.
Hell, I probably saved several hours on just the “you died. Return to the hub world, re-enter the level entrance, re-select the chapter, re-watch the opening spiel, and then start playing again” downtime. Like this, the only main course chapter where you lose the FLUDD, saw me die plenty during my childhood. That’s a LOT of resetting and restarting that you no longer have to deal with.
Sunshine is one of those games that’s actually better with emulation cheating because it can be used to eliminate so many tedious restarts and downtime. I used it to create my own checkpoints, not eliminating the difficulty entirely (I still had to, you know, make my jumps) but taking the edge off. That Yoshi segment I whined about? Setting my own checkpoints sure as hell didn’t make it any less challenging. What it did do was eliminate the time climbing out of the ocean and starting over from the beginning. You know, the part that would have been so boring that I never would have finished it at all, otherwise. Save states assured that most of my playtime with Mario Sunshine was fun and not frustration. So like when I died dragging this f*cking thing around:
How I hated this level as a child.
I didn’t need several minutes of downtime to start over and try again. I laid down the save state as I approached it, so that I could make a good faith effort at actually completing the full challenge. If I felt they went overboard, I would heel-toe it through a chapter. So what? I still had fun! Now that Sunshine is a game that can be played on your own terms, I can finally appreciate it on gameplay merits besides how damn weird it is for a Mario game.
Another example of “eliminating downtime.” This chapter took me days as a child. Through the magic of save states, I beat it in maybe an hour or so. The challenge was still there. I had to navigate it correctly and, thanks to a problematic camera, it’s still a pain in the ass. But if I fell, the misery of starting over from the beginning was gone. I wish I could play every game this way, even new games. I’m in favor of fun by any means a game can be fun.
I can’t stress enough that there were many, many chapters I loathed as a 13 year old that I enjoyed the hell out of as a 37 year old playing this with save states. For that reason, this might actually be the true killer app for the GameCube lineup on Switch Online. So, if you weren’t excited to play Super Mario Sunshine, my pitch is that, with save states, it feels different now in the best way possible. A game where the good parts are still good, but you might discover the bad parts are now, in fact, also good as well. Of course, it also makes the bad parts feel worse than ever when you realize not even save states can make the act of playing them fun. Ahem.
By the way, literally as I was finishing writing this review, I was going to be fine with that mission being the one and only main chapter I didn’t finish. But then I realized I had no screenshots of it, so I went to get them and about three minutes later I had the Shine. I’m not entirely sure what I did differently. The things that had been aggressively swarming me suddenly felt like they couldn’t care less that I was rolling the watermelon right past them.
Thus I finished with 90 Shines and, hey, I’m totally satisfied with that experience. So if Mario Sunshine left a bad taste in your mouth back in the 2000s, or you felt it was too challenging, give it a second chance on Switch 2. It’s not necessarily a whole new experience, but an optimized version of a flawed game. Imagine if you could remove just the frustration out of the most frustrating game experiences. That’s sort of what Sunshine is like now, and I’m all for it. Verdict: YES!Â
Okay, so I missed two 100 coin challenges. (shrug)
And apparently despite selling two-and-a-half million copies, almost nobody actually put that much time into it. It probably killed the franchise off for good, and I even have proof of that, but I’ll get to that.
For all the bitching that I’m about to do, make no mistake that New Snap’s scoring system is so much better than the original. There’s no ridiculous “doubling the points for centering the photo” crapola. No, there’s all kinds of other crapola. I think I’m about to set the world record for complaining about a game in a positive review of the game.
Since the franchise is basically fantasy cockfighting for children, of course there’s multiple instances where they fight, but it usually involves multiple steps. As an added bonus, in many fights, you can actually choose who you want to win by throwing an illumina orb at either one. This isn’t one of those cases, as this fight can be interrupted with a call for peace. It’s adorable.
You also needed to be zoomed in for the original game in order to take a picture. That’s no longer the case. Plus, I mean….. Christ, look at that. Nintendo 64 should be renamed the Dairy 64 because it aged like milk and now all that’s left is cheese.
The scoring system is more elaborate too, measuring things like pose, size, direction, and placement within the photo to the single digit. The poses are placed into different “star rating” categories, with the more basic poses being one star and the more complicated ones being four star. In theory, at least. Whether or not it makes sense is another matter that I’ll get into, but it certainly adds to the excitement. I’ve literally had dozens of instances of beating previous photos by a single point, and hundreds of new photos won by single digits. Anything that scores 4,000 or more points earns diamond status, IE the maximum rating.
Outside of the photodex itself, you can save any photo you want. I’ve never really played all that much with the editing tools but they’re pretty extensive. The re-snap button shown here allows you to change the angle of the picture like you’re back in the level, zooming in and out. It doesn’t count for your score, obviously, but it’s a nice addition. You can also earn, through the special requests, things to present them like frames or stickers. It’s really elaborate, so if you’re a creative type, this will have even more meat on its bones than I’m going to talk about.
And that’s not all the content, either. There’s also 234 special requests that don’t necessarily have to count towards your Photodex. For the requests, your score doesn’t matter at all, and the first time you submit a request photo, the request is fulfilled forever and that photo is permanently saved as a memento (and can’t be replaced, even if it really, really sucks and/or likely shouldn’t have even counted).
When a photo fulfills a request, it’ll have this little “talk” bubble on it, so at least it’s not a random guess whether or not you’re submitting a correct photo. BUT, you do have to actually submit the photo for evaluation to clear the request, so if it’s hard to get, you might not want to take other photos of that species and have the temptation of finishing a request versus scoring on a photo. I kicked myself many times for passing on a special requests to roll the dice on a high score opportunity.
And that’s what I have to show for it. It scores 4,284 and took me roughly a million attempts, give or take.
Finally, if needing over fourteen times as many photos as the original game to complete your album isn’t “big enough,” there’s the actual levels themselves. The original game had six levels and a “boss fight” for lack of a better term where you try to get a photo of Mew. What levels it had were fairly straight forward and offered little in the way of alternative ways to play. New Snap has fifteen locations and six boss fights. I called them locations and not levels because every single location offers multiple variations, or “levels” of content that are further split into day and night, which usually involves roster changes in the level and has a different variety of pose opportunities.
Sadly, only The Reef has “evening” as opposed to “night” and a truly awe-inspiring sunset. This is seriously a beautiful game when it wants to be. God, I would love for this to get the full Switch 2 upgrade treatment.
While you can look at the “levels” of each course as a difficulty setting, really it’s best to think of them as a complexity setting. The higher the level, the more variables there are. BUT, that doesn’t mean high score chasers will want to only play on the highest level. Sometimes specific events only happen on lower levels. One of the best examples is a pose that happens between the Carbink and Sableye. Both are found in the Cave courses and, exclusively on Level 2, there’s a scene where three Sableyes are chasing a Carbink. Giving the Carbink two illumina orbs causes it to attack the Sableyes.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, this is the only spot in the entire game where you can get a 4,000 point or “diamond status” three star photo of Sableye and THE ONLY three star pose Carbink does in the game, and it happens outside of the highest level of complexity the Cave has to offer. You don’t even go that direction in the Cave on level one and the scene doesn’t happen at all on level three if you take that branching path. By the way, in creating that clip, since I didn’t know if I should focus on the Sableyes reaction or the Carbink’s attack, I did both and ended up nabbing two new high scores.
Even after you reach the maximum levels, the game gives you plenty of reasons to adjust to lower ones because there’s dozens upon dozens of other poses that only happen on those levels. So, how many total levels are there in the game? Well, following the free-to-download DLC update, the map has fifteen selectable locations, like so:
Still plenty of blank spots, Nintendo. Just sayin’.
But, keep in mind that “Illumina Spots” are boss levels and are NOT the same courses as those they’re paired with. So when you click the dot for Florio Park and you see that you can play day, night, or illumina spot, it’s one course remixed five ways (3 Day, 2 Night) and a separate boss course remixed twice. There’s six bosses, so just this map alone has twenty-one different courses. Occasionally, an alternate route in a course is so dramatic it might as well be two different courses in one, as is the case with the Undersea course, but I’ll just count it as one. “There’s only fourteen dots on that map.” Right, but the game’s main menu is also itself a course, the Research Camp (you click the upper left hand corner), which also has two variations. If the menu screen looks like this:
You’ll start the course near that campfire. However, if the main menu looks like this:
If you want to change which of the two starting locations you’ll enter, it’s a cinch. Just click research, then exit back to the main menu and it’ll be the other one. The Research Center is by far the shortest level in the game, but even it’s packed with stuff.
You’ll start in front of the lab and have completely different poses and photo opportunities. Even the alternate path that takes you briefly inside the lab has changes based on which of the two starting locations you pick. So with that said, how many total levels, alternate paths, and hidden paths (IE the game doesn’t prompt you and it requires a special activation) are there in the game? Hell, I don’t know, so I’ll list them, or at least the ones I know about.
Research Camp (Camp): 2 Different Starting Locations or “Levels” One major alternate path in each that takes you into the lab
Florio Nature Park (Park): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels, and 2 Illumina Spot Levels Day level 3 and Night levels 1 & 2 has a minor alternate path that takes you across the Bidoof dam.
Both Day & Night can transfer to Secret Side Path, although any pictures taken there are scored separately.
Level 2 in the Illumina Spot has four different randomly decided starting positions for Meganium.
Secret Side Path (Side Path): 1 Day Level, 1 Night Level
Both Day & Night have a major alternate path that takes you off the main path and into Snolax’s den.
Day has a minor hidden path. Playing the flute in the first hollow log will take you above Torterra instead of underneath it.
Both Day & Night end on a remixed version of Florio Nature Park’s final scene, though any pictures taken there are scored separately.
Founja Jungle (Jungle): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
Every level Day & Night has a major (but short) alternate path that takes you off the main path and through a swamp.
Day level 3 & Night level 2 has an additional (but short) major alternate path that takes you off the main path and behind the waterfall.
Night level 2 has an additional (but short) hidden path where a Liepard knocks you off the tree in the main path.
Mightywide River (River): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
All levels have a major alternate path that takes you off the main path through a cave.
Day level 3 has a minor hidden path where a Quagsire knocks you off the main path (can’t go into the alternate route if you activate this).
Night level 3 has a minor hidden path where a Feraligatr (briefly) knocks you off the main path.
Elsewhere Forest (Forest): 3 Levels and 2 Illumina Spot Levels The level is like a maze structured as a main chamber, a scene based on a season, a main chamber, and an ending scene Level 1 will take you randomly to Spring or Summer for the second scene.
Level 2 will randomly take you to Fall or Winter for the second scene.
Level 3 allows players to control which of the four seasons they go to based on how they interact with the Espeon, so four major alternate paths.
Level 3 has a hidden path that’s permanently unlocked as an alternate path to a different finale if you lead the Deerling through the second main chamber.
Blushing Beach (Beach): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
Every level Day & Night has a major alternate path that takes you out into the water.
Maricopia Reef (Reef): 3 Day Levels, 2 Evening Levels
Every level Day & Evening has a major alternate path at the end.
Day levels 2 & 3 and Evening levels 1 & 2 have minor hidden paths based facing left or right when you approach Wailord.
Lental Seafloor (Undersea): 3 Levels, 2 Illumina Spot Levels
Levels 2 & 3 have a major alternate path near the start that takes you through, for all intent and purposes, an entirely different course.
Level 3’s alternate path has an additional major hidden path if you rescue a Lanturn from a pair of Frillish that takes you into Lugia’s lair.
Sweltering Sands (Sands): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels Day levels 2 & 3 and Night level 2 have a major alternate path leading to a different final scene.
Barren Badlands (Badlands): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
Day levels 2 & 3 have a major alternate path that changes the entire middle of the level.
Night level 2 has the same major alternate path as Day, but it requires you to photograph at least three Digletts at the start of the stage to activate.
Fireflow Volcano (Volcano): 3 Levels, 2 Illumina Spot Levels
Level 3 has a major alternate path that takes you to a different final room.
Level 2 in the Illumina Spot has a hidden path based on how soon you put out the fires in at least one Volcarona.
Shivering Snowfields (Snowfields): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
Day Levels 2 & 3 and Night Level 2 have a major alternate path.
The alternate path either rejoins the main path or you can take a second major alternate path that takes you to a different ending.
Outaway Cave (Cave): 3 Levels, 2 Illumina Spot Levels
Level 3 has an alternate path in the middle of the level.
THAT alternate path has a hidden path that takes you to a different ending.
If you stay on the main path, there’s another hidden path near the end of the level that takes you to a different main path ending.
Level 2 in the Illumina Spot has a major alternate route with a different ending.
Ruins of Remembrance (Ruins): 3 Levels, 2 Illumina Spot Levels
There’s a minor alternate ending to all three Ruins levels.
After over five years of playing this, including six weeks straight of addiction to this, I’m still finding higher scoring pictures off total flukes. Like I would never have found this photo if I hadn’t zoomed through the park before the Dodiro runs away AND taken this one single picture of it, thus forcing my hand to choose this photo for evaluation.
Mew was the last boss in the first game. Now it just shows up as post game content in the Jungle course, both day and night. “Is that 5,923 points for a photo not even centered in the frame?” Yep.
Individual photos don’t have leaderboards. Only the Photodex, the total course scores, and the individual courses. At one point, I couldn’t claim my Photodex score was entirely mine, as I play this game a lot with my family and they had some high score photos. But I’ve since replaced every photo not taken by me (I think there might be one or two exceptions but come on) with higher scoring photos, and any family sessions take place on a separate account, though it’s not high scoring because I ain’t allowed to play. I can watch, but I’m banned from playing because I “know where everything is.” You know, fam, I really don’t. Total bullsh*t, I tell you.
UPDATE: The day after this was published I climbed to #208 in the world. I’ll quit at 200. Cross my heart.
It’s really not even that high of scores in my Photodex either. This pic right here is still my four star photo for Starmie. Top players are easily over 5K for photos like these. I’m not using guides to find the photos outside a handful of instances when I was still trying to get one of every picture so that I could have this review up in a reasonable time (hah, how’d that work out for you, Cathy?!). Actually, online resources are woefully out of date for this game and often not helpful at all. Guides to “diamonding” the pictures usually are just advice to get the bare minimum 4K and not pictures with higher-yielding photos. Sometimes the advice is outright bad. Most of my photos were found just by plain old looking around. That’s the point of the game, right? That’s the fun stuff.
This three star photo of Swinnub was one of the final diamond pictures I needed (I think it was second-to-last). This only scored 4,049 points and took me a half hour by itself to clear the 4K mark.
Based on how I climbed the leaderboard and what those scores I passed along the way were, I guesstimate that, conservatively, less than four-thousand players have gotten all 936 photos (unless they just walked away with poses scoring 3,000 or less on tons of photos) and well under a thousand players (out of over 2.5 million) actually tried to get a diamond rating on every photo. Not get every diamond, but just tried. The truth is, it really wasn’t that hard to get one of each photo. The diamonds and a couple of the special requests were, but one star through four star photos themselves? I could probably count on one hand how many put up a real fight. Yet, I’m in the top 0.00848 of all players.
This pose happens at the end of the River course on level 3. To activate this pose, you have to throw illumina orbs at three Swamperts “hidden” along the river course to set up the pose and then one final orb right at the very end of the level. The three Swamperts will launch out of the water and dive back in within a single second. Because it takes work throughout the whole level, this isn’t the type of picture you can just spam and quickly submit over and over. It takes time to set up. Even with those circumstances, I’ve activated this “pose” at the end of the river course a few dozen times and this was my highest scoring photo of it. Top players using the pause technique are scoring between 5,500 to over 5,700. I’m stuck at 4,924.
Notice I said “highest scoring” and not “best.” I’ve actually had WAY better pictures of this sequence. Ones that, based on my research, should have scored 5,200+ minimum, only when I submitted them for evaluation, they scored under 4,000 points. Wait, what? How? Because the camera wasn’t focused on the closest Swampert, but one of the rear ones. This is why players who discovered that the game automatically centers photos and delays or extends scoring windows started pausing and unpausing, sometimes extending one second poses into nearly a minute to get that one photo. If you’re like me and think that sounds miserable and ruinous towards fun, your only other option is to aim, shoot, and hope the game focuses on the correct one. Remember the panda on the dragon?
This one?
That’s another photo that you have to manually activate over the course of a level, and this pose happens at the end of what is probably the longest course in the game. Even if you go for ONLY this photo, each time will take five minutes just for this, give or take. Again, I’ve had MUCH better photos than this one that sits in my Photodex. Dozens of better ones, in fact. Closer, with the Pancham facing me. But they weren’t counted as Pancham pictures. Instead, they counted as Drampa pictures. Unless you’re slamming the pause button over and over like you’re doing your best NES Advantage “slow motion” impersonation, you don’t have time to stop, aim, and shoot on this. This pose is gone in a second, and there’s nothing worse than THINKING you got the picture you were looking for only to find out it’s actually something else after the level ends and you see what you got.
I’ve had worse examples but I wanted to give you an idea of how hard this is.
The big photos of Pichu, Shaymin, Scorbunny, and Grookey have them grouped together around the crystal, and literally every photo in this area becomes problematic. It would be REALLY nice if they patched-in a toggle that the camera would never, under any circumstance, focus on a crystal bloom or ancient ruins. Allow players to opt out of it. Since they never even attempted to fix this, I assume it’s deliberately trollish design, signed off on by all bosses at Nintendo and Bandai Namco, for the sake of making it “challenging.” God, I can’t imagine why this had such low playtime among its 2.5 million copies sold.
While I sincerely believe New Pokemon Snap is an immersive game, this problem actually breaks the logic of the immersion. In the story logic of the game, you’re handing these photos to a professor for evaluation. So why would a professor look at this photo:
It’s actually more rare to get the photo you’re trying for during this sequence because the hit boxes for the mushrooms are overlapping where the Cleffa is placed. Why even set this with a gap large enough to clearly see the Cleffa if the zooming and focus will always go to the Morelulls? “Maybe it’s meant to be a scene for the Morelulls?” Nope. The Morelulls have their backs turned to you, thus assuring very low direction points and making it clear this is NOT a scene created as a photo opportunity for them.
And not ask the person handing him it “what is this picture about?” Why does it have to be decided at the moment the photo is snapped if the whole shtick of the game is that a photographer is handing already taken photos to someone else to have them rated? Wouldn’t the photographer be able to decide what the photo is about at any time before they submit it for review? This is immersion shattering to a degree that’s stunning. It’s such an obvious fix, and one the game engine should easily be able to handle because it already recognizes and awards points for everything in the photo. This is EASY, guys. As easy as any fix in the history of video games is. This type of thing is not a rare slip. VERY often, you can have something appear suddenly in the camera, like this Gliscor that is so very clearly the focus of the picture:
Oooh, look at the pretty butterfly. So majestic. What, you don’t see a butterfly in that photo? Yeah, me neither. You’ll also note that of the five pictures it thinks are Vivillon above, three of them can’t even be submitted because they’re so far away so as to be absurd to rate. Even though the photos DO have a Gliscor up next to the camera. GOLLY GEE F*CKING WIZ, DO YOU THINK IT COULD BE A PHOTO OF SOMETHING ELSE THEN? This is a deliberately brain dead engine because presumably Haruki Suzaki was more worried that this photography game for children might be too easy than he was about turning players off forever because the game feigns ignorance about what the subject of photos is in the name of adding difficulty.
So you quickly snap photos because it happens suddenly and then is gone from the screen. You’re excited because your reflexes were sharp. You saw the thumbnail in the corner during the course and KNOW you got the picture in the center or close enough. Then you finish the level and the photo isn’t there. Instead, you have pictures of Vivillons (which are in almost every course) in the far, far, far, far background of the photo you THOUGHT you got of something else. Why would any photographer give this photo to a professor and say it’s a Vivillon? Why would any professor assume this is a photo of a barely visible butterfly in the background? THIS IS NOT IMMERSIVE, BECAUSE NO PHOTOGRAPHER OR PHOTO RATER WOULD BE THIS DENSE! This is why most players quit early and never returned and others are pausing and unpausing the game in a way sure to self-lobotomize the fun center of their brains. Because otherwise, once the camera focuses on something, it’s hard to unfocus on it and refocus on something else. There’s a spot in the game where a Squirtle rides a Lapras, and if your timing is true (or you have burst mode on the camera) you might even catch it winking at the camera, which lasts for about a tenth of a second and scores maximum pose points.
I seriously can’t imagine why my relatively mediocre photo gallery is ranked 212th in the world. And hell, sometimes it really, REALLY makes no sense what it focuses on. Look at this photo, which broke me. I mean seriously, I’m about to lose my f*cking sh*t.
I assure you that I was not aiming at the f*cking Bidoof in background in this photo. I was clearly aiming at the bunny I just beamed in its f*cking face with an apple, so why would even a bad AI camera focus assume I wanted to take a picture of the thing far in the background and not the other thing that’s closer, dead center, and had literally just been interacted with by the player? Even the stupidest, glue sniffing, window licking idiot on the planet would look at this photo and choose the Scorbunny as the focus of the picture. And yet, because of how I zoomed in while playing the game, it decided it had to focus on something while I was waiting for the bunny that I knew was going to run up to the stick BECAUSE I THOUGHT THAT’S THE F*CKING OBJECT OF THE GAME: TO FIND THE F*CKING POSES AND WAIT FOR THEM! Somehow the brain dead engine decided I was aiming for the sleeping Bidoof and never unfocused on it even after I unzoomed the camera and rezoomed to get this picture. Hey, sh*t for brains idiots that made this game: what the actual f*ck was wrong with you? Have a little f*cking pride in your work and fix this sh*t! OH, IT’LL MAKE THE GAME TOO EASY? WHO CARES ABOUT CHALLENGE?! YOU KNOW, DIFFICULTY AIN’T WORTH SH*T IF PEOPLE JUST QUIT PLAYING BECAUSE THE GAME IS SO F*CKING STUPID IT CAN’T TELL THAT A CHARACTER THAT IS DEAD CENTER IN FRAME IS THE FOCUS OF THE PICTURE AND NOT THE THING COMPLETELY ENGULFED BEHIND IT! YOU SERIOUSLY SIGNED OFF ON THIS ENGINE? ARE YOU STUPID?
Actually, THIS is the one that broke me from two days earlier. Yeah, it happened twice. Actually it’s probably happened to me alone about forty or fifty times for this one photo alone (thankfully I found a better version and never have to do it again). I swear to god this review is technically an endorsement and I admire the creativity of this game, and I also think the people who made it are dumb f*cks that couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
This is a photo of a Sobble and it scores 4,680, ranking it #150 out of 234 three star photos. It scores 556 points for “other Pokemon” and 291 in “background points.” Huh? Okay, first off, “background” in this context doesn’t really mean “background.” It means anything in the photo the makers of the game have decided is point-scoring neat. Any photo taken with the waterfall in view on the jungle course scores high in background points, even if the photo is so obviously not as good. See:
By the way, this picture is now over 5,000 points and I don’t hate it anymore.
Seriously, Reef Evening might be the single most beautiful video game level ever made. Total background points between those four photos: 181 points, and they’re all for the fourth photo. The first three pictures above scored zero background points.
After this, I played the Research Camp for about, no exaggeration, ten seconds and got not one but two separate photos right off the bat that scored more background points than all four of those beautiful reef pictures combined. Take a look:
So wait, what’s the background? The vehicle. Anything taken with the vehicle in view is guaranteed to score tons of points. Or hell, I just today got this photo while I finished editing this feature:
112 in Background points? Where? The grass? Nope. That photo was shot right in front of the vehicle, and even though you can’t see it at all, apparently the “glow” of it or something is boosting the background score, because LOGIC! But hey, new record for my two star Meowth photo so yeah for me. Now let’s compare two pictures taken on the beach. This Lapras pic has a tropical island behind it that draws attention to the eyes. Surely that island is there for some reason besides set dressing.
Where are the 131 background points? The flower? Nope. Just the glow of a crystal bloom right next to it. For comparison, here’s my one star photo of Shaymin with a flower right next to it:
Zero background points. It’s glowing because I lit it with an illumina orb. So what could be worse than having to base pictures around crystals? How about not doing enough to make sure each tier of photo has no look-alike photos. This is a BIG problem. My two star and four star Pikachu pictures are basically identical, taken in the same location during the opening moment of the Beach at night on level 2.
The thing is, the sleeping picture you pass right by without doing any work to make it happen. All I had to do was light the crystal and hit him with an apple. The trough picture is actually pretty fickle to activate. I can’t just “do it” and make it happen by will. You have to lead him to the thing, then hope he jumps up it. Sometimes he just stops moving like the CPU’s run cycle is stuck. So of the two photos above, one takes maximum effort and one takes almost none. But it’s the one that takes almost none that is all but unbeatable against all other three star photos, and that’s not even the worst example. At one point, Pikachu rides a Mantine in the reef, which is its four star pose. To activate it, you need to light two crystals, and then time it perfectly because it flies by you quickly. I’m SO proud of this picture:
BUT, that’s actually my three star picture of Mantine, not my four star Pikachu picture. Getting the Pikachu version of this picture is really hard because literally every “something riding something” picture is hard to get the camera to focus on the rider. Eventually, someday, I will turn THAT picture into my Photodex’s four star Pikachu picture. I almost did a few minutes ago grabbing the photo for this review. But look at the pose points:
The degree of difficulty to time that picture, center it, aim, shoot, AND THEN have the focus actually be on Pikachu and not the Mantine is so much higher than that boring beach picture. They’re so far apart in the skill required to even get them that it’s kind of insane that the two shots are actually in the same category. But the Pikachu riding the Mantine photo only gets 500 pose points and competes head to head with the beach picture that can also be the two star photo depending on what the second Pikachu is doing. Again, I could beat that four star, and I will eventually. But why are they even put against each-other in the first place? They’re nothing alike.
What the f*ck? There’s actually TONS of poses for Pichu, but because they made it so the same f*cking moment changes from two star to three star based on whether or not Scorbunny is also celebrating, you can actually get two 5K photos in the three second window, and the only real challenge is making sure the camera focuses on the Pichu and not the Torterra. This pose happens every single time you play the level. You do nothing to activate it. It’s the finale of a battle between a Torterra and Dodrio, and not one of those “you pick the winner” fights.
Update: GOOD BYE double Pichu, though the reason it took me so long to get this photo is because every previous attempt photographed the bloom or something else.
Speaking of Torterra, here are its monster-scoring one and two star photos.
But typically, none of the post-hit animations score the maximum pose points, and in fact, they usually score under the 500 pose points average, in the 450 range. Even if you match size, beat direction, beat placement, and the timing is much, much more difficult (since the timing of the hit is almost entirely user controlled while the reaction isn’t), the game simply does not reward the harder to get photos. It rewards the most uncreative, unimaginative ones.
I won’t say that finding the low scoring poses or stuff so far in the background that it’s useless towards scoring isn’t fun. I had fun when I found out there’s a moment where Kangaskhan places another character in her pouch, even if it happens so far from the camera that it can’t ever make the Photodex. I was having fun before I understood the game wouldn’t know a beautiful background if it bit its ass and I was having fun afterward when I started looking for these arbitrary point getters. But I kinda wish they just threw out the background category and the four-tier limits altogether and just allowed more photos. Ideally, the game should be a scavenger hunt for the poses, and it’s not. Applin is a great example of that, and it shows ANOTHER problem in that photos can’t show off motion. Here’s its one star and three star poses.
Pretty lame, Milhouse. So, to get that photo, you have to light a crystal bloom that’s well out in front of you, and then race these two Inkays who are swimming to the bloom. They’ll separate when they reach it, and then jump out of the water and cross paths. This is the only time IN THE ENTIRE GAME they’ll do that. If only one Inkay is in the photo, it drops to the three star tier. That above photo is only the second time I’ve cleared 4,000 points. The only saving grace is that it happens right at the start of the Reef Evening levels 1 and 2. But in literally hundreds of attempts, that’s my best: 4,016 points. F*ck. Off. It’s universally regarded as one of the toughest diamonds in the game. In the clip below, I got 3,994 points.
So why not scoot back when it’s easier to get them both? Well, because size becomes an issue. For Inkay, THIS is a 2,000 in size:
This is 1,999 in size:
Okay, so size changes based on the pose, right? Not really, as the two pics above are actually kind of the same size. What you’re seeing in my jumping pic scored 1,360 in size. The size points drop that quickly, and there’s also a “focus” issue of course as you want the one facing the camera to be the focus, but it happens in a split second. I just grabbed a quick example and it’s not a perfect example because it’s not even close to centered, but it should give you an idea of how quickly size points drop. Literally every fraction of a frame in distance traveled subtracts exponentially more points. Just a teeny, tiny bit further away from the camera and I’ve lost nearly 300 points in size alone.
What’s with the 762 in pose? Again, some poses are measured in fractions of a second. Like, the game is frame-specific on pose points. For some, that fraction of a fraction of a second is the one and only max point chance for the entire character in a tier. Oh, there’s another four star Inkay photo, just like how the Applin has a second option for the three stars. And, like the Applin, it happens so far away from the camera that it can’t score enough points. It’s actually one of those special requests that takes approximately six weeks to complete (now you know the truth of where I’ve been this whole time) and involves feeding two Inkays an apple, then feeding them each another apple in another spot along with third Inkay, then feeding the third one again, and then feeding another along with four others, and if even one of them doesn’t eat the apple because two of them are bumping into each-other, you have to start over. BUT, if everyone eats their apples, THEN they’ll f*ck off well away from the camera and do this four start pose:
Which of these three do you think is the focus of this “I literally can’t believe this scored 4,894 points” photo. If you guessed the Piplup, thanks for actually reading this review because you’ve clearly been paying attention. This is yet another example of both finding a monster score because it was my one and only photo of the thing and thus I had to submit it and also me trying to take a picture of one thing and the game counting it as a photo of something else, though in this case, it broke my four star record for the Piplup by over 500 points, as the logical “center the Piplup” shot didn’t score THAT much. I can’t see how it’s possible to beat this photo, actually. So hey, thanks for once you miserable broken piece of sh*t engine.
This scored 5,217 points, plus, you know, it just looks cool.
It’s actually a legitimately frightening moment the first time it happens, and it’s such a cool f*cking picture. So they actually did do well by it, except for the three star photo. As far as I can tell, and apparently as far as anyone on the entire World Wide Web can tell, there’s only one single three star picture for this thing in the entire game, though it’s in the same spot on all three levels of the Forest during the standard finale. Here’s my version of it:
Jolteon appears exclusively at the end of the hidden path found in the alternate path of the Cave on level 3, so even reaching it requires both taking an alternate route AND then manually activating a time consuming hidden route. AND THEN it has to be prompted to actually jump into the play area with not one but two apples, which if the apples bounce wrong, it’ll walk away from you to go eat them. It has an easy four star photo. Just hit it with an apple once it’s walking around. But its three star photo is notorious despite having two options. The first is the one in the above pic of it leaping onto the playfield after you hit it with two apples. The above photo is so hard to get that it was literally the final diamond rating I nabbed for the full set of all 936. That photo above scored 4,012 points, and that’s considered very high for the jump since it doesn’t score a lot of pose points. The other option is this:
The room it’s in is lumpy and thus hard to use apples to lure it because they bounce awkwardly, covered with dense foliage that blocks it from view and dramatically takes away points, and the area it can travel before being stopped by a drop-off is very limited. It doesn’t move very fast, and if you hit it with an apple, it’ll stop to do its angry electric storm animation. Like, the limit is just a few seconds short of where that clip ends. So in Jolteon’s only appearance in the entire game, and an appearance you have to actually take multiple steps to even activate, you have just a matter of seconds to get the full range of poses in an area that’s covered thick with things that block it and lower its score. In the above clip, I did successfully get a centered pic of its gratitude pose. How’d that do? Not even 4,500 points, because it wasn’t close enough.
Note that the heavy photo-bombing weeds scattered all over its lair don’t even give you background points.
Better in pose. Better in direction. Better in placement. BUT, a teeny tiny bit further away from the camera, but that teeny tiny bit cost me 407 points. Compare that to this photo:
As of this writing, that one star photo of Celebi is my highest scoring photo in any tier. A one star photo beats even my highest four star photos, and I wasn’t even really trying for it. I was stunned when I got it, and I only got it because I actually screwed up activating the four star photo, which looks kinda the same.
That one star Celebi photo, taken because of a screw-up on my part, passed this photo of last boss Xerneas by five points, even though THIS photo takes a few steps to activate and is pretty difficult to frame correctly.
By the way, that picture, taken back in 2021 and probably only submitted because I missed the crystal blooms that wake it up, is still my #1 photo of Lugia just because of the 448 points for background. THAT picture scores more points than the three harder to get action pictures of the same thing.
What the f*ck is with sleeping photos scoring so much? EVEN THE BOSSES? Did the development team just really need a nap or something?
While lightning the bosses doesn’t sound too bad, three specifically are really, really hard to actually hit with the orbs. Steelix (when he’s not in slumber land), Wishiwashi (which has slow motion underwater physics to the throwing mechanic), and especially Volcarona cross the line from innovative takes on the photography format to trollish snoozers. They move fast and erratically but you still have to hit them with orbs and then still manage to get the photos when they barely fit into the frame. Wishiwashi and Volcarona have additional steps, as Wishiwashi requires you to orb multiple versions of the smaller fish that make up the larger one, while Volcarona is on fire and has to be put out with TWO apples AND THEN lit with an orb, and also there’s two of them on level two. They’re slogs, plain and simple. Wishiwashi is especially boring to play, and on top of that, it’s the lowest-scoring boss by far.
It should feel like a sea monster which is like seriously my #1 phobia, but it’s so boring that it doesn’t even give me nightmares. The cutesy, sweet and innocent Milotic actually has given me two nightmares where I was in its lake and couldn’t swim to reach the shore (only one less verified nightmare than of the sea serpent from Shadow of the Colossus), and it’s lovable and huggable. I mean, allegedly, if you’re into that sort of thing. I think it’s an unholy abomination but that’s just me.
It doesn’t crash during the course, but in the transition between taking your last photo (or even just hitting the exit) and the photo selection screen. I think it’s Florges specifically because most crashes happen when I’m excited about some photo I got of it that also uses up the end of my 72 photo roll. Without exaggeration, it’s over twenty crashes back to the Switch or Switch 2 menu, and if they haven’t fixed it by now, I assume they never will. I’m not happy with my 19,730 points for Floges (which comes in five randomly selected colors) because I f*cking know I’ve beaten every single one of those four photos and it didn’t count. I know they can fix it. I know they can fix the focus issues. They’re just choosing not to.
I want to go to this place. I mean without the monsters.
DIRECTION MY F*CKING ACHING ASS! IT’S THE SAME F*CKING POSE, ONLY CLOSER TO THE CAMERA AND MIRRORED, WITH THE OTHER DOG AND XERNEAS EVEN MORE PROMINENT! AHHHH! CATHY MAD! CATHY SMASH! GET REVENGE ON WORLD!
They actually put a photobomber in the river level. Look at this picture of Arbok. What, that’s not an Arbok picture you say? Of course it is! Look at what it says! Maybe I was wrong and the people who made this aren’t stupid, but instead are complete f*cking assholes.
Huh. Wow. So, yeah, that’s my pitch: look what I’ve done with this game. Look at the time I have in it. Look at the score I’ve achieved. And yet, there’s still at least twenty four things left I haven’t done. Folks, this game is packed. And broken, but packed, and so very, very fun. You’ll be in for a world of frustration and pain, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll have the time of your life too. OR you’ll hate it and I’m wired for this type of thing and maybe just a little sadomasochistic. I suppose I can’t rule that out. Verdict: YES!
You would NOT believe how hard it was to get that measly 4,011 point picture. I’m almost certain there’s no other 4 star pic of Eevee, either. Dozens, if not hundreds of tries, and that’s the best anyone in my family got (that’s actually my pic).
Gosh darn it. I was so hoping to be exactly #500 when I finished.
Jeez, for a game that sold 2.5 million copies, just the act of 100%ing the game shouldn’t put a novice like me that high on the leaderboard. But while going through my photos and creating a database for the review that notes which photos are problematic, which ones are glitchy, and which ones I believe outright crash the game (which happens a lot IN THE FIRST LEVEL IN THE F*CKING GAME!!), I realized I had a lot of low scores. So I started bumping the scores up to “get it out of my system” and, well, now three weeks have passed. But I’ve climbed another 145 rankings and currently have the 354th highest scoring photodex out of 2.5 million total players.
Look, I’ve been #1 on dozens upon dozens of pinball leaderboards so this shouldn’t feel as good as it does, but I’m pretty proud. Only a couple dozen of the 936 photos are my family’s. Most are mine and for a chick with shaky hands, that ain’t too shabby. Yet, it’s a huge bummer to be this high on the board too. This is a game that sold millions of copies and is one of the biggest gaming franchises in history. I should not be THIS high on the leaderboard, especially when I still have a lot of photos that are just barely over the 4,000 point threshold. I’m knocking those low ones out, but still, I’m going to guess there will never be another update to Snap. No Switch 2 upgrade. No more levels. And, worst of all, no third game. Apparently less than a thousand people were invested enough to ace the game.
I never started IGC with the intent for it to be the dominating thing in my life. So while I will be reviewing full time again very soon, I do want to finish this project with my family because some day soon I won’t be able to play games with them. This is what I cherish. The reception to the pinball project was amazing and thanks to EVERYONE who linked to it. And now I ask for one more week to finish this. It’s a fickle game.
F*CKING REALLY?!
See what I’m dealing with? Or how about this? In this screenshot, it doesn’t know what the subject matter is. This photo literally cannot be scored because there’s no Pokemon in it!
And other pictures are INSANELY low scoring yet for the life of me I can’t figure out any method to get closer. I finally caved in and started looking up the techniques other people use, but none of the really low scoring “rare” pictures have advice to pump the score up. There’s no truly useful strategy guide out there. A few YouTubers did have a few helpful pointers but the majority of the time I found a lot higher scoring pics than they suggest.
Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of attempts and this is the best I could do for these adorable little jellyfish things in the four star category. You can’t get close enough to diamond in the other four star method.
Most of the advice out there aims to simply get the pics regardless of what the score is or just over the 4,000 point threshold. One guy was genuinely helpful, though even then I found he too often went for the easiest or barest minimum diamond scoring pics. Thankfully some of the comments in his videos DID point me in the right direction, (on the other hand, his videos don’t show him crawling through levels so I appreciated that). Oh, and there’s a lot of weirdness with the four tiers of pics. The most notable one is ultra high scoring Shaymin. Here’s the one star picture.
Shaymin – One Star – Taken on Florio Nature Park – Night Level 2 – Score: 5,266
So far, so good. Here’s where it gets kooky. Here’s the two star photo.
Shaymin – Two Star – Taken on Florio Nature Park – Night Level 2 – Score: 5,313
What’s so bad about that? Here’s the three star photo.
Shaymin – Three Star – Taken on Florio Nature Park – Night Level 2 – Score: 5,839
Uh, seriously? How about the four star photo?
Shaymin – Four Star – Taken on Florio Nature Park – Night Level 2 – Score: 5,649
(throws up hands) What the f*ck? Really? So three nearly identical photos with only other characters sleeping around it and one action photo. Okay. And it’s hardly the only example. Here’s my current high 2 star Pichu.
Pichu – Two Star – Secret Side Path (Day) – Score: 5,161
And here’s the three star.
Pichu – Three Star – Secret Side Path (Day) – Score: 5,046
Here’s the one star photo of Swanna.
Swanna – One Star – Park Night Level 2 – Score: 5,031
And here’s my two star Swanna.
Swanna – Two Star – Park Night Level 2 – Score: 5,103
You get the idea, and there’s many, many more things like that. Sometimes you might have literally less than one second to get one type of photo before it turns into another photo. That’s the case with Grookey at the end of the level 1-3. When you play the Park on the third level, at the end of the course you have a split second to get a photo of him, but the game is kind of janky and often I took pictures of him DEAD CENTER of the frame, only the game decided I was taking pictures of the Shaymin behind it or the Crystal Bloom next to it. They could EASILY patch this by allowing you to choose any Pokemon in the photo, but no, the game decides what the subject of the photo is. And also, I’ve crashed the Park Level 3 so many times I quit counting after, no joke, two dozen.
Grookey – Two Star – Park Day Level 3 – Score: 5,177
Grookey – Three Star – Park Day Level 3 – Score: 5,476
Grookey – Four Star – Park Day Level 3 – Score: 5,124
So if you’ve been curious what I’ve been playing, this is it. It has made me scream and want to throw my controller through the wall. I literally hurt my throat yelling when it crashed after a run I *knew* I had at least two higher scoring photos. And also this might be my favorite video game ever made, and while I’m going to be calling out a LOT of bullsh*t, I’m also going to outright beg those who have been holding out to give it a shot.
I literally felt sad that the picture on the right beat the one on the left. That one on the left is INSANELY hard to get. The one on the right requires you to beam a crab with an apple and then turbo boost to get close enough to see the two Pikachus celebrate. Seriously, it’s F*CKING INSANE how low some amazing pictures score. That pic on the left, dead center, should be a 5,500 point pic, and now it’s not even in my photodex. Neither is the one on the right, but only because I got closer to it a few times over. Same picture but now it’s up to 4,662. Sigh.
Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth
Wario Land: Shake It!
Isles of Sea and Sky
Super Mario Odyssey
Super Mario Galaxy
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap 
Wario World
Super Mario Sunshine
New Pokémon Snap
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