Eggerland Mystery (MSX Review) The First Game in the Adventures of Lolo Franchise

February 7, 2026 by 1 Comment

Eggerland Mystery
Platform: MSX
Released in 1985
Developed by HAL Laboratory, Inc.
NO MODERN RELEASE

Yeah, the puzzle design in this one can be quite weird.

Eggerland Mystery is the very first game in the franchise that would come to be known as The Adventures of Lolo outside of Japan. America only got three of those games, but there’s a LOT more Lolo releases that Americans never got. That obviously includes the first two games since MSX never got a US release, but there’s also Famicom-exclusives and even a Game Boy version of Lolo. So it’s a pretty big series, actually, and before Eggerland Mystery, I’d only played one of them all the way through: the original US version of Adventures of Lolo. It was actually the first NES game I reviewed for IGC all the way back in my first year (I also started playing Lolo 2 but I’m pretty sure I never finished it). Eggerland/Lolo is one of those confusing franchises where the version America got is completely different from the Japanese original. NES Lolo 2 in the West is Lolo 1 in the East, and the puzzles in Japanese Lolo 1 are different from those in American Lolo 2. On the left is level 1-1 of The Adventures of Lolo 2 in the US, and on the right is Adventures of Lolo 1 in Japan’s level 1-1.

Adventures of Lolo 2 (US)
Adventures of Lolo (JPN)

So that’s awesomely annoying. I’ll do my best to walk everyone through this when I get to later games in the series. The first US NES Adventures of Lolo is on Switch Online right now, and it’s worth a look. They’re a series of logic-puzzlers with a slight action tilt to them, but the focus is mostly on flexing your gray matter. Well, at least that’s where the series will eventually end up. It became kind of obvious with this first release that HAL wanted to make something a little more arcade-like and hadn’t realized their bread and butter would be in tight, one-solution style puzzles. Eggerland Mystery comes close at times to being equal parts action and puzzle, and the result is a game with an identity crisis. Luckily, that crisis would be resolved in the next game in the franchise. I’ll get to the sequel soon, but today, let’s look at the first game.

One original aspect of this that wasn’t used in future games: sometimes (very, very rarely) the final door is hidden and must be found.

With a whopping 100 puzzle rooms (plus 20 bonus round rooms) and 5 post-game stages that require a special password to unlock, Eggerland Mystery is a pretty dang big game. If you played any of the NES or Famicom versions of Lolo, you mostly know what to expect. Instead of collecting hearts, you collect diamonds. There’s no treasure chest to reach, either. That’s replaced with a door that opens after you’ve collected every diamond. The object is simply to collect all the diamonds and then walk through the door. There’s a handful of enemies, some of which are harmless, while others, like medusa, prevent you from crossing their path unless you place a block in their line of sight.

The arrows seen in this screen can be walked through from the side, but never in the opposite way they’re pointed. Also, you don’t know which diamonds give you shots until you get them, but they always give you two shots when they do.

The medusas can’t be killed (except in the bonus stages, which are stupid), but with other enemies, some of the diamonds provide you with shots that temporarily turn them into eggs. Once they’re eggs, another shot blows them off the screen (they will respawn soon) OR you can push them, using them functionally as blocks to help solve the puzzles. They can even be pushed in the water and used as rafts. Finally, some levels might also provide you with special tools like bridges to cross water or the ability to change the direction of a one-way arrow. So far, so Lolo. But, this for sure isn’t the NES Lolo in many, many ways.

Between bonus stages, you’re provided with a password if you need to quit, but you’re also provided with one single character for the ultimate password that takes you to the final five stages of the game. Beating those five stages doesn’t get you a better ending or anything like that (hell, there’s no ending at all) but the toughest level in the game was among those five puzzles, so that’s something. Here is that password, with the heart being the final thing you enter.

For starters, your movement is quite janky. I’d describe the animation in this game as “choppy” which causes the controls to sometimes seem laggy or unresponsive. You’ll especially feel it when you have to ride eggs that you’ve pushed in the water or dodge the armadillo-like enemies that roll at you, who are by far the hardest aspect of the game. It’s certainly not the puzzles themselves. It’s clear that the designers didn’t fully grasp the concept of tight puzzle design at this point, because I was able to finish tons of levels with leftover shots. I was also often able to circumvent the “puzzle logic” by ignoring threats, specifically the skulls. In future Eggerland/Lolo games, the skulls will move faster and provide a legitimate threat that needs to be addressed before grabbing the final diamond/heart in the room, which wakes them up. In Eggerland Mystery, you move faster than them, and sometimes you can even grab the final diamond when it’s directly next to a skull and, as long as you start moving right away, avoid being killed by it when it wakes up. I did this in multiple rooms.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s levels where you’re meant to leg-it past the skulls, like in this stage. In other stages, you’re meant to “tempt them” to chase you in one direction and then you simply run around to the other side once they’re committed to the path they’re on. You’re much faster than them, so as long as you don’t panic, you’ll win every foot race. It helps the skulls aren’t very smart and don’t necessarily heat-seek you. In future games, you mostly can’t ignore them.

The dragons have a similar problem. Although they’re much harder to cheese, sometimes you can trick them by taking a half-step forward and letting them fire at you, then back up and run past them once their fire passes you. This requires a lot of room though, and now I’m curious if this is possible to do in future Lolo games. Either way, a lot of the puzzles have “multiple outs” and, for games like this, I prefer a much tighter design. Fans of the NES games will also notice that many enemies and elements common to Lolo hadn’t been invented yet with this game. The “leapers” that fall asleep when you touch them? They’re not here, nor are the walking versions of the medusas that throw swords at you, the rock monsters that push you around, sand traps, or any stages involving lava or collapsing bridges. In 105 levels, I only got stuck one time, and that’s when I realized that the game had introduced the teleporting snakes idea where you must kill one of the harmless snakes, then push a block over where it was, and it’ll respawn somewhere else.

In this gallery, you can see me start with a snake above the river, but after it sinks in the lake, because I covered the space it started, it reappears south of the river. By the way, the currents aren’t visible, so you won’t know how a raft behaves until you try it.

It took me nearly an hour to figure that out. Mind you, you’re two-thirds of the way through the game before this is even needed, with no education that this is even going to be a thing that you need to do. It’s pretty obvious that HAL had no idea what they were doing and were flying by the seam of their pants with Eggerland Mystery, but the franchise would drastically improve from here. For the first game, they didn’t quite grasp that they were a home puzzle game and not a coin-op. You’ll notice there’s a score in the corner, though that’s related to collecting diamonds and how many enemies you kill. There’s no penalty for taking too many steps like some Sokoban games (aka Boxxle) might do, nor is there a bonus for saving shots. At least I don’t think there’s a bonus, but there are bonus stages which were quite lame and a constant reminder of how janky the game’s “combat” mechanics are. The shooting is not very well programmed, as not every shot that’s a direct hit actually works to turn an enemy into an egg. I had a TON of moments where a shot landed and nothing happened. It’s all but a guarantee it’ll happen to you multiple times in some of the later bonus stages and even during a few of the puzzles.

In the bonus stages, you can’t die and enemies that normally shoot you, like the medusa, no longer do. You have 20 seconds to blow away every enemy on the screen for bonus points. This was a huge waste of time.

If you play in the B Mode of the game, you play the same 100 levels, only this time you have a time limit and each stage has bonus point items. While that sounds enticing, the items are seemingly hidden in arbitrary spots, and possibly randomly generated. There’s no “puzzle” element to the scoring system. I stuck to the A mode and was more than happy. For all its jank, the formula created by Eggerland lasted through over ten games for a reason. I’m just getting restarted with Lolo after playing the first game in the franchise back in 2012. Over the next year or two, I intend to review all the other console and MSX games in the series. When I do, the thing I’m hoping to see improved the most isn’t actually the play control, but the difficulty scaling. There were so many times late in the game where I found myself saying “that should have been a very early puzzle.” So there’s a LOT of room for improvement, but the good news is, the franchise will keep getting better. In fact, it gets so good that it makes Eggerland Mystery feel like an unfinished proof of concept.

I’m pretty sure this is the only game in the Lolo franchise where one of the special power items allows you to generate a new block any place you want and then push around. In future games, this would be replaced with a hammer that allows you to shatter a single rock anywhere you want. Sadly, the “magic framer” item only appears a couple of times in the entire 100+ level game.

The reason this isn’t the first game in a Definitive Review is because I’m taking my time with these games. I think I would have gotten bored if I played through Eggerland Mystery’s 100+ puzzles (and the unbearable bonus levels) in a single sitting. Instead, I paced myself over the course of a week and took frequent breaks. Games like this are ideal for that, and Lolo specifically excels when you hit-up a handful of levels at a time. That’s why I really think Nintendo and HAL need to figure things out and put out a collection. It’s just such a perfect franchise for a portable platform like Nintendo Switch. Well, I do sort of question how portable the humongous Switch 2 really is. I don’t take it places like I did the original, BUT MY POINT STANDS!

If you’re saying “hey wait, didn’t I see that thing in Kirby?” Yes. Yes, you did. Lolo and Princess Lala (pronounced Low-Low and Lah-Lah) are actually recurring villains in the Kirby franchise, only they’re now called “Lololo & Lalala.” No clue why. If HAL wanted to resurrect the gameplay style of the franchise, I have no objection to dropping Lolo in favor of Kirby. The gameplay is what’s timeless and Lolo’s character design is as generic as it gets, and I say that as a woman who uses a generic round, yellow character as a mascot. Along with StarTropics, this seems like the biggest HAL/Nintendo franchise to get NO reference at all in Smash Bros. I absolutely do not understand how this series, so beloved across the world and a game that sold enough to get TEN games has no clout in the 21st century.

I’m going to guess that when I finish the series, I’m going to ultimately name Eggerland Mystery the worst in the franchise. It’s clunky, often forgets what kind of game it is, and the level design isn’t particularly strong. It’s not necessarily weak, either, but it’s so loose compared to the US versions of Lolo that I can’t even guarantee Lolo fans will like Eggerland Mystery. The movement is too sluggish and the puzzles aren’t as tight or clever as the series would get, to the point that I think Lolo fans are likely to be at least a little disappointed. But if you want to see where one of gaming’s most underrated franchises got its start, I still think it’s worth a look. Just lower your expectations if you’re familiar with the series, because this thing is SLOPPY. But it’s fun too, and another reason why gaming fans owe the MSX more than they realize.
Verdict: YES!

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

January 26, 2026 by Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park for Colecovision
Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park for MSX
Athletic World for MSX

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

BONUS REVIEWS

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

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

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

Cabbage Patch Kids (Atari 2600)
Cabbage Patch Kids (Atari 2600)
Cabbage Patch Kids (Atari 2600)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Filed under New Games for Retro Platforms, Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Goonies (MSX Review)

January 23, 2026 by Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Vampire Killer (MSX2 Review)

October 28, 2025 by 4 Comments

Vampire Killer
aka Akumajou Dracula
Platform: MSX2
Released October 30, 1986
Designed by Akihiko Nagata
Developed by Konami
Never Released in the United States
NO MODERN RELEASE

I played a patched version of the ROM created by developer FRS. The patch improved general performance without altering the core gameplay. It just readjusted the speed, more or less. WARNING: If you use this patch, you will need the ability to map keyboard commands to your controller or just outright use a keyboard (which can be used in addition to a controller) or you will NOT be able to finish Vampire Killer. You see, there’s a door/tunnel maze in one level that normally requires the ability to press both UP and DOWN at the same time, but this patch prevents that. Instead, you have to press “M” to enter the doors.
Get the patch HERE.
And I apply patches using THIS TOOL. I should redo the MSX games in the Konami SHMUP feature using FRS’ patches.

If you’ve never heard of the MSX version of the original Castlevania, well, you’re in for a treat.

The original Castlevania wasn’t just released to the Famicom. Four days later, its cousin hit the MSX2 computer, and it’s, ahem, different. And this is why I love experiencing Konami’s output on the MSX, because they didn’t just shrug their shoulders and copy the maps from the more powerful NES. Instead, they took the base gameplay, roster of enemies/bosses, and level themes and settings and then reworked them to accommodate the MSX2’s hardware limitations. MSX in general is notorious for not handling scrolling all that well, and you can either roll with that and make side-scrollers that are played one screen at a time, or you can use it as an excuse to get creative. That’s what Vampire Killer does, turning the game into an exploration-based title where you search for keys to open doors and try to avoid soft-locking the game. Wait, what?

Weirdly, this carry-over from the NES game plays much smoother and more predictably on the MSX than on the NES. It’s MUCH easier to time the presses.

Yeah, soft locking is a legitimate possibility, and it’s not all that hard to do. First, let me explain what exactly is going on with Vampire Killer, because this isn’t Castlevania like anyone from America would be familiar with. Instead of just going from Point-A to Point-B, the MSX Castlevania features six levels, each of which is divided into three blocks. Each block has the standard Castlevania 1 door, just like the NES game, but there’s a twist: it’s locked. Hidden somewhere in the block is a silver key, which is not to be confused with gold keys like the one seen in the above screenshot. Gold keys can only be carried one-at-a-time and are only useful on treasure chests that lay around. The silver key looks like this:

Ignore the “Stage 20” thing because this screenshot is taken from the second loop after I beat Dracula, but this is really the first proper stage of Vampire Killer.

With a couple exceptions, the silver keys are usually hidden behind breakable walls and have to be searched out. It’s an inspired idea and it works fantastic. I mean, for the most part (she said as she eyes the rampaging elephant in the room). The blocks are never too big, either, and there’s one other twist: the maps wrap around. So when you reach the edge of the block you’re on, if it’s not walled off, you will come out the other end. So here’s the first screen in the first proper stage, and it’ll look familiar to NES fans:

Now, I could go to the right, like you would in the NES game. Or, I could go left, which won’t take me back outside the castle, but instead take me to this room on the far right side of the map.

Neat, huh? It’s not pointless, either. This is heavily incorporated into the level design and used for navigation-based puzzle solving, and it works vertically too. Well, sometimes. The vertical version of the map wrapping is a little more problematic because there’s also bottomless pits like any other Castlevania game. There are maps that you can find and pressing F2 calls them up, so you won’t necessarily have to jump blindly. But, I kind of wish they had just eliminated the potential for death by pits altogether and focused on the exploration, because it’s usually really well done otherwise. I enjoyed it so much I attempted to play this blind, with the only guide I used being StrategyWiki’s list of what all the items do.

See the person with a staff sitting on the ledge? They’re basically a shop, though you have to hit them over and over, which will eventually lead to them making a one-time offer to sell you an item. But it’s a LOT more complicated than that, because they change into different colors, and sometimes they’ll just give you hearts and sometimes they’ll take hearts from you. Even the sale mechanic itself has layers to it. Throughout the levels are two types of bibles: white ones and black ones. If you collect a black one, the price of the items in the shops will go up, but white ones make the price go down. It’s crazy how many extra layers of complexity they added to make this version stand out. They really went all out, which is in stark contrast to the elegant simplicity of the Castlevania that Famicom/NES owners got.

I highly recommend anyone who plays this for the first time keep that item page bookmarked, because there’s a TON of items that all work in a variety of ways, both passively and proactively, and almost never intuitively. In Vampire Killer, a whip isn’t even necessarily your primary weapon. The knife, axe, and boomerang REPLACE the whip once they’re picked up. Oh, and the axe doesn’t behave like the axe from the NES game and is instead a short-range boomerang, while the blue cross boomerang (which is fairly rare) goes faster and further. Oh, and if you don’t catch either of them on the return trip, you lose them and go back to your leather whip. Yep. I should also note the boomerangs and knife don’t use up hearts, but the two subweapons do, and they take “overpowered subweapons” to a whole new level.

I think Vampire Killer might earn the title “the weirdest 2D game in the franchise” because of how different it is from the typical Castlevania. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the whip was my least favorite weapon. I never use the throwing knives in most 2D Castlevania games, but I preferred them for this game because knives gave me range and speed without having to worry about losing them every time I used them. Plus, the knife was reliable in terms of collision, whereas whip was inconsistent. I was constantly whipping right through candles to no effect, and in general, the whip has none of the OOMPH you expect from a normal Castlevania game’s whip.

The subweapons are the holy water and the stopwatch. The stopwatch is another item I almost never use in Castlevania games that I got heavy usage out of in Vampire Killer, to the point that I actively sought it out. That’s weird, but not as weird as the method of activating the subweapons. To use the stopwatch, you have to jump in the air and press DOWN. Yes, really, but the holy water is even worse. To use the holy water, you have to jump in the air and tap LEFT or RIGHT. Now, I have twitchy fingers these days, so I was constantly throwing holy water accidentally while jumping at angles. Thankfully, hearts are plentiful and they’re not stripped from you between levels. That’s strange, because everything else is! Yep, ALL ITEMS wear off when you finish a level and you go back to your leather whip. Does it get weirder? Actually, yeah: you can possess the stopwatch AND the holy water at the same time, and they work on basically every boss except Dracula (because they can’t reach him). So five of the six bosses are pieces of cake in this game.

The bosses are CRAZY SPONGY if you try using your other weapons. But they have no invincibility frames at all, making the holy water’s fire extremely effective at quickly draining them. If your timing is true and you activate the stopwatch while throwing the holy water in a way where the fire is damaging them, one-shotting bosses is on the table for pretty much every non-Drac boss. My timing wasn’t, and I still beat Reapy McReapface with two bottles of water.

And it’s at this point I have to inform everyone that my ultimate verdict on Vampire Killer is a bizarre split decision based on how you play it. On the third block of the fourth level, I found myself unable to make progress and decided to use the StrategyWiki walkthrough to figure out what I was doing wrong, and I discovered I’d soft-locked the game. Right before you face the boss of the fourth level, Vampire Killer has the easiest-to-activate soft lock I’ve ever encountered in any game I’ve reviewed at IGC, and it makes this review much more complicated than it should be. I’m going to explain it, and if you know of an easier soft lock to activate in any game, meaning one that’s part of the natural game flow and not one you have to go out of your way to do, I want to hear it because I don’t think there’s ever been one.

SPLIT DECISION: PLAYING WITHOUT
SAVE STATES OR REWIND

This is the room in question, and I should note that if you find a candle item (not to be confused with the candles you break with your weapon), it puts a highlight box around breakable walls. Keep in mind that all four blocks are destroyed at once, instead of one segment at a time. You can’t make a stagnated stepladder out of them.

See the key? You can’t jump up and get it, even if you have the item that lets you jump higher (which I don’t even think is located in the fourth level anyway). See the blocks in front of the skeleton dragon? If you break those before you get the key, you’re in BIG trouble, because now you have no way to reach the key. If the dragon is already dead and you break those blocks, you have soft locked yourself. The game is over and you have to reset from the beginning. If the dragon is not dead, you have to damage yourself using the dragon in a way where you pop upward and collect the key using the knock back, but it’s nowhere near as easy to pull off the knock back trick in the MSX game as it is in the NES game.

I’m 75% sure there’s a second potential soft lock in “Stage 17” where a player can render the game impassible if they collect a key before breaking blocks somewhere else on the map to create an escape route. The silver key is located behind the blocks to the right of the base of the stairs, but there’s no way to get out of the area unless you do other things first. I activated this one too, and while I think you can probably die on purpose and restart, I didn’t try it and just restarted the level from my save state.

This is inexcusable design and a critical failure of play-testing, but I think it’s even worse than that. Both potential soft locks feel kind of deliberate, like they were a planned part of the challenge. So either this is a deliberate design concept that nobody in their right mind would come up with or it’s just an example of why play testing is so crucial. Here’s the thing: I believe that a player’s natural instinct, in any game like this, is to smash every single block they see. Does everyone agree? Players shouldn’t expect to be able to end their entire run by breaking one block. Well, I did it, and if I hadn’t been using an emulator where I could rewind this mistake or load a prior save state, I would have been so furious beyond imagination. But it also feels like this is something a player could easily do by accident. First off, collision is NOT PERFECT. Second, if you have a boomerang weapon and try to smash the candle that’s right there in front of the blocks, you’ll break the blocks and that’s it. This is really bad design, and if you don’t have the means to play with an emulator that features rewind or save states, I don’t recommend even trying this game. This is completely unacceptable game design.
Verdict: NO! But this review is not over.

SPLIT DECISION: USING AN EMULATOR
WITH SAVE/REWIND OPTIONS

Believe it or not, the red skeletons are probably the most threatening enemies in the entire game. They move super fast and they come back to life super fast.

Make sure you throw down plenty or save states or have your rewind set that it can go back several minutes. Did you? Cool. Let’s pretend those two soft lock sections aren’t a big deal, because they really aren’t if you have a nice emulator. I’m not trying to be wishy washy, but we’re not in the dark ages anymore and soft locks can be undone. So, what do I think of Vampire Killer overall?

I stopped and counted to ten and then carried on, and reminded myself that I genuinely enjoyed the maze-like levels.

Keeping it real, a lot of the appeal in Vampire Killer is from a novelty point of view. It’s just so different, for better and for worse. And there’s a lot of “worse” in the conversation. The famously elegant Castlevania combat and enemy design just isn’t here. The actual action of Vampire Killer is pretty sloppy and it lacks the PUNCH that the NES games have that made their combat so satisfying. So most of the appeal, at least for me, is playing a game that’s like an alternative universe version of what is one of the most important games of my life. One thing about the NES Castlevania is it has very conservative level layouts that rely heavily on fine-tuned enemy placement. The MSX game isn’t like that. It has genuinely ambitious level design, which often feels downright puzzle-like. Of course, it can also be so haphazardly done that you can end your game by breaking a single block. Ambition comes at a price.

In my first attempt to beat Dracula, I had the blue boomerang, and I missed catching it during the first phase and had to jump up and whip at the jewel on his forehead with the goddamned leather whip one shot at a time. Eventually I died from the stream of bats. I rewound the game and tried again, missed the boomerang, but I figured out how to block the bats. After a few minutes, I’d barely put any damage at all into Drac himself. Nuts to that. I reloaded the level and found the knife, and then I allowed the continuous stream of bats that he pukes out to knock me back while facing the correct direction (since the ledge doesn’t have enough room to turn around), and that’s how I finished it. It’s worth noting this is easily the hardest of the 8-bit Castlevania games and, if you attempt to play this cleanly, be ready for a game that plays dirty and is still kind of janky. I couldn’t do it. I tried, folks, and Vampire Killer ate my butt.

There’s a voice in my head saying “oh come on, Cathy! If this were any other game, would you be so quick to forgive that god awful soft lock design?” Okay, fair, and the answer is “probably not.” But Vampire Killer isn’t any other game. If the charm of a one-off novelty-like Castlevania experience knocked my socks off, why wouldn’t that apply to other fans? I make no guarantees here, but I think it’s worth checking out at least once if you’re a fan of the series. And I’m not giving it a pity YES!, either. I really did enjoy the level design for 16 out of the 18 blocks. I enjoyed the search for the keys. I enjoyed playing a Castlevania game that’s played one screen at a time and does things other Castlevania games don’t do. There’s a f*cking door maze in this game, for goodness sake!

In fact, the door maze is part of the soft lock room. Now, this will require you to have a keyboard or unlimited button remapping, including the ability to map keyboard controls to game controllers. If you don’t use the ROM patch that I used, this requires players to press UP and DOWN, at the same time. It’s assumed that players are on an MSX with a keyboard right in front of them, and with directional keys, you can easily press UP and DOWN at the same time. Oh, it’s a very inconsiderate and sloppy design, but mind you, for those players using a keyboard, UP is also “JUMP.” Because I’m insane, I tried playing the first level using a keyboard, and I spent the next minute kissing my controller and telling it I will never take it for granted again. I would have taken it even further, but I assume controllers come to life when nobody is looking, Toy Story-style and I don’t want it to judge me.

Hey, I like door mazes! Isn’t it kind of weird Castlevania has never really done a lot with them? They seem like they would lend themselves to the haunted house vibe, and it’s not like I wouldn’t have enjoyed the maze a lot if not for the sour note that ended it. So, I really liked Vampire Killer when it didn’t play as dirty as any game ever has. At the end of the day, after years of being curious about Vampire Killer, I’m actually happy I put in the time to finish it. I can’t say that about Simon’s Quest or Castlevania: The Adventure. Just don’t expect a masterpiece, because Vampire Killer certainly isn’t. Okay, fine, it’s a novelty. But hey, gaming is a big tent, and novelties have their place in it.
Verdict: YES!

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What I’m Playing Right Now #04

October 22, 2024 by 2 Comments

I’m enjoying this so far. And thanks to everyone who’s been leaving comments. I’m on Facebook too. So, what am I playing?

This.

Well, I teased on Facebook a few surprises with this Contra streak I’m on. Indeed, before I move onto Super Contra, I wanted to give the MSX2 build of Contra a shot. I really need to do more MSX games at IGC. Then again, isn’t it time that Konami and everyone else who programmed games for this wonderful platform pull the sticks out of their butt and celebrate it? As an American born in 1989, I didn’t know crap about the MSX until recent years. I first learned about it via Metal Gear. When I looked into the NES version, I found out that a lot of people consider it vastly inferior to the MSX game. That and its version of Castlevania is “the weird one. No, not the arcade game. The other weird one.”

It’s called “Vampire Killer” and it is, indeed, weird. Single screens. Keys. I’ll be doing this one sometime soon.

I’ve played enough games for it now to know it deserves to be known in the United States as more than a curiosity from across the ocean. This thing is a bonafide gaming juggernaut, with a seriously loyal fanbase, so I’m not sure why everyone who made games for it has allowed it to fade into oblivion. In the late 90s, there were a whopping three 10-game compilations for MSX on the PlayStation and Saturn, plus an all-in-one collection of those three collections (30 total games) exclusively on Saturn. Sadly, those were Japanese exclusives. It had the best name ever for a collection too: Konami Antiques MSX Collection. Antiques! Come on, that’s precious! Also, MSX got Virtual Console releases on Nintendo Wii and Wii U, but again, only in Japan.

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I think with retro collections as scorching hot as they are right now, the time has come for MSX to be celebrated globally. I think Americans would be chomping at the bit to play these, and from what I’ve played so far, the games of MSX stand out. Take Contra. It’s NOT Contra like you or I know it. It has 19 levels, among other things. Oh, and no scrolling. I’m pretty sure MSX doesn’t really do scrolling in most action games. So far, I’ve only reviewed four MSX games. The first came in February with Parodius, which I didn’t love. Then there were three in Pac Man Museum: The Games They Couldn’t (or Wouldn’t) Include. I didn’t love the MSX builds of Pac-Man and especially Pac-Land (one of the worst games I’ve ever played), but the MSX Pac-Mania was genuinely fun and scored the first YES! for an MSX game. I suspect the second YES! will happen later today. And it won’t be the last MSX game of 2024 that I review. Oh no. Tetris for MSX will be a bonus review in Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review. Much like with Making of Karateka, I’m tacking-on some games not included in the collection as “just for funsies” reviews at the end that have no effect at all on the main reviews. It’s 2024 and I’m most excited for a Tetris game. Party like it’s 1985! Let’s all drink New Coke and sing We Are the World!

Rotating is down? Buttons are instadrops? Yea, I’m going to need to remap.

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