The phrase "Don't judge a book by it's cover" is meant to teach people that the outward appearance of something can hide truly wonderful hidden depths the appearance wouldn't indicate. A phrase I don't think could be much more applicable than with Mega Man Legends. Boy oh boy is it hard to ignore that cover though. Created in the 90's at a time in which basic 3D art often appeared on box art in the west replacing the better looking Japanese originals. Whomever made that decision at Capcom, well I hope you work in another industry now days because a keen eye for aesthetics you certainly do not have.

I literally avoided this game when it released because the cover was so hideous. It's a shame because Mega Man Legends is actually crazy gorgeous visually, and also quite expensive now. Though not cell shaded it uses 3D models with hand drawn 2D texture layers to give the appearance of a cartoon world. This allows for Capcom to really animate the character faces and create such a colourful environment it's hard not to have a smile when playing through it, though this is partially because of some of the story scenes.

So Legends is not quite an RPG but has a lot of those elements and is more of a 3D adventure game. Mega Man, Roll and the Professor are diggers, (think like scavengers and salvagers.) They travel from island to island looking in old ruins for refractors which are used as power sources still in modern times. Whilst out digging their ship crash lands on an island meaning they need to fix it by searching the ruins however pirates are also after the same thing. These pirates are hilarious. The cinematography on some of their scenes, the daft situations, their faces and voices were the highlight for me. Kind of good really that Tron gets her own game but her brother Tiezel is equally entertaining. It's a shame Mega Man and Roll are so dry through it all but they do their part.

For the gameplay aspect you only control Mega Man with similar abilities to his normal game types as you would expect, only in 3D. He has his buster cannon, can jump and fire a secondary weapon. The RPG aspects of this involve either buying upgrades or finding parts to make them as well as many options for what secondary weapon you have equipped from mines, grenades, rockets etc. These have an energy gauge for how much you can use them comparted with the normal buster cannon though it can be recharged at save points.

So super positive so far right? Yeah the real Sword of Damocles over Mega Man Legends is unfortunately the controls which...aren't great, though I don't think they are that bad either but I look at them from the lens of someone who grew up with early 3D games. For the most part I didn't have too much trouble once I adjusted. The biggest issue is just turning the camera is so slow and the lock on is mostly useless as it only locks onto enemies you are facing and firing with the auto-lock is in most cases just better. There is a quick 180 turn but it doesn't always work too well and the best way I can describe it is uncomfortable. I only really got actually frustrated though on two bosses one of which was the final one where I was fighting the camera, not the enemies in both cases.

This small negative aside I had a super good time with this. It took me 8.5 hours to beat though there were plenty of parts and items I didn't collect as I didn't feel the need. I'm definitely looking forward to exploring more of the Mega Man Legends World with Tron Bonne in the future and I can see why there is a clamouring from fans for more from this series.

Recommended.

+ Graphics are really gorgeous allowing for a surprising range of facial animation rarely seen on the PSX.
+ The Bonne Pirates are highly entertaining antagonists.
+ Exploring in an adventure game world of Mega Man is really pleasant. Clearly I prefer the spin off titles to actual Mega Man games....

- The cover art makes me want to carve my eyes out with a rusty spoon.
- The camera control at times can feel unwieldly and frustrating.

For a week straight, I turnt into a workaholic sushi-restaurant owner, overcame my dive-phobia and even became friends with a fucking beluga. This game felt like a fever dream and what killed it in the end? Franchising.

Dave the Diver tells the story of how automation leads to success, so kind of a side-scrolling, k-poped version of Factorio with fabulous pixel art and quirky characters. You jump into the diving suit of Dave, an overweight anti-hero, accidentally becoming a restaurant owner, optimizing your ass off, to gain new followers aka customers aka followers. Within a few hours, you are trapped in the well known Stardew Valley-grind, waking up, go fishing in the deep sea, work all-nighters to buy new upgrades to serve more people to gain more money to gain more gear to - and so on. Back in the 90’s Elton John would have called this the circle of life, now it is quickly exposed as another great functioning, beautifully looking capitalism simulator with a hawaiian shirt on.

To sugarcoat this rotten core, it wraps an ancient mermaid-civilization story-line around it. But eventually a body stinks after some time even after wrapping it into cling warp and putting it in the freezer. So after you are starting to get tired after the sixth 100-hour week in a row, like an underworked Naughty Dog employee, eventually you start sniffing and the whole thing pops, the moment you receive the building permission for your second store.

Diver the Dave is a fantastic game in a lot of terms: movement, humor and squeezing as much management systems in a game as possible. But it exceeds its stay, like the mentioned body in the freezer. Sometimes you just have to ditch aka dig some ideas, instead of desperately hoping, that they grew better over time. If you can get over the fact to endlessly harpoon down beautiful sea creatures, definitely check this game out.

Tetris 2, this time on Famicom... Oh, and BomBliss is here too. What was up with the "-iss" thing anyway? Magicliss, Sparkliss, BombBliss... Well, whatever.

So, this comes from the same people who made the Famicom version of Tetris, which was probably the worst version of Tetris I've ever played. While I originally expected this game to be more like the NES version of Tetris 2, it's actually... just Tetris. Plus BomBliss. Huh.

Tetris 2 comes with 3 types of Tetris. Type-A which is your classic endless mode, Type-B which is the mission mode where you have a set amount of lines that need to be cleared in order to progress to the next level, and then there's also a Type-C which randomly adds garbage lines to the bottom of your screen, kind of like how getting attacked in Tetris 99 or Puyo Puyo Tetris works.

Tetris in this version of the game feels... weirdly smooth. Like, it's kind of absurd how good this feels compared to NES Tetris. The disparity between Tetris 1 and this Tetris 2 is ridiculous. That said, still no T-spin and all that, and I'll probably have to wait for a good bit before that actually comes into play.

...

Oh, yeah. BomBliss. Uh, it's like Tetris except that pieces come attached with bomb blocks that explode surrounding blocks when you make a line. It sounds cool at first, and it DEFINITELY looks cool, but the thing is that... the explosions just make the game too easy. It stops being fun around the third time you blow up the entire board.

Overall, this is probably the best NES/Famicom era Tetris I've played. Not a very high bar though...

Colorblindness Rating: A
Tetris is a game about shapes. Colors... not so much.