I've also got a large dump I need to do.

16. Aladdin (Megadrive)
Stone Cold Banger. The gameplay is nothing innovative but it's very well polished. And fun. There's plenty of nice little tweaks. Aladdin's little knife can deflect any projectiles as long as you time it right, which counters a lot of the more fiddly enemies and their projectiles. And if you get close to a guard and you're both slashing away at each other, you get a little sword clashing sound as you deflect their attacks. These don't sound like much but they both stood out as the sort of thing that find their way in when the devs are putting in that little bit of extra care. 
It's not that hard - there's one level, halfway through, that needs a bit of memorisation. But that's the only bit where you're in danger of losing many lives. The soundtrack is adapted straight from the film so pretty great. The colour and the brightness and clarity of the graphics is unbelievable, the desert level bursts out of the screen, you can be in a deep blue dungeon one minute, then a shining red lava field the next. There's a lot of muddy graphics around on the Megadrive (see Thunder Force 3 later) and I don't know what they're doing differently here but it works (having Disney concept artists assisting probably helped).
Anyway all of this is in service to the animation which is probably the best 2D animation in a video game that exists. It's astoundingly good. It's obviously been surpassed technically on frame rate and all the rest of it. But I don't think there's better, more charming, more expressive animation in another game (Dragon's Lair doesn't count). Definitely not in that squash and stretch, cartoon style. Given that it was designed by the same Disney animators that did the film, during the last hurrah of 2D animation, I don't think you'll ever get more talent chucked at a 2D videogame again. That talent pool doesn't even exist in the same way anymore. Here's a load of gifs, some of them ripped from the source code,  from this web page (which is worth a read if you're interested).





Can't find a full colour gif of this fish. I could watch this all day.

This sword swallower is brilliant and didn't even make the main game, recovered from the source code here.

Fat guard whose trousers fall down is probably my favourite enemy but is poorly served by internet gifs. As is the peddler. I'm not even scratching the surface here. 

So overall its

17. Sunset Riders (Snes)
Done in co-op. On Easy. Mild fun. 

18. Wonderboy in Monster World (Megadrive) 
Pretty great. Nearly everything has dated quite badly but it's fine - the core game is still solid. I had it way back when and got maybe 3/4 of the way through it. The last boss is dementedly difficult, I could try for the rest of my life and never beat it. So I 'completed' this half his life bar away from finishing it but fuck you I'm still counting it.

19. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - The Hyperstone Heist (Megadrive)
Good fun. It's not the best scrolling brawler from the 16 bit era but it's probably my favourite. It does well at capturing the zaniness of the licence.

20 & 21. Rocket Knight Adventures and Sparkster (Megadrive)
I was expecting RKA to be ok and Sparkster to be better but it's the other way around. While Sparkster has a more advanced implementation of the jetpack (in RKA it's just like a one-use super jump, with Sparkster you can fire it off in mid air so stay airborne and rattle around the screen for as long as you want).
Sparkster has a slight case of the Sonic 3s though and goes a bit overboard a lot of the time. There's more annoying detours like robot boxing matches and crap novelty things that don't work as well as they might. RKA is more straightforward and better balanced as a result. They're both pretty good though. Lots of bosses, lots of opportunities to fly and bounce about and blow stuff up. The horizontal shooter sections work better than they've got any right to. Decent soundtracks and graphics throughout. I didn't realise the Snes Sparkster is a completely different game so may give that a bash.

22. Gynoug (Megadrive)
Had this originally. Probably got halfway through. The difficulty defaults to easy, which I didn't like the sound of so put it on normal. Normal turned out to be pretty bastard hard by the end. It's pretty good though. But not as good as

23. Thunder Force 3 (Megadrive)
Originally owned 2 and 3 in this series. Could never get on with overhead view in 2 and a quick go of that showed that's still the case. Three though is very solid. I liked the weapon systems and power ups. You get two base weapons - a basic cannon and a backwards fire one. You get upgrade these and get three more through picks ups. When you die you lose the equipped weapon or, if it's a default, the upgraded version. Which provides a nice bit of strategy. Sometimes you're better off switching to a weaker weapon to save the bigger ones. The enemy types vary nicely and need you to experiment a bit with the loadout to find the weapon they're weakest against. 
It's great, all in all. The colours are a pretty muddy - there's more browns, greens and greys and I needed to pump the gamma output right up for some sections so I could see what was going on. The first five levels can be done in any order and then it puts you through to the final three levels, which are quite easy in comparison to some of the stuff that came before. Should be playing TF4 over the next few weeks. 

24. Gradius (PSP)
From the Gradius collection which has another three of them to get through. I think I toyed with buying this a few times for the NES but apart from that it never featured on my radar. I spent the first half of the game believing that I should have bought it back then. Then the difficulty gets ridiculous and I'm 
now glad I didn't because I would have never completed this, but it's so good that I would have tried repeatedly, fruitlessly beating my head against a brick wall.
 
Everything's pretty bare bones by the standards of where this genre ended up, but all the basics are extremely tight. Everything is very precise - the ship's movement, hit zones, you're never once cheated out of a life. It's always, always your mistake. You've always got a narrow window to save yourself in, and if you're too clumsy to get through it, tough luck, but it was there.
You weren't watching that side of the screen. You didn't deal with that one fast enough and instead that one got you. I died a lot of times (a lot!) and I can't blame the game once. For a game from 1985 that chucks as much at you as this, I'm impressed. Nice soundtrack and the SFX are in some beautiful sweet spot between space invaders mono-bleeping and the better 16-bit ranges.

25. The Lucky Dime Caper (Master System)
Over half a lifetime ago I completed the game gear version of this which I think is identical. It's decent enough. It can be a bit hard to know what the game expects from you as it veers between quite tricky and ridiculously easy. Alright for a quick blast. The main appeal was the nostalgia hit.

Rocket Knight might squeeze into my top ten 16-bit list.  I'm overdue an Aladdin run myself, lovely game.

23. Megaman 11

I'm not too familiar with the Megaman series, having only played no.2 and X to completion - the former with save state spamming and the latter closer to 'properly' with retroking (we did use save states iirc, but nothing silly).  I opted for casual difficulty on this, which was the second of four difficulties, described as 'for those who love Megaman but haven't played in a while!'.  Five lives rather than three, slightly less damage taken apparently.  It seemed to be the right choice all told, as the stages flitted between cakewalk and tricky.  It certainly wasn't a breeze at any rate.  There's a step up in difficulty when you get past the initial boss selection area, and some of the fiddlier jumps are the reason this dipped from an 8 to a 7 - Megaman just isn't quite manoeuvrable enough for some of the late game cog jumping not to feel hit and miss.  This is the way it's always been, so fair play for the fan service, but it's just a touch on the clunky side for a modern continuation.  I'm unsure if bullets pass through scenery in all MM games, but it struck me as unusual here - it works though, and it's fun to switch between weapons for different situations as you start to amass a bigger arsenal.  Perhaps as a result of playing it on a lower difficulty I thought the double gear stuff was mostly redundant, and as Jon mentions elsewhere you can buy your way to victory quite easily.  Still, I had a decent time with it.  It's got a nice visual style, the 3D geometry 2D plane thing works well in this instance.  Overall it's a good platform shooter but I think you'd need to be armed with a bit more nostalgia to describe it as great.  The boss run at the end though - now that was great.  [7]

24. Black Bird - Switch

I've been intrigued by this for a while.  It's basically a snazzy looking Fantasy Zone minus shops and extra lives.  Even if you think that's up your alley you have to factor in the brevity, simplicity and ease of it all - I'm no shmup head, but I got to the final form of the final boss on my first go.  I didn't save enough bombs for the same boss second go, but the credits rolled on my third.

Okay, so it's a score chaser, but even after rearranging expectations having the whole thing roll over and show its belly after four stages (yes, four) is ridiculous. It's 50% off at the time of writing but this is supposed to sell for £15.  Nope.  Having said that, it's a terrific experience. It plays really well, has a striking visual style and a lovely score.  I've unlocked 'true mode', but the internet suggests that's basically the same deal with slightly tougher enemy waves. A reluctant [5] from me. If I was reviewing a retro run through I hadn't paid for I'd be shouting about the quality, but as it stands it's an odd little super stylish glossy budget feeling title that should sell for £5.99ish.  I wish it had so I could give it a higher score.  

Early thoughts on Katana Zero, or just a thumbs up/down?  I'm looking at a day one for that based on videos.

KZ will be out next week right? Looking forward to that too, will you be able to post your review around release Jon? 

Updated my post with #6, Night in the Woods. Thoughts in Just Completed
Not sure if I can really call it completed if I want to restart it again, but whatever.

25. Red Dead Redemption 2 - PS4

I did it, despite tending to dislike games that require this much undivided attention.  It's Rockstar encapsulated; part monstrosity and part monumental achievement.  It's an exhilarating, sprawling cowboy epic, yet it's also a padded out dime novel that mistakes itself for Lonesome Dove.  

Starting with how it plays, there's a distinct lack of finesse to the mechanics.  I'd describe it as an above average last gen 3rd person cover shooter that's had one of the most breathtaking game worlds ever envisioned built around it.  Arthur ambles around during gunfights, transitioning from rock to rock like a sack of spuds that never feels like it's fully touching the ground.  Buttery smooth it's most certainly not, the shooting is merely functional, and if you're looking for faint praise, adequate.  I found that staying put was often the best route to success, popping up with snap-to aiming while laying waste to varmints that all felt a touch autopilot.  I've said it before, but the actual gameplay in the much maligned The Order: 1886 is marginally superior, despite being set thirteen years earlier.  Both have good old fashioned shooting gallery trigger satisfaction, but one can be vanquished in 7hrs, to use a word that brings to mind a smoother experience altogether, and one has to sustain an experience that could last somewhere in the region of 70 hours.  Do I tend to like slightly clunky bolt action rifle shooters?  Yes, as a rule, but the action isn't good enough to do much heavy lifting here, and the whole experience would've been vastly improved with slightly more enjoyable shoot outs.  You roll up at a destination, you put holes in some baddies, then you tear off on horses, mopping up any idiots who dare to chase you.  There are other mission types, but in terms of action this sums up well over 70% of the standard excursions.  

I'm led to believe that the phrase 'greater than the sum of its parts' and Rockstar go hand in hand, but this often made for tiresome sessions if I only had 30-45 minutes to spare.  This is a game to immerse yourself in, rather than hop from yellow spot to yellow spot on the map, which was always something I was going to struggle with, especially with the checkpointing being overly harsh for my tastes.  If you don't play this with a view to losing yourself in the experience you'll only be able to get so much from it, hence the fact that all my opinions here need to be taken with a pinch of salt.  If you like to go deep with your games there's an obscene amount of satisfaction to be had I'm sure.  With combat being a bit of a chore though, I found myself getting instantly annoyed pretty much every time my character died.  I have further grievances - the occasionally unfathomable forced walking (no running in camp, fuck off but okay, but no speeding up for 100 metres on the way out?), the glitches, NPCs getting ironed out because they Leroyed into a skirmish ahead of me, necessitating a restart (and more loading, and a further 5 minutes replaying the same section) - but it's time to get positive!

The positive bits.  

Attention to detail is astonishing.  The environments are breathtaking at times, real 'look how far we've come' stuff (in gaming history terms, not 'Christ it took me ages to get here'...wait, positivity).  The score does its job, sometimes rather well.  It's a decent stab at Morricone meets Ry Cooder that mostly plays at trigger points and it's a yes from me overall.  

When it all clicks, and if you play it for long enough it will, there's nothing quite like it.  I'll liken it to Shadow of the Colossus here, as it contains some of the very best moments in gaming, but it's all held together by slightly ropy padding.  For every session that had me grinning like a loon there was one that had me double facepalming over a mid-level inconvenience.  

---

Um...I didn't do too well with the positive bits, so this is bound to read like a [6] when it's not.  The story aims for grandiose, but really we're just - spoiler alert - following a gang of outlaws who gradually fall apart, despite the sweeping vistas and wolf fever dreams it's still a bit Quick Draw McGraw Paints His Wagon By Numbers.  Duck, I says (but what button was that again?).  It has its moments, but there's nothing masterful in the way the plot is pushed forward or in the way the story is presented.  It's admittedly still a cut above most games, but it all plods along as you'd expect for the most part.  I thought the Native American reservation father/son conflict was particularly ham-fisted, but there are some quality characters in the crew, plenty of neat set-pieces and some successfully deft touches (hello Willie Nelson, and props to the entirety of the epilogue).  

I've tried (and clearly failed) not to be overly harsh because I liked this enough to finish it, which feels like enough praise as western setting aside it's the antithesis of my usual stuff.  There's too much kitchen (time)sinking going on, and it's often not particularly gamelike at all in my eyes.  The tastes of the masses have changed, and I don't need to keep up as I'm catered for and then some with indie games.  It's literally the best ever era for me to play my sort of thing (oh God here comes Elf...), but my take away hot take on the hot mess is that huge chunks of the package are...unnecessary.  When at its best it's exceptional, but it's also proof that you can have too much of a good thing and far too much of an above average thing.  [7]

26. Dynamite Headdy (Megadrive)
Very good. Annoyingly hard in the final third but a few sections and bosses are some of the best stuff I've played on the MD.

27. The Adventures of Batman and Robin (Megadrive)

Moot_Geeza wrote:

it's a great looking/playing run and gun ruined by a difficulty level set to nonsense

PSP with a ridiculous amount of save states.

Ooh, Subterrania. Enjoy. Tricky until you learn the stages but it's a gem.

I don't understand how it was let out of the door in that condition.

Pretty much my thoughts on it too, although I'd go a little harsher on it perhaps. It really needed more reason to revisit levels or some kind of additional mode at the end.

I've also done Steamworld Quest recently, which was pretty disappointing. The core battle and card systems are fine and polished, but there's not much more to it, so it gets monotonous and repetitive.

And Sekiro. Well, technically I've given up on the final boss, but we'll call that done. A wonderful game in so many ways, with great combat and level design, but spolied by some weirdly uneven difficulty and camera issues.

JonB wrote:

Pretty much my thoughts on it too, although I'd go a little harsher on it perhaps. It really needed more reason to revisit levels or some kind of additional mode at the end.

There's hope for more. I had a look at the post-game secrets when I finished, and apparently

Yoshi's Crafted World 6/10

I gave Yoshi's Woolly World 8/10 just a few months back, and this is pretty much the same game.  It has a different art style but they both look fantastic in their own ways.  Guess I was just a bit burned out.

The levels are fine enough in a laid back kind of way but having to repeat levels to get enough collectibles to open the later levels gets real old real fast.  Get that it's a children's game, but feel it needs to do more to make revisiting levels interesting than relying on it's (considerable) cuteness and charm.

Mortal Kombat 9 (story mode) 5/10 - just doing a refresher before Mortal Kombat 11!  I'm no high level beat em up player so I won't say much about the quality of the fighting.  Netherrealm's story mode template is in place, though it's a bit rough around the edges.  As in, everyone gets 15 minutes to look cool and kick ass, but the story's a bit confusing and fights are too regularly crowbarred in for the less important characters.  I don't really understand how the tournament works.  Sometimes a guy will have to fight 2 blokes at once.  Other times there will be 1 person fighting 2 separate bouts, and they are the only bouts for the night.  This Shang Tsung bugger is worse than Vince McMahon from the WWF.  The universe is at stake and he seems to just be making it up as he goes along.  

As an aside, I think of this decade as being a lot less pervy than before, but really it's only the last few years.  This game came out in 2011 and there are g-bangers and giant knockers all over the shop.  Mileena's alternate costume has like a couple of really thin bandages over her rude bits and nothing else.  Poor old Sonya is wearing this tactical vest; I'm not sure if it's supposed to be bullet proof, but if it is, it would only protect her if she got shot directly in the nipples.  I was half expecting Sid James to be an unlockable character lol.  It's a bit of a contrast to MK 10 and 11 where the girls are dressed a bit more sensibly.  I'm not bothered by that kind of thing honestly, but it did seem like a blast from the past in this regard.

Mortal Kombat 10 (story mode) 6/10 - This is generally a lot better and the story mode I know and love.  Very close to a cheesy 80's sci fi/action romp now.  Only really let down by a few too many new characters that don't do much for me (I generally like the characters from the first couple of games much better than the later additions.  Cassie and the bug lady are 2 favourites from the new guys, though) and some all new quick time events.  On the whole it's pretty entertaining stuff and was a fun few hours to revisit.  Not much more to say than that!

Well said - and glad to read the little one is enjoying it so much!