After I had played the remake of this game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I decided to give the original game a try, and I have to say that originally, I couldn't get into this at all. Everything was confusing to me, battles seemed ridiculously one-sided and hard even from the very beginning and I quit very very quickly. But one day I eventually gave it another shot and looked up tutorials on how to actually play to a decent level, from then I was having a blast and I sometimes wonder if this is better than the remake made years later, although both are so brilliant that I find it hard to choose one over another. I will say that one thing did help me with enjoying this game, and that was OpenXCOM. OpenXCOM is a source clone of the original game and improves several aspects that made the original somewhat annoying to play. I can't remember all of these changes since it has been very long since I played the very original version of this game, but the changes are basically added to make the game more accessible and some features are added that are just useful in general, such as equipment stacking for your craft or the geoscape showing a bases radar coverage. I would highly recommend getting this version of the game, you do however need the original files but that is as simple as buying the original game on steam. Now that I'm done rambling on and on, let's start the review.

Story-
The year is 1998, aliens from who knows where have decided to pay a not so friendly visit to earth and have begun abducting civilians, terrorizing cities and generally being quite mean. Reports of these terrible acts increase until other countries decide to act and use their best soldiers and weaponry to fight back against the invaders, to no avail. Eventually the strongest nations of the world band together to start a organisation that utilizes the worlds best manpower, researchers, engineers and technology: The Extraterrestrial Combat Unit (X-COM). You assume control of the X-COM organisation in an effort to fight back against the aliens and send them packing. The story is not exactly as important as the remake series makes it, but you do uncover the aliens agenda (to some degree) and where they have come from.

Gameplay-
Jeez, where to start? X-COM: UFO Defense/UFO: Enemy Unknown is a strategy game in which you control practically all aspects of the X-COM organisation including researching, engineering, base building, equipment manufacturing and organisation, intercepting UFOs, battling the aliens in ground missions and so on. There is a lot that you have to do in this game and it can be very very overwhelming for a first time player which is why I recommend looking up tutorials for a general idea on how to get started. I will try and cover as much as I can in the gameplay department since I like to be thorough with stuff like this, this will be very long and if you can actually read all of it, then you probably have enough patience to play this game.

Starting Off: You begin the game by choosing a location for your first base, this can be pretty much anywhere, though I would be reasonable and choose somewhere that isn't in a ridiculous location like Antarctica. You then name this base and from there the game begins and you can choose what to do from here. Not much to say here except that you should probably start somewhere in Europe, at least that's what I've always done.

Base Management: There is a lot one can do with their base so I will try and keep this short. Once you have chosen the bases menu, you have given a view of your first base, which is always pre-built, from here you can add facilities onto the base which vary from facilities that increase the capacity of scientists, soldiers, engineers and equipment as well as radar systems and defense systems. You can build a new base at any time although I would wait at least for the first month to end before doing that. From within these bases you can choose research projects, choose production projects, equip aircraft with equipment (for skyrangers which transport troops) and weapons (for interceptors that shoot down UFOs), buy and sell equipment, hire and sack staff, view soldiers stats and so on.... yeah, quite a fair bit I must say. The interface is pretty well done for the base menu, everything is labelled very clearly and navigating the menus here is quite easy once you mess around in them for a bit, it will take some time to learn, but I could say that about everything when it comes to this game.

Research: You can choose to have a certain amount of scientists in your staff research a lot of new things (the limit of how many depends on how many labs you have in the base where this research will happen). This includes new weapons and armor, information on the aliens different species via autopsy, new materials, new aircraft and so on. Research is very important for you to stand a chance at beating the aliens, you will gain access to new research projects as you collect items from battles you have won, including alien corpses, alien craft parts, weapons, etc. You need to research some of this stuff as quick as you can, as the aliens start using more tough enemies very quickly and your pathetic rifle won't even scratch the much later enemies. A problem that I have had though however is that I find that armor has never really been a huge improvement to your troops in general, it does improve chances of survival but you might as well consider every hit a one hit kill for your soldiers since that can and will still happen with even the best armor in the game. Research time depends on the project at hand and how many scientists are working on it.

Manufacturing: Your engineers can be ordered to manufacture certain equipment that has been researched (such as laser weapons) for use in the battles, aircraft or sometimes materials for other equipment. Like with research, the amount of engineers that can be utilized depends on how many workshops your base has. I have little to say here apart from the fact that you should always be making something, even if you don't really need it, since you can sell the equipment for a small profit, as long as you mind your important materials being used, mainly elerium. Elerium cannot be made, it can only be found in UFOs you have raided, this can be a bit of a pain if you can't get enough elerium for equipment you want but this isn't a huge hassle, just DON'T SELL ELERIUM, you need it and selling it is a complete waste. Again much like research, manufacturing time depends on the amount of engineers working on the project.

Equipment Management: You have to assign what equipment you want to take on missions all by yourself. This can be a bit of a pain since you can easily forget to put equipment in your skyranger and then end up without having a tank that you bought for a mission since you just left it at your base. You choose what equipment you want in your skyranger via the equip craft menu, it of course has a limited amount of space but you should have enough space for everything you need even at the later points of the game. Adding equipment can be a little confusing but you get used to it eventually. You can buy equipment via the purchase menu although there won't be too much you buy here since most equipment will be made yourself, though you do need to hire staff through this menu.

Funding: Funding cannot be controlled directly, but is quite important as well... money is kinda needed to buy things and manufacture stuff. You get some money to start off with although it probably won't last long when you start expanding your base so you will need to consider selling in order to get some money during the month. Soldiers want money for putting their lives on the line as well as scientists and engineers so you won't be keeping all of the money you earn at the end of each month, you also pay for aircraft and base maintenance so keep this in consideration. At the end of each month the united nations will give you a rating for the month depending on the score you have earned throughout the month, depending on how many points you have you will get a rating that ranges from terrible to excellent. You earn points by researching, winning battles, shooting aircraft down, winning terror missions and saving civilians and generally any good kind of progress.

The aliens themselves have a score that you cannot see but they earn points on basically how well they are beating you, such as winning battles and making you cry, completing secret missions of their own (all ships have missions they undertake that you won't find out till much later), and generally letting them upset people even more than they have already. I believe (I can't remember if this is true exactly, and UFOPAEDIA is currently down so I could not clarify) the aliens score is subtracted from your own, giving you your final score for the month. Depending on how well you have defended a country (or basically how many UFOs you have shot down in that area) a country may give you more funding, or vice versa if you neglected a country, they could also leave the organization entirely if you tick them off enough or if the aliens infiltrate and force them to sign a pact that says they will not shoot their innocent people to bits and will share technology if they leave X-COM, surely this is not a ploy to let earths last defense die, can't possibly be that. If you get a rating of "bad" or "terrible" (of a mix of both) two months in a row, you get the pleasant satisfaction of being informed that the united nations think that X-COM project is a waste of time and that we should try and negotiate with the aliens for a surely better tomorrow, you soon find out in a pretty horrifying game over sequence that the aliens weren't exactly here for peace and decide to enslave us all. Fun times, eh?

Base Management Overall: Despite the fact that you have a lot of stuff you need to do yourself (and we haven't even got to battles yet!), once you get used to everything you need to do, I find base management very satisfying. You feel you have complete control over the organisation as a whole and every decision you make is crucial to success and making the whole thing run like clockwork and basically having the organisation run smoothly is just a great time overall. With so much to do, it is overwhelming to the first time player (believe me, I hadn't a clue what the heck I was doing when I first played), but if you stick with it you might just find it as enjoyable as I do. Now that base management is out of the way we can move onto battles... in a moment, there is still the geospace and intercepting.

Geospace: The geoscape is a representation of the globe, earth, terra firma, home. Here you can choose to let time pass at different speeds while you have nothing to do in base management (waiting for research or manufacturing to finish, equipment or staff to arrive, etc). You can zoom in and rotate all you want but all you will really be doing is waiting for UFOs to show up, which will happen if they move into your radar range. Once one pops up, the game stops to inform you of this, from here you can choose to intercept and shoot the thing down by choosing which aircraft you want to brave facing this advanced warship. The interceptor will then chase the UFO down to the best of its ability until it comes into firing range of the UFO or if the UFO decides to speed up and leave your interceptors view, which means the UFO gets away, you lose a chance to get some resources and promptly consider smashing your keyboard, although if a UFO gets away, you can choose to have your interceptor search its last known location which may have them find it again, if not then you can choose to have the interceptor come back and refuel or have it fly around until it is forced to refuel. The UFO can come back into view at any time so there is hope of catching it. If you do happen to come within firing range, the game shifts into a little sequence in which you can see how close the interceptor is to the UFO, from here you can choose to attack cautiously, aggressively or normally which basically dictates how close the interceptor will get to the UFO.

Each weapon has a range so you will have to consider how close you want to get to the UFO, the closer you get, the more chances that the UFO will strike back and hit you, get hit enough times and the interceptor is destroyed forever, you start saying naughty words and have to buy another interceptor which isn't exactly cheap. If you hit the UFO enough you will eventually take it down, it will either blow up completely, leaving no trace, or will crash land which allows you to investigate the crash site for a turn based battle which will net you resources depending on the UFO type. If you intend to make it crash land, don't shoot it over water since it will then crash into water and everything you wanted from it will be lost. Yay. I do find intercepting quite fun but you do need to be careful since bigger UFOs can destroy interceptors in one hit and no one wants that, right?

Battles: Now we can actually begin what is probably the most important part of the game. Only 2400 words into the review and all. Battles start out with the soldier equipment screen in which you choose what equipment in your craft to arm your soldiers with (take note that giving them 8 grenades is not exactly wise since they need high strength to carry more heavy stuff or more stuff in general without a penalty), which has always left a little clunky to me, since you have to click and drag into boxes representing different areas on their body and you can't swap one with another, say for example you have a pistol in a soldiers right hand and you wanted him to have a rifle, you would have to take the pistol off first and put it in the craft stocks first before putting the rifle in his hand, trying to put it in his hand while the pistol is already there does nothing when I would have expected the two to basically swap, but that isn't the case. Once everyone is equipped to your liking it is time for your troops to start the operation and this is where the game tends to be at it's most cruel. Your soldiers start inside the skyranger, something I absolutely hate about this game since it is very possible that a alien is sitting outside waiting for a soldier to step outside so they can take a shot on them and kill them in one hit. This has always been unfair to me and is the worst thing about battles since you can't do much about it apart from save and reload if things go wrong and then hope your soldier doesn't get mutilated next time.
The battles play in a turn based fashion in which you move your soldiers and then end your turn for the aliens to have theirs.

Every soldier has time units, which dictate how much you can do with that soldier in this turn, time units are spent when moving, firing, opening doors, crouching, turning, throwing grenades, rummaging through inventory, blinking, breathing, sweating, etc (might be exaggerating on the last three there). Once a soldiers time units have been spent, they can do nothing else and will sit there until the next turn where their units are replenished (unless they carry too much in which case they will have less for that turn, I believe carrying a lot while moving also spends more units). Once a soldier sees an alien, they will stop if they are moving and a red box will appear in the corner, clicking this will centre the camera on the alien in question, from here you can have a soldier that has a line of fire on the alien (even if they don't see this alien, but they can still shoot it and a wall is not blocking the shot entirely) they can take a shot on the alien with different shot types, each with varying degrees of accuracy, time unit cost and shots fired, auto shot will usually be your shot of choice since it is the lowest cost with the lowest accuracy but the soldier will fire three times, don't let the low accuracy percentage fool you, there is a bigger chance to hit than you may think. The soldiers accuracy is also determined by their own accuracy stat, the weapon being used and if they are wounded.

If you leave a soldier with enough times units to take a shot at the end of their turn, they have a chance depending on their reactions rating, to take a shot on an alien during their turn if they move into their field of view, the aliens can do this too and they very much enjoy using this tactic. Grenades can be thrown by first opening your soldiers inventory, dragging the grenade to a hand they have free, and then choosing to throw the grenade and then clicking where you want it to go, the accuracy of the throw depends on the soldiers throwing accuracy stat. Once all aliens are dead, the mission is over, you win, you get the goods from the UFO and the skyranger returns to base with the living soldiers. Soldiers that have been hurt but not killed will not be able to do battle for a few days, so keep them as safe as possible, but don't expect battles to go perfectly every time, this game is very hard and won't back down even from the beginning.
Lastly, soldiers (and on rare occasions, aliens) can have different conditions inflicted on them, none very good, at least if it's on your own soldiers. Depending on their bravery (or lack there of), your soldiers can panic if their comrades are getting slaughtered, leaving them to move on their own and be unable to move on your turn, they could also drop their weapon and do ridiculously stupid things that makes everything far worse. They can also go berserk which could make them shoot in any direction (probably in the direction of your other soldiers) and do even worse stuff, I think one may have even thrown their weapon, not dropped it, THROWN IT. Some aliens also get mind control capabilities which as one can guess, lets them control a soldier for their own benefit, most likely involving a soldier, a laser weapon, another soldier and a lot of death screams.

Battles in X-COM are very very tense, very difficult, but when you win a battle, that makes it all the more satisfying. X-COM to me delivers a feeling of everything is against you, even as you get better tech the aliens get far far worse (chrysalids I hate you, please just leave me alone), but despite this you can pull through and win battles, make breakthroughs in technology by capturing tough aliens and come out on top by the end of it all. Battles aren't exactly simple, anything could happen, aliens could be anywhere, you don't even know if new ones will appear until you are staring them in the face. The battles are more complex than the remake but as with the rest of the game, once you learn how to play the game to a decent degree, you can beat the aliens at every turn and feel great doing it (running theme here isn't there, eh?)
I won't talk to much about the aliens, though I will say I do like the designs for most of them and they can be pretty imposing, though some feel like a complete joke in a battle, such as the terror mission alien, the reaper. The reaper is some strange big armoured beast that looks kinda threatening, but only can hurt you via melee and they only really have a lot of health (well not after you get laser weapons) which makes them any kind of threat, pretty much every weapon can kill you in one hit anyway so why would something that has to walk up to you be a threat when most can kill you from a distance. The real melee threats are chrysalids which are just the most horrible things ever conceived. Also, go and have a look at the celatid... what am I looking at here?

I will lastly talk about terror missions, which are unfortunately something I never ever look forward to with this game, or in any other X-COM game for that matter. In these missions, the aliens have started attacking a city and you can choose to go to the city to defend the citizens and prevent the country from cutting its funding. These missions bring the worst of the worst when it comes to the alien forces and I just hate the structure of the maps where they could be hiding anywhere since there are usually loads of buildings with varying designs for them to hide in. On top of this you have to (though to be honest I would worry about your soldiers lives and killing aliens) keep civilians alive for a higher score at the end, the more left alive, the higher the score. But the civilians might as well be blindfolded since they have a reckless disregard for keeping themselves alive since they pretty much run wherever they want to, whether that be in front of your soldier, blocking entrance to a house or in the way of a shot, or walking straight into the bad end of an aliens plasma rifle. Doing these missions during night is even worse since there is less viability. I would advise ignoring the civilians and just hoping they won't be completely stupid and get themselves all killed.

Graphics-
Wow I can now talk about the rest of the game, but in all honesty the rest will be much shorter. The graphics I don't feel I can fully judge since I don't exactly know if they look great for the time or not, to me they look about what I would expect for the time but they are not bad in any way. You can tell what everything is and I quite like the images of the aliens once you interrogate them and perform autopsies.

Sound-
The sound in this game is pretty great in my opinion. The sound effects are all fitting, the sounds of guns firing sound great (though it can be a bit loud which game me a bloomin' heart attack first time an alien shot at my soldiers), the sounds of the aliens dying are satisfying (makes me sound like a psychopath but there you go), the soldiers death sounds are well... sometimes a bit silly to me but I'm more focused on the fact I just lost my best soldier than to worry about the fact they sounded like they were pretending to die. The music for the geoscape is just plain awesome (there are two versions though they sound similar they are actually different), the interceptor music gives an awesome feeling of success (although things could of course go horribly wrong, such is the way of X-COM) and the music for battles are creepy, adding to the already tense atmosphere, though not to the level of the sequel, Terror From the Deep, which has a soundtrack you would expect in a horror film or something.

Addictiveness and Depth-
I believe I've have made it very evident that this game has a fair amount of depth and isn't exactly simple. The game can take a while to beat (expect to be beaten multiple times by the game first before you give it a good spanking yourself) just from one successful run. If you have the patience to deal with the games somewhat complicated and at times tedious nature you may find yourself pretty addicted. I found myself playing it pretty much every day during my lunch break at college and at home until I beat the thing, people thought I was weird for playing something so old, I probably am.

Difficulty-
This game can be absolutely relentless. Things can go wrong so easily and so quickly, but recovering from a mess the aliens have made in your plans just makes every success feel like it has meaning. Be prepared to lose, a lot.

Verdict-
Despite the fact that the game isn't the most accessible in the world and that the game can feel like you are just putting yourself through a torture session, the game is just a lot of fun. Take the time to learn what you need to, watch others play it, read that manual and eventually you will get it and then start to enjoy this game. If you enjoy a challenging strategy game that doesn't hold your hand, play this. Then play
Terror From the Deep if you felt this was too easy for some reason, it's pretty much the same game, but harder and unfortunately buggier.

The Good-
Really involved base management, great for the folks who like this
Battles while hard are still very fun
Research gives a real sense of improvement to the team as a whole, it feels great to get better weapons and make the first enemies in the game that gave you so much trouble, feel like a joke.
The music is pretty great overall

The Bad-
Walking out of the skyranger, just being unlucky enough to have an alien shoot before you even take a step outside is infuriating.
This game is hard, sometimes it feels unfair hard.
Not very accessible, try and figure out what all the buttons on the battle screen mean without looking it up.

The Ugly-
The snakemans smile is just creepy, same goes for the chrysallid

Overall-
Despite its age and somewhat inaccessible design, this is still a great game and is truly worth the time of any strategy fan who has the patience.

So far I've played a couple of Castlevania games, those being 1, 3, Bloodlines, Dracula X, Rondo Of Blood, 2: Belmont's Revenge (the game boy Castlevania 2) and Symphony Of The Night. And while I haven't completed all of them, I can say that for me personally, Castlevania 3 is the hardest I've played. So how good is what seems to be the hardest classic Castlevania? Let's start with the story shall we?

Story-
The year is 1476, and Dracula is being his usual evil self, spreading chaos over Europe and has been practicing sorcery "to create a bad world filled with evil" (isn't that a fantastic line?). After being exiled because the townsfolk of Wallachia feared his power, Trevor Belmont is called back to deal with Dracula. Now Trevor must travel to Castlevania and put Dracula away until the next 100 years come round for him to come back and ruin everyones day again. Oh and there's some other people Trevor may meet along the way that may help with his quest.

Gameplay-
This is going to be a long one. The gameplay consists of you as Trevor going through extremely hazardous levels, whipping monsters and bosses in the hopes that you will make it to the end of the level with your sanity intact. The d-pad has you move left, right and duck, the a button has you jump, the b button has you use your weapon (Trevor's being the whip), holding up and pressing b uses your sub weapon and the select button switches your character between one of the other characters found and Trevor, the other characters, I will get to soon.

Despite the very simple controls, the Belmont's seem to have a problem with movement throughout the series. Trevor's jumping is something one may need to get used to. Pressing a while standing still will have Trevor jump straight up and then back down, moving while pressing a will have him jump forward, now that seems perfectly fine right? Well Trevor cannot influence his jumps in mid-air, as in you cannot move him once he starts a jump, so when you jump in one direction, you are going in that one direction until you touch the ground or if you touch something painful. Whipping also has a slight delay as in you won't be doing damage exactly when you press b, but for some reason I feel that the whip is a very satisfying weapon to use.

Throughout the levels you will find lots and lots of candles, whipping these reveal that they contain hearts for some odd reason. These act as ammo for your sub weapons, the sub weapons being a axe you throw in an arc, a throwing dagger you throw in one straight line, a cross which acts like a boomerang and holy water which you drop on the ground and makes a little fire which stuns enemies and even some bosses allowing you to hit them with your normal weapon while they can't attack you. The candles also contain whip upgrades for Trevor which turn the whip into a flail which increases it's damage, and then into a longer flail. You pretty much need to have your whip fully upgraded if you want to live long. Also, you can whip some walls that will reveal some other items, such as a pork chop, which heals you, and these square.... things with the number two or three on them, these let you use a sub weapon more than once, for example, without the item, you can only shoot one dagger onscreen, with the II item, you can shoot two onscreen, and then three if you get the III item.

Now about those other characters. Trevor can meet some people along his journey that will help him along the way, these include Grant Danasty, Sypha Belnades, and Alucard, the son of Dracula. Each bring their own strengths and weaknesses:

Grant is the first you can meet and is to me, the best of the three. He has the ability to climb walls and ceilings, making some areas easier, and you can actually influence his direction in mid air which as you can imagine, can help a lot with avoiding obstacles and can prevent? accidentally jumping into hazards. The problem with Grant though is that his weapon is a short dagger that's just about as powerful as the throwing dagger sub weapon, so obviously his attack range is pathetic, though this does not mean that he is useless in a fight, since he has better movement in general.

Sypha has the same movement as Trevor and also has Grant's short attack range with a small wand. The good thing about Sypha is that she has her own sub weapons which are some pretty useful spells, these include fire which shoots a line of fire in front of you which has very good range, an ice spell that shoots three ice balls, freezing projectiles and enemies, and lastly three electrical orbs that are quite effective against bosses.

Alucard... is probably the worst one for me. Alucard's attack is shooting ball.... things (which also needs to be upgraded like the whip if you want to shoot more than one) that go straight, horizontally up and down. These... are not as powerful as one would hope. But the best thing about Alucard is his ability to transform into a bat for one heart per second. This allows you to get past some sections with relative ease which is extremely useful, but other than that, Alucard doesn't seem to have much going for him.

But how do you meet these characters? Well at the end of most of the levels, you are given a choice of two paths, and what path you take depends on who you will meet. This is a pretty nice part of the game, giving you a reason to play the game again, since you can go for a front door approach into the castle, or from the underground. It's also pretty important to note that you can only have one partner, if you take a new one, the other will wish you luck and leave.

Now the levels themselves, these levels are HARD, but why? Pretty much everything, most enemies have something that will annoy you, such as small fast moving birds, axe knights that take WAY to long to kill and throw axes in two different altitudes, the enemies are just annoying, also getting hurt will knock you backwards, most of the time into the nearest pit. Lastly, they hurt more as the game progresses, so weaker enemies become ones that kill you in 4 hits, yay. Bosses are also very very mean and can take some time, especially the ghost that makes you face three bosses in order with no health refills.

But they aren't the only problems poor Trevor will face, the levels usually have some gimmicks that set them apart and all will give you a hard time, such as the level with the screen that moves up and you have to keep up otherwise you die, the waterfall levels with water pushing you, and worst of all. Stairs. Stairs were bad in the first Castlevania, but now they are so much worse. The stairs you cannot jump off of, sometimes getting a sub weapon to work is aggravating since pressing up makes you go up the stairs, you move pretty slow going up or down them, they sometimes end on a small platform, there are enemies that usually wait at the end and they are just the worst parts of the levels to me, and there's a level where it feels like that's all there is in it. Checkpoints are pretty scarce in these levels and it becomes pretty evident if you make it to the final level.

I will say that I do find the gameplay pretty fun, for the most part. There's a point where it will start being more frustrating than fun.

That's pretty much the gist of the gameplay. Onto the graphics.

Graphics-
I'm not one to analyze graphics to a big degree since they don't matter that much compared to gameplay to me. But I will say that I think the game does look better than Castlevania 1 and I also think that the stages look how they were intended. I also like that the level locations are more varied, since there's a swamp level, a waterfall level, the clock tower, the underground areas. They all look pretty good by what the NES can do.

Sounds-
The soundtrack, is just awesome. I like nearly all of the tracks in this game and they fit perfectly with the locations. You have both your upbeat tracks and your creepy ones, especially Nightmare, which plays in the underground sections. My favourite track would probably be Clockwork, which plays in the clock tower, which is only the second level in (that is if you choose to go there anyway).

Addictiveness and Depth-
This game will definitely take you some time if you don't know of the hell that awaits you. Despite it being very hard, it is still fun to play and is very satisfying when you beat a tough boss. The multiple paths and characters give the game replay value since you won't be exploring all the levels in the game in one play through and you won't be using one partner for one play through either (I think you might be able to meet them all, but I'm not sure on that), that and using different characters for different playthroughs will just give the game more replay value, you don't even need to take a partner with you and you can go solo with Trevor, but it's going to be an even harder journey than it already is if you do that...

Difficulty-
I'm pretty sure I've made it evident that I think this game is extremely hard. Again, the enemies, the control, the levels themselves all make this a very challenging game. I don't think it's to the degree of Ghosts 'n' Goblins though, I can't even beat the second level in that.

Verdict-
Although Castlevania 3 is a fun game, the difficulty may put the game down for some. But the replay value is great, the different locations are pretty awesome and the music is also really good. I give the game a 8. Shall we go over what is good and bad?

The Good-
That soundtrack.
Grant is extremely useful.
The partner system is just great in general.
More interesting and varied locations.
Multiple paths.

The Bad-
STAIRS.
The amount of stairs is just ridiculous.
The checkpoints are scarce.
Some bosses are just a downright pain. (I'm looking at you, Crypt Ghost)
Konami may have went just a little bit overboard with the difficulty in general and the game may just become frustrating more than anything.

The Ugly-
What in the world is Dracula's second form supposed to be?

Overall-
A good game, but boy is it a hard one. It's worth a go, but I think that the other Castlevanias I've played are more accessible since they don't get as hard as this.

I don't know about you, but when I was younger, around 5-7 years old, I had my PS1 and played a game called Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition to death, well for some reason I no longer have that but I still have Bust-A-Move 4 which I still play sometimes. Anyways, I had never played the original game back then since I had never had a SNES, so I felt like seeing how the first Bust-A-Move turns out.

Story: I may be completely missing something, but as far as  I know, there is no story. Most of the games in the series have never had one, and even if they did, they... didn't really matter that much. You could just say the story is, Dreg/Drunk, is doing evil things and you have to stop him by popping bubbles for some reason, OH, and there's treasure...

Gameplay: I'm sure most people may have played this sort of puzzle game either by different name or one in the Bust-A-Move series, but I might as well explain this for the people who haven't. The basic premise is that there is an arrangement of bubbles on the top of the screen, you are able to shoot your own bubbles at these bubbles, though the colour you get is random. Your job is to pop all these bubbles by shooting at them with your own and making 3 of the same colour touch together, when this happens, the line of bubbles will pop and any bubbles that are being attached to these bubbles you pop alone will drop which also gets rid of them as well as giving bonus points, if you are playing puzzle, then once you have popped all the bubbles, you clear the round and move onto the next one. You have to be somewhat quick though, as you only have a few seconds to shoot before the bubble is shot automatically, there is also the problem with after a few bubbles have been shot, all the bubbles will be pushed down a bit. There is also a line above your shooter, if the bubbles drop low enough and cross this line, you fail the round and lose a credit, you can then choose to continue or quit. Puzzle mode has 100 rounds for you to complete, if you lose all of your credits, you lose and are given a password to continue from that point, but you do not get your credits back. The other mode that is available to you is the versus mode against the computer (or against another person) where you battle against several different enemies from the Bubble Bobble games, you do not win by popping all the bubbles on screen but rather by making your bubbles drop instead of popping them to send bubbles to your opponent, the more bubbles you drop, the more bubbles are sent to your opponent and the harder it will be for him. Whoever has their bubbles cross the line at the bottom loses and the other wins, and as you would expect, the enemies you encounter get harder and harder. The last mode you have is challenge record where and endless amount of bubbles are spawned in which the aim is to pop as many bubbles as you can before the bubbles cross the line. The gameplay in general is pretty darn fun and easy to get the hang of, but I would be lying if I said that the 100 rounds don't get tiring, not just because it's basically the same sort of thing every round, but there is another reason which we will get to soon.

Controls: The controls are incredibly simple, you use the d-pad to aim your bubble shooter left and right, and you press b to shoot, I haven't actually tested if the other buttons shoot, but I wouldn't be surprised. The controls are perfect although I don't know how you could screw up the controls for a game that only uses 3 buttons.

Graphics: Well, if you have seen my reviews already, you know that graphics are not something that I generally care too much about as long as they are good for the time, and I believe that Bust-A-Move looks pretty good, nice and colourful as you would somewhat expect from a game like this and they are in general, well..... pretty good.

Sound: The music that is in the game is nice and I think it does fit the game, there are tracks for the puzzle mode, versus mode, and challenge mode. I won't go into it too much since there is not that much music here in general. But if there's any complaints I can make about this game, it is this... the music in puzzle mode, while I do somewhat like, is the ONLY track that plays through all 100 rounds. So if you feel like doing a complete playthrough in one sitting, you will be hearing this same track for the duration of the playthrough, as you could imagine, the track gets INCREDIBLY ANNOYING. Bubble bobble seemed to have this same problem as well with having only 1 track through all rounds of that. So I can only play through puzzle mode so long before getting annoyed with the music, it started to drive me mad, but that's just me.

Difficulty: I have not actually finished all of puzzle or versus yet, but I have played the majority of puzzle mode and while it is very simple to begin with, this game does get pretty difficult at some points with the structures that are made with the bubbles, I did actually get a game over while playing. But when you fail a round and continue, you get this little line guide that tells you how the bubble will travel when you shoot it, which is incredibly useful and can usually get you through the round, but once you have finished that round, the line is taken away until you fail a round again.

Verdict: The game in general is great and defiantly a good start to the series, although I do think that the sequels improve the formula with different types of bubbles, blocks and I remember Bust-A-Move 4 adding a pulley system as well as a combo system for the versus mode, and the rest of the games have different music tracks specific to the different backgrounds.

The good
Incredibly easy to understand, not to mention, fun.
The game can be pretty addictive
Controls are spot on
The game gets harder as you go through the puzzle and versus rounds, so it's not exactly a walk in the park.
All the modes in general are great
The computer can get pretty challenging

The bad
There is not that much variation in terms of the bubbles, they are mainly just different colours and that's it.
The music could get on your nerves after a couple of rounds, but some people are more tolerant of this.
100 rounds of what is basically the same thing can get pretty boring.

Well now that's done, I might move on to reviewing Bust-A-Move, the arcade version, and maybe the rest of 'em.

The problem with the game to me is that they messed up almost everything that made the original good. The music is a butchering of the original. I honestly don't see why Sonic Team could not have just used the original music, which would be fine to me, and the sound effects in this game should have just been the normal sounds, the great crash sound when you hit robotnik which gives you that feeling of "BOOM you hit him hard!" is replaced with a pop. I may sound like I am going on too much about the sound, but I don't mind remixes of music, as long as it is actually good. Also there are remixes of the themes in the credits that are somewhat better, which begs the question, why make an inferior remix and then put it in the actual gameplay... The graphics are fine but the two biggest problems with the game is the frame rate which is constantly fluctuating from being at normal speed to slow and the size of the screen, or rather how little you can see. The frame rates constant failure to remain at the right speed can easily make you mess up jumps and other crucial moments as well as disorientate some people, when standing still is the only time when the game runs at the correct speed, you know there is a problem. The screen size just makes it harder to see whats in front of you, take note of scrap brain zone act 3 where you are supposed to go up these stair like platforms while avoiding a spike ball that moves in circles, due to the size of the screen, you can't see where the ball is until you are right up to it, where you will most likely have it in your face, it's trial and error that could be easily overcome if the screen was just bigger, even if the gba doesn't have the biggest screen in the world, you could still zoom it out and make it easier to see. Apparently, the game is running of the Sonic Advance engine which is why the frame rate is a mess, which just goes to show that Sonic Team where too lazy to create the game from scratch, and keep in mind, this is a port, it's not terribly hard to do a port of a game especially when the system its being run on is actually more powerful than what the original ran on. Also, you compare the music from this game to E.T. Well the Atari wasn't exactly able to make stunning music was it? And all it really consisted of is a decent rendition of the movie theme, and the beeps and boops that are typical of an Atari game. Sonic Genesis had the potential to have good music, or at least a decent rendition of the original music. E.T wasn't going to have spectacular music or sound effects to begin with, after all, it's Atari, it can't do that much in terms of sound. And as for the anniversary edition, it's incredibly pointless if all you add is just the spindash, and I don't see how it makes the game easier when you can't see what is in front of you. Lastly, it's not like Sonic Team could not have done the port well, there is a person that made a version of sonic 1 for gba from scratch and basically made it play just how it should, just like the original. The speed is constant, you can see what is ahead and the sounds are the original. If you like this game, fine. But I honestly don't see why anyone would like this port.

Either battletoads, or I wanna be the guy. I usually cannot get past the turbo tunnel in battletoads, like most people. I have only beat the first boss in I wanna be the guy, the game just made me rage quit and I have never really bothered to make it any further.

Handhelds are defiantly not dead. Although to me, the games i've seen so far for both 3ds and vita, they both don't look like they are really worth buying, at this time anyway.

For me, I think Half Life 2 is overrated. I like pretty much everything else that have played that was made by Valve. But I just don't get it. I don't find it that fun and it felt like it went on forever. That and GTA 4, how did this game get perfect tens from critics?

Yeah, the first one is currently the game of the week. I highly recommend trying it out! Thanks for the feedback.

Well after finishing this game for the very first time and since I recently made a review for the first Earthworm Jim, I thought I'd review this one as well. Let's begin with the story.

Story-
The story is pretty simple. Similar to that of Earthworm Jim 1, Princess What's-Her-Name has been kidnapped yet again, this time by Psy-Crow, who wishes to marry her. Of course, Jim isn't going to have that happen and goes off to rescue the princess again, unfortunately for Jim, some of the baddies from the first game are still quite annoyed about their previous defeats and are still after Jim. The story is somewhat weaker, but that doesn't really matter much.

Gameplay-
Levels such as the first level and level ate pretty much have the same gameplay as the first Earthworm Jim, you run from point A to B while shooting whatever gets in your way. There are some new weapons such as the homing missile gun which shoot houses (GET IT? HOMES!), the massive wall gun thing that destroys everything on screen, and the bubble gun... that shoots bubbles, and is pretty much useless. Of course you can pick up health, ammo for your current weapon, ammo for your main gun and pick up the new weapons. There are some levels that change the gameplay such as the flyin' king where you have to fly your pocket rocket and take a bomb to the end of the level to defeat Major Mucus, and the three levels of puppy love where you have to save the puppies Psy-Crow is throwing out of a window, as well as bombs and bounce them over to Peter Puppy using a giant marshmallow thing... Dropping too many puppies makes Peter quite displeased and turns into a monster like in the first game, and proceeds to beat the snot out of you. Speaking of snot, Jim has a new friend to help him through the levels named... Snott. Snott replaces the head helicopter move from the first game by acting like a parachute and he can also swing you on slimy surfaces on some roofs. The controls are basically the same as before, the d-pad moves Jim as well as aim your gun and whip direction, a is too shoot and look like a maniac, b uses your head as a whip, although I don't recall it being mandatory at any point, and c jumps, pressing c while in the air makes Snott come out of Jim's backpack and will latch onto the slimy surfaces I mentioned before if he touches them, also pressing a while in the air uses Snott as a parachute. The gameplay is still fun as the first except there are a few annoying levels, in my opinion anyway. I don't particularly find the puppy love levels that fun, udderly abducted felt kind of tedious, but this is a matter of opinion, I also find the final level a real pain but it is by no means a bad level, it's just really hard.

Graphics-
I don't have much to say on graphics, other than they are great, but to me not as good as the first game. One reason for this is because I just seem to prefer Jim's sprite from the first game over this one. The animations are fine of course, so, yeah... not much else I can really say. Moving on.

Sound-
I think that the soundtrack from Earthworm Jim 1 was an absolutely amazing soundtrack, Earthworm Jim 2 is also pretty good, but again, I prefer the first game's soundtrack. I do like that this game has more classical music, it just seems to work well with the game's craziness to me. My favorite tracks would probably be the title theme,  the puppy love theme, lorenzen's soil and see jim run, run jim run. The game has good sound effects as well, with Jim being given new voice clips which I like.

Addictiveness and Depth-
This game has pretty much the same depth as the first game, just single player with multiple difficulties. I would defiantly play this game again since it is a fun game and all. But I would play the first game over the second.

Difficulty-
I think the game is just a tad easier than the first game, but not by much, it's still pretty hard due to levels like puppy love (especially part 3), inflated head although it is quite short, level ate due to being constantly chased by a salt shaker and defiantly the last level, see jim run, run jim run.

Verdict-
I would say that this is a very good game and is worth an 8, let's go over what I think are the good and bad points of the game shall we?

The Good-
The soundtrack is pretty awesome
It's about as funny as the first game
Most levels are pretty fun to play through
New weapons
A bubble gun
The games difficulty is a bit more forgiving

The Bad-
Can still be frustrating at times since the game is by no means easy
Three levels of puppy love, really?
Snott can be somewhat difficult to use when trying to swing off the slimy stuff since you have to be pretty accurate

This game is fun to play though, but as you may have guessed from my constant comparing, I think it is not quite as good as the first, I would defiantly try Earthworm Jim 2 if you haven't already.

Overall-
The game is very fun to play and a good game overall, but as you may have guessed due to my constant comparing, I prefer the first game over this one. But don't let that stop you from trying this game if you haven't already.

Ahhh, Earthworm Jim. Why did only last four years? From the three games that I have played, two of them were just plain awesome. Earthworm Jim (and it's HD remake, which is also awesome but I don't count re-makes unless they are drastically different) and Earthworm Jim 2. What was the third I played? That was Earthworm Jim 3d, but let's pretend that never existed. Since this game is currently the game of the week, as of the time of this review. I decided to make a review since I remember this game bringing a smile to my face when I first played it.

Story- The story is weird, like the rest of the game. A bounty hunter known as Psy-Crow, was sent by the "Evil Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt" (or Queen Slug-For-a-Butt for short) to retrieve a "ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-space-cyber-suit" (or super suit for short) made by Professor Monkey-For-a-Head, so that she can use it to conquer the universe. Psy-Crow makes a bit of a blunder by dropping the suit into Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, we have Earthworm Jim, an average boring worm doing... wormy things. Until, the suit falls on top of him giving him a body, arms, legs, using his normal worm body as a head and an awesome ray gun. After messing around with the suit, Jim overhears Psy-Crow talking to Queen Slug-For-a-Butt, apparently they have kidnapped Princess What's-Her-Name. Jim sets off to rescue the princess while having to protect his own hide from Psy-Crow, who is trying to recover the suit and other villains that want the suit for their own evil purposes, such as the best boss of all time, Bob the Killer Goldfish! Yep it's pretty silly, but too me, that's why its awesome!

Gameplay- The game is a 2d platformer, with a ray gun and a whip! The aim of the game is guide Jim through the levels from a to b (with some exceptions like snot-a-problem) shooting things that get in your way and using your whip to swing off hooks. You have your health as a percentage, and you have your ammo displayed as well, you can't exactly run out though, when your ammo goes below 100, the gun replenishes the ammo at a relatively slow pace, and of course you can pick up health and ammo along the way. The controls are this the d-pad moves Jim (duh), a is to shoot your gun and look like an maniac, you can use the d-pad while shooting to aim your gun, you can shoot in eight directions. b uses your head... as a whip, it can be used to attack enemies both while on the ground and in the air and can be used to swing off hooks, again, using the d-pad can aim your head, lastly c jumps, if you keep tapping c while falling you can use your head as a copter to slow your decent a bit, Jim will also grab onto ledges and pull himself up, also, one new thing I learned today is that you can hold down when Jim is hanging on a ledge to make him stay there hanging and scratch his butt. There are more controls for different levels, but I won't go into all of them, one of the most common though is andy asteroids where you race Psy-Crow while dodging asteroids you move your pocket rocket left and right with the d-pad, hold a to speed up and press b to use a temporary shield you can pick up. The controls, quite frankly, are perfect, some levels will have some slight difference in controls, but they are pretty easy to figure out. As for the gameplay, it's really really fun just blasting your way though enemies and defeating bosses.

Graphics- The levels look pretty good, especially what the heck which is basically hell. As for the animations, well, Jim's animations as well as the other characters are great and defiantly give off that wacky cartoony look. I mean, it's even fun just to leave Jim idle and watch his idle animations, like where he shoots himself in the face. This game may be one of the best looking games on the genesis.

Sound- Ah, yes, the sound. Firstly, the sound effects are great and fit everything that is happening, like the boing sounds when bouncing off tires, the sound of using your gun, and of course Jim himself, with all the ows you'll hear as he gets hit, the yippies you'll hear as he collects items and the OHHHH YEEEEEAHHHS when you reach checkpoints. The music for the levels is just plain awesome and fits the levels well such as what the heck, with is dramatic start, to the rest of it which is just elevator music with screams. THE HORROR! Favorites of mine include new junk city, what the heck, for pete's sake, the continue screen (or when you fight the robot chicken) and buttville.

Depth and Addictiveness- Well the game is a pretty good length, but there's no other game modes other than just the from beginning to end thing... But there are different difficulties so there is replay value to the game, but it's so awesome that you may just want to play it again since it is that great. Speaking of the difficulty...

Difficulty- Earthworm Jim is HARD. Not the hardest game ever, but still hard none the less. The annoying enemies and traps, some hard levels, the bosses make this game pretty unforgiving. An example that most people will use for a hard level is, for pete's sake, and how appropriate named the level is. In this level, you have to guide Jim's friend, Peter Puppy through the level, killing the plant things that get in his way and whipping him to make him jump over pits. If he takes damage from enemies or falls into a pit, don't worry, he won't die, he'll just turn into a monster, bite you and move you back a bit and take about 25% of health, and some points can get quite hard especially with the see-saw platforms. The chicken boss is a boss I can never seem to beat on my first try and the final level is quite hard with all the spikes and the pus, or whatever it is that gets shot at you, oh and the monsters with pincers that kill you in one hit. That's nice. So yeah, don't expect to get through this on your first try.

Overall, Earthworm Jim is a great game, it's fun to play through, the soundtrack is just awesome, but boy is it hard. But don't let that keep you from trying it, I would also recommend the HD remake, though I would say that the original is better since the voice for Jim seems better, the soundtrack sounds better and andy asteroids is made really really annoying in the remake with all the flashing colors making it hard to see and concentrate on anything.

After doing an absolutely terrible review and having it being pointed out, I decided to re-review the game and give the game a decent review. So, let's begin shall we?

Story- A soccer match is about to begin in a stadium.... somewhere. When suddenly, the robot masters from previous Mega Man games arrive to tear up the place. Seeing the carnage unfold, Mega Man goes to the stadium to stop them by... beating them at a soccer match... Mega Man games never really have had any focus on story, so I can't fault them for the story, especially on a spin-off title.

Gameplay- It's pretty much what you expect, it's soccer, you kick the ball into your opponents goal, when you are in possession of the ball, you can pass with y and shoot with b, when your opponent has the ball, you can slide tackle with y or head the ball if its in the air, b seems to do the same as y and a shoulder tackles. You can toggle whenever you want the small map at the top at the screen that shows where the ball and all the players are, as well as highlighting who you are playing as, with select. It's pretty ordinary soccer except for one thing which is a special shot. If you press r and b at the same time, and you have to be REALLY on time for this, you will shoot the ball but it will change it into something lethal which stuns anyone who gets hit by it, including your own players. These shots differ on who you are playing as at that time, such as Cut Man who makes the ball into scissors. Before the match, you can select who you want in your team, and their positions, the robots all have different stats such as speed and tackle, but if you are playing Capcom championship, you can only play as Mega Man and Mega Man clones. Whenever you can select more robots later in championship mode is something I do not know of, since I didn't make it past the first stage I selected. The gameplay, to be honest, just seems boring to me. I can see some people enjoying this, but I just can't get into this. The reason being that, since this is a Mega Man game, I was expecting just a little more to make the game more interesting, rather than just having a almost completely normal soccer game, but with special shots. I just feel that they could have had a lot more to make the game more interesting. Much like how Mario did with his soccer games, with their power ups, their own special shots, the ball changing color to make shots more likely to get in, etc. This is just soccer with Mega Man.
Graphics- Since I don't go much into graphics usually, I won't go into to much here. I will say that the graphics are just fine, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with how the game looks from what I have seen, it looks fair enough for what the SNES standards are. A game should not be judged heavily on the graphics, and that is what I will do here.

Sound- In my opinion, the Mega Man series has some of the greatest soundtracks ever. I did not go out of my way to listen to every track in the game, but from what I have listened to, the music is not bad, but I wouldn't say it is as good as what the series has had beforehand. Some tracks started to get annoying after a while like Blues Man (Proto Man) as its just a 1 min tune playing over and over. Some may have a different opinion, but in mine, I see it as OK music.

Addictiveness- Well as you may have gathered, I didn't exactly enjoy this game very much, I won't be coming back to play it any time soon. But I wouldn't say it is not going to draw anyone back ever, this depends on whenever you just like this game more than me.

Depth- Well there is a fair amount of content in this game, there is exhibition, which is just a traditional, quick match against the computer or another player. Capcom Championship, which is the story mode of the game, where you choose who to go up against. Tournament which is choosing a preset team and then competing in a tournament of 8 teams for a trophy, and lastly league which is... well a league, you select a preset team and then face certain teams in order, get the most points at the end and you win. So there is a good amount of content here, but is somewhat cliché since most sports games have these modes.

Difficulty- This will probably differ from person to person, depending on how good they are at soccer games, the strategies and all that stuff. Me? I'm terrible at soccer, so it's pretty hard for me, that may also be why I'm not enjoying the game much, but I'd say its more because of the somewhat dull gameplay.

Overall, I wouldn't really recommend this game, other than to people who are really into soccer games, but of course there are just better games than this if you are into them. If you expecting what I think most people were expecting, which is a crazy Mega Man soccer game with power ups, weapons and other interesting twists, you'll probably be as disappointed as me. So I'm afraid, after giving the game a somewhat decent review, my opinion still hasn't changed on this game. I only hope this review is okay to everyone.

"An awesome Pirated game where they placed Mario in Sonics world!" to me and most people who have played this, is not a fitting description for this game. Somari is a absolute failure of a game.

Graphics- Well they look like Sonic 1's graphics but... bad. The master system version of Sonic 1 had better graphics than this. And Mario.... looks kinda stupid.

Music- The music is absolutely atrocious. It's meant to be the music of Sonic 1 except it's done REALLY badly.

Addictiveness- Well, I will most likely never play this again, unless I want to play a bad game for some reason. So I wouldn't say the addictiveness is very high, it somewhat depends on how dedicated you are to finishing that one level you can't get past, for me, that would be the first level, no, I'm not bad at the game, the game is just an unfair buggy mess.

Story- There's a story? Well I guess it would be the same as Sonic 1 except Mario is trying to save the day by trying (and failing) to be like Sonic.

Depth- Well I believe its the same length as Sonic 1, so there's not much here, but at least it has a decent length, I could only imagine what labyrinth zone is like on this game *shudders*. It will probably take some time to beat this game, if you master the controls and recall the horrible enemy placement.

Controls- The controls are... decent. It plays like Sonic, but you cannot run fast like Sonic. And it takes
forever to even pick up speed.  You pretty much run into everything
that prevents you from getting top speed. There is also a spin dash
move. It's cool that they actually included it. But it is useless.

Difficulty- The game is way too hard due to enemies coming out of nowhere and trying to dodge projectiles is about as easy as inserting a brick into a disk drive. Oh and there's a pit that if you fall in, you can't get out of it and you will get hit, grab a ring as you fall backwards and get hit again and again and again. Fun.

Overall- Not exactly the Mario/Sonic hybrid you may be looking for. I'm just waiting for the two of them to be in an actual game not related to the Olympics. I wouldn't recommend this unless you like, terrible music, graphics, controls and enemy placement. I doubt you would like all those.

Sonic's first game was the first game I ever played. I love the original game and I would consider it to be a classic, like pretty much everyone else. I thought I'd try this version to see if it really is that bad. Take a guess.... Let's examine this "game" shall we?

Graphics-
They look like the original which is all well and good but the game has slowdown absolutely everywhere. I swear, the only time this game runs at a decent speed is when sonic is standing still. I tried this out with the first boss, it was slow and extremely choppy until I put sonic in a corner and just watched Robotnik go back and forth at a good speed. Other than this extremely bad flaw, the graphics I would say are fine.

Sound-
Ahh, don't you just love the sounds of the first sonic game? Well how about hearing a terribly butchered version of every single track in the game? That's right, everything in the sound department sucks, not a single track or sound effect in this game sounds good, apart from star light zone which is decent. Everything just sounds pitiful compared to the original. Remember the crashing (ish) sort of sounds when you destroy the wall in green hill? Well they replaced them with pitiful popping sounds... Did they try at all with this?

Addictiveness-
Yes, I'm SURE anyone that has played this game will love to play this again. With it's awful sound, horrendous slowdown and incredibly bad screen size, this is surely as addictive as Tetris. No, I guarantee that you will not want to play this abomination again, unless you are masochistic.

Story-
What story is there? Robotnik is turning animals into robots to take over the world, sonic has to stop him. What else is there to say? Well at least they didn't make a stupid re-imagining of the plot.

Depth-
The game is the same as the original, 6 zones (not counting final zone), 6 chaos emeralds to get through special stages (which are also completely butchered, what a surprise.) and there is an original mode which is the original game accept with all the lovely features stated earlier in this review and an anniversary mode with the same torture accept you have the spin dash, completely pointless and unnecessary. Now wouldn't you rather play the original, or a port that's actually good?

Difficulty-
I would say the original can be quite hard, but this is even harder because of the games small screen, so you can see practically nothing in front of you, slowdown that could mess up your jumps, and the physics which I'm pretty sure are completely crazy and don't work how they should. Combine these elements and you get a hard to control sonic and a completely anti-fun mess.

Verdict- With all these great features, you would think this game deserves a 10 right? Oh no no no no no no no no. This game deserves a 2, and that me being a bit generous.
Let's recap the bad points and good points shall we?

Bad-
Butchered music, that would make you rather listen to the lovely sounds of nails on a chalkboard.
Messed up physics that would drive Newton to insanity.
Terrible slowdown that may make trying to walk through sonic labyrinth more fun.
Incredibly dumb screen size, I mean, come on, how did they think this was ok?
Pointless anniversary mode.
Just a terrible port of a great game.

Good-
Well star light zones music could be worse.
No incredibly stupid and pointless changes... oh wait, the spin dash, well I guess it has some purpose.

Overall, I would recommend this game if you want to feel annoyed and maybe a little bit sad that this was how they celebrated sonic's 15th. Happy anniversary sonic! Now, let's forget this ever existed.

Ok, I'm gonna say straight out, I only played this for 10 mins and I am sick of this game. It's awful.
Story: Lester basically ends up on a island and wants to go home to read comics. In a nutshell. He's a nerd, and is... well, and unlikely hero.
Graphics: I don't say much about graphics, I will just day that they are fine.
Game play: As far as I have played you must get to the end of each section from left to right. Along the way you will have fun with your cowardly zero, oops I mean hero, with things like trying to get him to simply kick a turtle so you can keep moving, tedious jumping and constantly running away. FUN! I stopped playing at a part where a seagull picks you up and takes you to middle of the level. It is so annoying.
Controls: Horribly stiff, now if I remember the snes button layout, b makes you jump, a makes you kick, y makes you run after a bit of speed up time and x makes you push things. Not the worst control layout ever, but it all feels so stiff moving Lester, the controls annoy me. To do things like jumping up to a ledge, you have to hold up and press the jump button you have to be a little bit away from the ledge to climb, so if you are too close you have to turn around, step, turn then climb, it is so tedious. Eventually you will get a weapon, how you use it, I don't know, never got that far.
Sound: From what I have listened to, it fits the setting, but it was repetitive and quite frankly, I could hear my growling while playing more than the music.
I'm not going to go any further into this, basically the game is a frustrating mess with stiff controls. Anything good? Well the fact that Lester runs away and gets scared at certain points does add to some character, and it did feel like I was helping him overcome fears. But this game is too annoying for me to continue.

Story: Not much of a story, but..... You play as Little Mac, who is training to become the champion of the WVBA's minor, major and world circuits and to fight against boxing legend, Mike Tyson. Doc Louis, your trainer, trains you between each circuit to prepare you for the next.Gameplay: Both you and your opponent have a life bar, you have to learn your oppenents movements and punch them when they are vurlnarable. You cannot just punch them and get a hit since most hits will be blocked. Once the opponent has been knocked down, Mario will come in and count, obviusly if he reaches 10 then you win. Or if you knock your opponent down 3 times in the same round, it is a TKO and you win. You can also win by decision. Some fighters cannot lose by decision. Also, if you punch fighters at certain times, you can get a star, you can use it by pressing start for a powerful uppercut which can be dodged though. If you get hit while you have a star, you will lose one. Lastly, you have a heart count, the hearts deplete when your punches are blocked, when you block punches or when you are hit. When all hearts are gone, you will get tired and be unable to punch. So keep pressing buttons and dodge attacks to get your hearts back.Controls: Left is to dodge left, right is to dodge right, B is to punch left, A is to punch right (hopefully didn't get them mixed up). Holding up while pressing A or B will punch the opponents head. Down is to block some punches. Start is to use a star uppercut if you have a star. That is about it. Extremely easy to control so it is your fault if you lose, which is good.Graphics: Well, you can't expect much from graphics on the NES but the different boxers look pretty good to me, graphics don't really bother me that much to be honest.Sound: There isn't much music really, but the fight music is fantastic and the other tracks in the game are great. The sound effects also suit what you are doing, from punching to being knocked down.Addictiveness: This game is quite addictive and is fun to play through over and over again. Beating your oppenents is very satisifying.Depth: It is extremely simple really, but that doesn't matter when the gameplay is so good.Difficulty: The first 2 fighters,Glass Joe and Von Kaiser are pathetic. Piston Honda may give you trouble the first time you face him. The game gets extremely hard the further you get through the game. The game is easier when you know how to beat the fighters and you know their patterns, but the world circuit is very very hard and Mike Tyson himself, I have never beaten.Overall: A classic, and even if you don't like boxing or boxing games that are realistic, you might just like this brilliant, fun game. I recommend trying it out. Though it is a bit faster than it is meant to be on a emulater.

Let me make this perfectly clear. This game will beat you, over and over again. Regardless, this game is great. I have beat this game (easiest difficulty though) but it took a long long time.Story: Princess Prin Prin has been kidnapped by one of Sardius' demons. King Arthur must save her again.Controls: I have played this game on virtual console and the controls were flawless. The d-pad is to move, y uses your weapon and b jumps. You can do a double jump but once you have jumped, you cannot change the direction you jump unless you do a double jump. Gameplay: You must go through about 7 stages with enemies galore, each with a boss at the end of each which to me are easier than the levels themselves. But there is a catch, if you do manage to get through the levels, then unfortunatly, you must re-do the levels becuase you cannot defeat Sardius without the princess' bracelet. If you manage keep it till the last level then you can beat Sardius. Beat him and you win. There are different armours in the game, the normal does nothing but protect you from dying. The green armour powers up your weapon. The gold armour powers up your weapon and you can do a powerful charge attack with your weapon. Regardless of what armour you have, one hit will destroy it and another hit will kill you. There are many weapons that you will find in chests, some good, some useless, like the torch. The knife is my weapon of choice.Graphics: I don't say much about graphics, but they are very nice looking. But to me, graphics don't make the game. Music: I love the soundtrack of this game. The first level being my favourite music in the game. Verdict: Keep in mind that this game is possibly one of the hardest games ever made. You will die alot, but don't let that stop you from trying this game.

I love pac-man but this is just a bad port. The controls are annoyinly stiff. I can get through level 1 without dieing once in the arcade version. But this? I did not even make it past the first level alive on my first try. In the arcade the ghosts kill you by overlapping you a bit. In this port, they kill you right on contact. WTH! And the ghosts flicker. I can hardly see where they are. And once i get a power pellet, it's hard to tell when they are blue or not, and i end up killing myself. It's a horrible port, end of. Me giving this game a 1 overall is generous.

Megaman just needs to keep pacman's power pellets away and then saw his face of with the metal blade.