Month: June 2026

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty mini review

“Metal Gear Solid 2” is synonymous with subverting expectations. It’s synonymous with a lot of things, actually, representing its impact on the gaming industry.

If we can praise any one game for the rise of the video game auteur and the rush to build armies of developers to implement those visions for a hungry audience … we can certainly credit this one.

Hideo Kojima’s sequel to his PlayStation breakout hit has been celebrated partially as a showcase for the PlayStation 2 hardware, and partially as a game that prioritizes story to an almost absurd degree (hence the armies of developers).

The ultimate lesson at the heart of the story is to think for oneself, a worthy ambition for sure. The game gives us a cast of characters who are all entirely unreliable to illustrate this point, and yet, the entire narrative begins to collapse under the question of what is real and what isn’t. That might be a problem inherent to this type of story. But I confess to it breaking the suspension of disbelief more than I’d prefer. If I am to pretend that a story is true to engage with it, what am I to do when I am told the story is in fact not true?

If these questions seem a little too serious for a game about people creeping around under cardboard boxes, well, don’t blame me. The point here is to start using the brain, after all.

It was an absolute pleasure to engage with this, but I struggle with the question of just how essential it is, especially when we have the original game to play as well.

I think where this game lands is among my absolute favorites that just don’t quite make the Top 100. It’s more than fair to say that there are no regrets about having played, though. It’s a wacky-ass game.

Dave’s Score: 8/10

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (arcade) mini review

I’m not going to add a whole lot I didn’t cover already over here.

I guess what I’d say is that this is such a joy to play with my kids whenever I can convince them to give it a go. They’re into the Roblox and such, so it can be tough. We played it for Father’s Day this year.

It was great.

It’s always great.

Thanks, kids!

Dave’s Score: 9/10

Snake Rattle ‘n’ Roll mini review

If you play enough NES games in quick succession, you run the risk of being lulled to sleep, expecting an endless parade of basic platformers to bore you into submission.

That might be overstating it. I mean, I LIKE platformers, so the “risk” here may result in a fate that’s not half bad. But anyway, the point is, some NES games can be “same-y.”

“Snake Rattle ‘n’ Roll” is anything but. The objective is for you to move a little snake guy safely through an increasingly difficult to traverse 3D-isometric landscape. The pun of the title plays out with 50’s style music adaptations, a bright, colorful setting, and a bunch of critters trying to kill you.

Appropriately enough from the same studio that ported “Marble Madness” to the NES (Rare), this game reminds of that one, particularly as it relates to challenges inherent to the perspective (such as movement). The snake has to consume little bouncing pellets like Pac-Man to advance through stages … and he attacks enemies with his tongue.

If any of this sounds strange, I think that was the plan. Ultimately, Snake feels like a breath of fresh air compared to so many other NES games that refuse to deviate from established norms. That makes it an easy recommendation (with the caveat that it gets stupid levels of difficult in the end game).

Dave’s Score: 8/10

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 53)

“Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

If you’re of a certain age, an earworm is navigating its way through your brain right now as if you were RFK.

Where … 

In the world … 

Is … 

Carmen Sandiego?

That song was the theme to the television show spin-off based on the original property, which originally was an educational game kids could play on their parents’ computers.

I frame it that way to differentiate it from an earlier entry in this list “The Oregon Trail,” which in my experience was primarily consumed at schools. Carmen Sandiego made it to schools too, but just as many people played it at home.

Yes, kids back in the 1980s and 1990s were supremely bored enough to want to actively engage with educational games at home. How do I know this? I was one of those bored kids. And no game was quite so pivotal to the “educate your kids while they play video games!” parenting impulse as Carmen Sandiego.

It essentially justified the entire enterprise of educational video games.

If you want to know how it did that – when so many other games had tried and failed dating back to the Atari golden age – you don’t need to overthink it.

This game was actually fun to play.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? at a glance:

Genre: Educational
Released: 1985
Platform: PC
Member of World Video Game Hall of Fame
Continue reading Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 53)

S.C.A.T. mini review

This game is decent.

A shoot-em-up on the NES … I mean, that tracks, yeah? It’s probably gonna be decent … but no better than that.

S.C.A.T. is way too short a game. It makes up for that with typical (for a shooter) unforgiving gameplay to prolong the experience, and it also does some interesting things. And no, by “interesting” I don’t mean “shamelessly rip off 80s sci-fi movies, to the point they named their characters ‘Arnold’ and ‘Sigourney.’”

What the game does is give you the ability to fire either left or right, send enemies at you from both directions, and then leave you to try to figure it all out. What helps you in this effort is the ability to set rotating secondary weapons to fire in specific directions, which allows you to cover your rear end when appropriate.

Usually, this gimmick of firing in either direction falls super flat for me, but here it works. And like I said, it’s a short game, so the weirdness doesn’t drag on forever. There’s something to be said for that.

Dave’s Score: 7/10