Video games – Page 3 – DaveGladow.com

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond review

This is tricky. A much anticipated and then much maligned sequel of a beloved Nintendo franchise, Metroid Prime 4 is probably best experienced without any of that baggage. So a review kind of defeats the purpose.

What I feel comfortable sharing is that it doesn’t live up to the lofty expectations many had for it, nor does it fall to depths many have accused it of doing. Instead, my experience was very much, “Hey, more Metroid Prime, neat!”

I think the flaws in design are undeniable, so much so that the much derided desert area does necessitate a warning for first-time players: I would not ignore collecting the green crystals. Go a little out of your way to ram into them on your motorcycle as much as you possibly can. Do this and I think the pacing of the game works just fine. Don’t do this and the end of the game might begin to feel like an extended Kids Bop concert.

That there needs to be a caveat is in its own way disappointing, but I want to be clear: I REALLY enjoyed playing this. I’m okay with the choices many had a problem with, the music and graphics are top-shelf, and it’s still as fun as ever to wander through beautiful alien biomes, scanning all the things before blasting them into atoms. (The boss battles in particular are a highlight.)

I would compare this game to “Skyward Sword,” a personal favorite of mine that really irritated a lot of people in the Zelda community. The two games are similar in creating a relatively small, interesting world with interconnected distinctive biomes, and then demanding the user revisit areas in a fairly linear way. They also share the propensity for leaning into what made each series successful, with perhaps an acknowledgement that there’s no further to go without total reinvention. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking possibly so. (The difference between the titles is that the story beats here are not nearly as successful as they are in SS, but again, I still had a good time with the gameplay and environments.)

Ultimately, I hope people play this and we get another sequel. I also hope they mix things up a little more next time.

Dave’s Score: 8/10

Parasol Stars review

I want to give this a few paragraphs, because “Parasol Stars” is a game I really enjoy and it’s also a game I know won’t make the retro essentials list. (It’ll miss by a couple dozen spots at present.)

The basics here are that it’s (mostly) a non-scrolling platformer (it scrolls a bit, but it’s mostly a static area that covers at most a couple of screens) that was released on a few different platforms, perhaps most famously for the Turbografx-16 (this is how I played it, via the mini). It’s a multiplayer title, and you control these two cute little guys who have to manipulate bubbles to defeat all the enemies on the screen. Clearing the screen advances you to the next stage.

The quirk, and the reason for the title, is you use umbrellas to achieve this, and that dynamic — of using your umbrella to block attacks, collect bubbles, launch attacks, and float about the screen — provides a good time.

The graphics and sound are really top notch for this sort of thing, as well.

So, Parasol Stars is basically “Bubble Bobble,” but prettier and more fun.

That makes sense, since it’s a direct sequel to Bubble Bobble, after all.

Anyway, that’s the gist. I think it’s tempting to think of a game like this as being outdated by the time of its release, let alone today, but pushing that thought aside results in enjoyment that isn’t to be dismissed … it flirts with “must-play” status for me. I roped my oldest daughter into playing it with me, and we had a ball. It’s good in single-player, but I think it truly sings in multiplayer. That’s the way to go if you can.

Dave’s Score: 8/10

M.U.S.H.A. review

Compile, they of Blazing Lazers and Spriggan fame on the PC Engine/Turbografx, are the mad geniuses behind this vertical shooter, MUSHA, a much-coveted piece of the well-received Aleste series.

Props to you if you understood the entirety of that sentence — you passed my old-school gamer test (not really, but that was a lot of dorkstore reference material, if we’re keeping it 100).

This is one of those games that was reviewed decently at the time, but it became somewhat rare/expensive on the secondhand market, and its reputation grew as a result over time. By the time it made it to virtual console, people were grateful to be able to play it at all.

I think where I fall on this is that I prefer Lazers and Spriggan, but not by much. Lazers feels the most culturally significant as one of the Turbografx-16’s most important early releases, Spriggan is the most chaotic and over-the-top fun (while somehow also being the most polished), and MUSHA is a good piece of Aleste (basically a bunch of vertical shooters that were locked to Sega) history with a robust, somewhat confusing weapons upgrade package and a stellar Genesis twangy-sounding score.

I’d recommend all three, to be honest.

Dave’s Score: 8/10

Soulcalibur II review

I’m shaking things up a little in 2026, thinking that since I write these little mini reviews on social media anyway, why not just do that on my own blog? Bonus: I can throw in a few more words.

Anyway, Soulcalibur II is the first game I defeated in 2026, specifically the GameCube version on Nintendo Classics Online.

It’s a one-on-one fighter that got its beginnings on the Dreamcast (and arcades). The first game was beloved, but never made it to other consoles. As the Dreamcast became a financial failure for Sega, the decision to port the sequel to other systems was made.

The hook of the series is that the combatants uses weaponry such as swords and clubs to wreck one another. The gimmick of this entry is the inclusion of special characters for each port. Here on the GameCube, you got Nintendo’s Link, of Zelda fame.

The game is a fun time, easy to pick up and play, with button-mashing serving the newcomer well. The little Namco touches like the hilarious narrator from the Tekken series showing up were a nice surprise. It’s also a solid, diverse lineup of characters, and I enjoy the dynamic of being able to knock your opponent off a cliff to get the win. No real negatives either to speak of.

In short, it’s a good fighter. Gonna keep playing to decide where I’d rank it among my all-time favorites, but I think it says something that I want to keep playing. Check it out if you have the means.

Dave’s Score: 9/10

My games of 2025

I feel like I might have done my game of the year proper justice here, so I’m not sure there’s a lot I need to add to that.

I played a lot of games this year, but honestly, nothing was better than “Shadow of the Colossus,” a game I think of as being a must-play in the same category of games like Tetris and Donkey Kong.

Yes, you may play this game and not find it to be the game for you.

Yes, you should play it anyway, because the game is foundational to understanding the medium at large.

Beyond that landmark title, however, there was a lot of good stuff on the docket in 2025 (you can read through my thoughts recorded in real time right here on social media).

Below, I list everything I played through to some level of completion over the past year, and at the end, you’ll see a ranking of the best games I finished for the first time this year. It’s a fun list – hopefully with some decent insight included.

I’m excited for next year, too. Santa delivered a Switch 2 to the family, with all sorts of goodies to dive into.

Anyhow, read on to see how I rank the games I completed this calendar year.

SimCity — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 50)

We’ve reached No. 50!

At varying points throughout this countdown of Retro Gaming Essentials, I’ve had several “come to Jesus” moments where I’ve had to re-evaluate my ranking.

Often, these internal conversations have occurred at noteworthy markers, such as when we hit the Top 20 with “Super Mario Kart” or the Top 30 with “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.”

The conversations, such that they are, generally go something like this:

“Would I feel like a dumbass if this game wasn’t (or was) included in my Top (whatever)?”

That acts as a tie-breaker and helps me crystalize my recommendations. And when you boil it down, that’s really what this list is – a list of games I think should be experienced. Not just my personal favorites, and not just the games that seem important: Concessions on both points will be had, in the interest of providing a resource that is a little more worthwhile as a whole.

And that resource is this: What games, at the end of the day, do I recommend people play (and why)?

Building off of that, if we’re saying to folks, “Hey, play these 50 games,” I don’t see how that list of 50 can be at all close to complete if we don’t talk about “SimCity” (and by extension “The Sims”).

Any reasonable approximation of the history of video gaming requires that conversation.

So, as we put a bow on 50 reviews of some of the best games in existence (with the intention of someday reaching a tidy 100), I say this with full confidence:

Any gamer looking to play some of the all time greats should 100% include SimCity (or one of its sequels) on their to-do list.

SimCity at a glance:
Genre: Building simulation
Released: 1989
Platform: PC
“Game of the Year” from Computer Gaming Monthly

Star Parodier — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 49)

We haven’t really talked about Japanese imports in this countdown yet (present company excepted), and it feels like a pretty important part of the games industry at large … so let’s maybe do that, yeah?

Bonus: It gives me an excuse to talk about what is just a dang delightful game.

So, let’s go ahead and discuss “Star Parodier,” an excellent “cute ‘em up” that somehow didn’t get ported to America for a couple of decades despite it being a feast visually, aurally, and gameplay-wise, while also being that rarest of things shooters so often fail to even remotely consider during planning and development:

It’s approachable.

Star Parodier at a glance:
Genre: Shooter
Released: 1992
Platform: PC Engine Super CD
9/10 score from Nintendo Life

Mega Man 3 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 48)

I don’t know that I’m going to have much more room for series duplicates and sequels in the rest of this countdown.

And yet, here we are anyway.

I mean, sure, we’re still going to have to see some covered ground as we go along, because I just have too much fondness for particular games to leave them off. And if we can acknowledge that sometimes sequels can exceed the original work (as we have done), we can likewise acknowledge that sometimes they don’t *quite* get there … yet they have a great deal of value just the same.

Even more than that, if I’m honest with myself (and you), I can also allow that on occasion, my own choice for elevation in this list is more of a coin flip than a definitive proclamation. In other words, the relative quality between two choices for inclusion from a particular property might be essentially equal.

So, let us state for the record that even though it feels a shame to lean into a specific series often during a countdown of this sort (since it will inevitably result in the exclusion of other series), it is also not entirely without merit. Truly, sometimes, the games in question simply just deserve to be here.

For me at least, the real litmus test, above and beyond personal attachment, historical importance, or even quality, is going to be how distinctive an experience you might get from game to game within a particular series.

I can wince a little at all of the Mario games we have on this list so far, but only for appearance’s sake, because when you peer a little closer, you’ll see a unique experience from one game to the next.

To elaborate, Mario 1 was the original promise of continued fun and excitement. Mario 2 was the colorful oddball sequel that innovated. Mario 3 was excellence personified. Mario World was even more excellence personified. Mario 64 was a groundbreaker. And so on, and so on.

It’s the same with Castlevania. “Dracula’s Curse” is perhaps the best possible example of old-school “NES-hard” platforming, “Rondo of Blood” was the transitional game, introducing more dynamic branching levels and upping the visuals and sound, and “Symphony of the Night” was the natural end point for that evolution, going for more explorer-based action.

With all of that considered, you can probably pretty safely guess why we’re now going to talk a little about Mega Man 3. Sure, I have a personal attachment to it. But it’s also a titan among 8-bit platformers giving it a historical relevance, and it’s roughly as good as the game we already covered – Mega Man 2.

But ALSO, it’s here because it’s distinct enough from Mega Man 2 to merit inclusion on its own.

Mega Man 3 at a glance:
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1990
Platform: NES
GamePro’s third-greatest 8-bit video game of all time

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 47)

So, other than Mario and Link, the omnipresent faces of Nintendo who will still be around long after I’ve left this big blue rock, I haven’t had another game/series/character manage to break past two appearances on this list of nearly 50 (so far!) games I think everyone should try playing.

Until now, that is.

Welcome to the club, Castlevania!

Truly, it is a distinguished honor.

Your children’s children will be talking about this moment.

Okay, probably not, but we can still talk about “Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse” for a while if we want to, so let’s do that.

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse at a glance:
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1990
Platform: NES
Nintendo Power’s ninth-best NES game

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 46)

This section of the countdown might seem a little like the department of redundancy department.

The next few titles we’ll be featuring in this space are games in series that I love that already had representation in the countdown, and yet, here I am, saying you should play this other game too.

The onus then falls on me to make the case for why people should play not just the game that falls higher on the list (in this case, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time“), but for them to play that game AND this one.

In the case of the arcade classic beat ‘em up “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” we’re going to be looking at three distinct things, I’d say.

The importance of the coin-op brawler as a genre within video games.
The massive cultural relevance of the ninja turtles.
Why this game, itself, is fun.

So yeah, let’s get to it. Why should someone play that other turtles game … and this turtles game too?

Let’s read on to find out!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at a glance:
Genre: Beat ’em up
Released: 1989
Platform: Arcade
Konami’s highest-grossing arcade game.