PixlBit

Well we’re nearing the end of BaD.  Sorry I didn’t participate, but with my goal of having three articles a week up at GamerDad.com, it would’ve spread me too thin to do that.  Speaking of which, I’ve got another batch of reviews I’ve recently posted at GamerDad.com!  Please click on the links and read as many as you can and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d appreciate it.  OK let’s begin!

Psikyo Shooting Stars Bravo (Switch)

Back in the 90’s and seeping a bit into the 2000’s, one of the kings of arcade 2-D shooters was Psikyo.  Now NIS America has compiled a couple of collections of Psikyo’s games on the Switch, so today we’re going to take a look at the ones in Bravo, as opposed to Alpha.  I hate it that I missed out on reviewing Alpha earlier, but I liked this Bravo collection so much that I went out and bought them both, so I can talk about Alpha later.  Only problem is that the only way to get the physical versions of these games is to get the special editions, which are a bit overpriced.  But like I said, I’ll talk about them later.  I do like the artwork in a lot of Psikyo games, though.  Most of it was done by a Jun Tsukasa.  I like his work but I’ll let you guess why.

Wattam (PS4)

Those of you who know me may also know that I’m a huge fan of Katamari Damacy.  It was my Game of the Year back in 2004 and aside from a couple of early mobile offerings, I’ve played every game in the series since.  And I’ve also played other games from the Katamari creator, like Noby Noby Boy and I really want to get the Play Date handheld for his other game, but it may be too expensive.  So you can imagine my surprise and delight when I visited Annapurna’s booth at PAX South and found out they were publishing another game by the Katamari creator, and it’s every bit as weird and charming as his other works.  And I was even more happy that I get to review it!  So how weird is it?  Well you’ll just have to read the review to find out!

SpeedRunners (Switch)

Do you remember the intro to Disney-Pixar’s The Incredibles?  It was done in silhouettes and solid colors with a bravado brass heroic soundtrack.  That’s what I first thought of when booting up SpeedRunners.  The game has been out for a while on nearly every platform, but for some reason I haven’t reviewed it yet.  Just one of those games that fell through the cracks for me I guess.  But it was recently released on Switch, so I finally hopped on board.  Anyway, SpeedRunners is a 2-D platformer racing game where you choose a super hero character and race against others in lap-based levels.  It also kind of reminds me of Runbow, so if you liked that one, you’ll definitely want to check out this review and the game itself.

Unplugged: Shovel Knight Exceed Card Game

Shovel Knight is one of the most beloved and prolific indie games in the past few years.  It’s gotten several spin-off games and cameo appearances, and now you can play a card game featuring the characters.  Exceed is an existing card game with fighting game mechanics.  In fact, they did a version of it with Street Fighter characters that I reviewed last year.  The Shovel Knight version plays a lot the same, but I still say the rules are a bit too complicated for me.  But when it comes to board games, anything more involved than Hungry, Hungry Hippos is too complicated for me!

Willy Jetman: Astromonkey’s Revenge (Switch)

A starship with a careless space chimp pilot on board has exploded, leaving wreckage on a nearby planet.  So now it’s up to intergalactic garbage man Willy Jetman to clean up the mess.  But as he’s cleaning up, he ends up fighting some rogue robots and frees a space monkey from their prison.  Could this be the same monkey from the crashed spaceship?  And why is the monkey causing so much trouble?  It’s up to you to find out in this 2-D action platform shooter. The game kind of reminds me of a cross between Cave Story and an obscure NES game I used to rent as a kid called Solar Jetman.  It’s a fun and competent little game, but gets way too hard later on.

Haunted Halloween ’86 (Switch)

Donny and Tami are two schoolkids in 1986.  Which means they’d be about my age now.  It’s Halloween night, and they’re walking home from school to get ready to go trick or treating.  But on the way they hear about some strange noises at a farmhouse, and decide to investigate.  But they fall into a trap and now must defend their town from a zombie attack!  The game is like a cross between River City Ransom on the NES, and maybe, I dunno, Castlevania or Costume Quest, what with the Halloween themes and all.  Anyway, Haunted Halloween ’86 is available to download on most current consoles and PC, and even an old console as well!  Yeah you heard that right, at one point you could get this game as a homebrew NES cartridge!  So it’s actually running on that hardware!  But it’s reviewed on Switch here.  And like most NES games, it’s fun but way too hard.

Amiibo Duo Clad in Blue-o

And lastly, I got a couple of new amiibo figures recently.  Both are from Smash Ultimate and are echo characters: Dark Samus from Metroid and Richter from Castlevania.  Let’s check them out.

And that’s all for now!  Thanks for checking out my reviews and posting ‘likes’ and comments!  I do appreciate it!  Later!  --Cary