Slightly off-beat for a Kirby game, given that the series relies on a fairly traditional set of controls and gameplay mechanics, and Canvas Curse uses mostly new ideas for getting around. I guess you could say it's like a spinoff game. But, I still found it fun to play through, and if you've got nothing else to do, tooling around to earn medals (for unlocking things) is good for quick spots of time-killing.

Progress: Complete

Meteos is the new Tetris Attack. If you don't know what I mean, it's not important to you, and if you do, know that I mean it.

Progress: Complete

Frankly I just got fed up. My dissatisfaction with Evermore is hard to quantify, but there are a number of contributing reasons which aren't: a lack of vital in-game documentation (e.g. how to throw spears), a very sharp learning curve (when is alchemy needed and when is it wasteful?), and overblown environmental interaction (last I played I got up to a marketplace with a hopelessly complicated merchant-trading system that today's economists would have a difficult time trying to decipher). I think the kicker is that the basic combat gameplay is not fun enough to reward the incoherence of the rest of the game.

Progress: Gave Up

Even among RPG aficionados, Skies of Arcadia is not a title much heard of, amidst Final Fantasy this and Dragon Warrior that. This is most likely due to the game being released on the Dreamcast - a console that died long before its time, and which spelled the end for Sega's console business. It's truly a shame, and hopefully the Gamecube remake of the game will garner more attention to it.

Skies of Arcadia Legends follows the exploits of a young Air Pirate named Vyse, inadvertently thrust into an arcane quest for peace - and more importantly, adventure. Throughout the game, the player will live out the life-long dream of Vyse: to sail beyond the horizon, to go where none have gone before. The spirit of exploration and adventure is strong in this game.

The denizens of the world of Arcadia live in the sky, in floating islands, traveling through the skies by airship. In this world, there are three kinds of people: the citizens, who simply live their lives in the sky; the militaries, who must maintain a constant vigil for the enemy; and air pirates. Air pirates are divided into two sects - the Black Pirates, attacking anyone and everyone they please; and the Blue Rogues, a loosely-organized gang of freelance Robin Hoods. The Blue Rogues will only attack ships who are armed, and will never pick on the little guy, attempting to enforce justice wherever possible. The main character Vyse, and his childhood friend Aika, are teenage Blue Rogues in training; Vyse's father, Dyne, is highly-acclaimed in the Blue Rogue world for his deeds.

The real plot of Skies of Arcadia begins when Dyne and his crew (including Vyse and Aika) attack a ship of the Valuan armada, the enforcers of the toughest empire in Arcadia - after a riveting introductory story, the teenage duo rescues a girl named Fina, held by the Empire for mysterious reasons. What follows is a deep and intricately-written storyline, harkening back to the ancient 'old world' of Arcadia, and bringing at almost every turn an intriguing plot twist. Not only is the plot well developed, but the storytelling is superb, and never fails to impress.

Story isn't the only thing Skies has in its favor, though - it also offers gameplay that is both original and enjoyable. On the surface, the battle system is a tried-and-true simple menu- and turn-based RPG standard; but beyond that, there are abilities which offer a nice learning curve and striking innovation in the world of RPGs. Your party, which will typically contain Vyse, Aika, Fina, and a fourth character dependent upon what part of the game you're in, has a Spirit Meter shared by all party members. Spirit Points will slowly recharge throughout the battle by a set amount per turn, up to a certain maximum point. Party members can use items, conduct a regular attack, defend, or run; all these actions are free, in terms of spirit points. They can also use a magic spell, or use a special SP move; but magic spells consume a certain amount of spirit points dependent upon their power (as well as a single magic point from the character that uses the spell), and SP moves use up spirit points as well. Another option during battle is for a character to Focus, which will add spirit points to the party's SP pool in addition to the spirit points from the turn's end.

The Spirit battle system is only one aspect of SoA's gameplay genius. The overworld is often a largely overlooked aspect of RPGs; but certainly not in Skies. It could, in fact, be said that the overworld is the main focus of Skies of Arcadia. A high emphasis is placed on overworld exploration, as you possess a blank world map which gradually becomes uncovered as you explore the world. Throughout the course of the game, you will find new airships, and upgrades to your airship, that will enable you to explore new areas; natural obstacles, like stone reefs, wind walls, and strong winds, will block your progress until your ship is capable of handling them; this often ties in with how the story of the game is revealed. While sailing, you can also make discoveries, which you can sell to a Sailor's Guild in some towns in exchange for money.

You've got battles, and you've got sailing in a ship; so what about ship battles? A remarkable - and highly enjoyable - facet of playing Skies of Arcadia is in the ship-based battles, where your airship engages another one-on-one in a duel to the death. You must use main cannon, secondary cannon, magic attacks (once you find a certain upgrade allowing you to do so), and special ship attacks to destroy your enemies. Spirit points and Magic points are used in these battles as well: SP are consumed for attack actions of any sort, and MP when using magic, quite obviously. There are some non-story-related ship battles, but most of the ones you'll likely get into are direct requirements for going through the game, such as battling the Valuan Armada. The strategics involved in planning out a turn of ship battle are very entertaining, and it's always fun to watch an enemy ship burst into flames and sink into deep sky, never to be seen again.

In addition to the battle systems and the overworld, there are towns and dungeons galore. Towns are often full of exciting things to do and people to talk to; dungeons abound with interesting enemies and scenery; and both offer countless puzzles with progress or powerful items as their rewards. Some of the puzzles are easy, but a number of them are quite the melon-scratcher, requiring acute observation and deep thought to come to the desired end. There are even two ship-based sailing dungeons in the game.

With so much story and gameplay greatness in Skies of Arcadia Legends, you might think that the graphics of the game would be neglected - but you'd only be partially correct. Most of the graphics are barely, if at all, tweaked from the Dreamcast version of the game, which, while still very respectable, are recognizably behind the graphics of today's standards. The game's cinematic introduction shows off some of the graphical fallacies particularly; and throughout the game, your character will be plagued by an elliptical shadow, completely uninhibited by the shape of Vyse. However, the shadow is barely noticable the majority of the time, and graphical flaws become insignificant when watching the action on-screen. In the midst of battle, SP moves and magic attacks might just make you drool, with the enhanced high-quality visual effects. While it would be foolish to say that Skies would win any awards for graphics, it would be at least as foolish to call them poor.

The audio quality in Skies of Arcadia Legends never fails to please. Sound effects are great, from spell sounds to opening doors and throwing switches to audio clues of some nearby items. Many characters in the game also have small voice-over segments like "Thank you" or "Let's go!" played overtop of the accompanying dialogue (which is, thankfully, far more complex). Though some of the voices are nothing special, others are very fitting to their characters. And Skies has an absolutely fantastic soundtrack, offering a wide array of pleasing and well-composed tunes.

The replay value of Skies of Arcadia Legends is indisputably great. Not only are there story-related reasons to go back and play the game again (to see with greater clarity what was going on all along), but a number of side-quest collectibles are in the game, including 88 different overworld discoveries to be found, 24 'moonfish' to collect for a story-unraveling quest, 30 chams and 3 abirik chams to enhance Fina's weapon, and ten wanted-list bounties you can battle and collect payment for. Some of these you will find during the regular course of the game; but many - especially the discoveries - are difficult, and sometimes damn near impossible to find, offering a pleasing challenge. This is all not to mention the sheer length of the game; it's estimated that most first-timers to this game will take between 40 and 60 hours from start to finish.

While perhaps not the most difficult game, Skies is a fantastic play. The makers weren't afraid to break from many of the traditions of RPGs, and they succeeded spectacularly; you may find yourself tempted to just sail around for no sake but its own. With a long and engaging story, innovative mechanics, and plenty to do, Skies of Arcadia Legends doesn't fail to please.

Progress: Complete

It's become somewhat of a norm with Sega's developers (especially Sonic Team), since the formal death of the Dreamcast, to remake their DC games for Gamecube - Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II, and Skies of Arcadia Legends are prime examples. It took them a while, but Sonic Team eventually decided to port over one of their most lauded productions: the original Sonic Adventure.

It could be said, though, that of all their Gamecube remakes, Sonic Adventure DX is the least remade; that is, it is almost indistinguishable from its Dreamcast iteration. This is both good and bad, as while the original SA is highly respected (and for good reason), it's more than a bit behind the times. A great number of improvements could have been made to the control system or to the graphics (especially the atrocious lip-sync), but for the most part they were not. To make a long story short, SADX is SA with more replay value, through an actual motivation to get emblems (unlockable Sonic Team Game Gear games and a special secret for all 130 emblems) and an updated chao system.

Graphically, SADX sports only slightly revamped character models (the main improvement being lighting effects - also, Sonic's mouth doesn't seem quite as large as it used to be). Aside from that and the emblem and chao improvements, the game is unchanged.

Progress: Complete

One of the more celebrated SNES-era RPGs. As I presumed when I had just started playing, the combat system never gets particularly deep and the enemies are rarely hard. However, the dungeon design is very good and the puzzles are top-notch. Personally I think the game would have been better off Zelda-style, eschewing the RPG elements wholly. At any rate it's a fun 25-ish-hour jaunt through yesteryear.

Progress: Complete

Basically the culmination of every good thing to happen in the Mario Kart series since its inception. There are 32 tracks, though a few can't be played in WiFi mode due to latency issues: 16 Nitro (which you may remember was the original codename for the DS) tracks, which are brand spanking new and all very well designed, and 16 Retro tracks, collected from the past games - four from Super Mario Kart (SNES), four from Mario Kart 64 (N64), four from MK Super Circuit (GBA), and four from MK Double Dash (GCN). Reliving the SNES tracks is ultra-sweet, and they've resurrected most of the best tracks from the old games.

There is a fair amount to unlock through winning Grand Prix cups, and though I personally did it all in two days a saner person would probably get significantly more time out of them. The game starts out with eight selectable racers: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Yoshi, Bowser, Wario, and Donkey Kong. Four more can be unlocked: Daisy, Waluigi, Dry Bones, and ROB (the plastic NES robot!). Each character starts out with two selectable karts, and in addition to being able to unlock a third for each racer, you can unlock the ability to select any kart for any character.

MKDS also has a mission mode with some pretty fun challenges - collect all the coins, snipe all the fish with green shells, drive backwards through this map, push this boss off the platform, et cetera - but as far as anyone knows completing the missions has yet to unlock anything exciting. At any rate it is a fun distraction and a way to hone certain driving skills in a non-racing manner.

And online play is pretty easy and fun. Unfortunately you will inevitably encounter someone online who completely whores the power slide, e.g. zig-zagging in straightaways to get perpetual speed boosts. Personally this bothers me, as I refuse to believe that any human being can actually pull this strategy off, but in any event that's why the Friends system was invented for Nintendo WiFi and it works excellently.

Progress: Complete

The writing is brilliant (humor is excellently Americanized and nothing is dumbed down, and the characters are hilariously designed, from the bumbling gumshoe to a particular witness who sp33ks in l33t). The gameplay isn't timing-oriented, but rather than just making it easy, this thinking-man's game makes you ... well, think about what decisions to make. The game consists of two base parts, investigating crime scenes (think a Lucasarts-style point-and-click adventure), and cross-examinations in court (deciding where/how to question a witness and what evidence to present when relevant). Seeing prosecutor Miles Edgeworth physically recoil as if punched in the gut when Phoenix successfully catches his witness in a lie is perhaps one of the best video game moments ever.

Progress: Complete

Two years ago Viewtiful Joe hit the Gamecube like a sack of bricks. Joe was something of a reawakening for modern games, bringing back the long forgotten beat-em-up genre and showing that sidescrollers refused to be relegated to the annals of history. More than that, though, VJ was a terrifically challenging and fun game. Highly stylized in not just visuals, but also in control style, Joe made his players believe they were really defeating movie-sized villains and exploiting Joe's awe-inspiring VFX powers.

Capcom, being Capcom, made a sequel the next year with new locales and some new features. While it certainly suffered from some inevitable sequel factor pitfalls, it was still a solid production, remaining true to the parts of the Viewtiful Joe formula that worked. This year, the main event - Viewtiful Joe Double Trouble - made a terrible mistake in forgetting that.

VJDT begins cinematically with a mystery girl (who we later learn is Jasmine, Joe's little sister) being threatened by Hulk Davidson, returning big green rhinoceros from the original game. Captain Blue jumps in to save her just in time, but while he's not looking Hulk hurls a truck at them. It looks almost over, until Joe steps in... and ruins the film, and Jasmine's hopes of a big acting break. Blue and Jasmine were right in the middle of filming the next box-office blockbuster, Captain Blue 2005. Silvia (Joe's girlfriend from the previous games) arrives, and wonders what's going on, when Blue points out the cameras - but where have they gone? And what are those goons doing running away with Blue's film canister? Jasmine rushes after them to try and get it back, and Joe engages in hot pursuit.

As the story develops, Joe learns that an evil "Queen" is trying to steal the hero-ness from several popular movie heroes, including a Robo-Cop knockoff, a female Edward Scissorhands, and Captain Blue himself, along with a couple of other parody characters. However, the plot knows enough to not get in the way of the game. Joe's rival Alastor shows up out of nowhere for a duel, and the game's ending is completely trivial, but it makes the production come together and that's all that matters.

In-game cutscenes are displayed with still art or moving action and dialog boxes on the top screen. Though button presses progress the dialog, each cutscene is made up of several movie-like cuts, which must be progressed by manually sliding a ... slide, from the bottom screen upward. Some cutscenes, like the introductory one for instance, can consist of several dozen of these slides. While this is within the realm of getting used to, it is an ominous harbinger of the control issues that are to come.

In Double Trouble, Joe has lost some of his classic powers, but gained several new ones to round out his repertoire. Slow, of course, is indispensable, and operates just as it always has: hold the L button to slow the action on-screen and make dodging attacks and deflecting projectiles a snap. Mach Speed is gone, and somewhat taking its place is Scratch. Tap the R button, and Joe jumps up and poses - now scratch the bottom screen, and objects will fall on enemies or objects that you touch. It is used in a few puzzle situations, but as an offensive move it is usually fruitless.

Another new ability is Split, the power of splitting the screen in two. Move the stylus horizontally across the bottom screen to separate it in two halves, and slide the top one back and forth to change the alignment of things. This power is used in many puzzles, such as dropping falling objects on certain places, pouring water on fires, or putting an obstacle inbetween Joe and incoming fire. Unfortunately, the technique of splitting a vertical wall in two to jump through it becomes the game's most overused trick, and at the end of the game it becomes as standard a move as jumping.

Joe's Zoom-In is back, but not exactly how you remember it. By sliding the bottom screen vertically, "switching" it with the top, the Slide power provides a close-up view of Joe's immediate surroundings. This view is in fact so close that it's useless against most enemies. However, the final new ability, Touch, can only be used while Slide is in effect. Touch allows you to simply touch things on the bottom screen to affect them, like buttons, dials, levers, and some enemies that can only be defeated by touching them. Or at least, that's what the game says; the item shop allows Joe to purchase a "VFO" weapon, a boomerang-like flying disc that shoots lasers, which can also defeat Touch-only foes.

The new powers are cool and fun to use, and introduce some interesting new puzzles. Unfortunately, what Clover forgot is that the average human has no more than two hands. The degree of precision necessary on the bottom screen to accurately execute touch-screen powers is unfortunately high, meaning using your stubby fingers is almost out of the question. Even if you have the stylus in hand as you hold the DS like a traditional controller, switching between the face buttons and the stylus control is not as instantaneous as the game requests in combat situations. Most of the game's bosses have a part of their movement pattern in which they are vulnerable to Touch, but the opening is extremely slim and there simply isn't enough time to stop and fiddle with the touch screen. In fact, attempting to do so usually leaves Joe vulnerable to the next attack, and so a lesson learned early on is to not bother attempting to use Slide or Touch in boss situations. Even Split can sometimes take too long.

This half-baked new power system would be great if the existing combat rules had remained unchanged; unfortunately, some of the most vital components of Joe's martial artistry are gone. In the original two games, dodging an enemy's attack put him in a daze and made him extra susceptible to a Slow attack. This is still true (in fact, dodging an enemy in Double Trouble also makes him extra vulnerable to Scratch), but the balance has shifted dramatically. Where in VJ1 and 2 a single slow-mo punch or kick meant the end of a dazed low-level grunt, in Double Trouble it takes at least two Slowed blows; in fact, there is barely a difference between the number of hits an enemy takes while dazed and while not dazed.

Additionally, while in the original titles hitting a dazed enemy in slow-mo would put other on-screen enemies in a more vulnerable state, nearby enemies are unaffected by this in VJDT. In effect, the Double Trouble combat system has removed the benefit of dodging enemy attacks, and more often than not you are better off just beating the tar out of enemies as soon as you approach them. While this makes for an interesting pace, it is not the timing-oriented and stylistic combat system that made Joe's previous exploits so challenging; it is a simple-minded button mashing adventure.

For a fairly early DS game, Double Trouble looks graphically polished. Yes, there are jaggies and edges, but the scene comes together looking pretty solid and the Viewtiful Joe graphical style is at least recognizable, if not fully fleshed out. The game's soundtrack is quite good, and though the quality is clearly not as good as its console predecessors, it's still pleasing to the ear. There is, however, a distracting quirk in how the game handles music between scenes: even if the scene you're entering has the same background music as the scene you've just left, the music has to start all over again. Double Trouble's sound effects appear to be ripped directly from the originals, and while it doesn't have the cajones for full voice acting like VJ1 and 2, there are a handful of small voice clips rounding out a few of the main characters.

Like the previous games, Viewtiful Joe has replay value in the form of higher difficulty levels, in addition to the default ones (Kids for easy mode, and Adults for normal). Sadly, it looks as if there are no unlockable playable characters this time around, so there's really no reward for playing the higher difficulty levels except for the accomplishment itself. The game's length is respectable, not quite as long as the other VJs but fairly long for a handheld action game. For the sake of portability, Double Trouble incorporates a combination of an autosave mechanism after every scene (each chapter consists of several scenes) and manual saves, which miraculously manages to cure the saving-into-a-hole disease present in most games on the market: if your autosave puts you at a boss battle with low health and no upgrades, you can return to a manual save and beef up for the battle.

Double Trouble brings some cool new ideas to the table, but tows control awkwardness along with them. It has also forsaken some of the key aspects of the Viewtiful Joe combat system that made the previous games, for lack of a better word, Viewtiful. Plus, without unlockable characters, there is a distinct lack of replay motivation. While Double Trouble is a good game, and shows some promise for the future of the franchise, it's just not as fun to play as the originals.

Progress: Complete

A somewhat immortal RPG, FF7 stands out for its epic qualities: simple but fun combat mechanics, action-packed battle sequences, and most of all, a lengthy, engrossing storyline. Forgiving translation error, FF7 is a tour de force with immersion to spare, and plenty of variety (unique settings, minigames, et al) to keep the player engaged. It may not have an incredibly innovative battle system, but this is the game that proved people could care about video game characters.

Progress: Complete