Kay's Corner

Two genres that couldn’t seem further apart at a glance are the first-person shooter and adventure game. But first impressions can be deceiving, because they're more similar than you'd think. Older FPS games (particularly those following in Doom’s footsteps) tend to be a bit more exploratory, due to their secrets and the process of gradually building up your weapon arsenal, which isn’t totally dissimilar from exploring Hyrule and obtaining new items in a Zelda game. So, what would you get if a developer decided to go all-in on a slower pace, exploration and backtracking while retaining that first-person perspective? I’m willing to bet most people’s answer would be Metroid Prime, but as for me, my mind immediately goes to a little game called Powerslave. Released in 1996 as the first game from Lobotomy Software, Powerslave was a shooter that dared to be different. Rather than simply iterating upon the formula Doom popularised, Powerslave took its elements and combined them with...

Mickey's Speedway USA is a strange game, particularly where its legacy is concerned. This is an N64 game developed by Rare, released during the height of their relationship with Nintendo... and yet, it’s fallen into total obscurity. Even during retrospectives on Rare as a company, it’s left as a mere footnote; as just “that other game built on the Diddy Kong Racing engine” and nothing more. With a reputation like that, I had no reason to think the game was worth playing, so I paid it no mind for years. That was until recently, when two YouTube videos spotlighting the game and its supposedly ruthless difficulty caught my eye: the first from Pyrrhickong of Designing For , and the second from Ray0ken . That was enough to convince me as a lover of challenging games, and while I didn’t struggle with it quite as much as I anticipated (probably thanks to Huey’s overpowered stats), I still discovered a real gem of a kart racer! Mechanically speaking, Mickey’s Speedway USA feels like a comb...

We all know how influential Nintendo's games can be, which is why I find their lesser-known projects so fascinating. With a legacy as long-running and celebrated as Nintendo's, it's fun to see what creative concepts might've slipped through the cracks. And among all these obscurities, from 8-bit text adventures to more modern experiments, I think I've found my favourite in Mole Mania. The funny thing about Mole Mania is that, at least in theory, it had all the makings of a hit. Shigeru Miyamoto (the visionary behind Mario and Zelda) served as producer, the Game Boy had a massive install base, Nintendo had plenty of magazines to help spread the word, but none of that mattered when the Game Boy itself was irrelevant. Pokémon had managed to revive the platform a few months prior in Japan, but its sheer popularity overshadowed everything else on the market. And in English-speaking regions, where the Nintendo 64 had just released and Pok...

    Over the past few months, I’ve gained a newfound appreciation for Nintendo’s Game Boy. I’d played many of its games before, but it wasn’t until experiencing them through Nintendo Switch Online and its incredible filters that I really understood the appeal and reverence. That was enough to get me to pick up a Game Boy Pocket and an Everdrive to dive into the library, and I’ve had an amazing time so far! But if I had to choose my favourite new-to-me series, it would easily be the throwback to Nintendo’s earliest handhelds: Game & Watch Gallery. The Game & Watch Gallery series is one of those unabashedly Game Boy ideas, like turning Balloon Fight into a platformer or remaking the original Donkey Kong and turning it into a wholly new game after the original ending. It’s a concept that only really could’ve been done in that specific period, where Nintendo owned the market and were free to experiment without compromise. I adored the original Game & Watch Gallery when...

The past few years have been inundated with remakes and sequels to the media that defined my childhood and teen years, and it’s been a very exciting time! Seeing the likes of Super Mario RPG, Wallace & Gromit and Classic Sonic make such excellent comebacks has meant a lot to me, and they’ve served as a reminder of why I loved them in the first place. But there was one sequel that always seemed like a long shot, that always seemed like an impossibility… and yet, against all odds and my better judgement, it’s happening. It was one of the last trailers shown during April's Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, opening on a black screen before showing Kirby desperately trying to wrangle his inactive Warp Star. The quality and style immediately reminded me of Masahiro Sakurai’s work, but before I could speculate on what exactly I was looking at, Kirby's Warp Star had grown jets and blasted off into a familiar meadow, racing alongside some incredibly familiar vehicles. This was Kirby Air Rid...

When it comes to my favourite platforming series, my immediate answer is Sonic - more specifically, the games starring the pudgy black-eyed version of him from the 90s, as well as their modern successors. The original trilogy, CD, Mania and Superstars have been incredibly formative for my tastes, and continue to influence them to this day. They got me to love replay value and how your own skill can make a difference at traversing levels, and their brand of speedy platforming is still unmatched 30+ years later! But all that love and passion has made the process of writing about these games incredibly stressful. I'm already hard on myself when it comes to the quality of my work, and that's doubly so when talking about my favourites. I want to make sure everything's perfect and that I explain all my points well, but my anxiety tends to get the better of me. My plan of writing a Sonic Superstars review for its first anniversary had to be canceled as a result of the stress, alo...