Song of the Day: Volume 5 (Space Time)

Today's song is Gojira's Space Time. This track nicely encapsulates everything that makes Gojira such a phenomenal band. It's groovy, weird, creative, brutal, and melodic, all in appropriate measures. Oh, and those pinch harmonics can cure cancer. Enjoy!

-TRO

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

My first exposure to the Street Fighter universe came with, like the vast majority of people, the phenomenal Street Fighter II. I never had too much experience with arcades or fighting games growing up, besides my playthroughs of Simpsons, X-Men, and some game in which you play as a tugboat trying to get up a river at Chuck E. Cheese (back in the good ol' days when Chuck E. Cheese had some real arcade games, not just coin sucking ticket dispensers). But Street Fighter II was such a cultural phenomenon that even I couldn't have missed it. It was in 7-Elevens, malls, everywhere.

The one arcade to which I used to go as a teenager was a place called Wow! which you paid like 5 bucks to get into, but then the games were a nickel or dime instead of a quarter. There was also a selection of free games. One of these was Street Fighter II (well after the time it was popular), and I completely wore it out. I loved the look of the characters, the ease of control, and the spirit of communal learning that came about by getting your butt kicked by the great kid who could shoryuken at will, while the rest of us struggled to do the most basic of moves.

Anyway, I never really played any other Street Fighter games after that, as arcades were largely dying, and I didn't know about any of the other games. I played Marvel v. Capcom on Playstation, and would play SFII or one of the Alphas if I found an arcade, but my fighting game time was largely spent on 3D fighters like Tekken, Soul Calibur, etc.

But then, I purchased the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for PS3 a few years back, in order to catch up on my Street Fighter history. Including SFII, Alpha 1-3, SSFIV: Arcade Edition, SF x Tekken, a Bluray with most of the SF anime and a documentary series, an art book, a wicked sweet Ryu statue and belt, and a game I'd completely missed, SFIII: Third Strike.

I spent a lot of time playing SFIV, but I spent more time playing Third Strike than I spent on the rest of the games and movies combined. It was completely captivating. Featuring a roster with very few identifiable characters to fans of SFII (only Ryu, Ken, Akuma, and Chun-Li appear in the game), I rather thought I'd play through the arcade mode with Ryu, Ken, and Akuma, and go on my merry way having beaten it.

But it was too good to drop. The visuals are superb, the introduction of parrying adds a dizzying level of technicality and skill to the game, and the characters are so diverse and well designed that it's very easy to see why this game blows SFII out of the water. While I hear that the arcade version slightly edges out the PS3 one, I absolutely adore it. If you like fighting games, you have to give Third Strike a shot. It's my favorite fighting game, a genre in which I have many loves. I'd give it a perfect 10.

-TRO

Back In Black (?)

I've been out of town for a few days, but I'm back now! Look back tomorrow for the first exciting new review since I've returned. Happy trails!

-TRO

Hearthstone

It's been a surprising length of time since a video game review, due to my thoughts that I'd already done enough, and also due to the fact that Tales of Phantasia took me SO LONG to finish (I finally finished last night, nearly 50 hours later). I knew there was a reason I'd drastically dropped my amount of JRPGs...hmmm. Anyway, I started working on the handheld game I'd teased in my Super Metroid review, and I'll definitely finish Banjo Kazooie and review it, as promised, in the next few weeks. I haven't had as much time gaming, or rather, my gaming time has been sucked up by the game I'm reviewing today...Hearthstone!

Back when I had a lot of free time, I spent most of my time playing 2 PC games, League of Legends and Hearthstone. I still love League and was pretty good at it during my peak (got platinum in two seasons, which is pretty good for someone with pretty poor reflexes), but I simply lack the time to play now. Devoting 40 minutes to a game with kids, a wife, and things to do is simply impossible, especially when you can't pause or save it, and the real time outcome not only affects your stats, but also the experience of 9 other people. Anyway, I still play a few matches every few months with my brother-in-law, but my days of 2 League games a day are long gone.

But I have continued to play Hearthstone most days. Hearthstone is an online, digital only collectible card game very similar to Magic: The Gathering. While I never played Magic, I did get pretty into Pokemon cards, and very into Yu-Gi-Oh, so I am familiar with and really enjoy the game.  At this point, I'd say that I like Hearthstone more than any of the other two card games mentioned, for a few main reasons.

First, Hearthstone is a mouse only game, meaning I can play it on my laptop, without the computer in my lap, while watching TV. It's a wonderful casual competitive experience that I can enjoy while also spending time with my family. Your opponent gets a turn that typically lasts a minute or so, so you can easily jump in and out of conversations and TV shows with ease.

Second, Hearthstone has a big player base that enables you to play against real humans in an evolving meta game each and every day. If Yu-Gi-Oh had an online experience like Hearthstone, I would probably play it frequently, but every attempt to do this has been a miserable failure. Since there are real humans participating, strategies are constantly changing, as people attempt to optimize their decks to succeed against the dominant decks in the current metagame. This makes for a fun and always fresh experience driven by players as much as the designers of the game.

Third, Hearthstone's purely digital existence opens it to an enormous universe of possibilities that other card games can't measure up to. Randomization is now possible, making way for some of my favorite cards, including Flamewalker, Arcane Missiles, Yogg-Saron, etc. Changing cards is now possible as well, enabling the company to tone down once dominant cards, or give tune-ups to poor cards (although they rarely do the latter). This keeps any particular card, hero, or archetype from becoming too dominant, and the designers can react a lot quicker to emergent strategies with this tactic than by the ban lists seen in other card games. I also like that the designers are not too reliant on these changes, preferring to wait and see whether or not players can "figure out" a deck before knocking it down a bit. Sometimes, as was the case with archetypes like secret paladin and patron warrior, they wait a bit too long, but I'd rather they wait too long than start changing things very quickly without a clear plan and enough data to substantiate the changes.

Fourth, it's completely free! The client is free to download, and the cards are all unlockable simply by playing the game enough.

Fifth, the two methods of playing the games are really fun and distinct. In arena, you draft cards from a random pool, while in constructed you pick a deck from your own cards, and play with that one. Arena is wonderful because you get rewards based on how well you do, and it really scratches my itch for randomness and probability, but both represent a fun and unique take on the game that gives a breath of fresh are when one mode becomes stale.

Hearthstone does have a few things about it that I don't much like, but they're far overbalanced by the things I do. The client is at times buggy (although it may be my old computer's fault, so I won't hold them to this too much), resulting in disconnects and long load times.

The business model of Hearthstone results in a long curve of difficulty for me, as I am too cheap to buy card packs, so I have to earn them with in game gold and arena runs. When a new set of cards is released, I am typically left adapting to new strategies and cards with outdated cards and strategies, which always makes the first few months of a release challenging. I usually spend most of the first few months playing Arena, so I can build up my card collection, and then shift into playing constructed later on once my collection is sufficient. But I do have to say that they aren't cheap about giving out rewards to dedicated players, so it doesn't feel as much of a play to win game as other free to play games.

I'd give Hearthstone a 9.7/10. It's supremely fun, and I'd recommend you check it out!

-TRO

Great Ideas (Volume 2)

A TV or movie murderer/rapist/kidnapper (pick one) who's constantly whistling REO Speedwagon's "I Can't Fight This Feeling". This could be fantastically creepy.

Song of the Day (Volume 4): Last Remaining Light

Sylosis' Last Remaining Light is a great example of what great thrash metal should look like in the era after which Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer have ceased to be the shining lights on the horizon of metal. Oh, and that hook.

The whole album (Conclusion of an Age) is great, so if you like this, check out the record and the great band! I can also attest that they're great live, so if they come off of hiatus and tour, you should go check a show whenever you can.

-TRO

To Pimp a Butterfly

Here we find ourselves at the end of rap week here on reTROview, with one record left to review. And if you haven't heard this one yet, shame on you.

Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly is a modern classic. It seamlessly blends an enormous number of black musical styles into one sweeping masterpiece. Musical influences range from funk (George Clinton himself sings on Wesley's Theory) to R&B (Isley Brothers sample/cover on i) to electronic (Wesley's Theory) to jazz (For Free? Interlude) to hip hop (whole album). Rather than feeling like a disjointed mashup of popular styles, however, Kendrick's omnipresence and the tremendous skills of the producers involved help to make this record feel like a cohesive whole.

Kendrick's rapping is superb, and the beats over which he raps are almost as good. Standout tracks from the record include King Kunta, Alright, i, These Walls, and the Blacker the Berry. The message of the record is cutting, direct, and honest, dealing with a wide range of troubling political and social issues in and around the black community, from police brutality to managing fame and fortune to gang violence.

The record isn't perfect, as tracks like Institutionalized and Mortal Man fall a bit short of the promise of the rest of the record. But in all, this is an excellent record, and an instant rap classic for current times that will stand the test of time along its peers in greatness. I'll give it a 9.5/10.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 3): Never Catch Me

Today's decidedly not retro song of the day is Flying Lotus' Never Catch Me (feat. Kendrick Lamar). When you ask the kids interested in rap today who their favorite rapper is, my guess is that you'll get plenty of answers of Drake, J-Cole, Future, and Kendrick, but my guess is that Kendrick would probably the modal answer.

This track, published at the top of his game, demonstrates brilliantly why Kendrick is the best in the game today, yet despite all of his brilliance, Flying Lotus' production is the best part of the track. Kendrick gives it his all, delivering a blistering verse with his incomparable blend of wit, superb flow, profound introspection, and technical excellence. He also delivers a remarkably catchy and and melodic hook reminiscent of the gods of the rap hook, Clipse.

But Flying Lotus is on top of his game as well, and his production does its part not only to compliment Kendrick's verse magnificently (only Kendrick could really rap on this beat, so it's not surprising), but also completely carries this track with an outro that composes half the song, yet still, years later, gives me chills each and every time I hear it.

Flying Lotus' brilliant combination of electronic tones, live instrumentation, and jazz/hip hop fusion is on full display here, and it's a wonder to behold. While his full records never quite live up to the peak of his creative output, for individual songs he is the among the pantheon of the best producers who've ever lived, and this track shows it.

Anyway, check out the track. It's got something for everyone, and is a masterpiece of modern hip-hop.

-TRO

The College Dropout

Rap week continues here on reTROview! By the end of this, I'm going to have reviewed the same number of rap albums as rock and metal put together, which is not in keeping with my general listening trends. But I'm enjoying it, so whatever!

Second on my list of favorite rap records (not necessarily in any order) is The College Dropout, Kanye West's debut album as a solo performer. Kanye was first introduced to me by my college roommate, although I didn't really know it was Kanye at all. But I did hear great tracks, primarily from College Dropout, including Jesus Walks and Through the Wire many times coming from his computer, and always greatly enjoyed the tracks.

The College Dropout is my favorite Kanye record, despite probably not being the best. That, in all likelihood, goes to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. But College Dropout represents an early, happy, and slightly more humble Kanye who's still trying to find himself as an artist and a person, while his identity tends to solidify more and more as his discography goes on. Peering into the formative periods of this brilliant artist is absolutely fascinating, and as I generally prefer humble personalities to proud ones, I can identify a lot more with early Kanye than, for example, Yeezus Kanye.

I also think that Kanye's rapping is the best on this record, as he tends to lean a lot more on features on subsequent records. He was bringing an entire lifetime's worth of lyrical ideas into this record, and far less history into other records.

The production is probably not quite as good on this record as it is on most records, as his production abilities seem to continually improve over time. But that's a bit like saying that Lebron had a bad year, he only made it to the NBA Finals again, rather than winning it (exemplary, in other words). His novel use of sped up samples on tracks like Through the Wire and Last Call show his genuine love for older music, along with his ability to craft new and fascinating outputs from the work of others.

High points on the record include smash hit singles Through the Wire, Jesus Walks, Last Call, Family Business, Get Em High, Spaceship, and We Don't Care, and there are probably 3-5 other very good songs on the record as well.

For all of his innovations on the record, Kanye sticks a little too close to dated rap standards by having too many tracks on the album, as well as far too many unfunny skits (the ideal number of skits on a record is 0). But with all of that said, this is a truly superb record, and a look into the young and untroubled mind of a future mad genius. Listen, and love. I'll give it a 9.2/10.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 2): I Need a Doctor

I guess it's rap week here on reTROview! I Need A Doctor, by Dr. Dre featuring Skylar Grey and Eminem, is a microcosm of everything that made and continues to make Dr. Dre probably the most influential living figure in rap history (sorry Jay-Z). Dre's greatness comes from the unique combination of his perfectionism, ability to identify and draw out the greatness in his collaborators, his superb production, and remarkable talent at producing a sound that's both on the cutting edge in the time he made his music, but also had an eternal and enduring quality to it that has helped his entire body of work to age magnificently. This track features excellent production by (at the time) up and coming Alex da Kid, a hauntingly beautiful hook by Skylar Grey, one decent verse by Dre, and two excellent verses by Eminem. If you haven't heard it before, check it out. If you have, enjoy this excellent walk down memory lane with a relisten to one of the best rap tracks every released.

-TRO

Hell Hath No Fury

Rap isn't generally my go to genre for music. I dabbled a bit in high school, enjoying some Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G., Eminem, and Ludacris, but it was always a distant interest of mine. I found songs that I liked, but full rap records were generally boring to me, particularly as I'm not a person who's very interested in lyrics and verbal cleverness. I've heard songs hundreds of times, and still don't know the words. I find myself far more captivated by melody, instrumentation, production, and performance, so the lyrics generally take a backseat. As great classical rap generally relies on poetic talent, the art form rarely intrigued me. I've always been attracted to rap groups with phenomenal production, rather than lyric genius (i.e. Kanye). I have always appreciated a good punch line, though, particularly when I understood it and it was delivered in a way that was legible.

Enter The Clipse. A rap duo composed of brothers Gene (Malice) and Terrence (Pusha-T) Thornton, Clipse captivated my attention first for their fantastic production, and the phenomenal flow, delivery, and cleverness in their lyrics is what has kept my attention for all these years.

You usually can't judge a book by it's cover, but all it takes is one look at the album art to know that this record is going to be hot. They're sitting on an oven, with walls wallpapered with money, wearing crowns. Cmon. And the music within absolutely delivers one-million percent on the heat promised by the art.

The first song that hooked me on Clipse was Mr. Me Too. And it's a fantastic starting point to figure out exactly why these two are so great. The first sense I got from the track is the unbelievable production by the Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo). The entire album is filled with absolutely disgusting beats with excellent tone, sampling, and minimal instrumentation, allowing the listener to really get into the groove of each track. The beat is omnipresent, and fills out the track nicely, but never overshadows the vocals.

Mr. Me Too also shows us about the characters presented in the song. I don't know if Malice and Pusha-T actually conduct half of the illegal doings discussed in their album, but it's completely believable. In addition to their credible street nature, they are also incredibly gifted lyricists who are capable of constructing meaning within meaning, yet always going back to their core message, which is that they are drug dealing badasses that all men want to be, and that all women want to be with.

For are few examples from Mr. Me Too, here's a few lines from Pusha-T's verse establishing himself as a drug pusher extraordinaire:

"All my niggas caked up, sellin' gray and beige dust

Had that money right or end up in the trunk taped up

We don't chase and duck, we only raise the bucks

Peel money rolls 'til our thumbs get the paper cuts"

Or Malice' verse communicating similar themes:

"Wanna know the time? Better clock us

Niggas bite the style from the shoes to the watches
We cloud hoppers, tailored suits like we mobster

Break down keys into dimes and sell them like Gobstoppers

Who gon' stop us?

Not a goddamn one of you"

Mr. Me Too also communicates a few more subtle things about the group, beginning with the feature by Pharrell, who gets two verses on this masterpiece. While by no stretch are these bad verses, his lack of ability to hang with Malice and Pusha-T is painfully obvious, even to the novice observer of rap music. His flow is identical in just about every line, compared to the varied, fascinating, yet always sensibly diverse approaches of Clipse. His lyrics lack any sense of the clever wordplay which Clipse has, preferring instead naked bragging, which just doesn't feel as credible.

Another high point of this record is Malice and Pusha-T's incredible ability to craft a true rap hook. In an age in which every rapper is a singer too, crooning terrible autotuned melodies over great beats, Clipse absolutely mastered a catchy yet rapped hook in a way no group has since been able to approach. The entire record is filled with them. 

Other highlights from the record include Ride Around Shining, Chinese New Year, and perhaps my all-time favorite rap song Keys Open Doors.

I'll leave you with perhaps my favorite set of lyrics from Keys Open Doors discussing just how much coke they have hidden in their freezer:

"Open up the Frigidaire, 25 to life in here

So much white you might think your holy Christ is near

Throw on your Louis V millionaires to kill the glare

Ice trays? Nada! All you see is pigeons paired

The realest shit I ever wrote, not Pac inspired

It's crack pot inspired, my real niggas quote

Bitch never cook my coke! Why? Never trust a ho with your child"

Hell Hath no Fury isn't a perfect record. I really don't care for Trill, or for Nightmares. But it's one of my favorite rap records of all time, and it's a fabulous example of high production and lyrical quality blending together seamlessly to produce a masterpiece. I'd give it a 9.5/10.

-TRO

Blackwater Park

The two greatest albums in the history of metal are not, as you might expect, written by Black Sabbath, Metallica, Iron Maiden, or any of the other regularly mentioned groups in the history of classic metal. As great as those groups are, and as important as they are to the two greatest albums I referenced earlier, they can't possibly contend with Mastodon's Leviathan and Opeth's Blackwater Park.

All good artistic work has identifiable influences. No man exists in a vacuum, and every member of every band in the world has his/her own favorite band which influences the sound which they produce. The decent bands manage to mimic their favorites, and the degree to which it is good mimicry dictates the degree to which it is enjoyable. A band like Dream Theater, thus, provides superb mimicry of bands like Maiden, Metallica, Rush, Yes, and Pantera. This mimicry is excellent, but due to the lack of a truly original sound and identity, Dream Theater remains a very good band, rather than a truly great one. The vast majority of bands, however, fall even beneath this threshold, showing themselves incapable of mimicking a bands style while writing new lyrics, melodies, etc. in the genre, and thus are merely average or poor.

Opeth and Mastodon, on the other hand, manage to work in a wide variety of influences, mix them together in their creative process, and output work that is both an homage to their favorites, while also producing a voice that is completely unique to them. As I've reviewed Leviathan before (linked above), this review will focus on Opeth's masterpiece, Blackwater Park.

Swedish death metal band Opeth, the brainchild of musical savant Mikael Akerfeldt (I'm missing some weird Swedish punctuation in there somewhere), manage to achieve the very heights of death metal brilliance in Blackwater Park, but the story can't begin there. The story starts with their release Orchid in 1995, which represented a shot heard round the world at death metal. In an era in which death metal had become obsessed with a race to the very heaviest and most brutal sound, combined with the most shocking of lyrics, following the basic formula of Death's Scream Bloody Gore (1987), Opeth chose to follow the template of later Death records like Human (1991) and Individual Thought Patterns (1993) to combine the brutality of death metal with the oddball sound of progressive music. Unlike a band like Dream Theater, however, who had been combining metal with prog for years before this, however, Opeth managed to create a gorgeous and immediately recognized synthesis of the genres that both pays homage to those genres, and is uniquely Opethian (sp?).

Yet something was still missing on Orchid, as well as its followup records Morningrise (1996), My Arms, Your Hearse (1998), and Still Life (1999). That something was production value. Following, perhaps not intentionally, the formula laid by 1990s Scandinavian metal, the production on these records is, to be kind, garbage. The songwriting is all excellent, yet the sound quality is muddy and unclear, making it challenging to listen to without noticing the lack of quality in recording and production.

Blackwater Park (2001) shatters this barrier entirely. Produced by the tremendously talented Steven Wilson (of Porcupine Tree fame), Blackwater Park represents a true synthesis of one of the greatest songwriters in metal history alongside flawless production that highlights and draws out the brilliance in writing and performance that composes the record. Introductory track The Leper Affinity shows clearly that Opeth have all the makings of the great death metal bands, but a unique quality to their sound that puts them heads and shoulders above the rest. Picking other great songs from this record is challenging, as the record lacks even one boring second of music, but if forced, I would have to say the hauntingly beautiful The Drapery Falls, and of course, the chill-giving brutality of the title track, one of the finest concluding tracks in music history.

Blackwater Park is a must-listen for anyone with ear drums and a love for great music. I give it a 10/10.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 1): Elevate

The Winery Dogs' "Elevate" is fantastically catchy and enjoyable hard rock, played by a brilliant cast of superstars that manage to combine to produce a unique sound that goes above and beyond any of their substantial individual talents and history. The record on which this track can be found is very good, but it's never better than on Elevate. Check it out!

-TRO

Great Ideas (Volume 1)

True Detective Season 3: Batman Edition. This could easily be an adaptation of either of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's superb Batman graphic novels, The Long Halloween, or Dark Victory, although I think the Long Halloween would work a bit better with the True Detective staff. Go read it and tell me you don't think it would make an excellent 10 episode tv series, with a focus on Batman as detective rather than super hero.

What I'm Playing (Volume 7): Super Metroid

Super Metroid. The name seems to inspire awe inspired looks from just about every retro gamer I've ever met, but I'd never played up until the last week! Seeing that this was a critical omission in my gaming education, I added it to my queue, intending for it to be a Metroidvania run with a few Castlevania games and Super Metroid. Unfortunately for that idea, Specter of Torment came out right before I was going to start Super Metroid, so it had to wait.

 In Super Metroid, you play as resourceful bounty hunter Samus Aran. You begin the game equipped with power armor, an arm cannon, and the ability to jump. The story begins with the theft of the highly dangerous and last remaining Metroid by the Space Pirates. With the fate of the universe in your hands, you head out to the Planet Zebes to defeat the Space Pirates and take back the Metroid, which in a strange twist has bonded with Samus, seeing her as its mother.

In typical Metroid fashion, you have to proceed through a huge map, finding upgrades to make you stronger, and to allow you to get past various obstacles and enemies in your path to the Metroid. These upgrades are skillfully placed so that your exploration to find them feels free and open, but the design of the map actually is always funneling you towards the next objective.

The exploration aspects of the game are designed so that your pace is completely up to you. You can deliberately explore and fire at and bomb every wall, looking for secrets, or you can fly through the game quickly, attempting to finish as fast as possible. And speaking of secrets, there are dozens of little passages, secret items, and fun discoveries around every corner. I played the game for about 7 hours, as a complete novice, and only found 61%. I'd estimate that you need to find about 40% to even have a chance of finishing, so there are tons more that I didn't find.

The only Metroid game which I had played unto this point was that original, and I never finished that due to the crushing size of the game without a map. Fortunately for us, Super Metroid remedies this by giving you a map that auto-updates, keeping track of areas you've visited, and even adding in secret areas as you discover them, which makes the game feel manageable despite the fact that the explorable area is vastly larger in Super Metroid than in the original. This upgrade, more than anything else, reduces the overwhelming difficulty of keeping track of yourself in the world, which is vitally important in a game that puts such a large focus on exploration.

The music is tremendously creepy. It's unsettling that many tracks begin with an extended silence, making it very disturbing when you wander into an area with a new soundscape, and hear only silence at first. It embraces more of a modern film aesthetic, preferring to create moods rather than a more classically theme-driven approach. On the continuum of Super Mario Bros. to Skyrim, Super Metroid is way closer to the Skyrim side. This is particularly notable, as it's one of the earliest games I can remember taking this approach.

The graphics are fantastic, and have aged very well, The environment is excellent, enemy designs are clear and compelling, and Samus looks great. The bosses are HUGE for 16 bit sprites, and give you a real sense of challenge and danger due to their size.

For everything great and revolutionary about this game, I found some things about it to be grating. The controls were frequently wonky and unresponsive. This was particularly troubling with getting Samus to flip while jumping, a prerequisite to wall jump, or to do the almighty screw attack. Sometimes she would flip, while other times, with seemingly identical inputs, she wouldn't. This ended up getting me killed more than anything else in the game.

While revolutionary for its time, the lack of more modern introductions to the Metroidvania genre were notable, including progressively unlocking shortcuts and the ability to teleport back and forth between certain areas. For a game with as much backtracking as is required in Super Metroid, this was very annoying. I'd estimate I spent about 20% of my time just backtracking across the huge map, and that's probably a conservative estimate. Being able to pop back and forth between areas would have made the experience of backtracking to clear areas that were inaccessible prior to unlocking new powerups much more enjoyable.

I also didn't care for the end boss. While important for advancing the story, and presenting a nice twist ending, it was so very easy, especially right after the very challenging battle with the penultimate boss. Her pattern was very easy to read, and she was damaged by almost everything, making for a very simple end boss experience.

All in all, this game is both excellent, and extraordinarily important in gaming history. While it's position in history will remain unchecked, I do find that some of the luster of the game has been lost over the years due to improvements in the genre, although it was still very enjoyable. Now I just wish that I would have had the privilege to play this game at its release in 1994, as it certainly would have blown my little mind. My '94 review would likely have had this game at 9.5 or above, but some of the dated blemishes put this at a 9.0 in 2017. Well worth a playthrough, but I think that Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow represents a more enjoyable experience in the Metroidvania genre for the modern gamer (and yes, I'll get around to Symphony of the Night, eventually).

The next review will be the game pictured in the screenshot below. Good luck guessing!

-TRO

Fake Onion Headlines (Volume 2)

Christian Book Publisher Removes Page 69 From All of Their Books: Pages to go Directly From 68 to 70

*This page is not associated with The Onion. This repeating segment is a tribute to their work. If The Onion, for whatever reason, wishes to use these headlines for actual articles, I am available for hire on a per headline basis. Please contact my extensive administrative staff at retroviewblog@gmail.com if you are interested.

Fake Onion Headlines (Volume 1)

Area Libertarian Hopefully Lists "Free Trade" as Interest on Match.com

*This page is not associated with The Onion. This repeating segment is a tribute to their work. If The Onion, for whatever reason, wishes to use these headlines for actual articles, I am available for hire on a per headline basis. Please contact my extensive administrative staff at retroviewblog@gmail.com if you are interested.

Announcement

I've decided that my reviews for the "What I'm Playing" series have been a bit lax, so from now on I'm going to decline to review games until I'm finished with them, and tease the next planned game at the end of the finished review. This is due to the fact that I was having to go back and revise so many reviews due to inaccurate pictures I had of them after a few hours of game play. So the next games I'll be reviewing (probably in a week or two, at my current pace) are Banjo Kazooie and Super Metroid! Should be fun...