Welcome back for the 2025 reTROview reTROspective! My faithful reader is beyond delighted. 2025 was a very good gaming year for me. I played a lot of co-op games with my children and experienced a wide range of new and old games that I enjoyed a ton. Here are the games I completed in 2025 in alphabetical order:
1.
Adventure Island II (Game Boy)
2.
Alleyway
3.
Avenging Spirit
4.
Balatro
5.
Batman the Animated Series
6.
Batman: The Video Game (Game Boy)
7.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
8.
Bonk's Adventure (Game Boy)
9.
Broforce
10. Castlevania
II: Belmont's Revenge
11. Cyber
Citizen Shockman Zero
12. Darkwing
Duck (Game Boy)
13. Diablo
IV
14. Downwell
15. EA
College Football 25
16. Final
Fantasy Adventure
17. Giga
Wing
18. Goat
Simulator 3
19. Golden
Axe
20. Gun-Nac
21. Horizon
Chase Turbo
22. It
Takes Two
23. Kickle
Cubicle
24. Kirby
and the Forgotten Land
25. Legend
of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
26. Mario
and Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 (Arcade)
27. Mario
Kart: Super Circuit
28. Marvel
Midnight Suns
29. Mega
Man Battle Network
30. Mega
Man II (Game Boy)
31. Mega
Man III (Game Boy)
32. Mega
Man IV (Game Boy)
33. Mega
Man X5
34. Metal
Storm
35. Minecraft
Dungeons
36. Panic
Restaurant
37. Pokemon
Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire
38. Princess
Peach Showtime!
39. River
City Ransom
40. Rocket
Knight Adventures
41. Shovel
Knight: Pocket Dungeon
42. Sonic
Advance
43. Street
Fighter 6
44. Suikoden
45. Super
Mario Galaxy
46. The
Witcher
47. Undertale
48. X-Men
(Arcade)
Forty-eight new completions is a number I can be proud of.
Four a month feels about right, especially with lots of little games mixed in
to pad the stats. Let’s get going with our awards!
Honorable Mentions
X-Men
I got a new job this year. One of my last events with my
last job was going to a pizza place/arcade with my colleagues. After an awkward
meal with the whole game, my work buddies and I beat X-Men and Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was a fascinating look at beat ‘em up design from
that era, because you can see two diverging paths of what beat ‘em ups could
be, and what they became. TMNT is bigger, bolder, flashier, unfair, and
more spectacular. X-Men is fairer more under control, and a bit
monotonous. I’d label these two routes the arcade and home console paths,
although both are arcade games. While X-Men isn’t exactly the archetypal
home console beat ‘em up (Streets of Rage 2, if you were interested), it
lays the blueprint for how the genre can be done well and fairly. I really
enjoyed it!
Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire
This is a great pinball game. It’s got tons of replayability
due to all the creatures you can catch while playing and has wonderful video
elements that make this ideal for video game pinball (a very different genre
than physical pinball, although there are overlaps). If you haven’t played it,
and you like pinball and Pokémon, you are missing out.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
This game brings very little new to the genre but delivers
on everything that you’d expect from an Igavania. It’s well worth the time
you’ll spend with it.
It Takes Two
This is a very wholesome co-op game to play together with a
spouse. It’s also a good way to introduce a wide range of genres to a novice
gamer. There are sections that are more than competent homages to first-person
shooters, top-down action RPGs, flight sims, fighting games, rhythm games, and
more!
College Football 25
NCAA Football is back, baby! They had to get rid of the
name, but this is an extremely polished football game that lays promising
groundwork for our future of football gaming. Recruiting is SO satisfying, and
that’s what you must nail to get my vote. How it will work with transfer portal
insanity, though?
Giga Wing
Few people talk about this game, and they absolutely should.
It’s an incredibly flashy and fun vertical shooter that would have gotten every
quarter munched in the arcade had it come out 5 years earlier, when arcades
were thriving. Alas…
Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon
Pocket Dungeon is a meticulously designed and
engaging puzzle/roguelike game set in the Shovel Knight universe. The
presentation values are extremely high, the music is great, and there are tons
of characters who all play very differently. I didn’t love it, but I massively
respected it. Check it out!
Batman the Animated Series
Licensed games are generally poor. Fortunately, I have such
a love for Batman that I am always happy to try any Batman game, no matter how
bad (and some of them are very bad indeed). This Konami developed action
platformer has beautiful sprites, superb animation, feels very appropriate for
its source material, and great difficulty balance. My big complaint is that I
wanted one big final challenge level, but the last level was just walking right
until you challenge a disappointing final boss. Oh well.
The 2025 reTROview reTROspective Top 10!
Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge
The Game Boy Castlevania games are generally bad. This
doesn’t have to be the case. Konami knew how to develop for the system.
Castlevania is usually very visually and mechanically simple. All it would take
is some good music, intelligent level design, and some tender love and care and
the green screen could easily deliver a great Castlevania experience.
Fortunately, they absolutely crushed it once, with Belmont’s Revenge. It’s
not perfect, but it’s very impressive for a Game Boy game and well worth
experiencing.
Horizon Chase Turbo
This is a racing game that simply oozes charm. The game
looks absolutely gorgeous and can have up to four people playing split screen –
a huge plus in my home. There are tons of tracks to race, and you’ll be
unlocking cars constantly. There are oodles of stretch goals that will unlock
the highest-level cars for those persistent enough. If you like arcade-style
racers, this is well worth a play.
Rocket Knight Adventures
There were two routes to go when it came to platformers in
the 90s, and Rocket Knight Adventures chose the “Sega” route. Filled to
the brim with incredibly flashy set pieces and visuals, Rocket Knight will
let you do cool stuff constantly – and what could a 90s kid want more than that?
It’s in the same box as Sonic, Vectorman, Earthworm Jim, Gunstar Heroes, and
all those dudes. But Rocket Knight is towards the top of those rankings
in quality and absolutely delivers on the price of admission.
Metal Storm
Speaking of spectacular platformers, Metal Storm!
This game was a treat to experience for the first time. It’s unique gravity
flipping mechanic enabled some very memorable levels and bosses, and this game
plays impressively on its humble hardware. This is a rare expensive NES
cartridge that is worth experiencing aside from its price tag. Although I’d
never pay that price tag.
Gun-Nac
The NES is not really known for its shooters. The system
chugs with too many enemies/objects on the screen. It’s not super colorful like
the Turbografx/PC Engine. But Compile wrenched every bit of performance out of
the NES to deliver an excellent vertical shooter that also serves as perhaps
the single best introduction to the genre for a new player. It teaches with a
gentle hand, delivers cool and fun moments to keep the player engaged, and
ramps up in difficulty perfectly. Again, I’d never pay this amount of money for
a cartridge, but it’s tempting for Gun-Nac!
Super Mario Galaxy
The Wii is a huge blind spot for my gaming knowledge. I
don’t think I’ve played any Nintendo console less, other than Virtual Boy. Due
to my lack of engagement, I somehow skipped out on what every agrees is a
superb Mario game. It was excellent, but I found it being outclassed by Super
Mario Odyssey in basically every way. I know this is completely
anachronistic and unfair, but I believe Odyssey perfects the great ideas
in Galaxy. Sue me. It’s still number 5 on my list of best games of the
year.
Balatro
I already wrote about Balatro extensively for my piece
on roguelikes earlier this year. I grew a little tired of it once I realized
that the best tactics were rarely built around building killer poker hands, but
rather buffing mundane hands like pair and high cards. Despite that, there’s no
denying the addictive quality of this game. It’s a true masterwork in visual
polish and engaging gameplay.
Street Fighter 6
After several years, 6 finally dropped to a price
point that I was willing to pay. And, like usual, I got sucked back in –
although this time I went deeper than ever before. I hosted a tournament at my
house. I made Platinum (I know, not that impressive) by playing hours of ranked
until my efforts were yielding diminishing returns. I probably could make
Diamond, but don’t want to put in the grind to get there (it would probably
take me 40-60 hours). Anyway, this is a wonderful Street Fighter, and fighting
games don’t get any better than a wonderful Street Fighter. I’d say this is my
second favorite entry in the series after Third Strike. The single
player mode is atrocious, though. Please shoot it straight into the surface of
the sun.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
When the Nintendo developers are freed to do something super
wacky, genius usually emerges. This is as madcap as Zelda games get, and it’s
still astonishing to me that they were able to totally deliver on an extremely
high quality sequel to Breath of the Wild that has enough uniqueness to
it to stand apart. At times, it felt like the massive suite of gameplay options
available to the player restricted the creativity of the developers a touch – they
almost didn’t know what to do with such a broad palette of actions and
solutions. I still prefer Breath of the Wild, but Tears completes
an incredible era for Zelda. I can’t wait to see what Nintendo has up next!
Undertale
I am bored to tears by lore and story in video games. There
are a few exceptions. Chrono Trigger. Final Fantasy IV, VII, X,
and XIII. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (yes, really). Mass
Effect. Hades. Mother 3. Half-Life 2. I have played
literally hundreds of video games to completion and these are the only ones
that I care about the plot in the slightest. Maybe with a better translation I
could be convinced on Xenogears. Give me a fun sandbox to play in with
super controls and great level design. Give me the capacity to grind my opponents
to death due to hard work and clever allocation of resources. But please, don’t
focus your game on story for my sake. This year, however, a game made me feel
some things. REALLY feel some things. It had me completely questioning the
underlying logic of many of my favorite games. And it does it all in the first
20 minutes of the game.
SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED UNDERTALE YET,
PLEASE DON’T KEEP READING – GO EXPERIENCE IT FOR YOURSELF.
Undertale is
downright incredible. The game opens with a familiar enough premise to those of
us who have played a JRPG before. A strong, quiet protagonist finds themselves
in a foreign land and quickly discovers that destiny has big plans for them.
They set out with a single-minded dedication to growing strong enough to achieve
their dreams and save the world. But the protagonist encounters a kindly lady
on their quest, one who gives them shelter, and even bakes them a delicious
pie. When the protagonist attempts to depart on their quest in the morning, the
kindly lady recommends that they stay – the outside world is simply too dangerous
for such a young and naïve person to experience alone. The kindly lady insists that
if you are to complete your quest, you’ll need to go through her. Battle
ensues, with a simple but engaging battle system that is a blend of bullet hell
shooter, Earthbound, and Super Mario RPG. You must surpass
her to complete your quest, right? In any other RPG, the kindly lady comments
that you are stronger than she thought, gives you some reward items, tells you
to take care, and is always there for you to return home to, offering sage
advice and assistance throughout your journey.
In Undertale, the kindly lady is murdered, never to be heard from again. You have
blood on your hands.
I can’t tell you
just how much this shook me to my core. It is genius game design, offering
homage to the RPGs of the past while offering a just-gentle-enough reminder
that real life is not like a video game. Violence cannot solve the vast majority
of our problems and always leaves us something less than human on the other side.
For the rest of the game, I was dedicated to finding peaceful solutions to all
my problems but could never quite shake the Lady Macbeth level of shame that
filled me as I watched the maternal lady dying at my hands mere hours earlier. I
will absolutely be playing it again knowing what I do, but I don’t know if I
will ever be able to live down what I did to the kindly old lady in the name of
my quest. Shame on me.
Spoiler Alert Over
Anyway, this game
is spectacular. It’s one of 6 games from the 2010s that I’ve happily given
perfect scores to (Slay the Spire, Shovel
Knight, Breath of the Wild, Super
Mario Odyssey, and Civilization VI are the other five). This is a must-experience game that is so
thoughtful, funny, and well-crafted that it’s quite unlike any other game I’ve ever
played. Please play it when you get a chance, especially if you enjoy JRPGs. It
will leave you a little different for having played it – a distinction precious
few games can claim.
2025 Stinker of
the Year: Sonic Advance
It’s a three-way
tie at the bottom of the rankings with a triumvirate of games that I rated at
7/10. Of the three (Sonic Advance,
Mario Kart Super Circuit, and Goat Simulator 3), Sonic Advance felt the worst to me. It was ugly with poor
level design. Not awful, but just average. Not much of a stinker of the year
but I try to stick with games I enjoy. To be clear, I did play worse games (so
many HORRENDOUS licensed beat ‘em ups on the SNES) this year but Sonic Advance was the worst one I beat.
Now, it’s time to
revisit my goals from last year!
2025 Goal #1:
Complete Suikoden
Check. It was
pretty good. Not worth the money I spent on it.
2025 Goal #2:
Fix Hardware
I fixed up my
controller fleet and my PS2, so let’s call that a check.
2025 Goal #3:
Complete 30 games
Crushed it. I finished
48 this year.
2025 Goal #4:
Finish all the numbered Mega Man X games
Nope! I did finish X5,
though. I just didn’t want to.
2025 Goal #5:
Read 24 books
I didn’t complete
this goal, but I did read 20 books, so that’s pretty close. I’ll give myself a B+.
Now, it’s time for
some goals for 2026.
2026 Goal #1:
Play a long RPG
Maybe Final Fantasy XV. No commitments.
2026 Goal #2: Fix my Nintendo 64 and Gamecube
Somehow, neither of them are working. I’m distraught.
2026 Goal #3: Complete 35 games
Seems about right.
2026 Goal #4: Finish Command and Conquer
It’s now the oldest game on my backlog and it’s time. I made
it 80% of the way through it a few years ago and I need to finish it.
2026 Goal #5: Read 20 books
20 felt right last year. I don’t want to force myself to
read short books just to get to 24.
And that’s it! See you next time.
-TRO
