Metroid II: Return of Samus
Samus goes to SR388 to kill all of the Metroids. It's an overly large, empty game. Lots of corridors of both the vertical and horizontal variety, often with nothing in them. This entry also introduced the Space Jump, so you have even less reason to stay on the ground and potentially shoot a varmint or something. The Metroid fights are essentially mini bosses. There is some strategy in how you position Samus and react to their erratic movements. The spider-ball is perhaps the most relaxing power-up. Nothing like slowly cruising along walls and ceilings while listening to some quality Game Boy ambiance. Entire adventure is chill, besides the comically hard final boss that makes up 99% of the game's difficulty. OK
Pizza Portals
Your job is to deliver pizza through multiple dimensions at the same time. This is a homebrew game that only takes around 5-10 minutes to finish. I enjoyed it. There's not a ton of meat to chew on, but the developer took a unique concept and made it work on NES hardware. Impressive stuff.
Maiden Cops
Streets of Rage w/ monster gals. This is a fun beatemup that just needs a few tweaks here and there. Mainly, I would've liked to have seen more enemies onscreen. Healing items are also a little too rare. There have been a few occasions where I'd end up dead because I had to go through a long stage without so much as a popsicle. Maybe the issue is that they're not rare but the distribution of them isn't quite right, like they only seem to appear when I don't need them. It's an odd complaint I know, but one that kept coming to mind. Otherwise, what you see is what you get. Juggling hapless baddies with a SOR3-styled special move system is pretty cool. The three playable characters are nice and distinct. Meiga Holstaur - the uh... "cowgirl dressed as a luchadore" - is the only one strong enough to lift the heaviest objects. Pick her if you want to swing girders around Undercover Cops style (this game loves referencing other beatemups). Horniness rating is a 6 out of 10. Nothing explicit, but half the pick-ups are panties.
Maken Shao
Atlus brings their Dreamcast FPS (first-person-slasher) to the Playstation 2 and makes it 3rd person. I tried to be patient with this one, but its camerawork is ludicrous, and the level-design is embarrassing. One stage is just a large open area with 9 exploding dogs sitting in front of 9 crates. Another stage plants machine-gunning enemies at the end of narrow hallways. Players will also be making frequent trips to Moscow to grind experience for the characters that they've psy-jacked. The repetition sets in quickly, especially in those rare situations you have to use a shoddy character to access an area or boss. There are some QOL features like mid-stage saves, but everything else has aged like milk. Oh, and the translation is barely coherent. NO
Dragon Egg!
If you want a quick & easy adventure, then this is it. You might struggle for a moment trying to beat up the bad guys with an egg, but everything changes once it hatches and you're piloting a grown-up dragon. Power your winged buddy up with fiery homing projectiles and cruise through the remainder of this romp in 10 or 15 minutes. I can't say that this was ever unpleasant, but there's hardly any reason to come back after thoroughly stomping everything.
Junkoid
This is an incredible romhack of the original Metroid, likely the greatest next to Rogue Dawn. The level-design and atmosphere are astonishing. However, you saw firsthand how much I struggled with saying anything of value about Super Junkoid, and the same applies to its predecessor. You have to experience it for yourself.
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