Topic: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

[broodwars]

How about one more to finish out the night? Might as well finally let my PS3 get in on the action:









Blade Kitten is a 2.5D action platformer published by Atari in 2010, and it's apparently based on a webcomic series I've never heard of starring an anime catgirl bounty hunter.

I'll give Blade Kitten some props at the start for its visual style, which has aged extremely gracefully in the last 16 years, even if Kate Ballard (the catgirl) looks like she's going to try to sell me some Esurance every time the game goes into a cutscene. The environments may be drab and uninteresting, but those character models wouldn't look too out of place in a modern Indie game. The game is also fairly competently voice acted (not a guarantee in 2010), and there's a pretty strong emphasis on exploration with all the hidden collectables and the platforming tricks you need to reach them.

That said, this is an action platformer, and the combat was awful even by the standards of the time. Kate has a sword that follows her around in the air at all times, and you can mash a button to spam swings in front of you. There's also a grab with the sword the game really forces you to use in the 2nd half to remove enemy shields. That's about it for the combat, which wouldn't be too big an issue if the game didn't have quite so MUCH of it, and if the collision detection in this game weren't fundamentally broken. Sure, you CAN pounce on enemies at times to throw them in the air and you CAN also slide into enemies, but the timing on the aerial grab is really finicky and the slide doesn't play well with the Dualshock 3's analog stick. In the end, it's just more efficient to spam the attack button, the BORING way. And meanwhile, enemies just swarm all around you, beating you to death. Even with regenerating health, Kate is extremely fragile and it makes the levels way more frustrating than they need to be.

Things don't get that much better with the platforming. Being a catgirl, Kate can climb walls and ceilings, as well as lock jumps onto certain small platforms, and that's basically how every secret in the game will be hidden. What's frustrating about the platforming is that there IS more to it but the game never forces you to use the full depths of your kit during the main progression of the levels. For instance, Kate can plunge her sword into walls she can't climb and then use her sword as a springboard to fling herself up higher. The game NEVER tells the player they can do this in normal play. I only discovered this was a "thing" when I was rummaging through the menus and found the in-game manual that detailed how to perform this move, and I can definitely think of some early game chests I couldn't figure out how to reach that I needed that move to get to.

Unfortunately, there's a much bigger issue with the platforming that that: it's extremely unresponsive. Kate moves more like a Sonic or Bubsy than a Mario, feeling more like she's skating along the ground rather than running. This makes every level feel like an Ice level, where you're slow to get moving; suddenly start running extremely quickly; and then skid to a stop several feet from where you intended. The game's poor performance certainly doesn't help things there, either, especially in the game's 2nd half where the enemy count starts tripling and they ALL start chasing you through the levels without stopping. It also doesn't help that this game's environmental collision is a joke, and several times resulted in game-important characters getting pushed through geometry into areas they're not supposed to be in and which you can't get them out of.

And Christ, the levels drag on forever. "4-5 hours" my ass, "How Long to Beat." This one took me probably closer to 8-10, 2 full nights.

The story is also a mess. It starts simple enough: Kate comes to a planet to hunt a bounty and a fellow bounty hunter steals essentially her ID. Kate chases after her and shenanigans ensue. Unfortunately, after the opening level I completely lost track of what was going on in the story because everything kept diving into tangents and sudden inconveniences. I'm glad the game took a moment to remind players that the final boss was the bounty Kate came to hunt, because the entire "bounty hunting" story hadn't been brought up since literally the beginning of the game and I had no idea why I was suddenly at odds with this one woman.

So, why did I pick up this game? I actually do remember this one. For a while, I worked in QA for EA, where I primarily tested on 360 at first. Back then, Microsoft allowed developers on its platform into a little backstage XBLA for uploading test builds of games, and EA realized too late that that meant that anyone from any company could download builds of anyone else's game.

I played so much Space Invaders Extreme that way. 

In any case, one of the other games I kept seeing on there was this Blade Kitten game. At the time, it was good-looking, and I'm a fan of both anime and platformers so it looked like a fun time. Figured I'd give it a play once I had one of those shiny new 360 and PS3 machines for myself.

Well, I'm glad that I finally played through it in any case, even if the game was at best mediocre. It reminds me of those Sonic Boom games on the 3DS at times, a Bubsy game at others. Funnily enough, you may have noticed the "Episode 1" tag in one of those screenshots. Well, this isn't another Elea situation. There actually WAS an Episode 2...on PC. Apparently, the rights to the game were in limbo for a few years when Atari went under for a while, but the original devs managed to get the rights back and put out their 2nd episode...which looks identical to the 1st game despite being made 5 years later.

Yeah, I'll pass on playing Episode 2 on PC, thanks.

[Khushrenada]

Special shout-out to the music, by the way. The new orchestrations (particularly Aquas' theme) are outstanding.

The ten tracks that were released ahead of the game on the Nintendo Music app definitely helped get me more excited about this game then I had been when it was first announced. Most of them seemed like they would now be the definitive versions of those songs. Sadly, the Star Wolf theme was the one I felt was the weakest of the new orchestrations and felt there were some better ones in the past. Still, I've been wishing now that Nintendo would release the full soundtrack for the game on the app as I'd like to hear the rest of them and have the feeling it will take the place of the Star Fox 64 OST I'll listen to on occasion.

Was hoping I'd be able to at least match you again on the leaderboard but 3DS needs recharging and I wasn't quite able to finish the game I'm playing although I am very close to the final boss. I guess I'll wrap it up tomorrow. Gotta keep up the pace here particularly since Mop it up has been gaining a lot of ground lately.

[ThePerm]

Finished GTA: San Andreas story at 1:17 am.

[Mop it up]

Against my better judgment, I next tried out Sonic Drift for the Game Gear. I played and won all three of the GPs which rolled credits, so I s'pose that's a completion for this title. Why is Sonic in a car? Wouldn't he be faster without it? I guess he needs to make it fair for everyone else. Surprisingly enough, this doesn't appear to have any rubberbanding as was common in 90s racers, so all I needed to do was get by the wide-load CPUs and it doesn't take much to keep a lead. With its wonky controls and bouncy visuals that are hard to look at, I probably wouldn't have bothered playing this if it weren't so easy. Personally, I've always felt that racing games were never really worthwhile until the advent of 3D and analogue sticks.

[broodwars]

Against my better judgment, I next tried out Sonic Drift for the Game Gear. I played and won all three of the GPs which rolled credits, so I s'pose that's a completion for this title. Why is Sonic in a car? Wouldn't he be faster without it? I guess he needs to make it fair for everyone else.

I think Sonic would prefer we forgot about that time he did a racing game without a car. 

https://youtu.be/k6vgKfRsmI0?is=N1vNyNKnryeFYTnN

Also, Sonic All Star Racing Transformed and Sonic Racing Crossworlds are great, and he uses a car in those.

[M.K.Ultra]

On Wednesday I beat the main story of Marvel's Spider-Man on PS4. That is right, I went back to Insomniac for another shorter game. I actually don't have a time estimate (or trophy count or screenshot) since I am also on the PSN blackout. I remember picking this game up when I was really overbuying PS4 games. These days I am skipping all the Marvel games. I also was not really that into the recent Spider-Man movies, just watching them for the 3D. However I really liked Brand New Day and this was a great follow up as I really enjoyed this game as well. For a PS4 game it looks great and traveling around the city is quite fun, though I still ended up using fast travel. I tried to focus on just the main mission but did pick up some collectibles along the way. The combat reminded me of the Arkham games by Rocksteady but a little lighter. I think I enjoyed the story and acting most of all. Still probably won't pick up the sequels but I think I will return to this for 100% completion later on.

I am not sure if there is time for another short game or not but I will give it a try if I can.

[Khushrenada]

Backlaugust 2020 - 44 games total*
Backlaugust 2021 - 39 games total
Backlaugust 2022 - 56 games total
Backlaugust 2023 - 36 games total
Backlaugust 2024 - 18 games total
Backlaugust 2025 - 30 games total

This is the 7th Backlaugust event. I wanted to go back and review what the totals were for each year. Those are the amounts that users reported making some progress in their backlogs with games either beat or complete. It's funny. In my mind, I thought that the first Backlaugust was the highest total we ever had but it was actually the third which surprised me. Felt like this event often saw lower and lower numbers of games finished but that's not the case. It's down, up, down, down, up and now up again. In fact, with the way things are going, it is likely we can set a new Backlaugust record here which is not something I was expecting to see happen when we were talking about who might host this year and based on the last couple years turnout. Wild but welcome stuff. Who knows? Maybe there's still a few lurkers out there who have something to contribute but haven't posted yet. Perhaps having more of a competition for the leaderboard has also had an effect. It has reminded me at times of the first event when I start trying to catch up to RABicle. That was a good battle and Broodwars and Mop it up are definitely keeping me focused these last couple weeks as well.

*I've never been confident about this total of 44 because of Luigi Dude and the Castlevania games he was playing that month. There's like 11-12 games that he beat but some of them he sort of dismissed as not counting on his backlog because he had played them on different consoles before so the 44 comes about based on what he put forward to be submitted to the total but I can't help but feel there was more that could have been or should have been counted. Still even if we error with caution and add another 12 games to that total, it would only tie 2022 and we still have the chance to beat that 56 mark this year.

[Khushrenada]

Currently, the amount stands at 52 total games. Well, make that 55 as we are now 1 game shy of tying that 56 mark.

Mega Man IV - I decided to go for another helping of Mega Man and cross off another title from my 3DS GB VC backlog. Quite the acronym grouping there. Having found Mega Man III a better experience from II and the first one of Dr. Wily's Revenge, I went into this one hoping it might prove to be similar to III in which I didn't have to quite force myself to keep play. Well, it met that bar and surpassed it. This has been about the best Mega Man experience I've had yet. At one point as I was playing this on Wednesday night, I was even thinking to myself, I could see myself replaying this game again. With the other three games I'd played, I had imagined myself having those games and playing them on my Game Boy pocket and getting so annoyed and frustrated with them at having to likely have to replay stuff over and over again to progress in them. Not so much with this one. In fact, I'd sometimes be into the game to not bother with creating new save points which could backfire when I did suddenly fall into a pit or hit some spike and die and then I would have to replay a chunk of the level over again. It seems like the developers had really gotten a handle now of the Game Boy and how to make things play well on it. I went through all 8 of the Robot Masters and defeated the Ballade robot twice. After that fight, I died as the level suddenly surprised me with a self-destruct sequence and ran out of time moving forward. I decided to pause it and call it a night there even though I felt I was pretty close to now facing Wily and finishing the game.

How wrong I was! Figuring out what to do and how to get through that self-destruct level took longer and was harder than I expected. Then after that, one still had to play through a bunch of levels and minibosses on Wily's spaceship and then you had to fight all 8 of the Robot Masters again before I could finally face Wily and then figure out what to do in his boss fight. That last act of the game from the self-destruct sequence to the Wily fight really ruined the goodwill the game had earned up to that point. It just seemed to be a lot of padding to extend the ending for whatever reason. I didn't time myself but I'm sure it took at least two hours to go through that whole end portion of the game. I would have hated trying to experiment with different weapons in the hopes of figuring out what would be effective in some of those situations and having to keep dying and replaying and testing if I was doing it with the original hardware. And they had done so well with the game up to that point.

I might have mentioned this in a previous backlaugust but I got the Mega Man games from the 3DS VC since they were a third party title and people were unsure if Capcom might release them onto the Switch particularly since they really hadn't done much with these games until the 3DS VC re-release of them. Of course, now we know there is a GB NSO app and Capcom did let all 5 GB Mega Man games on it. I probably wouldn't have bothered then if I had known that. Still, because I did get them and add them to my backlog, it did give me some incentive to actually play them. I still may not have played any of them yet if I'd just waited for them on NSO. There's a bunch of titles I have been curious to try and still haven't bothered with on a lot of the NSO apps like the SNES and Sega Genesis. As it stands, there are now just three games left in my GB VC backlog. Mega Man V, Mole Mania and Metroid II. That's a lot of ehms. I really need to get around to playing Mole Mania. It was highly recommended as a good GB game but I've put it off to try and save something good for last and beating Mega Man V would likely accomplish that and I'd tackle Mole Mania after. But if I do that and it now leaves just Metroid II as the last GB VC game then I may actually go back to further play that game and actually beat it to complete that whole section of VC purchases.

[Khushrenada]

Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? I'd bought Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy years back on Switch when they kept popping up on sale on the eShop. I've bought other Jeopardy games for some past consoles in the last few years also because I like watching those game shows and I like trivia and seeing how much I can answer. After getting Jep and Wheel, I'd then noticed Millionaire and thought about picking it up when it would come on sale but kept putting it off as I'd rather get a physical copy and I did around December of last year for a bargain when buying a bundle of some Switch games. Never got around to actually playing and testing it out... until now! Shocker! It's a pretty barebones experience. Not as barebones or minimalist as Ubisoft's Jeopardy! for Switch but still pretty basic. When playing Solo, there's an Easy Mode and Normal Mode. From trying to find information online, that's it. There's no unlockable Hard or Expert mode. In a bit of irony, the Easy mode I found harder than the Normal mode. The Easy mode is designed to be a bit more family friendly to allow children to compete with mom and dad. Except some of the questions that I guess they feel kids would know were some things that tripped me up. I lost a few times so then I thought I'd switch ( ) it up to Normal mode which was much closer to the regular type of questions you'd see on the game show and if I didn't win the million on the first try then I got it on the second. Can't quite remember now because I decided I'd also try to win it on Easy mode which took a bunch more tries. On the game I did win, the $500,000 was something like "Which of these names is not a member of the eSports team e-Velocity?" or something close to that. Burned through a bunch of lifelines but it was still a 50/50 guess in the end that I ended up on the right side of. The $1,000,000 question was then something like "Which of these names was never President of the United States?" which was super easy to me.

There is a little bit of a point system you can earn from winning or walking away with some amount of money to spend on additional categories to have questions pulled from. The problem there is that of the 7 or 8 subjects that can be unlocked, there's like half of them I'd never want to unlock. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Manga are some of the subjects. I know so little of Harry Potter having never read the books and only watching the movie series for the first and only time two years ago. Likewise, I just don't read Manga or follow much in anime. As for Star Wars, I don't know who deep some of those questions may get but I'm not someone who has followed all these minor characters or expanded universe stuff and even the sequel trilogy I've only seen once aside from The Last Jedi. What is the name of the yellow alien with the big eyes in The Force Awakens? No clue.

However, what the developers really want is for one to buy some expansion packs for more questions with a link to the eShop being part of the main menu of the game which explains the low amount of unlockable categories. I may still mess around with the game some more to see if I can pull off a few more wins and maybe I do unlock everything since I can always unselect categories for questions to be pulled from so I wouldn't have to worry about some million dollar Harry Potter question. In the meantime, having won the grand prize in both Easy and Normal, I'm saying this game has been beaten.

[Khushrenada]

Aero Porter Started playing this a bit last weekend. Wasn't sure how it might go but thought it had a chance of being beaten quickly. There's not much FAQ information and the game is also pretty minimalist in information and presentation. The game can be pretty hectic and frustrating with the amount of spinning plates it wants you to keep an eye on. When I last played it on Sunday or Monday, I'd had a case where a explosive device went off ending the "day" or game and set it aside. On returning to it today, I discovered this had caused the power to be pretty much out for the in-game luggage sorter that you control so everything was moving pretty slow and I had low funds. As a result, I couldn't seem to buy an item to give me more power for the sorter and then I kept missing getting luggage on some flights causing me to get penalties and reductions in the amount of my money I had banked. At one point, I was down to zero and wondering if I had to reset the game because it just didn't seem like I could get out of this slow-moving hole or that I'd ever reach the request of seeing over 6,000 customers go through my airport. Fortunately, I kept chipping away and after awhile was back on track and getting better. Had a run in which I exceeded that 6,000 customer request while also correctly loading up the President's luggage on Air Force One and disposing of a bomb thread properly in one go. That upgraded my airport to a spaceport and unlocked Air Force One if the hangar for the game. Not sure how much of this is making sense if you haven't played the game before but I didn't come here to explain it.

It made me wonder if there was more that I could grow the airport out to be or what might trigger the credits to play. When I searched about credits for the game, Google AI posted that "Unlocking the Spaceport and Air Force One represents reaching the final high-tier milestone or maximum airport level in the progression loop." Also, "Once everything is unlocked, the game continues infinitely in an open-ended fashion rather than triggering a staff roll or conclusion screen." I wanted to see the source that it was getting this answer from but I couldn't seem to find that out when I looked up the "About the source" option. Still, based on the messages the game gives me on the title screen, it does seem like I've "beaten" the game even though it is more of an arcade-like game. Right, Google AI? "Endless Design: Aero Porter is structured as an arcade-style puzzle and simulation game rather than a narrative adventure." While I see there are other planes that can be added to the Hangar for some Streetpass nonsense, it does seem like I've hit the final upgrade and goal milestones meaning the game is now beat in that regards.

[Mop it up]

I'm back by unpopular demand! Maybe I'm just getting used to how these games work, or maybe they're short, but I've trailed through two more Game Gear titles with Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble and Sonic Blast. Not to be confused with Sonic 3D Blast, as I was. Finally getting to some games that were developed for Game Gear, surely these will have less of a screen-crunch issue, right? ...Right? Oh, how naive I can be at times. Sonic Blast in particular, has huge sprites, I can barely see a thing! I chose Knuckles for a change of pace, and I'm glad I did as his wall-climbing and gliding came in handy for the increased verticality of these mazes. Especially the one water maze level, which had a lot of paths that looped back on themselves if you fell. Triple Trouble also has a lot of springboards in it, so I guess it's a sequel to that other one. The first boss was probably the toughest one of the game, since it requires mastering the timing of ballin' in the air, a technique that wasn't present in the previous games. There's even an auto-runner stage here, back before it was cool! I s'pose this is a smarter way to handle an auto-scroll stage for Sonic.

[broodwars]

Been busy running family errands and chopping up fallen trees today to post or play anything, but I might as well add this one now that I've been working on for a few days and finally finished:







It's been a while since I played a Far Cry game, and even longer since I played Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. A few years ago, Ubisoft released a "Classic Edition" remaster on modern consoles that was widely criticized for running at 30 FPS. Well, as Ubisoft is wont to do, they recently put out an update to unlock the other 30 frames, so I've finally gotten around to playing this remaster.

The setup is simple enough: you are Michael Beihn, a cyborg supersoldier, and you're tasked with taking out a rogue cyber commando who has taken over an island with his army of cyber soldiers, cyber dogs, cyber sharks, and the deadliest creatures of all: the laser-spewing Blood Dragons. Perhaps you're sensing a theme here. You wander the island, capture garrisons, do brief missions where you take out enemies with particular weapons or free hostages. There are only 7 story missions, so it's a quick ride if you want it to be. I, of course, had to run around collecting all the VHS taps, CRT tapes, and complete all the side missions.

Overall, it's still a good game, though it's worth noting both that this game was made during the height of the 80s nostalgia boom and Ubisoft's "subversive" era. As such, the theming of the game can be a bit overbearing at times, and the humor can be both pretty tired and depressing at times...considering a lot of the jokes are at the expense of Ubisoft game design, which has not improved in any meaningful way since Blood Dragon's original 2013 release. It doesn't help that Michael Beihn was never the greatest actor, and he seems to alternate between completely phoning his lines in and just being...Michael Beihn.



It's not funny when modern games are basically just doing that now.

Blood Dragon walks a very careful line between absolute sincerity to the bit and absolutely no shits to give, particularly in the retro cutscenes. And the game is basically over once you unlock the explosive rounds for your sniper rifle, as nothing in the game can stand up to a semi-automatic sniper rifle shooting grenades. If you're not a fan of 80s movies, you'll find this game's style grating.







What does absolutely elevate this game, though, is Power Glove's outstanding soundtrack, which was clearly inspired by the likes of the original Terminator, Predator, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHcFO7pUi9Y&list=PLu6_FOgZp3ehDEMebGB4uDbN5yMYOthnP&index=25

This game also has one of my all-time favorite game trailers. Say what you will about mid-2000s Ubisoft, but they definitely had the passion at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dofacvjRkc

I wouldn't get too comfortable at the top of the leaderboard there, Khush. I still have a card or 2 to play before this is all over. 

[Evan_B]

I decided to stick it to all you swindlers who think clearing short games makes you superior, and took on Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta. That’s right, a 20-something hour game. Big spender here.

That was all sarcasm. I know some of you have completed larger games than me, and a short game is just as worthy, especially for this competition.

I’ve really just come to the sobering conclusion that most of the games I purchase are either procedural hellscapes or “feature length experiences,” which for my preferred genre tastes (RPGs) is twenty hours on a good day. The exceptions are few and far between, and when I do get those exceptions, they tend to be the first part of my backlog that I fridge clean. This is worrisome, of course, considering I am very aware of at least ten RPGs in my backlog at the moment. At least ten.

Anyway, it’s also why I find myself pining for the days of the dedicated handheld. Revelations in Celceta is a modern port of a PSVita title, and maybe it’s because it’s Ys, maybe it’s because it was made for Vita, but this is a trim action RPG that does not overstay its welcome. As a matter of fact, I was initially worried about its QoL fast travel feature being a bit needlessly obtuse, but the game just goes “hey, you made it halfway through the game map at this point, here’s limit-free fast travel” and becomes even faster and more convenient in the latter half. It makes me want to circle around back to the other Ys games in my library just to see if they’re actually as briskly paced as this. After getting stonewalled by a huge end-of-game side quest list in Digimon Time Stranger, it’s nice to have a JRPGs that appreciates my time. Even clearing out the side objectives for this game is very straightforward.

With that said, my Backaugustry comes to a close. I made the mistake of purchasing Elden Ring when I am fully aware that I want to play several big games before the end of 2026, among them being Dragon’s Dogma 2, which is a similarly honkin big JRPG. Oh dear. Good games, everyone, it’s been very enjoyable to see you all post about your recent finishes, as someone who is nostalgic for the days of forums’ former glory.

[broodwars]

I’ve really just come to the sobering conclusion that most of the games I purchase are either procedural hellscapes or “feature length experiences,” which for my preferred genre tastes (RPGs) is twenty hours on a good day. The exceptions are few and far between, and when I do get those exceptions, they tend to be the first part of my backlog that I fridge clean. This is worrisome, of course, considering I am very aware of at least ten RPGs in my backlog at the moment. At least ten.

I've been mulling over creating a separate forum event for RPGs in the future, but unfortunately the only month with a name that fits the topic is "ARPGust" (August), a month that is definitely already taken. "JRPG July?" Maybe we just go June -> August with "RPG Summer", since those are months where basically nothing comes out. I dunno. Open to ideas, because this is definitely the last Backlaugust where I'm going to be to shotgunning games like this. RPGs make up the vast majority of the backlog I care about as well, and they don't suit this format.

Edit: Been mulling it over, and what about "Rolevember"? Set it across November and December, traditionally dead months these days.

[Evan_B]

Rolevember has some charm! But I’d also consider a general “RPG book club” for folks, especially since their contents are rarely a neat fit in a single month. Since I play a lot I’d be willing to offer my hand and hot takes to those who come later.

[Mop it up]

Sonic Labyrinth and Tails Sky Patrol are in the bag! Labyrinth was shorter than I was expecting, with only 4 acts of 3 stages each, less than a typical Sonic. It reminded me of Kirby's Dream Course, what with its isometric perspective and getting a ball character to the goal, though it features a time limit rather than a stroke limit. It seems the main challenge here would just be going for high scores. Sky Patrol is sort of like a shmup, except with less shooting and more navigating an environment without crashing into stuff. It's pretty short too with only 5 stages, though they're pretty lengthy. Fortunately it offers infinite continues, though using one means starting at the beginning of a stage, so it still takes some doing to get through a level. Maybe it's just because the gameplay was different than the usual Sonic fare but I quite liked this one.

[broodwars]

"Ah...we have a 3-way tie for 1st, and the PSN Blackout is over. That'll do!"

I've mentioned before that I had a collection of bad games I had been playing, but I'd set them aside to play stuff moderately more enjoyable, Well, it seems the time has come to Farewell this thing from my backlog...



For my last major contribution to this event, I present the so-called Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection:



I picked this one up some months ago when it was on heavy sale just before its pitiful 2 year movie license expired and the game met the fate of all games in the Shiny Digital Future. This game contains 7 NES; Game Boy; and Sega Genesis Games, and while they are on the shorter side I would only consider 1 of them simple. And you have to complete them all for the Platinum, twice each for the Genesis games, and once on Hard mode in the case of one of the SNES games.

I think the movie itself best summed up my views on this collection and Limited Run Games' decision to make it.





This is going to be a long one, so I'm going to break this up into multiple posts for easier reading. Hold onto your butts!

[broodwars]

Let's start things off with Jurassic Park (NES):





If it weren't for rewind and save states, this would be by far the worst game in the set, and that is saying something considering how bad these games are.

The game comprises 6 top-down levels with a handful of additional boss fights, and like many of the other games in the set it takes its general look and iconography from the movie but the plot from the original book, meaning the focus of the story is largely on stopping the boat carrying stowaway raptors from reaching the mainland and tracking down all the rogue raptor eggs.

I sure hope you love collecting eggs, because that is 90% of the gameplay. You roam fairly large outdoor areas, collecting every...SINGLE...egg in the area in order to cause a card key to drop that opens a door...somewhere. The game doesn't tell you where. You're just supposed to check all the doors in the level until one does something. Once you get into a building, it's time to collect eggs again in order to trigger another card key drop that leads somewhere else. Wash, rinse, repeat. Shoot dinosaurs with a grenade launcher inbetween.

Good god, this gets monotonous, and weirdly enough it's not the raptors that cause the biggest annoyance, but all the swarms of Compsognathus that eat your ammo and can easily outrun you. The dilophosaurus are annoying in their own special way, too. The only way to take them out without taking damage is to constantly change directions and fire at them before they've instantly pivoted to your new location. And all the dinosaurs in this game respawn if you even slightly move off-screen.

Later levels add their own annoyances, such as the boat stage with its tesla coils that spit electricity in all directions at extremely odd intervals that require pixel perfect precision to avoid. Then there's the stage where you have to set timed C4 charges in raptor nests and then escape under extremely strict time limits before they explode. Then there's the stage where you have to turn on all the computers scattered randomly around a large building in a specific order the game never discloses. More on that later.

But the things that makes you tear your hair out and hug the rewind button are the 2 boss battles against the T-Rex. In both, you're playing escort duty as the T-Rex stomps around the environment. You can only damage him when he's charging with his head down to the ground. If his head touches you, you instantly die. If his head touches Lex or Tim (who joins in the 2nd battle), you instantly die. The NPCs will follow you as you move around the arena...sometimes. I never figured out what the trigger was to get them to move, which is all sorts of fun. Amusingly, the T-Rex stepping on them is NOT an instant kill.

Overall, this is a very bad game, and I'm glad I never have to play it ag-

Jurassic Park (Game Boy)





SONOFABITCH! It's almost an exact port of the NES game! Why?! Why couldn't it have just been a generic 2D platformer like every other Game Boy licensed game! 

Well, everything I just said about the NES version applies here, too, although oddly this is a considerably easier version of the game...mostly, and that's largely because of what a complete PoS the original Game Boy hardware was. Weaker hardware means there are way fewer dinosaurs onscreen, and for some reason Grant moves at what feels like double his speed from the NES game, which means that you can easily outrun the dinosaurs in this version. It's almost pointless to kill dinos in this game unless they're directly standing in your way.

Where things get different are in the boss fights. The Triceratops stampede with Tim and the T-Rex fight with Lex are still here, but they're not repeated like they are in the NES version. And the T-Rex fight works way differently and is much easier...if you know how it works. Instead of a traditional fight, you fire rounds at him to bat him away while triggering Lex to very slowly follow you to the exit at the far left of the arena. Lex can't get insta-killed, either. The catch is that if you don't enter this fight with a huge arsenal of ammo from the previous levels, it is impossible to clear this chase because there is NO ammo in the arena. That also means that you really need to be keeping count of how many rounds of each ammo type is sufficient to drive him away for a few seconds.

While playing this game, however, is where I noticed that LRG stuck an option in the collection pause menu that allows you to pull up a map of whatever level you're in at any given time. Very useful...



...except when it's a total lie. That is NOT the order you trigger the consoles in the Game Boy version. I believe the order in THIS map is the order you press them in the NES version.

Overall, I have and did see worse than this.

[broodwars]

Moving on, here's the one game in the set I not only have played before, but used to own and would regularly beat as a kid: Jurassic Park (SNES).







I don't know how I did it back then, because this is one of the most confusing, cryptic games I've played in a while.

I'll give the SNES version this much: it's certainly the most ambitious of Ocean's Jurassic Park games. Instead of a level-based structure, you have a small open world populated by dinosaurs and dungeons shaped like buildings. Outside, it's a top-down shooter. It's an Ocean Jurassic Park game, so you're looking for dinosaur eggs as well, and you're required to find all of them to beat the game. Inside, you're playing 3D Doom at 5 frames per second as you wander through absolute labyrinths looking for keys and consoles to interact with.

I remembered next to nothing about the actual progression of this game, other than that I needed to start by entering a utility shed to get a keycard before going into the visitor's center.

Pity I forgot that there are 2 utility sheds, the 1 you want is pretty well hidden, and I spent an eternity in the wrong one looking for a keycard that wasn't there. That then made me think my memory was bad, so I went to the visitor center...where I spent an even longer eternity looking for anything I could interact with and kept running into warnings that I needed keycards I didn't have in order to proceed. What a comedy of errors.

Once I started pulling up guides to point me in the right direction, things went more smoothly, but I can't stress enough what an absolutely cluster**** navigation is. Ocean had a love for mazes that bordered on the psychopathic. All of their JP games featured them, and none more than this one, and you're expect to remember where locked doors are and what keycards you need to open them later. The entire back half of the game expects you to crisscross the entire map 4 times over the course of clearing 1 dungeon, as you obtain keycards on the boat that allow you access to an area of the visitor center you need to reach to give yourself security clearance so you can explore the rest of the boat.

Then there's taking out the raptor nest, an absolute nightmare of identical corridors and walls you can very easily glitch through to get stuck in the void. At least the game is kind enough to remember what dinosaurs you've killed, as only certain raptors in the overworld respawn. And the collection does have a master map of the overworld that is quite handy, though sadly NO maps for the interior mazes that would be VERY helpful.

Where it isn't kind, and this is a big benefit of the collection, is with the game's save system. It doesn't have one, and it can easily take 3-5 hours to beat this game if you don't know what to do, and you're expected to do them all in one sitting. Again, I don't know how I routinely managed this as a child. Because the collection has save states, this game is way more playable now than it was back then.

[broodwars]

Next up was a game I'd heard a lot about as a kid and the first of the games I had to beat twice: Jurassic Park (Genesis).







Yeah, I lost my screenshot from when I cleared the game as Grant. As you can tell, I was stockpiling a lot of them at the time.

As I said before, if I didn't have save states and rewind, the NES game would be the worst game in the set. However, I DID have them in this collection so THIS piece of **** was definitely the worst one. I have no earthly idea what all the Genesis players were smoking when they were hyping this trash up back in the day. Sure, the SNES game was cryptic and frequently boring, but I'll take that over this ugly; cheap; and barely functional garbage.

This was the game that was hyped way back when for having 2 campaigns: 1 as Grant trying to escape the park, and another as a raptor pursuing Grant to kill him. In hindsight, maybe instead of the devs creating 2 mediocre experiences with bad implementation, they should have focused on 1 halfway decent experience because this game is a mess.

Let's start with the controls, which make Blade Kitten look responsive. Grant plays more like the Prince in the original Prince of Persia or the dude from Out of This World than Mario. Everything about his movement is extremely slow and requires utter precision. If you want to climb a ladder, you have to be in a VERY specific, pixel-perfect position. Meanwhile, you're getting ganked by dinosaurs who can move twice as fast as you and can kill you in a few hits. And there are so many instant kills, from falling into water on a tricky jump you just barely missed...to the T-Rex breaking through the background with a hit box that is at best a suggestion

Then there's the Raptor. Yes, he is much more responsive than Grant, if still slightly clumsy due to his size. He also has 3 times as a big of a hit box, and he can only hit in melee in a campaign full of humans with guns.  It doesn't go well. You basically spend the campaign spamming your lore-accurate double jump tail whip, which only sometimes actually connects with your target.

Yeah, that's definitely one big ol' disappointment. Good thing I never have to play that ag-

Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition





SONOFABITCH!

Yeah, OK, I actually played the other Game Boy game first, but how could I not do that bit again when Rampage Edition basically just feels like a level pack for the first Genesis JP game? 

I'll give Rampage Edition this much: it IS better than the first game, mainly because Grant now moves like a normal 2D action character of the time and the Raptor can go into an invincible rage mode if you collect 3 lysine containers. Strangely enough, the plot isn't based on either the Lost World book or the (terrible) movie. Instead, it has Grant returning to the island to stop InGen from capturing dinosaur DNA, and then escaping from the T-Rex as usual. Meanwhile, the Raptor runs around killing things until you eventually kill another boss raptor and escape on that damn boat that pops up in all these adaptations. With rewind and save states, it's perfectly playable, just frustrating and dull.

The level design is basically nonexistent. You start in a huge open area, and run wherever in the maze the game allows you to run until the game decides you've suffered enough. Sadly, this won't be the last Jurassic Park sequel that does this. There are collectibles you can grab around the maps in order to "save" their respective specifies, but that doesn't seem to actually have any impact on anything despite the game tracking it.

[broodwars]

Next up is a quickie: Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (Game Boy)





Ah...THERE'S the completely phoned-in, generic 2D licensed platforming action I was expecting from the 1st Game Boy game!

There are 8 fairly large open levels, and Grant must wander them collecting dozens of key cards that literally fall from the sky at times in order to open a big magnetic gate at the end of the stage. You shoot, you jump, and you swim to victory. Completely harmless and enjoyable enough for what it is, with the possible exception of the 2 auto-scrolling T-Rex chase levels where the level design can sometimes **** you over by goading you to take a wrong turn that turns out to be an unavoidable dead end. There are 4 boss fights as well, all with very clear patterns and obvious telegraphs.

A very competently-made generic licensed game. Not much to say about it. Ironically, it may be the best game in the collection by default.

Which leaves our last entry, Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (SNES)









So...this one's a weird one. Like Ocean's other Jurassic Park SNES game, this one is fairly ambitious for its time, but in different ways. It foregoes a linear structure and the open world of the previous SNES JP game for something akin to a Mega Man game. You pick from a list of missions, after which you run through gigantic open mazes killing enemies and completing objectives. After completing a given level, you're assigned an "emergency" mission where you have to run through another maze under extremely strict time limits. Wash, rinse, repeat for 6 sets of levels, plus another 2 for the game's true ending.

Like the other JP sequels, this game has absolutely nothing to do with either the Lost World book or the movie that'd later be loosely based on it. Instead, Biosin (Lewis Dodgson's company. You know them? We have Dodgson's company here! See? No one cares) has deployed an absolute army to Isla Nublar to take over the park, and John Hammond responds by deploying Rambo...err..."Grant" to kill them all and protect the dinosaurs.

The main problem with Chaos Continues on SNES is that the game is really goddamn hard, and the collection requires you to play the game on Hard since that's the only way to access those 2 final levels and the final fights with the T-Rex and the Biosin chopper. Despite having video evidence saying otherwise, I refuse to believe anyone beat this game legit back in the day. Enemies respawn almost immediately upon death, decent ammo is very limited, and Grant dies in seconds under sustained fire (literally, in the case of the frequent flamethrower troopers). It's a Contra game with the sensibilities of Super Ghouls and Ghosts. It's absurd. And if you don't know EXACTLY where to go during the timed emergency missions, you WILL run out of time because the time limits allotted give the player barely any wiggle room, even if they're mainly just jumping over enemies.

On top of that, the developers decided to get cute and give the player 2 sets of weapons: lethal weapons triggered by the L button and non-lethal weapons triggered by the R button. The former is meant to be used on humans, and the latter is meant to be used on dinosaurs. Non-lethal weapons will do barely any damage to humans, and killing dinosaurs with lethal weapons incurs a penalty. For some...bizarre reason, the devs decided to give the dinosaurs a lives counter. When you kill one with a lethal weapon, the counter drops by 1. Over time, that number will slowly tick back up as the dinosaurs repopulate, but if you're not careful you can deplete that meter extremely quickly.

It's worth noting that raptor deaths, thankfully, do not contribute to the dino death counter, as raptors are not dinosaurs. That's just hard science right there.

This is just a bizarre game. It's quite polished for what it is, it still looks good, and if for some reason you really wanted to play a Jurassic Park-themed Contra game, well...there you are. But it's beyond unfair that the developers constructed these massive & extremely similar mazes, give the player NO indication of where to do and little idea of what to do, provide very rare health and ammo pickups, and then often slap a strict time limit on top of it. It's just needlessly frustrating.

And with that, that's the collection. If I had to rank the games in order of quality, I'd probably have them as such from best to worst:

1. Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (Game Boy) - It's nothing special, but it also doesn't have any serious issues.

2. Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (SNES) - It's hard as hell, but there's a solid idea in here for a decent game.

3. Jurassic Park (SNES) - It can be tedious and boring at times, but with a guide nudging you in the right direction there's a unique experience here, especially since you can save your game now.

4. Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition - Terrible level design and frustrating combat encounters, but it's playable enough.

5. Jurassic Park (Game Boy) - The terrible Game Boy hardware ironically sands down some of the edges of the NES version.

6. Jurassic Park (NES) - Boring, tedious, and absolutely unfair in its design.

7. Jurassic Park (Genesis) - What the actual ****?

And now...it's your turn.

[Mop it up]

Lastly, it's time for me to round out my Backlaugust journey with one final: Tails Adventure. Things heat up quickly in this one as the first stage is a forest fire! Darn those rascally robo-ducks! While it's level-based, it has a focus on exploration and finding abilities and upgrades, as well as secret exits to more stages on the map. It still has the problem of a bit of a reverse difficulty curve, as things tended to feel easier after the more health and flight upgrades I found. I appreciate that some of the items are just for fun, such as the radio which allows you to change the music in a stage. Er, well, should I say "RAIDO" as the game calls it, if you prefer. At least all of the letters are present for that one; I'm still scratching my head over "ROCKET BOOTER." It's probably not saying much, but this is easily the best of the Game Gear bunch.

I did sample the last three Game Gear games offered in the collection (Sonic Drift 2, Sonic Spinball, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine), but I kind of hated them and refused to play them.

[broodwars]

69. Tails Adventure - Mop It Up

Backlaugust 2026 Total: 69 Games

...what? Were you expecting something else? 

[decoyman]

I have another one to add: Down in Bermuda

Picked this up on a sale for like $2 last month! Not bad, not bad…

In case you're unfamiliar, Down in Bermuda is a puzzler/search-and-find style game set in a tropical location with some pretty nice art direction. There is a nostalgic story of trying to help a pilot who crashed on the island long ago get back home. Also, there's magic and some colorful characters, such as a giant sleepy talking turtle, a skull pirate, little aquatic axolotl guys, rock warriors. You help these characters who live on these islands, each of which has its own style and theme.



My take of the game is generally favorable, with some nitpicks. Finding the orbs you need to progress (~20-some orbs each island) can be tedious on handheld as they're small and easy to miss, but at least you can find a map that lists locations if you get stuck. Controls are a little wonky, but I sort of got used to them by the end… which (last critique) came pretty quickly. I think I 100%d the game in about ~10 hours. If I'd paid full price for the game, I might be disappointed, but for $2 it was an enjoyable romp.





That makes… 2 games for me this Backlaugust!