PixlBit

I’ve cooked you all up a Thanksgiving feast of game reviews I’ve written lately over at GamerDad.com.  You’ll get all nice and fat after reading these!  Please read as many as you can and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d appreciate it.  OK, let’s dig in!

Cotton 30th Anniversary Double Feature!

We’ll start with a review double helping!  “Cotton” is a series of 2-D horizontally scrolling shooters that were very popular in the 90’s during the 16- and 32-bit eras.  They star a candy-obsessed witch girl named Cotton who flies on her broom as she shoots down foes in spooky yet silly settings.  It’s an example of the “Cute ‘Em Up” subgenre of shooters similar to titles like Twinbee, Parodius, Fantasy Zone, or Ordyne.  And now it’s Cotton’s 30th anniversary!  Of course, this may not mean much to many gamers, as Cotton was never released outside Japan…until now!  Earlier this year we got Cotton Reboot!, which I reviewed a couple of months ago.  And now we are getting two re-releases of classic 16-bit Cotton games: Cotton 100% and Panorama Cotton!

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (PS4)

For several generations, youngsters have enjoyed watching shows on the Nickelodeon cable channel for kids.  Heck, even when I was little back in the 80’s, I enjoyed watching Nick shows such as You Can’t Do that on Television, Danger Mouse, and Double Dare.  Even more recently I’ve been known to watch shows on that channel like Invader ZIM and The Penguins of Madagascar.  My younger brothers would watch shows on Nickelodeon, too, such as Rugrats and SpongeBob Squarepants.  And now there is a fighting game featuring Nick’s vast history of cartoon stars.  So yeah, it’s basically Smash Bros. with Nickelodeon characters.  It’s not as good as Smash, but you shouldn’t expect it to be.  Read on to find out if it’s good and who’s in it!

SkateBIRD (Switch)

Some people like to eat a bird for Thanksgiving, so here’s one.  Back in the late 90’s, extreme sports games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater were huge.  But I never understood the draw of them.  That is until I reviewed Disney Skate Adventure, which was made by the same folks who did the Tony Hawk games.  Disney Skate Adventure was actually one of the first games I reviewed at GamerDad, and I finally understood the draw of these types of games after playing it.  You got to skate with familiar characters like Buzz Lightyear and cub Simba, and skate around locations like Pizza Planet and the Elephant Graveyard.  It was a lot of fun, so I’m more open to try unusual skateboard games now!  Which brings us to SkateBIRD, where you can play as small birds who have traded flying for skating, and you can shred around skate parks like a giant bedroom!  It’s about as weird as Fight Crab, and really put the ‘hawk’ in Tony Hawk!

Bonito Days (Switch)

And if you don’t like birds, how about some fish for your feast?  In the Super Monkey Ball games, there are usually a large selection of multiplayer mini-games that are just as fun as the main game themselves.  One favorite is Monkey Target.  Who doesn’t like Monkey Target?  In that one, you roll your monkey in a ball down a ramp, launch it in the air, and make it glide to a target below for points.  Bonito Days takes that premise and expands upon it with a bit of Katamari Damacy weirdness thrown in.

Metroid Dread amiibo

For a while I wasn’t having too much trouble getting amiibo figures but this year it’s been a lot harder.  Luckily I finally got the Metroid Dread amiibo two pack, so let’s take a look at them!

Gynoug (PS4)

I’ve been reviewing a lot of Japan-only classic 16-bit shooters lately that have been re-released on newer consoles.  But here’s one that was actually released in the US on the SEGA Genesis, under a new name.  In Japan it was called Gynoug, but they changed it to Wings of Wor in the US.  Despite how you may feel about the change, I can understand why they did that since ‘Gynoug” looks like the phonetical pronunciation of holding back a sneeze.  Anyway, in this one you play as a winged warrior as you mow down enemies in 2-D side scrolling fashion. 

Trios (Switch)

Trios is a math puzzle game where you must solve equations to match the number in the background.  In each stage are bubbles with numbers and equation signs in them (plus, minus, times, and divided by).  You must tap two numbers and an equation sign to make a new number, and repeat the process until you get the desired outcome. 

Waifu Discovered 2: Medieval Fantasy (Switch)

Waifu?  What’s that?  Isn’t that what you hook your Internet up to?  Nah, just joking, I know what that word means.  It’s like a pretend girlfriend or something, I think.  Anyway, fasten your seatbelts, folks, because I think this may be one of the weirdest (and most adult) 2-D shooters I’ve ever played.  In a fantasy world, warrior and wizard ladies have put on cursed armor and now they need to get it off.  So an old lady summons a spaceship from a shooter game and shrinks it down to shoot away the curses and remove the evil armor. 

Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire (PS4)

Play Mahjong Solitaire to unlock outfits for a bevvy of pretty anime ladies in this one.  It’s very similar to the Bishoujo Battle Mahjong Solitaire game I reviewed a while back, but without the guns.

And that’s the end of the feast! You should all have nice fat bellies now!  Thanks for reading and posting ‘likes’ and comments on my reviews.  I do appreciate it.  Later!  --Cary