Disclaimer: I was born in 2000 on the older end of Generation Z, lucked out into owning all 3 of the major consoles of the day and grew up in the UK, this list shouldn’t be taken as concrete fact and instead as an anecdotal list of games that were common among classmates and friends.

You won’t be seeing any Xbox or GameCube games on this list because the PS2 absolutely dominated, very few people I knew besides me owned those consoles.

Something I’ve noticed in my 14 months of Substack so far is that generally, my readers tend to be a lot older than I am; a lot of the games I’ve written about predate my time on Earth so it’s only natural. As such, I’ve heard mentioned a lot of games from the NES, SNES and other platforms that everybody owned… that wouldn’t necessarily pop-up in best of lists: games like Ikari Warriors, Winter Games and so on.

I’ve always been a retro gamer (if you could even call it that back then) and played my PS2, GameCube and Xbox all the way up until 2009 with those classic Sega compilations on each.

With this all in mind, I wanted to make a list of games that my generation grew up with. These aren’t necessarily the greatest games ever made (though a few stone cold classics appear) instead they are games I just remember floating around wherever I went; growing up in the 2000’s, these games are the kind you’d always see, without fail, laying atop your friend or cousin’s PS2 Slim.

Star Wars Battlefront 1 & 2

I can count on one hand how many people I’ve met in my age range who didn’t grow up with Battlefront 1, 2 or both. As a kid I preferred Battlefront 2 but as an adult? I feel they’re about equal. Adore these games.

The 2000’s were a golden age for Star Wars video games. While the prequels are contentious to this day, gamers were feasting on classic after classic: Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and Outcast, The Force Unleashed, Republic Commando, Rebel Strike on the GameCube, KOTOR I and II, I could sit here all day listing the amazing Star Wars games I grew up with that came out between 2000-2010 but the Battlefronts and LEGO Star Wars were easily the most ubiquitous.

The premise of Battlefront is that you relive famous battles from the films as a standard, rank-and-file soldier. Each match of Battlefront plays out a bit like Battlefield (in fact, EA’s Battlefront reboots in the 2010’s were essentially just Battlefield clones) where you capture points using infantry and vehicles in order to drain the enemy team’s ticket counter to 0 and win the game. Both games have their own merits and are worth playing. Battlefront 1 has the better maps, better infantry gameplay and the campaign features clips from the films but Battlefront 2 adds space battles, playable heroes, a much improved campaign and maps from Revenge of the Sith. If you play on Steam, both games had their multiplayer restored (mod free) a few years back and are very cheap, it was a dream come true playing these online with some people I knew who also had fond memories.

LEGO Games

Starting with LEGO Star Wars in 2005, TT Games began to flood the market with LEGO games based upon popular, family-friendly licences like Indiana Jones and Batman. Everyone I knew had at least one of these when I was growing up. I owned LEGO Star Wars 1 and 2 as well as Indiana Jones and Batman though by the time Batman rolled around even my single-digit aged self was getting tired of how samey these games all were.

I think most people have played a TT Games LEGO game but in case you haven’t, they’re essentially action platformers with some light puzzle elements and although short, they tend to have a huge roster of characters to unlock to keep you coming back.

Don’t quote me on this because it’s been somewhere in the region of 15 years since I last played one of the classic-style TT LEGO games but I remember LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy’s DS version being shockingly good, you could drag and drop parts and make your own character on the touchscreen.

Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets

The garbage PlayStation 1 Harry Potter game is much more well-known than Chamber of Secrets which is a damn shame because this game is actually good.

With a fantastic soundtrack composed by Jeremy Soule of The Elder Scrolls, Chamber of Secrets had bright and whimsical graphics, took you to an impressively realised, fully-explorable Hogwarts and played well; it was a platformer with some light Metroidvania elements, before 9/10 indie games matched that description. As you progressed through the game you unlocked new spells which enabled access to new rooms in the castle. I have fond memories of this one. Chamber of Secrets won’t make any best of lists but it was an above average game with a really warm, charming atmosphere. I owned it on GameCube but my classmates tended to have it on PS2. Quidditch World Cup was also fairly popular but I’ve never played that one.

I was really hoping Hogwarts Legacy was going to be in the same vein as Chamber of Secrets, especially as the Harry Potter games that came after this one fell off a cliff in terms of quality but that game just looks devoid of any charm or colour to me: more of a product made for international audiences than the real Harry Potter, which was always weirdly relatable for school-aged British kids, I don’t know, tell me in the comments if I’m wrong.

Chamber of Secrets was my favourite Harry Potter book as a kid so I hope I’m not overselling this game.

New Super Mario Bros Or Super Mario 64 DS

As the decade progressed, the GameBoy Advance was gradually replaced at school breaktime by the Nintendo DS and the DS Lite; I had the old, original version DS for a while but had upgraded to the Lite by 2007 at the time Pokémon Diamond and Pearl were spreading like wildfire.

But before Diamond and Pearl, the game everyone had was either Super Mario 64 DS or New Super Mario Bros, I for sure played both but I think NSMB was the one I actually owned myself.

Here is where I lose 400 subscribers… I never liked Mario as a kid, instead I was firmly in the Sonic camp and spent an ungodly amount of hours on the GameCube versions of Adventure 1 & 2 as well as the classics plus some weird Saturn inclusions in those old Sega compilations like Sonic R. I got a snide comment some time ago on my best retro games list saying that a lot of it was Nintendo fanboy stuff and I couldn’t help but laugh internally because I didn’t become a Nintendo fan really until the Switch came out; the GameCube was my first console, I’ve always loved Zelda and grew up with Metroid Prime, Luigi’s Mansion and Double Dash but didn’t care for Nintendo’s other franchises until much later.

3rd and 4th Generation Pokémon

As with every generation for the past few decades, Pokémon was extremely popular when I was growing up and usually the sole game people had for their DS/GBA besides some licensed crap; you had a PSP to play GTA without your parents knowing or you had Pokémon for your DS, that’s just the way it was. I had all of the Pokémon games because I lucked out, my older brother would dip in and out of gaming, losing interest then giving his consoles to me when he was done.

If we’re not counting home consoles then Pokémon Sapphire was the first game I ever played, as such, the juiced up Gen III Pokémon Emerald remains my favourite game in the series. Something about Hoenn’s Okinawa-inspired volcanic archipelago has always spoken to me and the seaside towns would always remind me of places I’d been on caravan holidays to here in the UK.

Like I said at the beginning, the GameCube and Xbox were quite uncommon when I was growing up so don’t expect to see many of their games here but I’ve genuinely never met another GameCube owner who didn’t have Pokémon Colosseum. If I had to make a list of GameCube games everyone had then that one would certainly end up on it.

Tie-In Disney And Pixar Games

Film tie-in games have pretty much gone extinct these days but in the 2000’s these things were everywhere: The Incredibles, Shark Tale, Shrek: if you could name the film, it had a (usually dreadful) game on the PS2, Xbox, GameCube and often an even worse GameBoy Advance version.

Among friends and family there always seemed to be a few of these floating around. Most tie-ins were complete crap but a few I remember being good were both The Incredibles and The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer, the Spongebob film tie-in game and once I got a bit older and moved on to the Xbox 360 I had quite a bit of fun with the tie-in game for The Simpsons Movie. Among my slightly younger Gen Z contemporaries and going into Gen Alpha I have heard that the Ratatouille and the Cars game were everywhere and that the former was abhorrent but the latter was okay.

I want to give a special shout out to the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith tie-in, that game was not only really fun but featured an alternate ending where Anakin kills Obi Wan and the 2-player mode pit you and your friend against each other in a 1v1 lightsaber duel. I have distinct memories of inviting a friend over in 2015-16 with the intention of playing some Xbox One, him getting curious about the game once I mentioned the alternate ending and then us spending hours on Revenge of the Sith fighting each other and pissing about. I still own my copy today, had it since I was a kid and the film was new.

FIFA, Pro Evo and FIFA Street

Growing up in the UK, you’ll generally be pulled in one of 4 directions in regards to sport: if you’re working class it will be towards your dad’s favourite football team or to the TV to watch F1 on a Sunday and if you’re posh (or Welsh) you might be directed towards rugby; I’ve never met a cricket fan in my life that wasn’t British Indian/Pakistani or privately schooled but there is that direction too.

I’ve never really cared for football so few footy games ever graced my shelves, I love watching international tournaments like the Euros or the World Cup but I just can’t get invested in the Premier League. I’m sorry but watching 11 people represent a city none of them are from against another 11 people who also weren’t raised in the city they’re playing for doesn’t interest me. Anyway, regardless of what I think, these games have always and will always be popular. These days EA FC (formerly known as FIFA) pretty much holds a monopoly on arcade-style football games but I’ve been told in the past that Pro Evolution Soccer had the better gameplay and that it was let down by the lack of licences forcing them to give teams and players silly off-brand names like ‘Man Red.’

I’ll take a moment here to show some appreciation for the Football Manager series of strategy and management games, I don’t really watch football outside of international tournaments but playing FM has given me a greater appreciation for the sport.

Need For Speed Underground 1 & 2 and Most Wanted

While the quality of racing games today is superb it certainly feels like we’re missing variety. 15-20 years ago you could find Dirt, Need For Speed, Burnout, Midnight Club, Test Drive and more on shelves whereas today it feels like you get Forza, Gran Turismo, an occasional legacy reboot or nothing. The racing genre in general was always pretty popular here but Need For Speed seemed to be the go-to for most.

A childhood spent on Jak II racing missions scared me off playing racing games at the time but as an adult, now that the PS2 and Xbox libraries are dirt cheap, I’ve had a great time rediscovering these titles and seeing exactly why they were more popular. This type of racing game isn’t exactly a perfect simulation but the ability to speed down the road with easy to grasp controls in the sorts of cars that got the boy racers of the UK drooling with tightly put together soundtracks is a power fantasy all of its own.

The popularity of Fast & Furious, the impressive graphics of racing games compared to others, the UK’s strong car heritage, the chav culture of the 2000’s and F1 arguably being at its peak from 1998-2012 certainly helped racing games like Need For Speed to find a strong audience in the UK; there was a time here where the Subaru Impreza was every young male’s dream car… for some of us, it still is.

Doritos Crash Course

Advancing beyond my early years into the later years of my childhood we have Doritos Crash Course: a free Xbox Live Arcade game from 2010 where you were tasked with steering your very own avatar through Wipeout-esque obstacle courses.

Those veterans of the golden age of Xbox Live will remember that the indie section (more on that soon) was full of what I can only call avatar slop: countless awful games where the only appeal was the ability to play as your own avatar. Doritos Crash Course stood out by being great fun to the point where me and other idiot 10 year olds were hopeful they would release paid DLC for the game; a sequel did come about in the final months of the Xbox 360 but I remember very little of it and you can no longer revisit the game since, according to Wikipedia, it was delisted all the way back in 2014.

Everyone I’ve met who owned a 360 back in the day has at least tried Crash Course and most enjoyed it… absolutely none of us have any idea what it had to do with Doritos.

Total Miner, Castleminer, Murder Miners and FortressCraft

There was a brief time: between 2010 and early 2012 when everyone was watching Minecraft explode in popularity but most of us lowly console players were unable to try it; I had an awful laptop at the time that ran the game at an N64-esque framerate but that’s all I could do. For us, Xbox Live Indie clones like Total Miner, Castleminer, Castleminer Z, FortressCraft, Murder Miners and many many more filled the gap.

Most of these like the original Castleminer and FortressCraft were pretty crap but once Minecraft finally arrived on the 360 in May 2012 these clones had to get creative if they hoped to survive and that’s when they really hit their stride.

Total Miner was the most popular and introduced RPG elements, a wider array of weapons than Minecraft and let the player explore some really gnarly cave systems, cave systems that were quite honestly better than most to be found in that era’s version of Minecraft. Castleminer Z introduced guns, zombies, dragons and aliens, tasking you and your friends with surviving the horde while making the pilgrimage across a set of unique biomes; Murder Miners was basically Halo with Minecraft-style building and Red Faction-like destruction, that game was awesome too. These games began as shameless knock-offs but developed a legacy all of their own. We all played them and we all remember the days before Minecraft arrived.

Halo 3 or Modern Warfare 2

Halo: CE and Halo 2 were accessible but a little before our time, so Halo 3 is where most of us cut our teeth… or Modern Warfare 2.

I do mean that ‘or’ word too, in my school, you were a Halo player or a CoD player and usually subject to slander from the opposite side; I did and will always prefer Halo. I can’t express to anyone how good prime Halo 3 was on Xbox Live, you just had to be there. Hopping on to see 90/100 on your 360 friend list all playing Halo 3, getting a party and game invite before you even knew what you were doing then putting on the worst headset possible to spit utter bile over a match of Slayer on Sandtrap is an experience I wish everyone had. It’s impossible to really put into words how much this game means to me, I made friends playing Halo 3 I would meet years later in real life. I’m not one to succumb to outrage and being butthurt on the internet but it still pisses me off what they did to this franchise.

Modern Warfare 2 is a great game as well but it’s one I got into more in my teens long past its heyday. I’m not a fan of CoD multiplayer but that campaign is absolutely stellar and I think the Call Of Duty franchise gets more hate than it deserves; CoD games were 60FPS before anyone cared about that on console, consistently deliver entertaining campaigns and maps like Rust, Nuketown and Shipment deliver a special kind of carnage nothing else can.

My favourite Call Of Duty is Black Ops 1 but MW2 is awesome.

This has been a by no means exhaustive list of games common among people my age growing up but for older gamers, I hope this gives you some insight into what the people who will soon be running this industry grew up playing; for my contemporaries in the 25-30 age bracket… I’d smash you in a 1v1 on Guardian.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication.

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Starting with Diablo in 1998, some of the biggest Western RPG’s of the day began to make their way to consoles. One of these RPG’s: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, had been closely intertwined with the Original Xbox since Bethesda first became aware of the machine’s existence and would become one of the most successful games for the console, releasing there exclusively just a month after the PC version in North America and selling over 1.3 million copies: the #16 best selling game in the entire Xbox library. If you grew up in the 2000’s like me and were a big console gamer then you know the rest of this story, JRPG’s began to look more and more antiquated with their turn-based combat, laughable voice-acting and traditional levelling systems while Morrowind and Oblivion gave us vast, handcrafted 3D worlds, dozens of factions to join and a truly life-consuming amount of content.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been ported so many times and has become so ubiquitous that we’ve had a horseshoe effect and I get the impression that the game is somewhat hated today, no doubt helped by Bethesda’s less than stellar run in the past decade. But I remember a time before Skyrim, I remember playing Oblivion for long hours into the night in the 2000’s, I remember the excitement leading up to 11.11.11: the November 11th 2011 release date for Skyrim, I remember rushing home from school and being absolutely ecstatic to tear open the cellophane on my copy of Skyrim for the Xbox 360. This game was all me and my friends played for months and months afterwards.

RPG reviews have always intimidated me because these games take forever to beat and I don’t feel as well-versed in the genre as I do in strategy or shooters but I know that RPG articles do very well here on Substack and that there are 2 games in particular I’ve been requested to tackle (you know who you are) so before I hop off the deep end, I want to cover a few role-playing giants I know well already.

Sit back and join me on the chopping block at Helgen.

As The Scrolls Foretold

It is year 202 of the Fourth Era and Tamriel is in chaos.

In the two centuries since the Oblivion Crisis in The Elder Scrolls IV and the end of the Septim Dynasty the Empire has entered a prolonged period of decline.

In the East, Argonia, formerly the province of Black Marsh, has been independent since the Oblivion Crisis and rules free of Imperial influence, even going as far as to conquer much of south Morrowind. To their north, Morrowind, de jure a part of the Empire but de facto independent, has been ravaged by the Argonian invasion, the impact of the Baar Dau meteor at Vivec and another eruption of Red Mountain triggering an outpouring of Dunmer (known to men as Dark Elf) refugees across the continent.

In the West, the Breton homeland of High Rock remains a loyal province of the Empire in large part due to its decentralised and quarrelling nature but the vast land of Hammerfell: the province of the Redguards has ceded from the Empire. In the years since Oblivion, the Empire waged a long and savage war with the High Elf Aldmeri Dominion, the Dominion did not convincingly defeat the Empire but they were able to impose the White-Gold Concordat: a controversial peace treaty that Hammerfell rejected, forcing Cyrodiil to disavow the enormous desert province.

The Aldmeri Dominion spans the southernmost provinces of Tamriel: from the High Elf Summerset Isles to the Woof Elf Province of Valenwood and the Khajit province of Elsweyr, split between the Kingdoms of Anequina and Palletine. They bide their time, waiting to once more assault the Empire.

It’s within this wider geopolitical context that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim takes place and in this icy, rugged northern province that a vicious civil war is being fought, ostensibly about Nord identity and religion but really it is for the fate of the Empire. On one hand, Western Skyrim: loyal to the empire, cosmopolitan and revolving around the deeply Cyrodiilicised city of Solitude; on the other side is Eastern Skyrim and their so-called High King: Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak of Windhelm, a usurper yes but fiercely dedicated to his homeland, nationalistic, loved by his subjects and determined to uphold Talos worship: the worship of the deified first emperor of the Septim Dynasty, outlawed under the White-Gold Concordat.

To make matters worse, long-dead dragons are coming back to life and attacking towns and cities all across Skyrim and it’s the player’s job to discover why.

The Stormcloak Rebellion isn’t as in-depth or politically complex as the central conflict in, for example, Fallout: New Vegas but it’s one I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed and identified with. I am British, more than that, I am one of the first generations from one side of my family not to be born in Scotland and my hair not being red like some of my other close relatives was a point of gentle joking when I was a child, as young as 6 I was marched up the steps of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling; I can tell you my clan motto and which clan I belong to as well as where they lived historically. Scottish Independence, Brexit, Northern Ireland: these are sensitive political issues in the UK that still have a big question mark over them; just 3 years after Skyrim came out, Scotland held its independence referendum after all. Both in myself and in the context of Elder Scrolls lore I can understand that pull between the chilly, rugged north and the cosmopolitan south and this in-game conflict only mirrored real life more as the 2010’s in Britain dragged on.

The return of the dragons isn’t really discussed anymore by The Elder Scrolls lore enthusiasts but this conflict and the ramifications of it are still the subject of multi-hour video essays.

For The Masses

Skyrim, like Doom, Minecraft and Resident Evil 4 is one of those games that has become notorious for the sheer number of ports it has received and the plethora of platforms it is playable on; jokes like Skyrim: Smart Fridge Edition have been floating around for years.

I myself started with the original Xbox 360 version on 11.11.11 and still own that copy today, in 2016 I got the Skyrim Special Edition for Xbox One which introduced the Creation Club, mods on console and some graphical touch-ups, particularly in the lighting department. For this review I’ve been playing the new Anniversary Edition port on Switch 2 which has sufficed well now that the horrendous launch issues have been mostly patched out. This version has no mods and includes a lot of Creation Club content without the ability to opt out but the graphical improvements are very nice and I love the console and the potential for portable play so I’m not too bothered.

I’d have to write an Old Testament-sized article if we were to go over the minutia of every port, so rather than do that I’m just going to select what I think is the worst and then the best way to play.

Skyrim launched at the tail-end of the 7th console generation and pushed both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 to their limits with either version having some seriously choppy performance and muddy textures. The PlayStation 3 edges out the 360 as the worst because Bethesda’s games were given a greater amount of care and attention on Microsoft’s consoles (who they have always enjoyed a strong relationship with) as such, the PlayStation 3 retains Oblivion’s save-file bug and generally suffers from worse performance and lower levels of polish than its 360 counterpart. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, anyone who was gaming in this era will remember that the PS3 pretty much always had the worst versions of cross-platform titles, like the PS2 before it.

I also want to give a dishonourable mention to Skyrim’s disappointing VR port, that version shines when modded but fails to take full advantage of the technology in its vanilla state. It would have been nice to see Bethesda refine and perfect their VR versions over the years and port Starfield too but considering VR is looking dead outside of niche projects and sim-enthusiasts and has produced barely a handful of must-plays in the decade since the Oculus Rift I’m not holding my breath.

The PC has always been the home of Bethesda’s RPG’s: The Elder Scrolls began on the desktop, the fabled modding community is based on the PC and with the future of Xbox looking bleak it seems TES fans will coalesce once again around its traditional home. While the gap between PC and console couldn’t be more narrow today, the desktop still offers the highest potential fidelity and performance; a full keyboard and mouse setup makes menu navigation and quickly switching spells and equipment much less grating as well.

In side to side comparisons the PlayStation 5 version doesn’t look significantly better than the Switch 2 port, since the Switch 2 version is being actively updated as well I’d pick that over PS5 if you want to play on console, just bear in mind there are quite a few sound bugs still and that vegetation has a lower render distance. I went this way because modding doesn’t bother me and I have always been a console gamer predominantly, though I do own Skyrim on PC and play that version on occasion.

Finally Awake

The famous and endlessly memed Skyrim opening with the character creator included.

Skyrim opens seemingly at the end of the civil war with the player, a gagged Jarl Ulfric, a loyal Stormcloak rebel named Ralof and a cowardly horse thief all crammed into a rickety Imperial wagon on the way to the southern city of Helgen to be executed. Most players have seen this cutscene a million times and even if you’ve never played Skyrim there’s a strong chance you know the words “Hey you, you’re finally awake.” Uttered by Ralof but I’d like to point out how in just 5 minutes, Bethesda skilfully and simultaneously introduces new players to the world of Skyrim, updates returning players on the state of the Empire (who are the quasi-protagonists of the series besides your character) and establishes the motives behind the Stormcloaks while allowing both sides of the civil war to be seen in a sympathetic light.

Ralof points out the Thalmor agent presiding over the execution as a symbol of the Empire’s subservience and corruption, this lets the player know how dire things have gotten since Oblivion; on the contrary, Ralof also says soon after that the Imperial fortifications around Helgen made him feel safe as a boy, implying that the Empire has historically been good to Skyrim and its people.

Legate Rikke: the female legate and right-hand to General Tullius organising the chopping block has the horse-thief shot in the back by archers for attempting to flee despite there being no evidence of the man being a rebel, meanwhile Hadvar: the rank and file legionnaire who asks the player their name (prompting the character creator screen) is sympathetic to you no matter what race or gender you pick; the Empire is not made up of brainwashed, totalitarian forces, its rank and file consider the morality of their actions and they have the confidence to allow the citizenry to observe the entire affair at Helgen rather than having Ulfric dispatched behind closed doors.

The worldbuilding of The Elder Scrolls: its depth, scope and the richness of Tamriel’s history are the series’ defining traits and it’s moments like these, the fact that both sides offer you a path to safety in the Helgen dragon attack and the differences between Western Skyrim versus Eastern Skyrim that make Skyrim’s main conflict so compelling; the main character of Skyrim is the province of Skyrim itself and once the return of the dragons has been dealt with in the main quest it’s up to the player to decide which Skyrim they believe in most. Skyrim isn’t just a reactive world but a proactive world. The villain of the Dragonborn expansion tries to have you taken out before the player even sets foot on the island of Solstheim and apart from one recurring, fatal flaw in the guild quests which I will cover later, the factions of Skyrim treat you: the Dragonborn, as a powerful weapon to further their designs on Skyrim or as a useful idiot with a special talent, not as the centre of their world.

In The Legend of Zelda, most JRPG’s or The Witcher, people know and/or fear you as the chosen one with a legendary blade, a legendary reputation or a divine blessing. In The Elder Scrolls? The guards want you to shut up when you do your dragon shouts, most people are quick to insult you for coming close and in certain parts you’ll be called an n’wah and a s’wit casually in the street. They don’t care what you can do, they care what you can do for them.

All this talk of war, politics and the return of the dragons: something akin to the end times for the Nords, gives The Elder Scrolls V a darker tone than its predecessor. These are not the sunny woods, grassy meadows and flowery hills of Oblivion’s Cyrodiil, Skyrim’s roads are infested with wolves and sabre tooth tigers and every city has some kind of dark undercurrent or tension, whether it be Windhelm’s race-relations and mysterious murders or Whiterun’s neutrality being eroded by two feuding clans and its Jarl’s every move being scrutinised for signs of betrayal by both sides of the civil war.

It’s a shame then, in the midst of all this great worldbuilding that Bethesda forgot to add the actual war part of civil war; outside of the civil war quest line, you will see no battles, no signs of armed conflict nor signs of large-scale troop movements. No camp followers, no marching troops, no mass burials, nothing. You are told over and over about impacts of a war and battles that are not happening and that is an immersion-breaking issue.

Vistas Of Nirn

While Skyrim’s graphics have undergone a set of overhauls since 2011 to bring them up to modern standards one thing that has been consistently excellent in these 15 years is the game’s art-style.

Skyrim is often mischaracterised as a Viking game and while Nordic influences are apparent there is much more going on. The Reachmen with their horns, furs and animal teeth are of a distinctly Celtic flavour, the hold guards and a lot of the architecture has a more Anglo-Saxon flavour as well, in fact, every hold has its own unique flavour and generally speaking, the further West you go in Skyrim, the less Norse it gets. Markarth almost reminds me of Petra.

The world of Skyrim is one of exceptional natural beauty. Whether you’re crossing tundra, ice fields or alpine woodland I can guarantee a great view around every corner and a striking sky at night.

No amount of screenshots I take will ever be able to do the province of Skyrim justice but rest-assured, what it lacks in animations, texture details, character modelling and modernity it makes up for in sheer wallpaper potential. If you’re into the dreaded cosy games then I imagine you could get a lot out of Skyrim’s homebuilding and life-sim mechanics like marriage and adoption; turn the difficulty down to Novice and the game is trivial, you could even try to be a pacifist using spells that pacify wildlife and people.

Unfortunately, I do feel that most weapons and equipment are dull compared to their equivalents in previous games. Skyrim’s iron and leather armours look better but the Imperial Legion have gone from wearing these Hellenic-inspired suits of heavy armour in Oblivion and an awesome samurai and centurion mash-up in Morrowind to the most boring, knock-off Roman looking stuff possible; steel and elven are two other armour and equipment sets that suffer a downgrade too.

I will concede though that Skyrim has the best ebony armour in the series and the steel plate set is pretty awesome too.

The state of Western culture being what it is, Skyrim was the last major Bethesda game composed by Jeremy Soule, whose career was ended in 2019 by severe allegations, allegations that were so serious that he was never taken to court nor charged with any crime, still, he was certainly guilty of scamming people with a Kickstarter and that one-two punch was enough to unmake him as one of the premier video game composers. Soule has practically vanished since with Dragon Age and Fallout composer Inon Zur the likely replacement for the next game.

All of this does put a damper on what is (Oblivion and Morrowind included) a trilogy of video games with some of the greatest music ever. Playlist after playlist exists on YouTube of Skyrim ambience and soundtracks but here are some of my personal favourites.

Secunda always seems to find me when I’ve arrived late to the inn at Ivarstead or am walking below the glowing Northern Lights far in Northern Skyrim. This is my favourite piece of music from the game and like Kynareth’s Wings or Nerevar Rising from Oblivion and Morrowind, hearing takes me right back in time to all those hours I spent when the game was new.

Skyrim’s version of Nerevar Rising (which became the theme song of the entire franchise) is called Dragonborn and might be my favourite rendition of the song. Every time I hear Dragonborn I’m taken back to when that first trailer dropped and the internet lost its collective mind and to the thousands of times I’ve booted up the game and lingered a while on the menu to hear the chorus drop.

Dragons in The Elder Scrolls are not animals or monsters but sentient, smei-divine beings, as such Bethesda invented an entire conlang for the dragons in Skyrim, with a script that looks similar to cuneiform. It’s a thing of beauty when they let the choir go absolutely ham in dragon tongue. I’d like to explain the context behind this one but I’m trying to avoid spoilers.

A Dragonborn For All Seasons

Of the estimated over 90 million copies sold of The Elder Scrolls franchise, Skyrim makes up at least 60 million; statistically speaking, 2/3’s of the fanbase may have only played Skyrim.

One of the big reasons for this is that Skyrim, for better and for worse, smashes the traditional limitations of the RPG class system and allows you to play any build at any time and on any character while removing complex character building sheets and stats screens. 10 Hours in, if you decide you’re not enjoying your stealth archer build you can head to the nearest smithy, buy yourself a sword and either start playing that style of combat the hard way or pay trainer to get your skills up to scratch.

It’s hard to even put into words the amount of different ways you can choose to play Skyrim. There are characters I took through this game that I still look back on fondly: the Wood Elf archer with light armour and a two-handed sword, my Orc brute in full heavy armour, heavy weapons and using zero magic; my favourite character is one that has been committed to my memory simply as ‘The Dark Lord’ I played this Dragonborn from early 2012 to late-2013 when I finally put down Skyrim for a few years. This guy was somewhere in the region of level 90, I had done every evil ending for the DLC’s, was the master of every guild and woke up at 5am before school every week day to max out my schools of magic, I would fly a dragon from town to town wearing daedric armour with Miraak’s mask melting people with the Master level Destruction spells.

For this playthrough, I chose to mix it up a bit. I still used a mage-type character: my preferred way to play TES games but I turned on the survival mode and decided I would only use plain clothes and a dagger besides the usual magic; I took up alchemy for the first time as well when I usually avoid it. The survival mode was clearly grafted onto a game that isn’t quite built for it and the lack of fast-travel has burned the road between Whiterun and Ivarstead into my brain but I’ve had a lot of fun taking it slow, stopping to take in the sights… and filling up my Switch 2 SD card with screenshots. I usually pick a Breton for the extra magical ability or a Dark Elf so I’m not a filthy s’wit but this time I played as a Nord for roleplay reasons.

All of this freedom does have some major downsides. The attributes system from classic Elder Scrolls is completely removed to facilitate your constant build swapping; it wouldn’t have been possible to cast any worthwhile spell in the past if you had chosen Intelligence as your dump stat. This has the effect of making Skyrim characters feel like generalists rather than specialists and makes Skyrim an Action-RPG rather than a true Role-Playing Game in my opinion.

Speaking of magic… it’s absolutely garbage in Skyrim. An entire school of magic was removed along with spell-crafting and many of the wackier spell-types like those that work on touch, now every school of magic is a linear set of spells you buy your way through as your skill improves. Levitation? Gone. Water-walking? Restricted. Unlocking spells? Gone. In the space of 3 games magic went went from the ultimate mage power fantasy in Morrowind to being a glorified ranged weapon. To make matters worse, it’s generally agreed upon that of the 3 archetypes: a warrior, thief or mage, a pure mage build in Skyrim is the weakest. Give me my burn on touch spells back damn it.

Let me pull my punches for a minute because I like what Skyrim does with the levelling system.

In between Oblivion and Skyrim (2006-2011) both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas released; the latter was not developed by Bethesda but it is for all intents and purposes Fallout 3 with a different map and written by a different studio that understood the IP better. In Fallout, you unlock a perk at each level: a little bonus or ability that’s tied to your attributes and skills, for example, you might get 25 extra action points in V.A.T.S or the ability to eat corpses to restore your health; Skyrim has these perks too and they fit in well.

Alright, I’m back to laying in the punches. To give Bethesda credit, Fallout 4 and especially Starfield have enjoyable combat but prior to those games, it was a mixed bag and Skyrim is no different. The execution animations improve things but like in Oblivion, melee combat in Skyrim gives the sensation of swatting the air in front of an enemy rather than making any contact; there is no parry or dodge, you simply move, block, swing and hope for the best. The stealth archer build is widely considered the most powerful in the game so if the combat bores you and magic isn’t your thing then there is fun to be found in pulling off impressive shots from afar and dispatching enemies in silence… or you could choose to get by turning enemies on each other, or by summoning mythical creatures with Conjuration; in Skyrim, you can play in virtually any conceivable way.

As a Dragonborn, a couple of hours in, you will gain access to Dragon Shouts. You acquire Shouts by learning words of power from ancient ruins and then slaying dragons to unlock these abilities with their souls. Unfortunately, only Whirlwind Sprint, which is useful for cutting down travel time in Survival Mode and Unrelenting Force, which sends enemies flying with ragdoll physics, ever get much use for me but your mileage may vary.

Blacksmith, Tailor, Stormcloak, Spy

Warning: This section contains heavy quest spoilers

The biggest issue with Skyrim isn’t its stripped back RPG mechanics or bland combat but its poor writing and questlines; there are exceptions of course but in general Skyrim’s faction questlines don’t hold a candle to those found in Oblivion.

In Oblivion and especially Morrowind, each questline would have a certain amount of entry-level dirty work attached: a set of quests that were quick, gave you an early game boost in cash and taught you what the guild was all about and as you progressed through the mundane work your rank and reputation within the guild would grow and the player becomes more privy to the machinations of guild leadership. Being a member of the Fighters Guild or the Mages Guild was a career in the world of Tamriel. Not in Skyrim, the bar for entry is rock bottom and they’re desperate to hand you the keys.

In the College of Winterhold quest line you find a magical orb in a Nord ruin and instantly become the star pupil; the rest of the quest line sees you appointed a special emissary for the Psijic Order and tasked with stopping this artefact: the Eye of Magnus, from ending up in the wrong hands. This quest line is short and generally feels boring compared to the Oblivion Mages Guild where you had to stop the return of a powerful necromancer. Even if you only know a single spell, you and not the seasoned instructors of the college, end up as the Arch-Mage.

The civil war questline, no matter which side you pick, plays out much the same except you defend Whiterun and attack Windhelm as the Empire whereas you attack Whiterun and siege Solitude as the Stormcloaks. Likely due to hardware constraints, none of these feel like genuine, large-scale medieval battles and that disappointed me even as an 11 year old; the civil war is dripping with lore implications and long-term consequences but it’s hard to imagine someone with only a surface-level knowledge of TES lore caring when the conflict in-game is this bland.

I enjoyed the twist in the Companions questline and in The Dark Brotherhood where you become a werewolf in the former and can decide to betray the Brotherhood and wipe them out in the latter but once again it all leads to you easily taking charge after a short and contrived series of missions. In Skyrim, it is possible to be the leader of every major guild all at the same time and that is incredibly lazy; it makes no sense for the player to ascend to the peak of some of these organisations. At least in Oblivion you had to put in some serious grinding to reach the top, here these guild questlines feel shorter than ever. If TES VI doesn’t reintroduce the old class system and attributes back then I’d at least like to see guild ranks and level requirements return and to be restricted based on your prowess at a specific set of skills or perks; as Arch-Mage, the player should be required to have at least 1 school of magic at Master level. In Skyrim, you feel like the protagonist of the story rather than a member of an organisation working your way up.

The main quest has the same systemic rapid pace and immersion issues. While in Morrowind you were a newly released convicted recruited by the Blades to get to the bottom of the Corprus disease and to promote Imperial interests in the fringe territory and in Oblivion you worked to end the Oblivion Crisis and to secure the Septim Dynasty, in Skyrim, the main quest is a mad dash to slay Alduin where your Dragonborn training at the hands of the Greybeards lasts 5 minutes and this story isn’t half as long as in the previous 2 games.

Only you can recruit members for the Blades and rebuild their ranks… the Dragonborn is every faction’s saviour. The dissonance between the trademark Elder Scrolls hostile NPC’s and the factions worshipping you as Christ is jarring.

Sovngarde Awaits

Skyrim isn’t my favourite TES game. If you ask me on a Monday it might be Morrowind and it could be Oblivion on Tuesday; I can’t decide between those two but I know Skyrim isn’t on the same level. The RPG elements are too stripped back, the quality of the questlines takes a backseat to facilitate plots that fulfil the hero fantasy; I don’t find the ancient Nordic ruins as interesting to explore as those left by the Ayleids in Oblivion’s Cyrodiil and my favourite way to play the game: as a mage, has never been weaker than it is in Skyrim.

On the other hand, there’s no denying that the beauty of Skyrim’s world, the compelling nature of its central conflict, the freedom you have to play the way you want, 3 excellent expansions and the simple boyish joy of fighting dragons has given this game immense longevity and makes Skyrim supremely enjoyable even if it doesn’t quite measure up to past adventures.

It’s become fashionable to hate on Bethesda since the abysmal launch of Fallout 76 and the overhyped Starfield and many of the complaints aimed at Bethesda’s game design began in Skyrim, regardless, 76 is in my opinion the only truly bad game Bethesda has made and even Skyrim: The Elder Scrolls’ 3D era at its weakest is still a brilliant accomplishment. Skyrim gets ripped to shreds online on a regular basis now but it’s easy to criticise The Elder Scrolls V when it was the pioneer. When The Witcher was still a niche eurojank title on PC, Oblivion and Morrowind were already delivering immersive 3D worlds on a massive scale, collecting GOTY awards like postage stamps and for many people, The Witcher 3 was just filling the void the long wait between Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls VI, presumably set in Hammerfell, has created.

The RPG landscape may have moved on from Bethesda and their style of game design but Skyrim, its vibrant modding community and still highly active player base remain to ensure this classic endures.

TL;DR: Skyrim is a step down from Oblivion and Morrowind but unparalleled freedom, a gorgeous world, rich lore and a near bottomless supply of quests to embark on and dungeons to pillage means it still deserves classic status. The writing could be better and the casualisation of the RPG mechanics leave a bad taste in the mouth but Skyrim surpasses its predecessors in other ways, particularly in its soundtrack and expansions.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication.

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Those of you who have been subscribed for a long time will be familiar with what I’m going to say next: I started this Substack to talk about the Nintendo 64’s first person shooters with perhaps a few other reviews and opinion pieces on the side; at 412 subscribers and counting and more articles published than I ever thought possible, it’s safe to say I exited that particular niche long ago.

For the foreseeable future, once a month, I’m going to be writing a retrospective of this console’s FPS library: every last game, in chronological order. These will be more digestible pieces and focus on celebrating the games in question rather than reviewing them, though my general thoughts will be included, especially if I have strong ones.

Let me take you on a journey back through time and through history as we explore the foundational years of console FPS games.

Year of Release: 1997

Platforms: Nintendo 64 and PC

Developer: Iguana Entertainment

Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment

Copies Sold: 1.5 million (5.8m N64 users in 1997)

Remastered: December 2015 (PC) Ported to Xbox One (2018) Nintendo Switch (2019) PlayStation 4 (2021) Updated for Series S/X and PlayStation 5 (2025)

Background

Acclaim Entertainment, Turok’s publisher, was founded by 3 former Activision employees as a joint-venture in the late 1980’s with a focus on localisation and porting games for the American market. While Acclaim’s subsidiary: LJN, which it purchased in 1990, has gained some notoriety for the poor games released under its label thanks to The Angry Video Game Nerd, the WWF licence, Acclaim’s solid job with the Mortal Kombat II port as well as Double Dragon II earned them enough capital and respect to be considered a reputable publisher. By the end of the 2D era, with the Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam and more console licences under their banner, Acclaim found themselves in a position to expand.

In 1994 the seeds of Turok were sewn. Acclaim acquired Valiant Comics (renaming it to Acclaim Comics) which came with the Turok: Dinosaur Hunter licence and announced in August of that year their intention to adapt the 1993 comic series of the same name into a video game.

At this time, Iguana Entertainment: Turok’s eventual developer, was known only for some obscure solo efforts like Aero the Acro-Bat for the Mega Drive and for being Acclaim’s most prolific porting partner, so the publisher deepened their relationship with Iguana by acquiring them in December of 1994.

The mid-1990’s were the era of early 3D in video games and Acclaim’s reluctance to transition to newer hardware was wrecking their finances and lead to lay-offs as well as tumbling stock prices; before long, it became clear that Turok was the company’s last and best hope of survival. This was a time when video games were still considered distractions for kids and teens so Acclaim betting it all on a gory, expensive and experimental title in the foetal console shooter space is a risk that should be applauded and one that most publishers wouldn’t have the courage to make today.

Development

Despite its announcement 2 years prior, development on Turok at Iguana only commenced in 1996. Turok was not only to be the first shooter developed for the Nintendo 64 but also the first major title by a third-party developer to be made for the platform making this game important to the history of the entire console.

Turok was developed by a 15-man team, most of them inexperienced and new to the industry, which is a trait it shares with a certain other best-selling, highly-regarded Nintendo 64 shooter. An inexperienced team dealing with new hardware and an ambitious new title sounds like a disaster on-paper, thankfully, Acclaim’s strong relationship with Nintendo and their commitment to console exclusivity afforded them much support and feedback from the Japanese giant. Throughout development there were suspicions that Nintendo would find the game’s gory and violent content (which went far beyond the level depicted in the comics) objectionable and push for changes but to Iguana’s surprise and to the delight of gamers, the fountains of blood and grotesque death animations made it into the final product unharmed.

Turok’s development was as chaotic as it was ambitious and Iguana were determined to create the best-looking, best playing game on the Nintendo 64 platform. Acclaim’s advanced motion capture facilities were used to animate all of the human enemies in the game and the team even planned to use the technology on emus and ostriches to animate the dinosaurs; more traditional methods were eventually used but the game’s Wikipedia page seems to imply that at least some data was gathered this way. Despite Turok’s ‘Boomer Shooter’ label: a label that used to mean shooters that followed in the footsteps of DOOM, Quake and Duke Nukem that has now been overused and encompasses virtually all FPS games more than 20 years old, Iguana actually cited Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64 as their biggest inspirations which is why Turok has its hub and world structure as well as a healthy dose of platforming and item hunting.

Those platformer roots run deeper than you might think, this game was originally conceived as a side-scroller until it was decided that a first person perspective would allow Iguana and the Nintendo 64 to flex their graphical muscles more and that the perspective would heighten immersion.

The headache of having to compress a game as big and as impressive as Turok onto an 8MB Nintendo 64 cartridge as well as a plethora of needed bug fixes forced Acclaim to delay the game from its original Autumn 1996 release date to the final March 1997 release date Turok ended up launching on, thankfully, healthy marketing and significant hype did wonders for stock prices and kept interest high.

What Turok Gets Right

Art Direction, Premise And Atmosphere

The premise of Turok is that you are Native-American warrior Tal’Set and the current holder of the mantle of Turok which makes him the guardian of the Lost Land: a timeless other-world where dinosaurs still walk the land, the terrain is coated with prehistoric jungle… and aliens, robots and other extra-dimensional terrors wage-war with awesome sci-fi weaponry. Among these weapons is the Chronosceptre: a staff of supreme power which The Campaigner wishes to reconstruct and use to escape the Lost Land and conquer Earth; naturally, your goal as Tal’Set is to introduce him to a premature death. If you explore each level thoroughly enough and gether up the pieces then Tal’Set can acquire the weapon for himself to use in the final boss fight.

I don’t think I need to explain how great the premise is, the very idea of the Lost Land opens up a limitless roster of potential foes and weapons (which certainly is not lost on the developers) and the mountainous jungle setting helps to explain away some of the original version’s technical limitations; that’s not draw distance fog, it’s water vapour, you’re in a jungle canopy!

To this day, very few games can boast an art direction as fascinating as the one to be found in Turok. Through the course of the game your crusade against The Campaigner takes Tal’Set through misty clifftops, Endor-style treehouse towns and eventually through robot factories and more, the gradual shift to pure science fiction is utterly compelling, you really feel as if you’re journeying to the heart of hostile territory, level by level.

Gameplay and Guns

Turok’s game structure and level-design are where the Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64 influences shine through the brightest.

There are 8 levels in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter but the first level: The Hub Ruins functions like a short tutorial before the player discovers the gateway chamber where you use keys to access the other stages, just like Peach’s Castle and Mario’s Power Stars. Akin to Tomb Raider, levels are vast and maze-like with things hidden throughout, they take quite a while to finish. Each level has keys to find, which unlock subsequent levels and there is also a hidden piece of the Chronosceptre in each of them. Because the levels are so lengthy it can be frustrating if you miss a key and have to go back but this is only an issue on original hardware; I imagine the overwhelming majority of you, should you choose to try Turok, will be playing the remaster, the draw distance fog is gone in the modern version so you’re only going to miss most of the keys if you really don’t pay attention and explore.

Levels are non-linear and feature a lot of climbing and swimming: much more vertical than the people who call Turok a ‘boomer shooter’ will let on. I can’t think of another shooter in this era that really made you feel like more than just a floating pair of hands in the same way that Turok did.

The enemy and weapon variety make Turok an absolute blast to play. You get to play with bows using futuristic exploding Tek Arrows, automatic shotguns with exploding rounds, big combat knives, an AK, a Plasma Rifle and more, better yet you’ll be fighting aliens, big mecha, velociraptors wielding their own guns and the cherry on top: a laser shooting T-Rex boss fight. If that doesn’t sell you on Turok then I don’t know what will, Tal’Set faces a mean foe with even meaner weapons.

A Technical Achievement

This might be lost on modern players picking up the remaster who are unfamiliar with the Nintendo 64 and its library but the goal of making Turok: Dinosaur Hunter the most impressive game around was met… and then some. While I used the remastered version for this article I beat Turok for the first time on original hardware not long before I started this Substack. I own quite a few Nintendo 64 games because it’s my favourite Nintendo console and even though Turok was released early in the platform’s life the only game I can think of that looks better is its sequel Turok 2: Seeds of Evil.

Turok is notoriously foggy on the ‘64 and its music was heavily compressed but that keeps the framerate at a tolerable level and it doesn’t mire the fantastic presentation; the remaster brightens things up a little bit too much for me, and adds rays of sunshine from above, it’s the most minor of nit-picks but I felt it worth mentioning.

What Turok Gets Wrong

Platforming (Original Version)

Platforming on the remastered version of Turok can be tricky but mostly feels enjoyable, however, on original hardware? It’s absolute torture.

You have to make incredibly precise jumps with a framerate around 20FPS (all PAL Nintendo 64 games run about 10 frames slower than their US and Japanese counterparts) the inability to see Turok’s legs, in dense draw-distance fog and while using a controller with only one analogue stick. I fell to my death and lost lives to bottomless pits again and again and again. The sound of Turok screaming on his way down will be stuck in your head forever.

This is the game’s biggest flaw and the one that prompted me to revisit the Lost Land on Switch 2 instead of the original hardware.

Sound And Compression

In this early stage of the Nintendo 64’s life Turok had to ship on an 8 megabyte cartridge necessitating some heavy sound compression to fit all the music and effects on the medium. You can hear this compression even more clearly than you might in other Nintendo 64 games but as well as that, many of the weapon sounds don’t lend the amount of impact and sense of damage that they should. It’s a shame when the arsenal on offer is this stellar.

There are a few stand outs in the soundtrack like the Underwater theme for those sections where you have to dive into deep lakes and submerged caves but in general I find a lot of Turok’s soundtrack blends together, it’s a trance inducing mix of tribal percussion and synth that provides a backing to the action and accents the jungle but not much else. Darren Mitchell is a talented composer with some excellent work under his belt but the full expertise didn’t shine through until the sequel. Mitchell’s work on Turok 2 is some of the best in the ‘64’s library.

Boss Fights

Turok doesn’t have many boss fights and of that scattered handful only the T-Rex is particularly fun or memorable.

You’d expect a boss at the end of each level but instead, Turok puts two of its five boss fights in the final level with the other three appearing sporadically. The boss fight with Longhunter: a camo-sporting, Humvee-driving military man was the game’s lowest point for me. To beat Longhunter you have to destroy his 2 Humvees while they drive at you wildly and fire projectiles; trying to dodge these while getting in your own hits, particularly on an N64 controller is a huge pain. Then you face him on foot and unless you keep up constant momentum or outgun him he will kill you again and again. I beat the other bosses on my first try and defeated The Campaigner on my second go but Longhunter took me about an hour to finally put in the ground.

Turok’s Legacy And My Closing Thoughts

If you haven’t picked up on my sentiment already then let me make this crystal clear: I think Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is a fantastic game and if it wasn’t for my preference for Turok 2 I would happily name it my second favourite shooter on the Nintendo 64. From the moment you first find your pistol to the final shot with the Chronosceptre, Turok remains a superb adventure.

Turok hasn’t aged well on original hardware but the remaster is so readily available that this isn’t an issue. I first played this game in late-2024 and was in awe of both how good it looked and how, despite coming out before GoldenEye, it was the first to bring to the table some of the innovations that game popularised like the signature Nintendo 64 FPS control scheme and a focus on open-ended level design and exploration rather than the narrow corridors of DOOM and Quake; Turok even surpasses GoldenEye in some ways, particularly with Tal’Set’s agility and the verticality of most levels.

You don’t have to take my word for it, Turok’s lasting effect on console shooters and on the trajectory of the Nintendo 64 speaks for itself.

This game was a massive hit, boosting N64 sales and spawning a trilogy of games and a multiplayer focused spin-off, when Rare were designing GoldenEye, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was the game they wanted to be: the title they looked to for inspiration and as a reminder of where the bar was set. Years later, the beloved Retro Studios: a developer founded around a seasoned corps of ex-Turok developers looked back at the Lost Land and at Turok 1’s game structure as an example of the same first-person and exploration-focused design they wanted to bring to the table once again.

In 2026, few speak the name Turok and the trilogy has largely faded into memory but its contributions are plain to see.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication.

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There was no video games crash in Europe. While the USA suffered its crash and Japan’s console industry hadn’t yet expanded beyond the home islands, British and other European gamers were playing and making games all through the 1980’s.

I’ve had this idea cooking for about a year so I’m looking forward to finally publishing this patriotic-themed list. Here are the very best games this soggy, grey, industrious little island has to offer.

10: Project Zomboid

I’m sure we’ve all heard of Zomboid by now but in case you’re unfamiliar, Project Zomboid is a zombie game that sits somewhere between classic Fallout, survival titles and RuneScape, combining RPG-style stats and character building with an isometric perspective, bleak-tone, survival elements and base building. It’s set in the late 1990’s in Tennessee during a zombie apocalypse that gradually wipes out civilisation and basic infrastructure sending you (and some friends should you choose) back to the pre-industrial age. According to The Indie Stone’s About Us page it is a multi-national team developing the game but considering the team have given talks in the UK and make a joke about Newcastle on this page I’m going to guess it is a majority British effort.

In my recent poll quite a few of you requested that I cover more indie games so here I want to make it known that I have been a big Zomboid fan for years and plan to write about it in future.

At over 9 million copies sold and as a long-time occupant of a top 20 most-played spot on Steam, Project Zomboid is among the most successful British indie games ever made; the project started development in 2010 showing Indie Stone’s extreme dedication and the loyalty of long-time fans.

Zomboid makes my list because it is one of very few games of its type that I actually enjoy. I’ve made it clear in the past that these survival-y, craft-y games aren’t really for me… but I’ve been enamoured with Zomboid since I first discovered it. For a while, for me and a group of friends I used to play with, this was the multiplayer game of choice and I’ve made so many memories from slipping over while sprinting and getting eaten alive to living through an enormous storm that obscures the sound of approaching undead; that moment that comes in every playthrough: the day when power and water shut off gives you such a wonderful pit in your stomach. Project Zomboid inspires dread, creates thick tension and rewards attentiveness in a way that few titles can manage.

9: Kenshi

I’ve already reviewed Kenshi but I published that review back when my audience was substantially smaller than now. If you’d like to know my deeper thoughts on this game then you can read that review here.

Kenshi was trending on YouTube a while ago and has become a highly-regarded cult-classic but if you’ve not heard of Kenshi then it is billed as the ultimate RPG sandbox; the closest game to it, in my opinion, is Mount And Blade. Kenshi has no main quest, no tutorial dungeon, no essential characters and no directions, in what I can only assume was a metaphor for Bristol itself, you are coughed up into a world with crumbling architecture, funny clothes, bizarre artwork and downtrodden peasants and told to make a go of it by any means necessary. Combat is tough, wounds are often fatal, the local laws are arbitrary and everyone hates you but if you persevere with Kenshi it can be an extraordinarily rewarding experience.

Kenshi has sold over 2 million copies and has a sequel on the way, though given that Kenshi 1 took 12 years to make… I wouldn’t expect it soon.

After spending some time with Kenshi I eventually came to the conclusion that the game isn’t for me but it deserves a place in my top 10 for two reasons, first: there is nothing else like Kenshi on the market and secondly: for a select few of you, for those of you who love RPG’s and crave a true sandbox, for those of you willing to grind out combat skills and to work out all your faction’s logistics and outposts, this will be a 2000 hour game. Kenshi earned my admiration despite my own gaming tastes.

Every game seems to be a Survivors-like or a farm builder today, dare to cut the player’s limbs off and peel their flesh like a tangerine, dare to leave the reviewer a broken heap in the bottom of a rusty cage, dare to be different, dare to be Kenshi.

8: No Man’s Sky

While an infamous 2019 YouGov survey revealed that over half of Brits would refuse a trip to the moon, Hello Games shows that some of us still dream of the stars.

No Man’s Sky is another game like Project Zomboid that seems to cover about 5 different genres; this is a space sim, survival-crafting experience and an MMO all rolled into one. No Man’s Sky is perhaps more famous for what it represents than for its actual properties as a video game. Sean Murray and Hello Games not only redeemed themselves after a catastrophic launch but have gone above and beyond and went on to supplant both Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen at the apex of the niche space sim genre.

No Man’s Sky blurs the lines between indie and Triple-A development since it was pushed by Sony but if you consider it an indie project like me then it is the second most successful one to ever come out of the UK behind Fall Guys: which is a free game and therefore not an entirely fair comparison. No Man’s Sky sold somewhere in the region of 10-11 million copies by 2023.

Considering the absolutely seismic hype No Man’s Sky drummed up prior to launch I’m sure I’m not the only one who looked at this and said “That’s my dream game.” Years of watching the likes of The Next Generation, Voyager and Deep Space 9 will give you that hunger for deep space exploration. No Man’s Sky didn’t live up to the hype then but it certainly does now. The loop of base-building, fetch-questing and scanning with some light combat and raids here and there won’t be for everyone but I can guarantee you one thing: this game will give you a new potential screensaver every time you log on; if you’re anything like me, you’ll be sold from the moment you compulsively mutter “Engage.” aboard the bridge of your capital ship.

7: Fable II

I’m trying to stick to individual games with this list but just know when I pick titles like Fable II and other sequels later that they’re a stand-in for the whole IP.

The Fable series is set in Albion (which is just an ancient name for Britain) a fantasy world at a roughly late-medieval to Napoleonic technology level where many of the British cultural touchstones and humour have been dialled up to 11. Fable is an RPG of a different sort. Instead of levelling up stats and reading books you spend a lot of your time solving petty squabbles between villagers with deep Somerset accents; rather than picking options from a dialogue wheel and wooing your prospective mate with the gift of the gab you will instead spam emotes in front of her and potentially lead a carousel of maidens back to your house… yes, you can own property and yes, you can also get STD’s in Fable. It’s like playing a story book laced with the kind of humour the UK does best.

The Xbox consoles were always the most popular in the USA, UK, Brazil and Mexico; although I would argue that Bethesda’s RPG’s (which always ran best on Xbox 360 compared to PS3) filled this role, the Xbox 360 wasn’t really known for having a flagship RPG series so Fable II was the stand-in, selling at least 3.5 million units but likely more.

The 360 was my console during that formative 9-12 years old period; I started with the PS2, Xbox and GameCube but it’s this console I have the most nostalgia for. Back then it was borderline state-mandated that every Xbox 360 owner had Fable II, Halo 3 and either Skyrim or Oblivion in their library; everyone I knew loved this game, we all played CO-OP one time or another and let me tell you, all criticisms you may have fall apart when you and a friend are competing to rack up STD’s or are farting in villager’s faces. Fable II is the best of the trilogy.

6: Batman: Arkham City

Once again, consider this a shoe-in for Rockstar’s entire Arkham series. The Winter of 2011 was the Xbox 360’s last big hurrah and a time in gaming I have massive nostalgia for; Skyrim, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Batman: Arkham City all came out in the same 5 week span, it was glorious and Britain’s Rocksteady was leading the way.

The Arkham games made several innovations that would shape the next decade of gaming: Geralt’s Witcher Senses are derived from Arkham Batman’s Detective Mode, the simple melee combat system (you know the one: Y/Triangle to counter and B/Circle to break shields) used in Arkham was aped by every mid-budget and superhero game released since. Arkham City’s city-prison setting cleverly explained away hardware constraints and allowed for an almost post-apocalyptic feeling world full of crime and a staggering roster of villains to defeat. Throw in an incredibly fun gliding mechanic, excellent presentation, a second playable character and those trademark Arkham stealth sections and you have one of the best games of the generation.

Arkham City sold a massive 12.5 million units, likely more given that it has since been remastered.

Late 2011 was a magical time, a time of extreme hype and looking forward to the great games ahead, I can’t tell you how many hours 11 year old Scanlines spent watching and re-watching the trailers for both Arkham City and Skyrim. Not only did Arkham City deliver on the hype but in my opinion it surpassed the original, even if it was missing the hint of gothic horror I so enjoyed in Asylum.

5: Forza Horizon 4

I chose Forza Horizon 4 not because it’s the fan-favourite but because it is the best of the 3 Horizon games I have played and represents something rarely seen in gaming: a British developer depicting British culture in a British setting; Top Gear, classic British cars and the turbulent weather all made it in.

The Forza series occupies the ‘simcade’ niche in the racing genre: not realistic enough to be called a simulator and not wacky enough to be thrown in with the likes of Out Run and Mario Kart. Horizon veers more into the arcade-style of racer than Forza Motorsport by adding an open world with all sorts of collectibles, challenges and secrets alongside the standard racing; cars in Horizon are generally easier to drive than in Motorsport too. Set between Northern England and Southern Scotland the map sprinkles in iconic elements of Britannia like rugged coastline, rain, beautiful Edinburgh, rain, and rugged countryside villages… where it rains a lot.

There are no lifetime sales available for Horizon 4 but according to Skynet, it reached at least 24 million players; anecdotally speaking, I’ve always felt that Forza Horizon was the only Xbox franchise left still going strong.

The console simcade space had been dominated by Gran Turismo for decades by the time the first Horizon came out but no doubt in thanks to its cross-platform availability, strong pick up and play factor and the upbeat, festival-like atmosphere of the game compared to the sterile, James May-like Gran Turismo 7, the Horizon sub-series has gone on to dominate both the console and PC racing game markets for more casual fans. It’s not Assetto Corsa or I-Racing but the Horizon games are great value for money and fun to play for those who aren’t motorsport fiends.

4: Total War: Medieval II

We’re getting into the upper reaches now so these games are all genre-defining classics. I’m choosing Medieval II because this is by far the most beloved in the fracnhise.

Without Total War, the RTS genre would probably have gone extinct, it is the IP around which the rest of the genre has revolved since the year 2000. Total War sees the player taking command of a major empire across a range of historical periods, with a focus on the military and economics, in an attempt to cement their chosen nation as the foremost world power. The crusades and papacy mechanics, late arrival of the Mongols and the superb Stainless Steel mod that fleshes out the map make Medieval II one of the premier entries in the franchise. The series has gone astray in recent years with an increasing focus on fantasy elements and stat-based combat but even so it remains the very pinnacle of the genre.

It’s hard to say exactly how many copies Medieval II sold since the game predates the widespread adoption of Steam as the standard for PC games distribution but on that platform alone it has sold several million.

Total War seems to be in its final years with Sega reportedly dissatisfied with Creative Assembly behind the scenes and French developer Eugen Systems, in my opinion, making the best RTS games on the market at the moment but I hope CA can get their act together soon, losing Total War wouldn’t just be catastrophic for gaming but for the British video games industry as a whole.

3: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto is one of the United Kingdom’s most successful cultural exports, at over 225 million units sold GTAV is one of the best selling games ever and most likely generates the lion’s share of the UK’s £7.6 Billion games industry. Grand Theft Auto VI’s hype is a gravitational pull around which the entire industry is swirling, nobody wants to release around it and every games company on the planet is watching and waiting for its impact; of all the games in this franchise though, San Andreas has to be the most highly regarded.

I think we’ve all played this one but in case you haven’t, GTA San Andreas sees you controlling CJ: Carl Johnson in the city of Los Santos which is basically a knock-off Los Angeles. The game is set in 1992 and draws heavily from the West Coast rap scene with characters like Big Smoke and Ryder clearly modelled after the likes of The Notorious B.I.G and Eazy E. San Andreas introduced a whole suite of life sim elements that allowed you to personalise your CJ, you could hit the gym and bet buff, eat nothing but burgers and become a fat bastard and cycle everywhere to upgrade your stamina. Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City may have pioneered the open-world sandbox but San Andreas set the bar and shaped the series into what we today recognise as triple-A development at its most expensive, expansive and decadent.

San Andreas was the best-selling PlayStation 2 game and the 10th best selling game on the original Xbox at 27.5 million copies sold.

We all played it when we were too young, we all loved it and we will all continue loving San Andreas. Before GTA got high on its own supply, San Andreas was cutting edge, controversial and brilliant fun… except for that train.

2: TimeSplitters 2

It’s inevitable that Rare and their alumni take the top spots of any best of British video games list; GoldenEye or Perfect Dark could have also lived in this spot but I chose TimeSplitters 2 because it takes everything those classic Rare FPS games did and polishes it to a mirror sheen.

TimeSplitters 2 is the ultimate Nintendo 64 shooter… but for PS2. The specific style of FPS that Rare pioneered was being superseded by Halo and Call Of Duty by the time that TimeSplitters 2 released in 2002, so Free Radical sent that classic era of console FPS games off with a bang. TimeSplitters 2 has the GoldenEye/Perfect Dark gameplay but refined to perfection and takes you on a campaign spanning the past, present and future; the humour is sublime, the weapons roster is perfect and when you’re done with the missions, this game offers the greatest bot multiplayer mode ever created with an additional challenge mode thrown in. You will be kept occupied for weeks playing TimeSplitters 2.

No sales figures have ever been released but considering the series tops the list on every ‘franchises that should come back’ post on the internet and that this game was released across all 3 major platforms back in its day… I have to guess it was successful.

TimeSplitters was my GoldenEye. When friends came over after school, this was my first choice for some CO-OP fun, same with cousins and extended family, I’ve probably played more TimeSplitters 2 and Future Perfect than any other shooter in my life. Throughout my childhood, when I didn’t know what to play, this was the game I would always reach for and even now in the second half of my 20’s I can count on it to deliver me from a bad mood.

Seeing TimeSplitters 4 again and again get cancelled and not make it to shelves every few years has been heart-breaking.

Honourable Mentions

Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider is an iconic British franchise and truly deserving of all the praise it gets. This one hasn’t made my list simply because it just isn’t for me; I’ve tried quite a few times to get into classic Tomb Raider and always flaked off and the modern ones are like Uncharted but worse. I’m anticipating a lot of gnashing teeth about this omission.

Worms

The Worms games are a stalwart, fun British classic. Despite my deep fondness for this funky little series I decided to omit a Worms game because I don’t feel they had much of an impact on the wider industry and because they are the same thing every time if we’re being honest. Great fun though.

Elite: Dangerous

The Elite series is one of the grandfathers of British video games, it inspired GTA, practically founded the space sim genre and has influenced a countless number of games since; the mastermind behind the franchise, David Braben, was even made an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in Her Majesty the Queen’s 2014 Birthday Honours for his work in the industry. I decided to omit Elite though because it has been mishandled and underbaked into irrelevance. It took them so long to reach the climax of Dangerous’ Thargoid War storyline that most of the player base had left by then; the seeds of the conflict were sewn in 2017 and the war wasn’t wrapped up until late 2024.

1: Donkey Kong Country

The Donkey Kong Country series is my pick for the greatest video game(s) developed on British soil. Before Rare took on the IP DK was a novelty and an arcade relic preserved only in a slot on the Super Mario Kart roster, Rare took Kong and gave him the tie, his attitude, his friends, his jungle island home: everything that makes the character who he is today; Nintendo’s characters are now more recognisable than Disney’s and one of them was essentially made in the UK.

Donkey Kong’s SNES adventures outdid Super Mario World, the first 2 are the best 2D platformers of all time in my opinion and sit at the pinnacle of that console’s library. DKC took us across Kong Country: underwater, through the jungle, underground and flying off many a minecart rail, it was frustrating, sometimes unfair but the challenge was always worth it.

With somewhere in the region of 9.5 million copies sold, Donkey Kong Country was the 3rd best selling video game for the Super Nintendo and it was well-worthy of that accolade; it sported an on-board Super FX chip that propelled its presentation ahead of everything else on the system.

Rare, in my mind, are undoubtably the greatest British video game developer of all time. They almost outshined Nintendo’s first party offerings on their own console: the N64 and have had an enormous effect on pop-culture with the direction they took Donkey Kong in; who can forget those soundtracks too? Groundbreaking stuff for the industry. Rare’s example should be celebrated in the UK as a triumph for the arts but instead, video games remain lambasted by the mainstream media and we have allowed this legendary developer to become nothing more than the studio that churns out Sea Of Thieves updates.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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I’ve always been more of an Elder Scrolls man: Morrowind is my favourite RPG of all time alongside KOTOR 1 and 2 but ever since my late teens I’ve grown to appreciate Fallout a lot more and to enjoy the delicious cynicism of its world.

Hearts Of Iron 4 is a game I know very well.

After so many hours of play, the frustrations from a decade of technical debt and the fatigue of the same setting for over 2 thousand hours certainly begin to set in, so I’ve been looking into the world of total conversion mods. Kaiserreich and The New Order had too much reading for me and Millennium Dawn is too boring; let’s see if Old World Blues can win me over.

Just a quick reminder before we begin: I have already reviewed Hearts Of Iron 4 in agonising detail, so this will be more of a narrative article looking specifically at the mechanics of the mod and following the general path of what I got up to. I hope you enjoy.

HOI… HOI Never Changes

Let me set the scene first and give you a run-down of what Old World Blues is all about.

The Old World Blues mod begins in 2275: 2 years before Fallout 3, 9 years before Fallout: New Vegas and just under 200 years since a nuclear war between a resource starved Communist China and a hyper-capitalistic USA plunged the world into ruin.

The world of Fallout primarily centres around California and the rest of the American West; up until Bethesda’s ham-fisted implementation of the East Coast and the contrived methods with which they planted classic Fallout factions there, the series was as much a Western as it was a post-apocalyptic Science Fiction. Classic Fallout was relentlessly bleak: the retro-futurist art-style and pre-war propaganda clashed brilliantly with tales of Canada and Mexico’s aggressive subjugation by the US Army and the remnants of the old establishment: The Enclave, are so twisted and violent that the denizens of the wasteland seldom refer to themselves as Americans or pine for the past; the pre-war America is ancient history to those who inhabit the world of Fallout, it would be like a modern Brit longing for the days of Queen Victoria.

This largely tribal setting, stretching from the Canadian Prairies in the North to Honduras in the South has been reimagined through the lens of Hearts Of Iron 4. War never changes, as ever you will find yourself completing focus trees, altering unit templates, training armies and producing equipment in order to fuel a war machine powerful enough to rebuild civilisation, 1 energy cell, 9mm bullet and frag grenade at a time.

Fledgling republics, religious fundamentalists, primitive tribals, technology cults or cartel kingpins, out in the wastes every kind of polity you can imagine is there to command. Many of them are original creations and it’s a testament to the mod-makers that I can hardly tell what is pulled from existing Fallout lore and what has been cooked up to fill in the barren wastes.

Taking Office

I’ve played brief sessions of OWB before: once as Arroyo and another as Mr House’s New Vegas but this time, I decided to head south of the border. The political landscape in Fallout’s Mexico is somehow both better and worse than that of its more vast neighbour to the north.

The former states of northwest Mexico: Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa and Chihuahua are littered with a mixture of bandits, ranchers and the pre-war Cartels immortalised as ghouls; on the coast also live the Free Fighters: a society of honest to goodness luchadores. Caesar’s Legion looks upon these weak polities with hungry eyes.

Northern Mexico is dominated by the Republic of the Rio Grande: a former US puppet state that boasts a surviving political system from before the war and maintains the Texan Arms Association as its unruly vassal state just beyond the river. To the east, the Ejercito Mexicano: the Mexican Army and its historically inspired AI General Santa Anna, styles itself as the true successor to pre-war Mexico, a Mexico free from US domination and their Rio Grandese underlings. Just south, Tlaloc: an unstable supercomputer named after the Nahua rain God preserves the interests of Petro Chico and delegates regions out to the control of its ‘sons’ which are other AI, like Santa Anna, who are inspired by figures from Mexican history. Further south, Petro Chico: the remnants of a US oil subsidiary, the Costa Cafeinada Cartel (what a fun name: the Caffeinated Coast) and a series of Nahua and Mayan states compete for dominance.

So, which did I decide to play? I’ll be damned if I’m going to fight for an AI controlled future and the idea of Mexico being run by a bunch of immortal Cartel bosses or Mesoamerican LARPer states wasn’t all that appealing to me so I picked the Republic of the Rio Grande. After 200 years and the USA having completely disintegrated, I should think any accusations of being quislings ring hollow by now.

‘One of the only pre-war countries to remain after the apocalypse, the Republic of the Rio Grande is a hollow shell of its former self. Surviving the collapse in no small part thanks to the American soldiers within its borders deserting to save civilian lives, the Republic redefined itself in order to survive.

With the rise of democracy came many challenges, and a long line of presidents have faithfully served the Republic in order to keep its people safe and happy. Despite this, tensions are running high as the Texan Arms Association continues to grow more and more discontent.’ - The Republic of the Rio Grande’s in-game description.

Broken Steel

Before we get into my campaign I want to call attention to just how perfectly the minds behind Old World Blues have captured the atmosphere of classic Fallout and New Vegas. This isn’t the same map you know from the standard game: the waterways are polluted sickly green and have all overflown, only to be crossed via strategic chokepoints or thrown together sea vessels, each and every city is a blackened corpse of twisted steel and large swathes of the land are scarred by nuclear fire and the landscape is dotted with caravans peddling their wares along the dilapidated road networks of the old world.

The presentation is elevated further by the UI and soundtrack, the former being modelled off Interplay’s original Fallout games and the latter taken from across the series, a few hours deep and you start to forget that you aren’t playing a real Fallout game. Fantastic.

I write all my reviews and articles under the assumption that (however unlikely) a developer might someday end up reading it, we can’t hold modders to the same standards as properly financed and organised development teams but I do have 2 minor complaints that I’d like to see ironed out: the stylised Fallout 1 and 2 font is extremely difficult to read sometimes and I’d love to hear some new voice lines recorded for the mod since it is a bit jarring listening to Mexican soldiers speaking Castellano Spanish and I have to imagine the ghoul troops sound normal too, though I haven’t played as a ghoul nation yet. I’d volunteer to do VA if I wasn’t so clearly a British man with a British accent.

Like in most mods, coloured buttons have been incorporated into the UI, I don’t generally use these types of mods myself but I found the splash of colour to be welcome when the environments are so drab and barren. Another burst of colour comes from the animated leader portraits, some of them have effects like arcing lightning or a holographic green tint with flicker and it goes a long way in making these seem like living, breathing people; I imagine this was inspired by Stellaris. I’ve never seen this done in any of the other total conversions I’ve played, bravo Old World Blues.

El Presidente

I took office in Rio Grande on the 1st of January 2275 and what I found was an absolute shambles.

Old World Blues has a fully fleshed-out and expansive Fallout-themed tech tree which covers everything from robotics and power armour to taming wasteland beasts and agriculture.

With the Legion an existential threat to the North, Cartels to the West and the Brotherhood of Steel well-established over the river in Texas, I found the nation without even the most basic robotics researched and much of the army being made up of small, undertrained, underequipped bands of infantry wielding pipe weapons, worse, even basic agriculture was not known to the Republic and we were working with the most rudimentary of tools; these were the technologies I focused on first: better industry and agriculture with a higher standard of infantry doctrine and training methods also set to research, better equipment would have to wait. Manpower is hard to generate in the post-apocalypse and better food means a wider manpower pool, thankfully, foreign auxiliaries were enshrined into the nation’s military laws, so for now, we had the means to fight and to grow.

And not a moment too soon, trouble soon found Rio Grande.

Not 3 days into my presidency and the ghouls of the Sinaloa Cartel came knocking: threatening for caps.

The Old World Blues mod implants the EU4 trade node system into Hearts Of Iron 4, this means that the rail network is set in stone and cannot be altered and it also enables various decisions around dispatching convoys and spending caps. To be honest, in all 3 of my OWB games so far I largely ignored these mechanics and didn’t notice a difference, I also could have paid off the Cartel easily and lived in peace… but a la mierda with that. I told the Cartel, in no uncertain terms, to do one and set up a defence on the border; we didn’t have expertise or firepower but we did have men: more men than the enemy.

While I prepared for the criminal onslaught: no doubt to be joined by a second cartel to the southwest who soon threatened me too, I took a good look at Rio Grande’s focus tree.

From playing Arroyo and as Mr House a while ago I’ve begun to pick up on the structure of these trees. Generally, the first few focuses are short lore primers that provide a few choices to gain extra factories or national spirits early on, from there you get to choose between a few different political paths with other, sub-branches for industrial and military development. I’m used to mod developers deploying walls of text after every focus and forcing the player down a very tightly controlled narrative so the level of freedom and the lack of overbearing storytelling in OWB was a relief for me.

The best part of Hearts Of Iron 4 is its combat system, everything around that should be there to facilitate more combat.

Most of the political branch of the Rio Grande tree was locked behind the dubiously named ‘desperate times’ so I went with the right branch first to improve the army. While I worked down these focuses, I was made aware of a top secret bunker, supposedly full of pre-war weapons and technology that could only be opened by seizing the key from Ejercito Mexicano and Tlaloc, I added this to my mental checklist of goals; eventual war with the Legion and NCR was inevitable and I would need some nasty firepower to take those superpowers on.

Speaking of the Legion, the lore primer informed me that not only did the Republic defeat a previous Legion invasion… but that the responsible Legate: Paullus still resides somewhere within our borders. I’m sure that won’t be important later.

In a move that I’m sure had my approval ratings subterranean and Rommel spinning fast enough in his grave to power Mexico City, I had accidentally left my defending armies on the border doing training exercises because well-trained troops are imbued with a slight edge in combat, so the men were completely disorganised by the time the cartels attacked. As the first waves of Cartel troops advanced my disorganised army was getting cut down quite easily; in base-game Hearts Of Iron 4, losing a border skirmish like this generally results in you ceding territory… so I was beginning to panic.

Fortunately, our superior numbers were affording us a greater level of staying power. In Hearts Of Iron 4’s combat system, division HP strongly correlates with manpower; more men means a higher HP pool. The Cartels had smaller divisions than us and less of them, so while the odds were not in our favour at first, those divisions who made contact with the enemy before the rest were able to tank the assault through good, old-fashioned attritional warfare while the rest regained organisation and joined the fight later.

Well-trained and reorganised forces joining the battle, special forces divisions relocated from the north and the sacrifice of the common soldier drove off both assaults. We had beaten the Cartels.

The victory saved the Republic piles of bottlecaps and secured the city of Rio’s Steel Heart from possible seizure but mostly importantly, it gave the army experience of real combat; like most RTS games, HOI4 has a veterancy system for units which meant I now had a cohort of battle-hardened troops. Since military experience is a tangible currency to be spent in HOI4 too, I got to work cashing in my nobly gotten gains.

I’m going to break the narrative flow temporarily to say that my long spoken of HOI4 tutorial article never saw the light of day because a new DLC completely invalidated huge swathes of it; it might eventually surface but in the meantime I’m going to give a few division design pointers here.

The division stats screen is incredibly intimidating but for your infantry divisions (which should ideally be used only for defence, offensives on terrain where armour is not viable and special operations like naval landings) the main group you need to be looking at is these:

Factoring in Rio Grande’s mediocre industry and technology along with the unlikelihood of us picking a fight with the Brotherhood, whose power armour wearing Paladins I would assume are hard targets, I decided to maximise Soft Attack, Organisation and Defence; I’m not all that well-versed in the new robotic and power armour wearing battalions OWB adds so I decided to stick with what I know. In Hearts Of Iron 4, Hard Attack is the attack state used against units with high hardness like tanks and presumably power armour while Soft Attack is for unarmoured targets like cars and infantry; the 8/2 infantry-HMG fireteam template here provided just enough hard attack for the odd armoured car here and there while allowing me to hopefully shred through raider and cartel factions. Organisation determines how long a unit can withstand combat and Defence governs how well a unit can hold its ground, I focused on these stats as well with the goal of wearing down enemy morale and equipment against my lines before advancing against their depleted divisions.

Really outing myself as a USSR, China and Poland player here. To cut a long story short? The divisions were quite manpower and equipment intensive for the wastes so this template was introduced only in limited numbers at first.

Desperate Times

After those initial raids, peace reigned for months and I started to bring real change to Rio Grande. Agriculture and industry improved allowing us to have a better equipped army with a higher standard of weaponry while more manpower steadily became available; a couple of new divisions were even trained. On top of all this, I invested 2 research slots into both robotics and a power armour program, these would take a while to come to fruition but in the event of an invasion by Caesar’s Legion or another big player, I wanted to have more than just pipe rifles and knives on hand.

One day, with bangs in the capital: Gloria and the sounds of gunfire out in the provinces, that brief, sweet peace was broken.

Relations with the puppeted Texan Arms Association had been deteriorating ever since I began my presidency but the souring relations finally came to ahead when they announced their independence, setting off explosive charges in Rio Grandese territory in the process. The disgraced Legate Paullus too was beginning to cause trouble, launching raids from an unknown location in the desert and destabilising the provinces.

Low stability but higher war support… central authority was weak but at the very least, the people had an appetite for vengeance and so I got to work on picking up the pieces.

The status quo would not do and the idea of cosying up to the Brotherhood and the other Texan factions north of the Rio Grande River didn’t appeal, so I decided to go with the The Hero’s Oath path: with the militaristic, charismatic and ruthless Presidente Leonardo Mora. Under Mora, I quickly got to work stabilising the nation’s economy and deciding what would be done with our two enemies: Paullus and the wayward Texans who had taken most of our military industry with them.

There were 3 options in dealing with Paullus but to be completely honest? I only cared about one of them: seeing him dead.

From what I understand about Mora, the character is violently anti-Legion so for role-playing reasons I went with the violent route and on a personal level I wanted a bit of revenge, so hiring the failed Legion expeditionary was not a thought I seriously entertained. Following this branch of the focus tree, a system of Minutemen, like those found in Fallout 4’s Commonwealth: Los Minutos was established, bolstering our army and the Legate was hunted down and shot… we even shipped his body back to Caesar.

The issue of the T.A.A is one I gave more thought than the raider with delusions of grandeur that was Paullus.

Crossing the Rio Grande and facing an enemy that was virtually built on its ability to manufacture large numbers of small arms would be a daunting endeavour. With only 3 major points of crossing and the T.A.A undoubtably having better equipment and a larger industrial base, it would certainly become a brutal, attritional war if I chose to attack; also on the table were the options to reach out to the T.A.A and compromise, or to sidestep them altogether and build bridges with the other factions of Texas. After much deliberation: at least 5 seconds! I chose war; this is Hearts Of Iron, not Pens Of Iron, I ain’t playing this game to hammer out peace treaties and sing kumbaya, I’m in it for the krieg.

After a wave of destabilising efforts and threats, I declared war on the T.A.A in September 2276. The opening week or so of the conflict went well. After sustained assault, a number of divisions were able to cross the Rio Grande and seize the settlement of Eagle Pass from the enemy, casualties were about equal on both sides which is a good sign when you’re on the offensive and the settlement of Rio River, while still holding on, was a shooting gallery… but then a series of amateurish and embarrassing mistakes were made.

I forgot to reassign my divisions from a fallback line so they were constantly trying to return to their positions on our side of the river, my plan to sneak a few divisions into the Texan heartland to seize a few cities and force an early capitulation led to hundreds of stranded troops; a fourth crossing point over the Rio at Nuevo Laredo, one which I had somehow missed, was used by the enemy to strike deep into the Republic.

With defeat almost certain and hopes of victory looking remote, I prepared to surrender and made plans for my next attempt at Old World Blues.

Only joking, I won. What, did you think I was going to lose? My stranded troops were able to seize all of the T.A.A’s major cities while the river crossing caused the dumb AI to overextend itself, giving up vital positions elsewhere to my army.

The conquest of the T.A.A gave the Republic the satisfaction of a revenge served hot, courtesy of our desert campaign but even better, it allowed us to secure the largest industrial base in the region and to harness a larger population living in less arid territory; the division template I prepared earlier was expanded to encompass the entire army transforming Rio Grande’s Army into a formidable fighting force.

With the two major national crises resolved, stability and prosperity began to return… but we had unfinished business with the Cartels and the Free Fighter luchadores to the West.

La Guerra Larga

The Focus Tree had brought stability back and hefty industrial improvements so I decided now was as good a time as any to go on the offensive and began manually justifying war against the Beltran-Levya Cartel next door. While we had been waging our great struggle against the Arms Association, those parasites from the Cartels had returned and with all of the Republic’s forces committed to the war, I had no choice but to pay them a large sum off money to piss off.

The area of northern Sinaloa where Beltran-Levya govern is harsh: rough, defensible hills and mountains that reach high temperatures but I decided to attack them first in the hopes of securing a viable port from which to construct a navy. I knew from my knowledge of Fallout lore that the New California Republic: the strongest nation in post-war America, would seize the long, slim state of Baja California from its bandit occupant sometime soon; a port and naval forces would enable us to launch a naval landing in the territory later if need be.

I had also hoped our recent advancement in air technology and production of gliders armed with bombs would prove decisive… if you speak Spanish and read the title of this section, you already know the answer.

The opening offensive of the war: the operation to capture the city of Nuevo Ideal went smoothly, not only were Beltran-Levya outnumbered but by now, more than 2 years into my game, I had managed to equip and train the army to a higher quality and quantity than that of my neighbours. There was a worrying lack of supply but I assumed that once the city fell and was incorporated into our logistics network, we could have a strategic pause, rearm and then push on.

You know the part earlier where I mentioned that you can’t built supply lines in Old World Blues? That they are natural, set-in-stone connections between nodes? Well, this is when I found out. My entire frontline was stuck in the rough Mexican wastes with no supply, waging a war that I had already spent 1000 lives in fighting. No turning back now.

My campaign into northern Sinaloa ended up being an unmitigated disaster. We were eventually able to secure supplies but the damage was done: of the original 7800 men sent into Beltran-Levya, about 4000 never came back. A devastating loss of life. The war was eventually won but at the cost of all those lives… and Rio Grandese democracy: Mora was made dictator for life in an effort to stabilise the state after a horrendous campaign.

In the time I had spent at war, I hadn’t noticed the world changing around me.

The Ejercito Mexicano, while I’d been floundering in Sinaloa, had launched a highly successful offensive against the Brotherhood’s Alamo Chapter in Texas and wiped them out. Just north of the Republic, Las Granjas: The Farms, a nation of peaceful cattle herders and crop growers, had been swallowed whole by the Legion giving us a direct border. Fearing that I was next, with an empty manpower pool and a fearsome army on my border I decided that just one more war: an annexation of Sinaloa Cartel, to establish a river border with the Legion and improve my defences was our only hope at long term survival.

Drunk on power, Mora declared the Republic of the Rio Grande to be the reborn United States of Mexico and marched into the territory of the Sinaloa Cartel; the Free Fighters in the south attacked too, looking to gain territory and prestige from putting down this bastion of crime.

In Hearts Of Iron 4, peace deals are largely conducted by acquiring War Contribution: a deeply flawed system that rewards you based on a few factors, the most important of which being victory points/territory captured… so despite my army seeing the heaviest combat, the Free Fighters managed to attain about 50% Contribution by seizing the Sinaloa Cartel’s capital. As a result? The peace deal I got was absolutely garbage.

It was at this moment, at the height of frustration, that I made the decision that would end my run. Depleted, overconfident and desperate to establish the Yaqui River as the (for now) permanent border between me and the Legion, I immediately invaded the Free Fighters: depleted, undersupplied and critically low on manpower, I actually chose to attack.

Within days, the remnants of my army were on the run and I did as many of history’s greatest generals have done before me… and hit Alt + F4. Mexico would be reunited… but not today and bot by me.

A Job Well Done

The worst thing I can say about Old World Blues is that it’s attached to a game that peaked about 5 years ago. The focus trees are well-designed, the aesthetic is immaculate and for the first time in a long while, I can look at my loss and not chalk it up to glitches or horrible RNG but instead pinpoint moments of poor judgement and sloppy warfare that led to my demise. That to me is what strategy games are all about: learning to maximise your success within a set of rules and parameters and playing your hand, no matter how horrible it is, to the best of your ability.

I turned a struggling, poor, technologically backwards republic in the deserts of Mexico into a military powerhouse with a wide industrial base and I had an absolute blast doing it.

If you’re a fan of Fallout then this mod is for you, if you’ve grown tired of Hearts Of Iron 4 then Old World Blues is worth trying for you too; I know there is an appetite among my readership for more Hearts Of Iron, so if you’d like to see me try more nations in Old World Blues than do let me know.

TL;DR: Hearts Of Iron 4 is far past its peak and Old World Blues’ developers stray from established lore in order to fill up the map with interesting factions but the aesthetic is spot on, the new units and tech add a wealth of combat options and wars in the wasteland are bloody, challenging tests of strategic skill.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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With this in mind, I’ve put together a short survey, I hope with your answers I can fine-tune the publication to provide more of what you want to read.

I’m talking about 007 Nightfire, not Goldeneye 007, didn’t you read the top of the page?

I can sing Goldeneye’s praises all day long (believe me, I already have) but for those born at the turn of the Millennium like myself, we didn’t experience the revolution that was Goldeneye 007 as it happened, instead, we reaped the benefits; the shooters I saw growing up were 007 Agent Under Fire, Halo, Nightfire, TimeSplitters 2 and Medal Of Honour: Frontline: all titles with the DNA of Rare’s classic shooter thoroughly incorporated.

The only Bond shooter I owned as a kid was the very disappointing Goldeneye: Rogue Agent (though I find it to be over-hated) I only played Nightfire and Agent Under Fire around the houses of friends and relatives so recently I decided to change that: to finally see what Nightfire has to offer for myself.

Universal Exports

007 Nightfire was developed by Eurocom, who also made The World Is Not Enough for the Nintendo 64 and it released just 2 days before Pierce Brosnan’s final Bond film, Die Another Day hit cinemas in the USA, so it was in the best interests of the minds behind Bond to distribute this game as widely as possible. Nightfire features the Aston Martin Vanquish which is Bond’s car from the film and the disc even contains a trailer for Bond’s then upcoming outing; this game was, to some degree, a smaller part of the seismic advertising and brand event that was Die Another Day and the 40th anniversary of Bond in 2002.

Nightfire came to virtually every piece of gaming hardware you could get your hands on in the early 2000’s: the PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, PC and even the Game Boy Advance. I’m going to be paying lip-service to the much different PC and GBA versions of this game below but just to be clear, the Nightfire I’m reviewing is the one released for the big 3 consoles.

Something I adore about this generation of consoles (other than the inherent fondness I feel for my childhood generation of gaming) is how seemingly identical multi-platform titles are riddled with little quirks and hallmarks of the hardware they’re running on; I was one of only 2 GameCube owners in my class at school and it was always funny to see titles I thought of as GameCube games running on the PS2.

Let’s get back on topic and cut to the chase: the GameCube version of 007 Nightfire is usually considered the best. On the GameCube, Nightfire targets a smooth 60FPS rather than the 30FPS found on PS2 and Xbox and the multiplayer mode supports a greater number of bots. Textures, lighting and sound quality don’t quite reach the heights that can be found on Xbox but it’s a small price to pay, in my opinion.

Most players experienced Nightfire on the PlayStation 2 which is a shame because if it wasn’t for the PC, this would be the worst version of the game. The framerate doesn’t reach the same heights as on the GameCube and the PlayStation 2, being the weakest machine of its generation, doesn’t stand toe-to-toe graphically with its competitors either; some people out there really hate the GameCube controller for some reason, so if you’re one of those then this could be a version for you.

The Xbox version of Nightfire does look better than on GameCube but the Xbox also only runs at 30FPS so pick your poison. Regardless? The 3 console versions of 007 Nightfire are all very playable, if you didn’t play it on GameCube then you haven’t missed out on much.

Another way to play Nightfire is on the GBA. I don’t own this version of the game but from what I can gather and the gameplay footage I’ve watched it looks and plays similar to 90’s FPS games like DOOM, certainly looks the part as well. This is a fascinating version as it is quite clearly based on an early rendition of the consoles’ game; Nightfire was originally supposed to star Andrew Bicknell’s Bond from Agent Under Fire before the likeness for Pierce Brosnan was secured, that old model of Bond is in the cutscenes here still as is the health and armour gauge from that game. I’ll definitely be seeking a copy of this out for the future.

The less said about 007 Nightfire on PC the better. That version was developed by Gearbox software, it has missing levels, worse gunplay, lots of bugs and outside of a small but dedicated multiplayer community, nobody bothers with it today.

Do It With Intensity

007 Nightfire opens, as all good Bond films should, with a pre-credits gun barrel and action sequence.

Graslu00 is a titan of the Bond FPS community with a channel full of long plays and challenges, I highly recommend checking out his work if you’re struggling with 00 Agent runs or unlocking cheats.

Bond is providing close air support with a sniper rifle to an allied French operative: Dominique as she’s chased through the streets of Paris on New Year’s Eve. The two agents’ target is a truck full of stolen ordnance. Like 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies, this pre-title sequence serves more as a thematic opener than a narrative one, the idea of stolen military hardware falling into the wrong hands and Bond’s partnership with Dominique being central plot points in the rest of the campaign.

This brief, blissful mission is such a superb fulfilment of the game’s promised power fantasy: it’s so fast, so stylish, so violent… so Bond. Nightfire is the first James Bond video game that successfully replicates the tone and feel of the films.

Inevitably Bond manages to get on top of things and as 007 and Dominique ‘congratulate’ each other on a job well done, the screen fades and we get the first ever video game Bond theme: Nearly Civilized by Esthero. I’m told Esthero is relatively popular in her native Canada but truthfully? I’d never heard of her work before playing Nightfire.

Nightfire’s intro basically spoils the (albeit highly predictable) plot of the game from the get-go which is a bit of a shame but the song is dark and stylish and it’s great how Kiko and Alura: the two main Bond girls, are worked into the sequence too; I’m not sure who the fiery-haired woman is supposed to be, Dominique? Or just more fire to fit with the rest of it?

I’ll get more into the graphics soon but I was thoroughly impressed with Brosnan’s likeness in this game and it seems the developers were too, choosing to slap him not only only the main menu but at the end of this scene; it wasn’t uncommon for real life people’s faces to get botched in video games back then. Perhaps I’m projecting my own feelings onto it but Brosnan’s slight grin and eye contact always struck me as a little “Hello again, old friend.” This was the first time since the PS1 and Nintendo 64 players had the chance to control the genuine, incumbent James Bond himself.

In general, for both better and for worse, Nightfire is much more interested in being a good James Bond experience than an innovative, ground-breaking shooter. Its weapons and gadgets, even the flashier ones, are almost entirely sourced from the films, its plot is something of a mash-up between The World Is Not Enough, Thunderball and Moonraker as well; this is a video game for both Bond fans and N64 Goldeneye fans first and foremost. I love that.

In the era of the lowest common denominator, it’s refreshing to come back to a time when many games were made not only for gamers but tailoring to gamers of a specific breed.

Just A Bit Closer

I’ve said in the past that the Dreamcast, Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube: the sixth console generation, is an era that straddles retro gaming and modern gaming. The early PlayStation 2 and especially the Dreamcast library mostly feel like late-90’s video games with a makeover but some titles were way ahead of their time both graphically and mechanically and wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3; 007 Nightfire is one of these overachievers. It may play like a Nintendo 64 game in the gunplay department but it looks and sounds even better than games like Halo 2 and TimeSplitters.

The environments and art direction are drop dead gorgeous, every level has its own audio and visual identity that makes them stand out.

Mission 1: The Exchange sees Bond HALO jump into the grounds of a castle in the Austrian Alps in order to infiltrate an exclusive party where a black market arms deal is rumoured to be underway… which is about as Bond as it gets as far as mission setups go. Spotlights cut through the falling snow, the battleship grey castle walls contrast with the white ground and warm orange lights guide the player towards interiors where supplies, opportunities for sabotage and eventually: the main entrance can be found.

The atmosphere is sublime, helped further by Nightfire’s wonderful soundtrack; this is the only Bond FPS that ever approaches the greatness of Goldeneye on the N64’s music. This OST has lashings of film motifs, plenty of catchy driving, sneaking and combat themes, each and every one of them a treat for the ears.

The music changes dynamically the further you make it inside the castle walls but this sneaking theme from the very beginning is the best.

Most of 007 Nightfire takes place in Japan and the setting is used to its full potential with traditional, modern and the cyberpunk images of Japan each getting a mission with that aesthetic.

The mission Double Cross, set in a traditional Japanese compound, is replete with the glow of lanterns, koi ponds and rooms decorated with Shinto iconography and Feudal Japanese memorabilia. The oriental instruments and moody tones of the soundtrack add a cruel edge to the stealth in this mission; you’re not avoiding detection or sparing the lives of ignorant underlings, Bond is here to quietly dispatch hostage takers with violent speed and efficiency.

It’s not many video game soundtracks that manage to convey character as well as tone but Nightfire’s manages it. There are moments of Bond’s bravado, espionage skill and violence accented by the score across every mission.

In the next mission: Night Shift, Bond is tasked with infiltrating the Japanese skyscraper HQ of a villainous multinational corporation in a level that I’m sure had to be, at least in part, a tribute to Perfect Dark: Rare’s spiritual follow up to Goldeneye released 2 years prior. The sea of lights outside, laser grids and steel-glass interiors give the level a cyberpunk feel. Many players consider this level to be the peak of the game.

Inevitably, in true Bondian fashion, 007 is discovered and this prompts a sequence where you have to go full John Wick against the incoming, heavily armed security team. The catharsis of finally getting to let rip in a proper gunfight, the feel of my old, dormant, 00 Agent Goldeneye skills returning and the rocking combat music made this a high point of Nightfire for me.

Don’t worry, there are missions in broad daylight too, ones that don’t revolve around stealth or infiltration, like Chain Reaction, where Bond has to evade enemy sniper teams and gather evidence in a Japanese nuclear reactor partway through being decommissioned.

This mission provides a more grounded take on Japan compared to the previous traditional and cyberpunk levels. Cargo-carrying bots, rusted catwalks and disused storage areas play host to a game of cat and mouse where you squint through the sun’s glare and peer along rooftops for the tell-tale silhouettes of enemy marksmen. Chain Reaction is one of Nightfire’s toughest missions but like all well-balanced difficulty, it does come with a high dose of cathartic comeuppance at the end of the level.

Using a prototype laser turret, the player fights off an ambush inside a giant warehouse as the music crescendos and makes you feel a million pounds while you mow down a horde of goons (that’s Great British Pounds, not weight.)

I don’t want to go on and on, spoiling every last piece of music and level in Nightfire so my point is this: the game looks and sounds like something on the big screen and best of all? It makes you feel something: powerful, dangerous, tense and often, Nightfire’s presentation puts a big, fat grin on your face. You can’t complain about that.

No Glib Remark

At its core, 007 Nightfire is a Nintendo 64 shooter; that classic aiming system, carrying a huge arsenal of firearms PC shooter-style, the open-ended level-design with optional rooms: it’s all there. Setting that design template aside, Nightfire also serves an an indirect sequel to 007 Agent Under Fire, a shooter that is also good but mostly remembered today as being a slightly worse Nightfire… and for having the off-brand, Andrew Bicknell Bond I use for my profile picture. As such, Nightfire is a selection of older ideas polished to a mirror sheen.

From Goldeneye, Eurocom’s own first Bond game: The World Is Not Enough and from Rare’s other N64 shooter masterpiece: Perfect Dark, Nightfire takes the objective-based missions, gunplay and stealth… unfortunately, it’s here where Nightfire doesn’t quite manage to live up to its predecessors. The gunplay is a marked improvement over Agent Under Fire but it isn’t as good as the shooting to be found in Rare’s 2 N64 classics. In Perfect Dark and Goldeneye, prominent hit effects, a suite of enemy injury animations and pained grunts all tell the player where, when and how badly the enemy has been hit (as well as providing some excellent comedic relief) but in Nightfire much of this has been left out, worse, there are hit detection issues that frustrated me on quite a few occasions.

Let’s not completely throw mud over 007 Nightfire though, the weapons roster is second only to Perfect Dark in utility and fun factor; this game’s legally distinct SPAS-12 shotgun: the Frinesi feels beautiful to use. Vehicle missions are a glorious power fantasy too, if you can’t enjoy bombing it around an ice lake, launching rockets from an Aston Martin then your taste in video games might be the real issue here.

From Agent Under Fire, 007 Nightfire takes its driving missions, turret sections, scoring system and the Bond Moves: hidden objectives in missions that reward the player for thinking like Bond with a score boost and the appropriate musical sting. These elements combined make 007 Nightfire a supremely addictive experience. I finished this game about an hour before Resident Evil Requiem unlocked in the UK and even now, just over a week later, I’m coming back to Nightfire every day to speed run levels, find more Bond Moves and gather the hidden 007 tokens in the quest for a full Platinum Medal save file: an achievement that essentially requires every level to be speed ran with minimal damage, close to 100% shot accuracy and all tokens collected.

Level design and interactivity is by far this game’s greatest strength and at times? Nightfire feels as much like a Bond immersive sim as it does a standard first person shooter. The first mission in the Austrian castle I mentioned earlier: The Exchange, is considered by many Bond video game fans to be the single best level ever made for the video game franchise. There are 3 separate ways into the castle and 4 different routes to access those entryways; the mission starts with some stealth and ends with pulse-pounding action and a boss fight against an attack helicopter. It is perfect.

Critics of Nightfire tend to complain that it peaks in the first mission with The Exchange and never reaches that high again but I disagree, in my opinion, The Exchange is a perfect showcase of everything Nightfire has to offer while later missions explore individual mechanics better: Night Shift is the beast stealth mission and Countdown provides the best firefights in the game for example.

From what I can gather online, the three most popular levels seem to be The Exchange, Night Shift and Phoenix Fire… I’m not an exception to this rule, my favourite mission is probably the latter: Phoenix Fire. Where Night Shift is a stealthy ascent up a Japanese skyscraper, Phoenix Fire is the mirror: a panicked descent while you’re hunted by an attack chopper and spec ops. Fundamentally, I play these games for that classic. Rare-style FPS gameplay and Phoenix Fire delivers lashings of it, letting you play with most of the game’s weapons and really get stuck in to some heavy action.

Rare’s Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were famous for their multiplayer modes; as a teenager, I played the Perfect Dark Xbox Live Arcade version’s multiplayer with bots and friends almost every evening and my childhood was consumed by TimeSplitters 2 and Future Perfect bot matches, so I was excited to give this one a try and evaluate it. To cut a long story short, Nightfire’s multiplayer mode is better than Perfect Dark on N64’s… but inferior to the Perfect Dark XBLA version and every other multiplayer offering of this type, unfortunately. Nightfire’s weapon and character roster just isn’t as broad and as interesting as the ones found in TimeSplitters and the maps aren’t particularly memorable either, only Skyrail.

What kills this multiplayer even more is that almost every game mode and character is locked behind campaign medals so you have to earn the right to enjoy what is an integral part of the game. I don’t mind unlocking maps and characters to some extent but Nightfire gives you almost nothing for free. What a shame. Fun but not among the greats of the era, this is no TimeSplitters 2 split-screen.

If you’re the sort of gamer who doesn’t replay games often or doesn’t feel comfortable laying down cash for a short experience (though this is an exceedingly cheap game, at least here in the UK) then Nightfire might be one to emulate or to pass on. The plot is Bondian enough and serviceable enough to deliver a few moments of genuine emotion and the multiplayer is a fun distraction but Nightfire’s magic happens on repeated runs: the magic is in finding those Bond Moves you didn’t know about, grinding for Platinum Medals and in replaying your favourite levels with different routes to the objective. Nightfire is a short game with a smaller, more curated selection of higher quality levels compared to Goldeneye on the N64.

A Pithy Comeback

This whole review has been building up to the big question, a question I’m sure everyone who’s ever played this game has asked themselves, a question that every Bond game must face: is Nightfire as good as Goldeneye? Is it better? Let’s be clear, history has already answered this question: Goldeneye’s legacy is cherished by everyone who enjoys FPS games, by Bond fans who love the film (arguably the best in the entire on-screen franchise) and even by popular culture. Nightfire has certainly not cast the same, long shadow.

Jimmy Fallon and Pierce Brosnan playing Goldeneye 007 on prime time US TV

Goldeneye has the better gunplay for sure… but by virtually every other metric, Nightfire is the better video game and perhaps more importantly: the better James Bond experience; if you find any congregation of Bond fans online, they will tell you, entirely straight-faced that Nightfire and Everything Or Nothing are mandatory Brosnan-era experiences.

Nightfire could be called my generation’s Goldeneye. Being around games like this, Agent Under Fire and Goldeneye: Rogue Agent as a kid cemented James Bond and Brosnan’s version of the character in my head as the height of cool and as a seal of quality on video game boxes, just like Goldeneye for those before me.

Nightfire is better, if it wasn’t for TimeSplitters and Halo then Eurocom with their license to… make Bond games, would have been the kings of the early 2000’s console FPS scene.

Diamonds Are Forever

Licensed video games have a long and sordid history, a taboo that follows them even to this day.

It was the 40th anniversary of Bond and Die Another Day was just around the corner, frankly, no matter what type of Bond product Eurocom would have put out it was going to sell well. Eurocom didn’t just splutter out shovelware though, they took Agent Under Fire, seasoned it with a bit of that old Rare magic and just a dash of their previous ingenuity with the Bond license to cook up one of the greatest shooters of this generation. Nightfire is superb and the only Bond game to ever surpass Goldeneye.

Nightfire isn’t flawless: certain missions (ahem, Deep Descent…) have unfair checkpoints, the game is rather short, there are some gunplay issues and the multiplayer mode is disembowelled, its entrails scattered about for you to earn via high scores but many of these complaints are a symptom of Nightfire being an old PS2/Xbox/GameCube title. I’m not one to value artistic merit and evolution over creating an enjoyable experience, so while Nightfire is a perfect dish of old ingredients, it still gets my vote for as the greatest Bond game ever made.

TL;DR: 007 Nightfire’s multiplayer is cruelly drawn and quartered, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, minor gunplay issues are present… and yet it is better than Goldeneye. Every inch of this game is sculpted with passion for 007, every mission is a layered, enjoyable operation and the Platinum Medals are an addictive prize to strive for.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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Back in October, in the midst of my long retrospective series on classic Resident Evil, me and of Infinite Lives got talking about the franchise and decided that a collaboration was in order; this month, these plans are coming to fruition. I can’t put a precise date or time on it but very soon we’ll be discussing/reviewing Resi 9 together.

Week 1: 007 Nightfire Review

Last year I had planned to tackle all the major Bond games in the run up to First Light; Goldeneye was my first ever article on the Journal but I didn’t get the chance to do the others. Nightfire is my latest retro game addiction and it happens to be the most beloved game by fans of the Bond films, so this month I’ll be reviewing this classic shooter and comparing it to Goldeneye on the N64 in a battle of the Bonds.

Week 2: Hearts Of Iron IV: Old World Blues Mod Review

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a HOI4 fiend: 2213 hours and counting so far but even I get tired of the same old focus trees, the same old World War 2 and the same old problems that Paradox refuses to fix so this month I’m going to be writing about the incredibly popular Fallout-themed mod: Old World Blues. In this mod, the player can choose from hundreds of tribes and polities and fight others in the ruins of a post-nuclear Western United States and Northern Mexico.

Week 3: Ranking The Resident Evil Games

I’ve written extensively about the Resident Evil franchise on this publication, shared which one is my favourite and given most of the series a thorough going over with the critical stick but never before have I ranked them. This month I’ll be ranking the mainline Resident Evil games (plus a couple of spin-offs) and we’ll see where Requiem sits once I’ve had a few weeks to replay it and to digest the experience.

Week 4: Every N64 FPS Part 1: Turok

The original plan with this Substack was to go through each Nintendo 64 FPS game in chronological order (not unlike ’ NES work over on ) since my non-gaming articles aren’t setting the world on fire for the most part, I’d like to return to this original mission with an article about a Nintendo 64 shooter once a month until we’ve covered them all. Depending on who you ask, there are about 17-20 FPS games for the ‘64 so this should keep me going for quite some time.

The lockdowns, fuelled by a gifted PlayStation and Konami’s Castlevania collections were my first forays not only into retro gaming but into the realm of PC too; it was at this time I got my first gaming rig that wasn’t a hand-me down.

But why Castlevania?

Something about grinding through these famously difficult titles felt more poignant at that time and I figured that with a future stint in university on the way, it would be my final chance to put a lot of time into finishing some incredibly difficult games. Chief among these in difficulty was Rondo Of Blood, this game took me 2-3 weeks to finish… but I had an absolute blast doing it.

No PALs

It’s at this point in a review where I’d usually discuss the best versions of the game, what platform it released on and how it was received… but I can’t for Rondo Of Blood. Not only did this game never come to the West but the PC Engine (or TurboGrafx-16 as it’s known in the US) never even released in Europe!

Our counterparts across the Atlantic could have imported Rondo Of Blood from Japan and played on the TurboGrafx-16 via an adapter but the closest we got to this game in the UK was Castlevania: Vampire’s Kiss on the SNES, also known as Dracula X in the states (this is getting exhausting) a butchered port of Rondo Of Blood.

A lot of fans enjoy this game’s alternate take on the Rondo Of Blood soundtrack but personally? I prefer the real thing.

I’ve never played this version but as mentioned in the Symphony Of The Night review last month, Rondo Of Blood was remade for the PSP in its first official release outside of Japan: Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles.

I’m writing this under the assumption that you’ve probably read my Symphony Of The Night review also, so I won’t go over the finer details but the short version of this story is that today? Both Rondo Of Blood and Symphony Of The Night are only playable on modern hardware using a PlayStation 4 or 5. This review was written based on that Castlevania Requiem bundle for PlayStation 4 that contains both games.

I’m sorry this has been a particularly brief section, this is not a game we’ve had an easy time getting a hold of in the West, especially for those like me who largely dipped from PlayStation after the PS2 for greener, more Xbox-y pastures.

The Wheel Keeps Turning

Rondo of Blood begins in 1792 with a deliciously ominous German narration accompanied by a wonderfully animated scene depicting the resurrection of Dracula before throwing you into a full-blown, 90’s anime intro, it’s awesome. The plot is nothing too detailed but neither does it need to be; this is a classic, side-scrolling, ass-kicking, whip-cracking Castlevania game, not a Metroidvania like its sequel. You’re not here for Shakespeare or Chaucer, you’re here to slay Dracula and die (a lot) trying.

Rondo stars a new Belmont: Richter, he wears a cool blue tunic and presumably, looking at those delts, has armed himself with some trenbolone and test enth’ alongside the usual holy water and whip. Look, if you were fighting death himself, you’d get a bit saucy too.

Something I really enjoy about Rondo Of Blood is how, despite being in the anime-style and even sharing many assets with its sequel: Symphony Of The Night, it manages to carve out a style and atmosphere distinct from every other entry in the series.

As anime grew in popularity in the West, especially in the 1990’s, it became more common for video games to adopt that style too; from The Legend Of Zelda to Final Fantasy, most Japanese franchises turned away from European folklore and cultural influences to adopt more of those found back home. Rondo Of Blood sits at the middle point of this shift in its own franchise. This game is in an anime style but Richter is clearly of Schwarzeneggerian stock and the foes are largely traditional fare for the series; the sequel: Symphony Of The Night would lean harder into the Japanese style before later entries in the series saw you playing as a secondary school student in Japan or in a Devil May Cry-style hack and slash… no wonder this franchise vanished for a rethink.

Rondo Of Blood is the point in the series where all pretences of Castlevania being a horror franchise were dropped. Up until this point, the series played up its Hammer Horror and Gothic Horror influences; Super Castlevania IV opened with a Star Wars-esque creepy text crawl and the original NES game’s manual even had a light-hearted yet foreboding warning for the player.

But Rondo Of Blood is full of bombastic tunes and high action.

Horror games were blossoming into their own unique genre at this point with Alone In The Dark having released a year prior, so it was about time Castlevania cut ties with that particular label.

While the feature was missing in Super Castlevania IV (since that game was essentially a remake) extra playable characters returned in Rondo Of Blood with 12 year old Maria Renard introduced. I'll talk about Maria from a gameplay perspective later but she fills that loud, obnoxious comic relief anime trope I despise so much; her character design is completely out of place and her voice is exceedingly irritating.

Maria is one of several hidden maidens to rescue but only she is playable.

Something wonderful that Rondo Of Blood manages to capture is how much of a threat Dracula is to the world.

In the original game, as Simon Belmont, it isn’t easy to fathom exactly why Dracula should be stopped other than because the game says so. The entire journey takes place across desolate ruins within the castle courtyard followed by the occult interiors of the fortress itself but throughout it’s clear that the player is the aggressor, we don’t see the consequences of Dracula’s reign or the destruction he has wrought. This isn’t a criticism, just the realities of creating a game on a console less powerful than a flip-phone. Rondo Of Blood remedies this. We see towns engulfed in flames, haunted cemeteries and infested wilderness on the way to Castlevania: the fruits of Dracula’s reign that make it clear the dark lord must be slain.

Creatures Of The Night

While made more famous by Sega’s later, ill-fated attempt at the concept, other consoles had their own CD-ROM add-ons including the TurboGrafx-16.

Like any good CD-ROM add-on, the TurboGrafx-CD made the console look absolutely hideous; Rondo Of Blood developed for this attachment.

If you’re not into the tech then speaking in the most basic terms, the greatest advantage of disc-based media over cartridges and cards is storage capacity; a Switch 2 cartridge has a capacity of 64GB while the PS5 Blu-Ray can hold about 100GB, the Nintendo 64 cartridge holds 64MB while the PS1 disc can hold an ‘impressive’ 660MB, you can see how transformative this is. The TurboGrafx-16’s library was generally not as graphically striking as that of the SNES but the CD attachment does allow Rondo one key advantage: its soundtrack. This one is a banger and comes very close to its sequel in terms of quality.

The opening mission takes place in a burning town, infested the minions of Dracula and Divine Bloodlines acts as an upbeat, high-energy opening track to build excitement and to fuel the power fantasy of ploughing through this dark army as Richter.

Rondo Of Blood is also replete with remixes of classic Castlevania tracks, like this excellent version of Beginning from Castlevania III.

Opus 13 has a very Sega feel to it and I’m sure you’ll agree; this reminds me of the kind of music you hear in Nights Into Dreams or perhaps even Sonic Adventure, I love it.

I’ve written this section somewhat out of order but rest-assured, the graphics of Rondo Of Blood don’t disappoint either; the TG-16 didn’t have the longevity of its competitors, neither did it have the power of the most advanced console of its day: the SNES but as is always the case, with a little hardware knowledge and a motivated developer, Rondo ends up looking just as good as anything on Nintendo’s machine.

As expected from classic Konami, the sprite-work is top-notch and Rondo Of Blood (at least on PS4/PS5 hardware) runs flawlessly. Something I particularly love about this 16-Bit era of Castlevania is how the colour palette from the NES games’ levels was pulled into the next generation and enhanced, you can see those same level themes and shades shining through giving Rondo and Super Castlevania IV a great sense of continuity with that classic trilogy.

I will say, as a small criticism, Rondo Of Blood doesn’t seem to me to be as well animated as its SNES contemporary. Richter isn’t quite as capable as Simon Belmont (which we’ll get into later) which factors into that equation but as well as that, due to the smaller sprite size and weaker hardware, Rondo lacks a sense of weight and power that I feel when I play Super Castlevania IV. The item crushes are a huge exception, these big, bombastic special attacks look exactly as damaging and devastating as they should.

Cracking The Whip

Rondo Of Blood often gets labelled as the most well-polished ‘run of the mill’ 2D Castlevania and while elements of that are true… I do think the statement sells it a bit short.

Let’s get the biggest issue with Rondo Of Blood’s gameplay out of the way first: no omnidirectional whipping, this is one of those gameplay innovations that I’m shocked didn’t catch on, it would be like playing a tank controls Resident Evil game after RE3: Nemesis without the quick-turn. Setting that aside, Rondo Of Blood makes 2 primary innovations in the gameplay department in regards to the standard Belmont style: the Item Crush and the Backflip.

A selection of stylish use-cases for the backflip.

Of the two, the backflip is the most significant and my personal favourite. Certain bosses and enemy encounters were clearly designed with expedient use of the backflip in-mind, so if you want to have a go at Rondo Of Blood yourself (and you definitely should) you’ll want to master this technique.

Full-disclosure: I didn’t replay the entire game for this review, only about half of it; I’ve been on a serious Bond FPS binge lately. I might be proven wrong when I go back to finish it but Rondo Of Blood wasn’t as difficult as I’d remembered, no doubt due to my more extensive experience with retro games now but also because of learning when and where to use this backflip. Of course, if you want to have a much easier time with Rondo you can play as Maria, who serves as the game’s easy mode… but let’s be honest with each other for a second, if you beat Rondo Of Blood as Maria, then you didn’t really beat it at all, did you? I don’t care if I’m gatekeeping, sue me.

The Item Crushes are a lot of fun. How this works is that each heart-shaped piece of ammunition you collect contributes to a meter on the side of the screen, once it’s full the player can unleash a weapon-specific, special attack that usually ends up clearing the screen, these moves are a life-saver and contribute towards Rondo feeling like the fairest Castlevania yet in spite of its steep difficulty.

A comparison video showing all Item Crushes from Rondo Of Blood and Vampire’s Kiss/Dracula X.

Another refinement over previous entries is Rondo Of Blood’s interpretation of the branching paths mechanic present in Castlevania III. In that game, each path was a binary choice between going up or down between missions, it was good enough but Rondo Of Blood certainly improves on this system.

This time the extra stages are treated like hidden levels, not unlike Super Mario World on the SNES (only much less telegraphed) this is one of my favourite parts of Rondo Of Blood. This is the biggest Castlevania game yet, no doubt thanks to it being disc-based and the alternate stages give the player a lot of agency to customise the experience. Have you been stuck on one level for ages? Retry the previous one and find an alternate path to tackle a separate challenge. Replaying Rondo Of Blood? Look for the stages you missed. This is a game where 3 players can potentially play entirely different configurations of stages 2-5. I don’t even know where some of the entrances to the extra stages are and that will keep me coming back to Rondo for a long time.

Dracula Returns… Again

Listen, I love Rondo Of Blood: this is most certainly my favourite of the traditional side-scrolling Castlevania games and I would argue that, overall influence on the history of the medium and gaming cultural impact aside, Rondo Of Blood is a more enjoyable game to actually play than Symphony Of The Night… but by this point, you do feel a certain sense of having been here and done all of this already.

You can add a backflip, a second playable character, Item Crushes and branching paths but fundamentally? This is the same game players had been enjoying since the NES; Castlevania’s one foot into the action genre and one foot into the platforming space harms its flexibility as a gameplay style. If you want to make a new Super Mario platformer then you can do all sorts with the level themes, power-ups and enemies but Castlevania isn’t like this, it must be gothic horror, it must take place in a castle and it must incorporate that whip and sub-weapon gameplay style in order to even qualify as a Castlevania title.

There has been a lot of talk over the years about why Castlevania vanished from shelves and I have some thoughts on this too. It’s true that this franchise never had a decent 3D game like Ocarina Of Time, Super Mario 64 or Sonic Adventure (yes, I’m outing myself as a Sonic Adventure enjoyer) but more than that, it’s the innovations that came with those entries that never arrived for Castlevania. Ocarina Of Time expanded the lore not just of the Triforce and of Ganondorf but of the entire world of The Legend Of Zelda; the entire franchise is based upon the story concepts introduced in that game. Sonic Adventure, however fumbled elements of it were, invented an entirely new gameplay system that felt true to Sonic’s 2D origins and Super Mario 64 did much the same; Castlevania has never innovated on the same level successfully, therefore, as cool as the new Belmont’s Curse game looks, I don’t think the series is going to see any real mainstream success again.

Symphony Of The Night looked like Super Metroid, nobody likes the N64 Castlevania games and the Lords Of Shadow games are like poor man’s Devil May Cry. Castlevania has no gameplay identity in the modern era and there’s no reason to play a new version of the classics when you can get them all for less than £20 off Steam.

But let’s end on a high note: Rondo Of Blood is fantastic. This game made my lockdown more tolerable, it’s a blast to play and might even be the perfect entry point to classic, punishing Castlevania for those who have already played the comparatively easy Super Castlevania IV.

TL;DR: Rondo Of Blood is more of the same but that same classic Castlevania DNA is sublime. This is a fairer, funner and faster take on the NES formula and flies unfairly under the radar in comparison to its Metroidvania sequel.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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Every Bond fan new or old inevitably finds themselves one day providing their personal Bond film ranking, perhaps over a pint with friends, on YouTube or here on Substack.

This is mine. Every official James Bond film (so that means no Never Say Never Again) put into my very own tier-list, enjoy!

Dr. No - Great

I find Dr. No to be a bit of an underappreciated Bond film today.

A lot of people pay it lip service for being the first: the first ‘Bond, James Bond’ line drop, the first villain, the first lair, the first Bond girl but beyond that? I’ve heard this film described as ‘boring’ or being in that prototype stage and I have to say I couldn’t disagree more. The on-site filming in Jamaica makes this a gorgeous film to look at, I enjoy the relatively grounded plot and the scene where Bond digs and chips away at Dr. No over dinner with increasingly barbed remarks is a stand-out, as is the classic “That’s a Smith and Wesson.” Moment.

I can’t really name any negatives to this film, everything amiss with it is the result of age and its tight budget.

From Russia With Love - Great

From Russia With Love was once my favourite Bond film of them all but while my tastes have shifted, my liking for this film has not.

From Russia With Love features a spy infested Istanbul and draws on the real world Cold War atmosphere to make a near-perfect spy thriller. This film gave us who I think is the most beautiful of the Bond girls: Daniela Bianchi as Tatiana Romanova and the first iconic Bond henchman in Red Grant. Bond’s fight with him is so gritty and raw that it’s one of the few from this era of cinema that still holds up and feels authentic. Neither Moore nor Dalton could sell a fist fight like Sean Connery, we’ll call it Scottish grit.

The pace of this film does drag a little bit for me but otherwise? Top marks.

Goldfinger - Top 5

Possibly the least controversial placement on this list, Goldfinger is an all-time great that transcends the franchise.

The birthplace of the giant laser interrogation trope, the first appearance of the gorgeous Aston Martin DB5 and establisher of the Bond formula, Goldfinger mixes glamour, intrigue and a well-put together plot with a big action set-piece at the end to create what I consider to be a perfect film. I never feel any dragging pace while watching Goldfinger and Connery is at his best here, I love Shirley Bassey’s theme song as well.

Some modern viewers express discomfort at Bond’s less than consensual advances on Pussy Galore but that’s to be expected with a film this old.

Thunderball - Great

Thunderball is a bit of a marmite Bond film for a lot of people: you either love it or hate it, I’m firmly on the side of the former group.

Again, when they film in such beautiful locations (this time it’s The Bahamas) I find myself just relaxed and with an easy going smile on my face watching these films, its as if the sunshine and the crystal clear seas are seeping out from the screen. What helps too is Thunderball’s excellent theme song, an absolutely classic underwater battle and a plot I rather enjoy.

Thunderball gets a bad rap for having a pretty glacial pace and some weak performances, I’m a fan of this film but even I’ll admit it isn’t the easiest to follow at times either.

You Only Live Twice - Average

This is the one where they try to turn Bond Japanese and he just ends up looking like a Romulan from Star Trek.

You Only Live Twice is a relatively bland Bond film featuring a Sean Connery that was sick to death of playing the role and filmed on-site in Japan but seemingly only in the dingiest parts of Tokyo they could find until the final act around the volcano. If it wasn’t for the great action, amazing set design and Donald Pleasance’s iconic stint as Blofeld, this might have stooped even lower.

Not an awful film, very watchable but not one I would pick over most others, I love the theme song.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service - Bottom 5

OHMSS has been re-evaluated as a classic Bond film and now ranks among many Bond fans’ favourites… this is not an opinion I share.

Let’s get the good stuff out of the way first: Tracy is an excellent Bond girl and the ending to this film is a tragic gut punch, I also really like the Christmas-y atmosphere in some scenes… that’s it, that’s all I like. George Lazenby had next to zero experience as an actor and it shows: he doesn’t look, sound or act like Bond, the film crawls along at a glacial pace and Telly Savalas’ Blofeld is thoroughly unconvincing.

I’ve watched this film once and I have little desire to go back to it, the theme song is cool at least.

Diamonds Are Forever - Bottom 5

Diamonds Are Forever might be my least favourite film in the entire series.

An out of shape Connery stars in greasy Las Vegas in a plot about Diamond smuggling with yet another recast Blofeld shoved in. The setting is as un-Bond as you can possibly get, Sean Connery can’t sell the action like he used to and the whole production just feels tired and unenjoyable, with a comedic bent that doesn’t land nearly as well as it would with Roger Moore at the helm. I actively dislike this film.

Lana Wood as Plenty O’Toole provides 2 great reasons to watch this film at least and the final sequence aboard the oil rig is quite a fun watch.

Live And Let Die - Great

We finally come to Roger Moore’s first Bond outing… and this one is an absolute banger.

Live And Let Die is a deliciously weird and funky Bond film with an immensely catchy Paul McCartney theme song, supernatural themes, voodoo elements and a more campy tone that works a lot better because Roger Moore is better at selling that sort of thing. This is one of my favourites.

I’m a white British man, I’ve visited the USA just once in 2007 so I’m no expert on this topic but I have heard some take issue with the stereotypes centred around this film’s depiction of its mostly black cast though I will say that there are both good and bad black characters in this film and the ones who are bad aren’t bad because they happen to be black, so I didn’t really get any offensive undertones while watching it, at least not as bad as in You Only Live Twice.

The Man With The Golden Gun - Average

The Man With The Golden Gun was probably the first Bond film I was exposed to, I remember seeing bits of it on TV as a kid and laughing at the scene were Bond puts Nick Nack in a suitcase.

Roger Moore’s performance is all over the place in this film with the actor himself expressing regret later that he had to slap Maud Adams’ character on-screen: a Connery-style approach when Moore’s Bond is known more for witty banter and charm. Aside from the shaky performance and campy humour there is a lot to enjoy here, the great Sir Christopher Lee is unforgettable as Scaramanga and the corkscrew car jump is an unforgettable stunt… even if they did put that stupid slide whistle over the top.

Not a great Bond film but still very watchable.

The Spy Who Loved Me - Top 5

The Spy Who Loved Me is the best film of Moore’s Bond tenure and most-likely saved the franchise from death, ending its post-Connery slump.

Moore is finally allowed to breathe and to come alive in the role after a nervous first outing and a second film where he was made to act like Connery Bond, it’s in this film where you see that classic Moore wit and class come through at last. TSWLM gave us the iconic henchman: Jaws, brilliant action sequences and one of the best Bond girls in Barbara Bach as KGB operative Anya Amasova; Egypt isn’t the first location you think of when picking out a Bondian spot for an adventure but it works well here.

Great film, great opening song, great performances: this one is a classic.

Moonraker - Subpar

Moonraker is a mixed bag, I do enjoy this film but overall? I don’t think it’s that good.

My largest subscriber base outside of the Anglosphere is Brazil and Portugal so I’m contractually obliged to say that it’s cool how Bond goes to Brazil in this one (Espero que você tenha gostado dos carnavais da semana passada) and I do enjoy the final battle up in space but otherwise? Not a lot stands out to me. I watched this film again recently and I barely remember it which probably isn’t a good sign.

Again, nice theme song.

For Your Eyes Only - Average

For Your Eyes Only, coming off the back of 2 very over the top Bond films ends up feeling like a bit of a come down, especially as Roger Moore begins to look too old to play the part in this film but I still enjoy it.

The final battle atop a fortified mountaintop complex in Greece is a bit underrated in my opinion and Roger Moore, while looking a bit past it delivers as always but with a cynical biting edge to his version of Bond that only really appears in this entry. Great stuff.

I don’t think this is a popular choice but I want to go on the record and say that For Your Eyes Only happens to be my favourite Bond theme song as well. A decent film but not quite up there with the greats.

Octopussy - Great

Everything about Octopussy is crude, loud and ridiculous but it’s such an enjoyable watch from start to finish.

Octopussy’s choice of India as its exotic setting really works and I enjoy the whole rickshaw chase sequence, Roger Moore’s age in this film made him far past believable as an elite Double-O agent so instead the comedy and Moore’s quick thinking are pulled into focus instead; I just love the few moments of emotional depth scattered in here like when Bond avenges the death of a fellow agent.

Octopussy isn’t high art, in fact, it’s pure nonsenee but what it is above all else is great entertainment.

A View To A Kill - Bottom 5

Unfortunately, Roger Moore’s final film as Bond: at the ripe age of 57, is also his weakest.

Moore is visibly lacking in energy and virtually every bit of action is performed by an obvious stunt double, the plot is beyond stupid and both the camp and ham are cranked up to ludicrous levels. I know this film has its fans and Christopher Walken’s performance as Max Zorin is an enjoyable one but AVTAK just isn’t all that enjoyable and from what I hear, even Roger Moore didn’t like the idea of getting it on with younger Bond girls at his age on-screen.

Like all Moore films this one is still very watchable but it is at the bottom of the pile, cool theme song by Duran Duran though.

The Living Daylights - Subpar

In recent years a sort of cult of Timothy Dalton has emerged in the Bond fandom: staunch, ferocious fans of his 2 outings as Bond who declare him the best and his films to be overlooked… I won’t play my hand too early but I will say that I don’t enjoy The Living Daylights that much.

I admire Timothy Dalton’s love for the Bond novels and hard-nosed dedication to playing a version of the character true to that but I just find him very wooden and uncharismatic to watch; the Bond girl, action and locations in this film don’t interest me that much either.

Not one I rewatch often but it can be a good time if you’re in the mood for it. I do admire that in the 1980’s when action films were all about excess that Bond was daring to be a bit more cerebral.

Licence To Kill - Great

Licence To Kill is the lowest-grossing Bond film of all time, to the point where it almost killed the franchise… which is a great shame because I think this is one of the better films in the Bondography.

Dalton’s performance is better, the plot centring around drug cartels, an attack on Bond ally: Felix Leiter and 007 going rogue add a wonderful rawness to the film and the action, particularly the chase at the end of the film is absolutely stellar.

It’s a shame Dalton’s tenure as Bond ended so early because I think given one last film, he would have really come into his own… but I wouldn’t change the Goldeneye we got for anything.

Goldeneye - Top 5

Goldeneye is special, it’s a film that transcended the Bond franchise and even the medium itself; the first Pierce Brosnan Bond film, the picture that saved the franchise and the basis for a video game that changed first person shooters forever, Goldeneye means a lot to a lot of different people.

Sean Bean plays a perfect villain in Goldeneye, Famke Janssen and Izabella Scorupco are both drop-dead gorgeous, Pierce Brosnan is the most handsome man alive in this film and it is tied together with timeless action, a perfect pace and immortal lines of dialogue.

Yes, you should rewatch Goldeneye, I know you’re thinking it.

Tomorrow Never Dies - Top 5

Oh yeah, that’s right, it’s in my top 5.

The general consensus among Bond fans and average film goers seems to be that Piers Brosnan was in Goldeneye which was amazing and Die Another Day which was a war crime and the stuff in between is forgotten but I adore Tomorrow Never Dies. Jonathan Pryce as Elliot Carver is a deliciously hammy villain, the plot involving orchestrated news and Chinese broadcasting rights hits a little too close to home, especially for British viewers who remember the News Of The World scandal and I adore every bit of action in this one, especially the sequence with the remote controlled BMW.

Don’t skip out on Tomorrow Never Dies and don’t sip the credits either, Surrender by K.D Lang is a banger.

The World Is Not Enough - Bottom 5

This film isn’t generally considered that bad by most Bond fans, just middling to low… but for some reason I’ve always hated this one.

The oil fields of Kazakhstan and Baku aren’t exactly locations oozing with exotic charm and they don’t have the interesting cast of characters or performances to keep things going like in Goldeneye, Robert Carlyle’s Renard is a conceptually stupid villain with a gimmick that gets barely utilised and above all else? This film just bores me. Every now and again I hear about how it’s this hidden gem, I rewatch it and I still strongly dislike it. Christmas Jones (played by Denise Richards) is probably my least favourite Bond girl, she’s absolutely, sizzlingly hot but gets nothing to work with in the dialogue department and has zero chemistry with Brosnan.

Garbage’s theme song for The World Is Not Enough is really good though. RIP Desmond Llewellyn who played Q for the final time in this film.

Die Another Day - Subpar

Die Another Day’s awfulness is infamous among both Bond fans and outsiders alike but despite this I find Die Another Day to be incredibly watchable.

The CGI is awful, the plot is so bat shit insane that I burst out laughing on my first viewing and the invisible sports car pushes the boundaries of believability, even for Bond but if you just turn your brain off and laugh at the film, preferably with a hard beverage this one is really fun to watch.

It’s not a good film but I just cannot hate Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan was unceremoniously dropped from the Bond role over phone after this film, something he admits he didn’t take well and I don’t blame him; Pierce will always be Bond for me, I grew up seeing him in video games and on Bond reruns, my favourite Bond, it’s a damn shame his tenure only produced one picture that most would consider a classic.

Casino Royale - Top 5

Daniel Craig’s Bond is a portrayal I’ve gone through a lot of different opinions on, today? I find his films to be a bit over-hated, even if they aren’t my favourite and lean too much into prestige film-making rather than the entertainment and escapism I watch a Bond film for; this first one is his best and easily among the best films in the franchise.

Casino Royale is an emotionally charged Bond caper with superb action, my favourite Craig Bond performance and an excellent villain in Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre; Eva Green’s role as Vesper Lynd marks the very pinnacle of Bond girls, her and Craig’s chemistry is wonderful. The ending of Casino Royale is everything On Her Majesty’s Secret Service fans say that film’s is but better.

I’m not a big fan of the opening song and the grim-grey tone of Craig era Bond does occasionally rear its ugly head.

Quantum Of Solace - Subpar

Quantum Of Solace is an extraordinarily messy film but considering what was stacked against it, I think it turned out quite well and I have to admit that this was the first Bond I saw in the cinema, so there is a bit of a soft spot there on my part.

Quantum Of Solace was developed during a writers’ strike and given just weeks to edit, so a lot of the scenes were re-written by Craig and the director himself and the editing is notoriously bad with constant quick cuts and hard to follow action but you do get used to it. If you give Quantum a chance you will find a middling to poor Bond film with a crap villain but Olga Kurylenko is a delight to watch and the short runtime gives this film a wonderful sense of momentum, Daniel Craig puts in a solid, tortured performance as Bond as well.

Skyfall - Great

Skyfall is a very nostalgic film for me. 2012 Was the last time it really felt cool to be British: we had the Olympics here, Skyfall was in cinemas, Skyfall’s title song by Adele was on every radio 24/7, lots of the film took place in the UK and overall? It just felt like we’d peaked again, however briefly… the fact I was only 12 probably helped.

Skyfall is a beautifully shot film with some brilliant action, great emotional punch with the departure of Judi Dench as M and a classic Bond villain in Javier Bardem as Raoul Silva. I do think they played the whole ageing hero trope too early and the planned Sean Connery cameo in Scotland would have been an internet-breaking moment but what we got was still fantastic. Great film.

Spectre - Bottom 5

Rounding out my 5 worst Bond films is Spectre, one I actually saw on release at a late-night, full up cinema showing.

Spectre feels like an awkward, Connery-era Bond tribute at every turn: Daniel Craig is clearly sick to death of playing Bond just like Connery was, the brawl on the train with Dave Bautista is like Connery’s fight with Red Grant only 10 times less cool and the return of Spectre with Blofeld is handled in such a staggeringly awful way that it can only baffle the viewer. Spectre marvelised Craig’s Bond films by retroactively linking them together and yes, that too is handled terribly.

“It’s always been me, the author of all your pain.” Fuck off, Spectre.

No Time To Die - Average

At last we come to the final Bond film to date: No Time To Die, I didn’t adore this one and the almost 3 hour runtime means I’m in no rush to rewatch it but I generally felt Craig’s era ended on a high note… the elephant in the room not withstanding, which felt like a cheap low-blow and a little bit of a slap in the face to be honest.

Daniel Craig carries his age well and comes across as a seasoned, over the hill yet still lethal agent, a lot of the action is fantastic and I can’t dislike the plot considering it’s essentially Metal Gear Solid 1 but Rami Malek’s villain is garbage and I never bought the romance between Craig Bond and Lea Seydoux’s Madeline Swan. A solid ending for an era of Bond that took itself a bit too seriously.

This hasn’t been the most typical of articles for me but I hope you enjoyed it! I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please consider a donation or subscription to my Ko-Fi page via the Support Scanlines button below.

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Rare’s Goldeneye 007 released on the N64 in 1997 and is far and away the most popular FPS on the console (in fact, it’s one of the most beloved N64 games full-stop) on the other hand, The World Is Not Enough, developed by Eurocom: the studio that would later release the beloved 007: Nightfire, has been completely forgotten by all but ardent Bond fans, N64 enthusiasts and those who have nostalgia for it.

Why is that? Today I’m going to be comparing Goldeneye to TWINE and noting what The World Is Not Enough does better, what it does worse and ultimately why I think this shooter has been unfortunately cast aside.

Not For Lack Of Trying

Let’s answer the most important question of all first: was The World Is Not Enough forgotten because it’s crap like the film it’s based on?

Games that live on in popular memory do so because they are either good or awful; average games when not a part of a larger franchise (see Super Mario Sunshine for a bang average game that gets to live on thanks to its IP) don’t occupy the long term memory.

So is The World Is Not Enough average? I wouldn’t say so. TWINE is absolutely a good game: it plays well, looks fantastic for its age and runs better than most games on the console.

Graphics And Performance

If there’s one area where TWINE strides leaps and bounds ahead of Goldeneye 007 it’s in the technical department.

Most Nintendo 64 games run like crap, it’s just the norm when playing this console, in fact, it’s even worse for us in Europe running PAL games because while they look slightly better than their NTSC counterparts in the States and Japan they also run at 1/3 of the speed. Goldeneye 007 was made by an inexperienced team on what was cutting edge hardware so while it is one of the all-time greats it’s not a particularly good looking title and certain missions run so poorly it becomes almost unplayable.

The World Is Not Enough on the other hand is strikingly impressive. It doesn’t look quite as good as Perfect Dark (more on that later) but this is a small price to play when that game runs so poorly even an N64 acolyte like me can hardly enjoy it; TWINE runs better than Goldeneye as well. Furthermore, the added reload animations, weapons actually resembling real life firearms now and the improved character models add a great deal to the experience.

Goldeneye levels look like liminal spaces or textured mazes but levels in The World Is Not Enough resemble the curated, naturalistic spaces we would see later in the PS2/GameCube/Xbox raft of 007 games.

Gameplay And Level Design

It’s here where the waters get muddy.

Both Goldeneye and TWINE play very similarly: the player controls Bond from a first-person perspective through a level using gadgets and guns alike to complete a set of objectives; they both use that cursor-style aiming system that the former popularised and they both have that one bastard mission that will have you tearing your hair out: Control in Goldeneye and City Of Walkways II in The World Is Not Enough. In my opinion, TWINE’s individual parts are greater than those of Goldeneye… but it comes out being less than the sum of those parts.

The World Is Not Enough has the better feeling gunplay, the better weapons, the addition of a crosshair and greater verticality but the objectives are quite repetitive with a lot of hostage rescuing and planting devices on computers; enemies seem to stand around waiting for Bond to attack as well whereas in Goldeneye they are more proactive in hunting down the player.

Goldeneye’s levels weren’t always fair and didn’t always make the most sense in the context of Bond’s mission but they were chaotic, fast and fun whereas in TWINE you spend a lot of time doing things that aren’t shooting or using cool gadgets… which are the 2 biggest parts of the Bond power fantasy besides exotic locations and beautiful women.

Goldeneye is perhaps the more enjoyable shooter whereas TWINE is more polished and evokes the feeling of being Bond more, I enjoy Goldeneye more on a moment to moment basis but you could call this one a draw.

Sound And Story

Goldeneye’s mission select/main menu theme

The World Is Not Enough’s main menu theme

We had a category at the start where one of these 2 games utterly dominated the other and now we have a second; Goldeneye’s soundtrack is worlds ahead of TWINE’s, even if I really like the main theme.

I could sit here listing tracks until the cows come home but if you need to refamiliarise yourself with the excellence of Goldeneye’s OST I recommend this remastered version.

You haven’t lived until you’ve grabbed a Walther PPK in VR and stuck this on.

There are many versions of Goldeneye songs that have been ‘updated’ out there but this is my favourite work.

In terms of the guns’ sounds I’d probably give TWINE the edge and it also features full-on voice acting whereas Goldeneye does not, enhancing the presentation of the story. In general, TWINE definitely goes off-script less than Goldeneye does, with its entirely non-canon (but awesome) Silo mission… but that isn’t a plus for The World Is Not Enough, since it follows closely to what is one of the weakest Bond films and my personal least-favourite of Brosnan’s tenure; for all of Die Another Day’s flaws, it is highly entertaining to watch at least.

The Dark Elephant In The Room

I’ve skirted around the issue long enough, those of you who have intimate knowledge of the N64 library will know another big reason The World Is Not Enough didn’t go down in history, it’s the reason too that Rare didn’t make this game and Eurocom took over the Bond license: Perfect Dark.

Perfect Dark launched in May 2000, 5 months before The World Is Not Enough as not only the final big console exclusive for the platform but also as its magnum opus, as far as FPS games are concerned; TWINE had a separate PS1 version but Perfect Dark was an N64 native. Perfect Dark didn’t just improve upon Goldeneye but pushed the FPS genre forward as a whole while The World Is Not Enough just smoothed some of Goldeneye’s sharper edges.

Speaking from a broader perspective, Goldeneye came out during the heyday of the Nintendo 64 whereas The World Is Not Enough came out on its deathbed. By the year 2000 it was clear that A: The Nintendo 64 had been utterly trounced in sales by the PlayStation and B: That Nintendo would be bringing a new platform to shelves soon. Video game consoles tend to have a particular life cycle: a couple of years of steady growth, a surge of hit titles and sales around the third, fourth and sometimes fifth year on the market and then a slowing period before they are replaced; Goldeneye started that peak period.

Rolling The Credits

In conclusion, The World Is Not Enough is an enjoyable, polished, well put-together shooter that you should absolutely play if you have an N64 or are into emulation; I bought my cartridge unboxed for £10 so it shouldn’t set you back much either.

Unfortunately, this game just doesn’t take the risks or reach the same highs as Goldeneye and Perfect Dark completely eclipsed any attention it might have gotten, so while TWINE is a really decent shooter, there’s no wonder it’s been forgotten.

Retro gaming culture is dominated by nostalgia, fist-waving at the state of modern gaming and rose-tinted glasses but Scanlines’ Journal is different.

Here at the Journal I strive to review games both past and present in a sensible and balanced manner with the goal of informing you: the discerning reader about what’s worth your hard-earned cash and of artistic merit and what should be left buried or to gather dust on shop shelves. If you want to be a more informed gamer in 2026 then subscribe to Scanlines’ Journal and join the hundreds of readers already choosing to play better.

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This is a British chain of second hand shops that deal in electronics, DVD’s, accessories and most importantly: video games. The inherently environmentally friendly premise of CEX, its low prices, excellent online marketplace and a business model that gives you generous in-store credit for bringing in unwanted goods have made it a commercial powerhouse and virtually the last remaining second hand video game retailer on the high street; I built most of my retro collection through this chain.

Yesterday, I decided to pop in CEX on the way to the gym, trade in 2 unwanted controllers and see what I could get.

I’m not sponsored by/affiliated with CEX in any way.

The Selection

One of my favourite parts of CEX is that you never know what you’re going to find; this isn’t a chain that receives brand-new, sealed video games like Gamestop or GAME, CEX only stocks what people bring in so it’s a true roulette. I’ve seen pristine N64 games, rare GameCube titles and even a NeoGeo before. I love window shopping even if I don’t get anything.

This trip didn’t disappoint either, feast your eyes.

This selection of 3DS games is among the more impressive ones I’ve ever seen. It will piss me off for all eternity that they slap these stickers on the covers instead of having them tucked into the plastic but we’ll set my nerd rage aside for now. There aren’t really any rarities here per-se but I’m very glad I bought Samus Returns back in 2023, it only cost me £31 and my copy is in mint condition.

3DS hardware and software prices are mad at the moment, if you’re not using yours then you’re sitting on money my friend.

I have to say, my heart sank a little bit seeing this little stack of Original Xbox games.

When I used to visit this branch of CEX a few years ago they had a mighty collection but now it’s dwindled to nothing; maybe it’s popular? Or maybe they can’t justify the shelf space for games that don’t sell? Who knows?

There are some good ones here: Return To Castle Wolfenstein is considered the best in that series by some, Operation Flashpoint: the precursor to Arma is great and KOTOR is in my top 10 games ever… we’ll try to ignore Driver 3 rubbing shoulders with these classics.

Ah man, my heart always sinks when I see either a Pikachu or Pokémon N64. That Pikachu Edition with the button in the critter’s foot was the version of the console I grew up with: the one I got for my 9th birthday but I was forced to sell it when we moved across the country and now it costs more than a holiday to Spain.

If you’re not in the retro scene then you might not know this but GameCube hardware and software prices are at an all-time high, I’ve noticed since this increase they’ve moved all the GameCube games behind the glass with the other big-ticket items.

A little to the left there was a small selection of SNES, Dreamcast and NES games.

My eyes widened at that copy of Paper Mario, that’s a notoriously pricey game: most of the Nintend0 64 library is less than £30. I hope whoever brought that in treated themselves to a nice dinner and I hope whoever buys it takes care of it. That’s the sort of thing I’d buy on the spot if I was a collector with a lot of cash to spare.

What a sad looking Dreamcast, it was quite yellow in-person, I think if you’re going to test and to clean up things that get brought in to be sold on, you might as well give it the Retrobrite treatment as well.

I spotted this pristine looking pair of Game Boy Colours; I have a teal one too and it doesn’t look anywhere near as good as this one. The prices are a little bit extortionate but no doubt, modded with a backlight and fitted with a cartridge containing a disgusting amount of ROMs, one of these will make somebody very happy indeed.

Let’s be honest too: the Game Boy Colour is unbelievably aesthetic, even if you don’t use them they look pretty on a shelf.

Next to the Game Boys I was shocked not only to see a game for the Sega Saturn but also for the, arguably even more ill-fated and obscure Sega Mega 32x.

Every day I thank God that child me didn’t break any of his Pokémon cartridges, these things are worth so much now. £40 for a game that weighs less in data than a modern JPEG but we don’t buy numbers and code, we buy memories and feelings; when you have nostalgia or a calling to play an old game, you pay what passion demands.

If I wasn’t in the process of saving or if my voucher wound up being a lot more I might have folded and bought that Neo Geo pocket Colour, what a sexy little device.

By the way, if you’re a newer retro gamer than I strongly advise you not to bother paying for original Memory Cards like that one for the GameCube, the 3rd party options today are cheap, plentiful and store a huge number of saves; I bought a £20 one from Amazon about 4 years ago and it’s still not full.

Shout out to that Game ‘N’ Watch.

There were rows upon rows of Fat PS2’s, Xbox 360’s and such behind the glass but these are cheap and relatively uninteresting.

I once bought Soul Reaver 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2 from this very same branch of CEX, now the PS2 section is 75% shovelware.

Seeing the word ‘soccer’ on a PAL video game was an out of body experience.

The Goods

I took this trip to CEX to get rid of two gamepads: my Hori Octa Fighting Commander Tekken 8 Edition: a gamepad made for fighting games that I no longer use because I prefer an arcade stick and to pawn off my Sega Saturn Model 1 controller; I got the Model 2 back in the Summer and it’s better in every way.

Despite buying from CEX pretty regularly this was actually my first time selling to the chain; a lot of collectors keep this stuff as an investment and my family often remind me that this stuff will be worth a lot of money in future (or already in the case of my Saturn library and my rather large Dreamcast selection) but I don’t buy consoles and games to sell on or as an investment, I buy things I want to play and to preserve.

I had to wait in line for a while since I was there during lunch hour and they test most items there and then but once I did finally make it to the counter the process was painless.

I handed over both controllers, got a look like I’d just dropped the words ‘Sega’ ‘Saturn’ and ‘Model 1’ in a row on accident and waited briefly for them to test the Hori; the Sega Saturn isn’t exactly a console you come across every day so they couldn’t test it but gave me the benefit of the doubt since the pad was in good condition and my Hori worked fine.

I took a cool £29 CEX voucher for my troubles, which was more than I expected; it’s my birthday on Sunday and I knew I wanted to place an order that evening so I had it emailed to my account’s linked address instead of taking a lower amount in real cash.

But what did I spend it on?

I’ll have to show you the goods in a follow-up note since my little Bond-pack hasn’t arrived yet but this is what I ordered.

The World Is Not Enough (N64) = £10

007 Everything Or Nothing (GCN) = £8

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64) = £8

007 Nightfire (GCN) = £5

This order was £31 in total but thanks to my voucher it cost a singular Great British Pound and the rest of it was shipping costs. My order would have been £43 but came out to around £14, nice!

If you grew up in the heyday of the PS2, GameCube and Xbox like me then you’ll know the 007 license was a seal of quality; I have Agent Under Fire for PS2 already but have never owned Nightfire or Everything Or Nothing so I’m happy to add those to the collection, especially as they run better on GameCube.

For the N64 I picked up the cult-classic The World Is Not Enough and Rogue Squadron. TWINE isn’t a Bond film I think too highly of but Nintendo 64 enthusiasts often claim the game is as good as Goldeneye so I’m eager to test that claim; Rogue Squadron was the first N64 game I played on real hardware back when I was 9 years old and got it for my birthday so I’ll be happy to replay it, especially with the Expansion Pak which improves the performance.

Since First Light has been delayed, I decided to dose up on Bond to stave off the withdrawal.

I Am Entirely Shameless

I will review literally anything, it’s your fault, you all platformed me.

Fast forward a little and I found myself wobbly-kneed post leg day and in need of some grub and a good coffee. I’m not sure if Costa exists outside of the UK but essentially? What you’re looking at is British Starbucks except the coffee is better, the variety is more narrow and the food is slightly worse; I’m not a snob, so I order it anyway.

My cappuccino (yes, I’m drinking it past midday Italians, you’ll have to deal with it) had that typical over-roasted, burnt coffee shop taste but it wasn’t overpowering and the foamy milk and chocolate dusting kept me satisfied in a 7 year old eating too much chocolate sort of way.

The panini was made of brie, bacon and chili jam and came out piping hot so I had to leave it for a minute in order to not end up looking like a Feral Ghoul. The bacon was a bit leathery but tasted pleasant, the chili jam added a nice little peppery zing and the brie… didn’t really taste like brie that much but it was gooey, salty and pleasant enough though trying to eat gooey foods and drink huge foamy coffees with a beard is like a real-life quick time event.

It was good, Humanity Restored.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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Nintendo’s legendary 3D adventure: the first such game in the Zelda franchise has an unassailable list of accolades and innovations to its name: the first game with a lock-on system, the most critically acclaimed video game of all time, a context sensitive control-scheme, the first video game to receive a 40/40 score by Famitsu, Ocarina of Time’s legacy and impact on 3D gaming cannot be measured… but I didn’t know any of this growing up. To me? Ocarina Of Time is different.

It was never a masterpiece I couldn’t criticise or an old classic I rediscovered later, this game was my childhood: the one that made me a gamer, forever. To modern gamers Ocarina of Time is history but to me? It’s home.

At age 4, I would try to play Ocarina Of Time on my brother’s GameCube, then when I had my own at age 5, I’d keep having a crack at it, my feeble child brain getting stuck in the Deku Tree. Every year, I’d turn over the little plastic hinge in my Wind Waker box and make another attempt at Ocarina instead: the more ‘adult’ and scarier brother to Waker, in my young mind. As I got older, I’d get a little further each time until one day, armed with my mum’s laptop, tempered with a bollocking for hogging it and prepared with printed out guides from zeldadungeon.net (which is still going to this day… I remember when Twilight Princess was the newest game on that menu bar, fuck, I’m getting old) I embarked with the courage of a boy about to enter double-digits on a quest that would stay with me for life.

The Triforce Of Time

There are 3 distinct versions of Ocarina Of Time, each with its own quirks, drawbacks and benefits. I’ve played all of them and here is the rundown.

Ocarina Of Time was first released for the Nintendo 64 in 1998, there are actually 2 versions of this original with the first print of the game including a later-removed sample of the Muslim call to prayer in one of its music tracks… but this print was so limited and famous among collectors that you’re unlikely to just find it by accident now.

Ocarina Of Time on the Nintendo 64 is foggy, blurry and has a lot of framerate issues but if you play this console a lot, you know that those issues are ubiquitous anyway. There aren’t really any benefits to playing on N64 today except for its historical value, it being cheap and the old Crescent of Islam-inspired Gerudo symbol not having been removed yet. This is the version of Ocarina Of Time you emulate when you boot up the game on Switch Online’s Expansion Pack.

The GameCube version of Ocarina Of Time is probably the most obscure today, though it isn’t too expensive.

This version of the game replaces the old Gerudo symbol with the one modern Zelda fans will know, removes a lot of the blood found in a certain area and renames some of the button prompts to better fit the GameCube controller. In terms of improvements, the game runs at a buttery smooth 30FPS (in comparison to the 19FPS as standard on PAL N64 games) the resolution is doubled, the draw-distance fog is toned down and the Master Quest: a kind of new game + mode made for second playthroughs with a much higher difficulty is introduced.

Finally we have Ocarina Of Time 3D: the 2011 remake released for the Nintendo 3DS.

Ocarina 3D is a 1-1 remake with an updated art-style, character models and the inclusion of stereoscopic 3D for migraine-enjoyers. This version of the game includes many quality of life improvements, the Master Quest, a hint system and a boss rush mode; the fact that this version is made for a device the size of a phone also adds something to the experience. Many an illicit after bedtime Ocarina Of Time session was had in my bed with this game.

So, which version of Ocarina Of Time should you play?

My personal favourite version of Ocarina is the GameCube one: it’s the one I grew up with, it’s the one I chose to play for this review and it’s the version I’m most eager to revisit. Some of the censorship is unfortunate and the GameCube pad’s analogue sticks are a little too sensitive for the aiming and item use in this Nintendo 64 game but the Master Quest (although I’ve never actually played it much) is a great incentive and the performance is miles ahead of the Nintendo 64 original.

If you’ve played Ocarina Of Time many years ago and want to revisit it with as little friction and old game jank as possible then I recommend getting the 3DS version. You miss out on a big screen and I’m not a fan of the ‘updated’ art-style’s brightening of the game but the quality of life features are useful, it plays brilliantly and if you have one of the New 3DS consoles with better 3D then the feature does enhance the experience.

The Nintendo 64 version should only be played via Switch Online. Listen, I love the Nintendo 64: it’s my favourite Nintendo console and my 2nd favourite console overall… but Ocarina Of Time was pushing the machine to its limit and the minor bits of censorship introduced later aren’t worth reversing when the game is stuck chugging like mad.

Breaking Point

Now we’ve covered the different versions of Ocarina, let’s get back on track: back to my usual formula for any Zelda review. That’s right, we’re off to the timeline again!

Ocarina Of Time is arguably the most important entry in the franchise from the perspective of the lore and over-arching narrative. This adventure is the origin point for all 3 of the series’ timelines.

The original idea for Ocarina was to have it be a retelling of the Imprisoning War mentioned in A Link To The Past; Ocarina Of Time from the ground up was always developed as a prequel, though the connections to ALttP were loosened as development drove on, partially because the minds behind Zelda have never chained themselves to the series’ plot orthodoxy too tightly and because the opportunity to tell a Ganon origin story was just too good to pass up. Fighting the standard Pig-Demon Ganon in a war for Hyrule in full-3D would have been cool but during development, a lot of areas had to be scrapped due to technical limitations as it was and the final product, in my opinion, has a much better narrative than that concept ever could have delivered.

What kind of power turns a man into a demon? And does Ganondorf know that you know what he’s planning? These are questions that kept me spellbound as a child and elements of Ocarina that I recognise now through the boring lens of adulthood as the developers doing a lot of good with just a little bit of solid writing and game structure.

The timeline split adds a special weight to Ocarina Of Time. During the final confrontation and even while roaming the overworld it’s always in the back of my mind that there is an entirely canon outcome where all of this: a game world I practically grew up in is completely obliterated… and that makes my inner 7 year old upset.

A Vile Climate Pervades The Land

Absolutely weapons-grade nostalgia

Ocarina Of Time begins during a new age of peace for the Kingdom. After generations of warfare, the races of Hyrule: the Hylians, Zora, Gorons, Gerudo and Kokiri live in relative harmony as part of a unified state under Hyrule’s royal family; undead roam the fields at night and Kakariko Village Graveyard has more tombstones than the town has people, so the scars of war run deep but the realm is healing… for now.

Among the Kokiri lives a certain boy: Link. A child of murky origins and the only youngster in the village to not have a fairy yet, he is an outcast but while the rest of the Kokiri live innocent little lives sheltered from the rest of Hyrule by the Deku Tree, deep woods and perpetual childhood, Link’s young mind is not so naïve. One night, he has a nightmare: a vision of a fleeing Princess and of a sorcerer clad in black armour giving chase, then the next morning his fairy: Navi finally comes, summoning Link to the Deku Tree for an urgent meeting.

Ocarina Of Time’s opening has the perfect narrative ingredients: an unexpected journey, a dark prophecy, an unlikely hero and a somewhat unwilling partner in Navi, who scolds the Link for being lazy.

Where games like Tears Of The Kingdom felt the need to hype up Ganondorf with bombastic cutscenes, old myths and scenes of conquest, Ocarina Of Time knows that the unseen enemy is much more intimidating. Link only encounters Ganondorf twice in the entire game: once on Hyrule Field where that nightmare comes to pass and once more in the finale, yet this version of Ganon manages to feel the most cerebral in the entire series, to this day.

The Deku Tree is afflicted with a death curse and dies less than an hour into the game, when you enconter the Gorons they are starving to death thanks to Ganondorf’s seeding of Dodongo’s Cavern with monsters and Jabu Jabu: the living deity in Zora’s Domain is sick and infested with parasites; nightmares, famine, disease, Ganondorf leaves misery in his wake. This is show don’t tell storytelling employed more effectively than many modern games. We don’t need to be told he’s the ‘Demon King’ or that he means to conquer the world, we see it for our own eyes within 30 minutes of putting in the cartridge.

Ocarina Of Time doesn’t weave a particularly complex yarn but it is a game rich with lore and subtext. I’m going to talk about more dungeon-specific lore later but for now? Just know that there is no shortage of it.

A prominent theme in Ocarina Of Time is corruption. The Deku Tree’s insides are corrupted by a curse, Dodongo’s Cavern is killing the Gorons instead of nourishing them with food, the usually peaceful Jabu Jabu is unruly and swallows the Zora Princess Ruto and later, the 5 temples are transformed into catalysts for Ganondorf’s dark power; corruption also appears in a more administrative sense. The denizens of Hyrule Castle Town live behind sturdy walls and under guard, wearing opulent clothes and enjoying markets and amusements while Kakariko Village just a short walk away gets a token couple of guards, one of which bullies and taunts Link while suggesting he bring payment for opening the gate to Death Mountain: his only job; even within Castle Town, one of the watchmen wishes something bad would happen. The Gorons, once famed for their strength now need a 10 year old to break their Chief out of his temper tantrum and to unblock the Cavern, the Zora are ruled by a King too fat to stand and Mido: a bratty little bully bosses around the Kokiri, Hyrule has no infrastructure, the non-Hylian races are shut away in their domains and the King doesn’t care to listen to his own daughter; corruption and negligence have rotted away the Kingdom’s foundations long ago, Ganondorf need only to push the house of cards over.

I don’t think I’m spoiling it for anyone after 28 years by saying that you play as Adult Link for the latter 2/3’s of this game, during this transformation it’s made clear that even the Sacred Realm has now been corrupted and characters like Ingo and the Poe Seller: heavily implied to be the Castle Town guard wishing for trouble, relish the opportunity to grow fat off the spoils of Ganondorf’s new regime.

The Shape Of A Legend

A remastered version of Ocarina Of Time’s trailer… for some reason, every trailer I can find and the game’s UK advert use music from Conan The Barbarian… was this really the case?

I wasn’t around yet in ‘98 so I can’t speak from experience but as I understand it, Ocarina Of Time generated a hurricane of hype before launch; everyone wanted to rent it and only a chosen few could, the game was sold out everywhere and despite the Nintendo 64’s sales trouncing by Sony’s PlayStation, the eyes of the whole industry were watching.

This era of gaming gets a lot of ridicule today for its technical issues and ugly, early-3D presentation compared to how beautiful a lot of 90’s 2D games were on the Sega Saturn and in arcades and sure, Adult Link’s long, low-poly nose is quite funny but an aspect of Ocarina’s greatness I think gets left out today is what an enormous technical achievement it was. Most ‘3D’ games on rival hardware were actually low-poly models on 2D backgrounds and this can look great too but the Nintendo 64 was the most powerful console of its day and it shows, with Ocarina Of Time looking better than virtually any game to be found on the PlayStation.

On the other hand, Ocarina Of Time looks like this:

The point I’m making here isn’t that Ocarina actually looks good and you’re wrong or that pre-rendered background are inherently less appealing than full-3D (Ocarina also uses pre-rendered backgrounds for interiors) my point is that most games weren’t even attempting to bring to life worlds of this scale and fidelity while Ocarina Of Time pulled it off, beautifully. This was before Shenmue and before Grand Theft Auto III which needed superior hardware to match what Nintendo had already done with this game.

Ocarina Of Time on Gamecube, with that console’s crisp framerates, higher resolution, support for newer 60Hz PAL TV’s and sublime video output looked and ran so good that as a kid, I didn’t even know it was a Nintendo 64 game until I was a little bit older.

Technology comes and goes and what was impressive once is now no longer but one area where Ocarina Of Time has never been surpassed in my opinion is its tone and atmosphere. This game feels magical and enthralling in a way that nothing else I have ever played has matched.

Let’s be clear, I highly enjoy modern Zelda titles too but one thing I mourn is the loss of magic and wonder in this series. Ocarina Of Time’s Hyrule is filled with hidden, otherworldly, magical fountains, ghostly Poes roam the Graveyard and Hyrule Field at night, the world relies on the Sages and their transcendence into celestial entities with ancient spiritual power in order to save it; Link doesn’t save Hyrule with a robot arm, an I-pad and a motorbike running on chu jelly, he saves it by wielding a mythical blade, forged so long ago that its origins are a mystery and by wielding the strength imbued to him by the Sages while by playing obscure melodies with secret sorcery attached.

I think my life-long love of history comes from Ocarina Of Time. This game has more urban legends and lore theories than you can count and it is that way because the world of Ocarina shows you so much but tells so little. This game invites you to be an archaeologist, a historian and a folklorist while you play and just as in real life, there are structures, disappearances and locations that cannot be explained.

The unexplainable, the shrouded, the sense of mystery, this all feeds into another part of the Ocarina Of Time atmosphere that has become notorious as well: the horror.

The late 1990’s and early-2000’s were the peak of the Survival-Horror genre of videogames, Nintendo had taken notice and began to incorporate more horror into their own titles; the GameCube launch title Luigi’s Mansion (another one I played the shit out of as a kid) was a light-hearted Resident Evil-style haunted mansion romp and Nintendo even published their own survival-horror with Eternal Darkness, also on GameCube; Ocarina Of Time and Majora’s Mask were the beginning of this push. For the first time, a Zelda game was trying to scare us… and it worked, masterfully.

Ocarina has no jump-scares or overt gore (at least not in the GameCube or 3DS versions) but as always, it succeeds through subtext and atmosphere at being deeply unsettling.

All of this: the horror, the intrigue, the magic and the wonder is tied together by one of the greatest video game soundtracks ever recorded. I’m going to be putting each dungeon soundtrack in the next section but these are some of my favourites from the overworld areas. You are in for a treat.

The iconic Lost Woods theme is playful, energetic and alluring. The area’s sinister lore involving missing children and the need to navigate by following the melody give it an almost pied-piper feel. The tambourine, wood chimes, maracas and other shaken instruments have signified woods/Kokiri areas in Zelda soundtracks ever since, to the point that I now also associate these instruments with the woods.

The Gerudo Valley theme will forever be what Mexico sounds like in my head. This song is pretty mismatched to the area it plays in: the Gerudo are Middle Eastern and Subcontinental-themed while this song sounds like the Hispanosphere distilled into a song… but I don’t care! So catchy.

One of the most relaxing, holiday-feeling pieces of music ever put into a video game. Going to the swimming baths was a rare, few times a year sort of treat when I was young so when I wished we could go more often, I’d boot up my GameCube and swim around Zora’s Domain as Child Link to try and get a piece of that feeling. Top soundtrack for a great area to explore.

Places Of Worship

I’m going to do something a little different for this gameplay section.

Let’s be honest: we all know how a 3D Zelda plays because it’s never changed. 3D Zelda birthed the sword-and-board, locked on blocking and striking combat that would become the norm for most melee-focused games until Dark Souls; the dungeon items and puzzle-based boss fights are all very familiar. So, I’m going to deviate from normal and rank each and every dungeon in the game, before I get into my complaints.

From worst to best, here are the dungeons and mini-dungeons in Ocarina Of Time and their soundtracks.

Worst: Inside Jabu-Jabu’s Belly

Inside Jabu-Jabu’s Belly, Ocarina’s third and final Child Link dungeon is a common pick for the worst in the game and I have to agree.

Let me front load my compliments because truly? I don’t have many. The concept of a dungeon set inside a living, breathing creature is an inherently interesting one and I like that this dungeon isn’t a complete cakewalk after the first 2. Barinade is one of the game’s better bosses in my opinion and the crush Princess Ruto develops on Link is kind of cute as well.

On the other hand, all of the enemies are really irritating until you find the Boomerang, every room looks the same, carrying Ruto around is a damn chore, the concept of the dungeon is utterly wasted on a weird coloured tumour key card system and that music… it’s awful! It’s barely even music, it sounds like unmedicated IBS.

Inside the Deku Tree

It feels a bit harsh to put the Deku Tree here because it is after all a tutorial dungeon and a pretty good one at that.

The dungeon has a signature moment with the jump from the top floor through the cobwebs on the bottom, I like the music even if it is subtle, Gohma is a solid boss fight and the rustic, woody atmosphere is just really appealing to me.

On the other hand… this dungeon is as simple as it gets, none of the enemies are a real threat, the puzzles are trivial and in the grand scheme of things, while not necessarily a bad experience, the Delu Tree just doesn’t compare to the highs this game reaches later.

Dodongo’s Cavern

Dodongo’s Cavern is my favourite of the 3 big Child Link dungeons, these are the 3 worst in the game at the end of the day but this is the one I enjoy replaying the most.

Dodongo’s Cavern has an interesting enemy roster with the titular, fire-breathing monsters and I love the Lizalfos mini-boss fights, finally getting the bombs instead of relying on the flowers always feels like a liberation and I really like the dungeon’s signature moment where you drop bombs through the rope bridge and the skull opens up.

On the other hand… the music is crap again, King Dodongo is the easiest boss in the game, dying to 2 Deku Stick jump attacks, and other than the main entrance, the entire dungeon feels like an endless carousel of muddy brown tunnels with nothing memorable.

Gerudo’s Fortress/Training Ground

Gerudo’s Fortress is the first and unfortunately worst mini-dungeon to show up on this list; this might be the only part of the game I actively dislike replaying.

Gerudo’s Fortress has a cool stealth mechanic where you can knock out guards, I always enjoy Middle east/desert themed levels in Nintendo games so the ambiance helps and duelling the Gerudo Captains with the risk of being captured makes for tense and enjoyable combat encounters. The optional Training Ground is quite fun too.

On the other hand, this place is a nightmare to navigate, rescuing the carpenters is bloody tedious and you don’t gain any kind of special item or new ability from it. The only reason this place isn’t in the worst spot is because I can’t judge a mini-dungeon to the same standards and I do give it points for getting creative.

Bottom Of The Well

Ocarina Of Time’s Bottom Of The Well mini-dungeon is infamous for traumatising kids and being filled with blood, Dead Hand and skeletal remains in the Nintendo 64 version. The long-time resting place of Bongo Bongo and implied to be the personal torture chamber and dungeon of a civil war-era Sheikah, this place is oozing with atmosphere and dark lore.

Unfortunately, The Bottom Of The Well is rendered entirely optional if you’re an advanced player with knowledge of the Shadow Temple and Haunted Wasteland layouts since the Lens Of Truth acquired here is mainly used in those places; the other loot you find here is inconsequential, most of the dungeon if you do choose to partake is pointless and falling through the floors without the Lens gets old quickly.

Water Temple

Ah the legendary Water Temple: the face of tedious Zelda dungeons, a euphemism for confusing level design and endlessly berated even by people who have never played Ocarina Of Time. A level so bad, Eiji Aonuma: senior Zelda designer and producer even apologised for this war crime. To be honest? Although this is inarguably the worst Adult Link dungeon, I don’t detest the Water Temple.

The Water Temple has amazing atmosphere. That cascading, haunting yet serene music is perfect. The fight with Dark Link, although a mini-boss, is probably the best boss fight in the entire game, as a concept I like the idea of changing the water levels and the central room with branching paths design that makes the Forest Temple so good is present here, just executed a lot worse.

I’ve played this game enough to have a rough idea of what to do every time I play by now but even so… the Water Temple is very confusing and one mistake almost always necessitating a complete start-over with the water levels is infuriating; the boss is one of the least interesting fights in the game and fighting the big clams underwater is painful. As I’ll get into next, the developers were planning another direction for this temple and had to shift later, so the lore behind this one is underbaked too.

Ice Cavern

As far as I know Nintendo have never confirmed this but all the signs: the frozen Zora’s Domain, the design of Ruto’s medallion, finds in the game’s files and this music track all point to the Ice Cavern having been the original idea for the Water Temple. This is a fan-theory with a mountain of evidence.

The Ice Cavern has wonderful ambiance, some of my favourite puzzles in Ocarina Of Time and gives not 1 but 2 useful items: the Iron Boots and the Blue Fire. I like how the whole thing is a bit of a homage to A Link To The Past’s Ice Palace.

Unfortunately it’s difficult to say much more, this is an incredibly short and syrupy sweet mini-dungeon. I’m not alone in saying that the Water Temple could’ve been the best in the game if the theories are true, instead it came to be the confusing nightmare we all know and ‘love.’

Fire Temple

The Fire Temple is a solid baseline to judge all Zelda dungeons by in my opinion, this temple does nothing wrong, it delivers everything you could want, never gets irritating and has a good boss fight… but it doesn’t excel at any one area either.

I love the mystery of the Fire Temple: it’s this structure built deep into Death Mountain, clearly designed by some race other than the Gorons and filled with dungeons and jeering faces… it’s another artefact of an ancient time, forgotten by all of Hyrule. Volvagia is a great boss fight and I love the moment when you knock down the pillar into the room below just before the end of the dungeon, it’s also an empowering moment when you realise the Goron Tunic allows you to walk on lava unharmed.

On the other hand, the original version of the music that played in the Fire Temple that I mentioned earlier was way better in my opinion, the Megaton Hammer is such a limited dungeon item that it wouldn’t be out of place in Twilight Princess and the mini bosses are annoying to fight.

This was my second favourite temple as a kid (my #1 has never changed) and I still have a big soft spot for it but objectively speaking? The Fire Temple is bang average.

Inside Ganon’s Castle

Ganon’s Castle is the final and best mini-dungeon in the game. Built floating above the swirling, dark abyss that used to be Hyrule Castle, this is the heart of darkness in Adult Link’s timeline.

Inside Ganon’s Castle is like a farewell tour for Ocarina Of Time before you face the final boss, every sage gets a themed dungeon room. This little sample platter of Ocarina dungeon design allows each dungeon item to shine one last time and I enjoy how it doesn’t outweigh its welcome. The slow realisation as you ascend the tower that Ganondorf himself is playing the organ to make this dungeon’s music is extremely clever.

I don’t want to discuss the final boss in this section but I’ll say that one half of it is a bit mundane and this mini-dungeon does lack a good mini-boss of its own.

3rd Place: Forest Temple

Oh boy, this isn’t going to be popular. The Forest Temple has been crowned time and time again online as the best temple in the game by fans and reviewers alike, I agree that it’s a great temple… but it’s not quite up there at the summit for me.

The Forest Temple is another one of those locations steeped in mystique, fan theories and horror. This mystery Hylian structure in the middle of the Kokiri Sacred Forest Meadow is haunted by the spirits of 4 sisters, garrisoned by Stalfos: the reanimated skeletons of adults who go missing in the woods and according to some theories, may have been the previous resting place of the Master Sword before the Temple Of Time. This temple has a fantastic boss fight in Phantom Ganon, excellent puzzles, tight design, fun combat encounters and the twisted hallways are iconic for being just plain cool. It is likely the most influential Zelda temple ever made.

So what don’t I like? Well, I know I’m in the minority here but I find the music gets on my nerves after a while, especially that weird chanting, other than that? Almost all of the enemies are recycled from the Great Deku Tree and I find this dungeon a royal pain in the ass to navigate; I got stuck here for a week when I was a kid and I don’t think the frustration has ever left me, I just associate this one with endless wandering, rifling through my printed guides and watching zeldadungeon.net walkthroughs.

2nd Place: Shadow Temple

The Shadow Temple is the absolute peak of Ocarina Of Time from a lore and atmosphere perspective. This temple was a concentration camp run for the purpose of torturing and executing Hyrule’s prisoners during the civil war, having seen so much death and agony it was transformed into a gathering point for evil and the suffering has become manifest in an evil spirit: Bongo Bongo who beats his execution drum on and on in the dungeon’s deepest depths.

The Shadow Temple is deeply unsettling to this day. The music opens with the starting notes to Zelda’s Lullaby: the secret melody of the Royal Family, signifying its origins, there is a sound of a distraught angel and something dark responding to her; you also hear… something, clanging against metal bars and a sound that’s suspiciously close to the Wallmaster puts you on constant edge. The Shadow Temple features some great puzzles using the Eye Of Truth, an iconic moment with the ghost ship, Bongo Bongo is an excellent boss fight and the use of guillotines and spinning blades as obstacles is highly entertaining.

What is there to complain about? Well, I don’t have a problem with it but a lot of people find the Shadow Temple too linear, after all, you are mostly just following the path downwards and there is a fair bit of platforming which has never been Ocarina’s strong suit; the Dead Hand mini-boss is reused from the Bottom Of The Well.

1st Place: Spirit Temple

I LOVE the Spirit Temple!

Ocarina Of Time’s final temple (depending on whether you choose to visit the Shadow Temple first or not) is also its best. This ancient, crumbling place of worship to a Gerudo goddess considered pagan to the rest of Hyrule is drenched in Ancient Egyptian aesthetic, has 2 halves, one for Child and one for Adult Link and features both my favourite boss fight and my favourite mini-boss in Twinrova and the Iron Knuckles. Best of all? That music… gives me goosebumps. You feel the weight of Link’s long journey here, the song sounds antique, hot and slow, as if the labours of the quest are weighing heavily on our hero as does the unanswered question of whether Nabooru even still lives. I love the Mirror Shield puzzles.

I have no complaints: zero. Sue me, if you don’t like the Spirit Temple then you need to book an appointment with your local GP, you might have something terminal.

Ocarina Of Time is my second favourite game ever and my favourite in this franchise but to be honest? The dungeons here aren’t the best. The Forest, Shadow and Spirit Temples are iconic and the Ice Cavern and Ganon’s Tower are fun as well but everything else is average to subpar in quality. You have to remember, this was the first 3D Zelda and no precedent had been set in regards to dungeon design so I don’t hold it against Ocarina, in fact, it’s a miracle that this game produced 3 of the best dungeons in the entire franchise anyway.

The biggest issue with Ocarina Of Time’s gameplay is that it is simply too easy. Any modern gamer will comfortably get through this one without dying a single time, it only gets challenging when you commit yourself to one of the torturous mini-games, especially the horse race with Ingo: an activity so bullshit that in 22 years of playing this game I’ve never found a way to win other than physically blocking his horse from moving ahead.

I have other small nit-picks: the Gold Skulltula collectible rewards aren’t worth it besides the Heart Piece, rupees are sort of useless in this game and the camera system can sometimes be finicky but this is already a mammoth review and I’m sure you’d like me to wrap it up soon.

Twists, Soul And Skulduggery

Warning: Heavy spoilers

The weakest part of Ocarina Of Time is the Child Link section, it doesn’t contain much plot or character development other than Zelda’s ill-informed plan to gather the Spiritual Stones and open the Sacred Realm first to claim the Triforce before Ganondorf does… Zelda is a child and Ganondorf is an expert manipulator so of course, this goes horribly wrong and I love that. As he should, Ganondorf easily manoeuvres his way around these children playing at the game of power.

There are 2 big twists in Ocarina Of Time and both are perfectly executed and foreshadowed.

As you make your way through the Child Link portion of the game it becomes clear that Ganondorf isn’t clueless: he is also seeking the stones and in the races’ refusal to hand them over, they have suffered… but why would the villain just give up? Well, as time goes on you realise that all is not as it seems. None of Ganondorf’s minions come to stop you and Ruto’s message in a bottle… is a letter the Zora princess has no memory of writing. When Link does finally encounter Ganondorf on Hyrule Field, he’s almost pleased with the boy and only gives him a small blast of magic to assert how powerless the lad is.

Link returns to the Temple Of Time, opens the Door Of Time with the 3 spiritual stones… and is sealed away for 7 years, too young to claim the power of the Triforce while Ganondorf, who has manipulated our heroes’ need to save the Kingdom against them, strolls right into the now open Sacred Realm to claim the golden triangles for himself.

In trying to save Hyrule, Link and Zelda have doomed it.

The second big twist is unfortunately ubiquitous knowledge to Zelda fans at this point: Zelda, Link and Ganondorf each own a piece of the Triforce but back in 1998 this was a new concept and the one thing that stopped Ganondorf claiming the entire power was something that nobody could have predicted: that the Triforce divides itself and seeks out those most suited to bearing each piece if an evildoer attempts to seize it.

That’s what I love about this game’s story. With a manipulative villain like Ganon you have to view their failure in terms of the mistakes they made along the way with their master plan, if a villain like this makes glaring oversights and the plan is stupid, the intrigue collapses.

Ganondorf’s only 2 mistakes are not being able to foresee how a mythical power no mortal has ever claimed will work once he reaches it and betting the future of his regime on a duel with Link, again, a reasonable decision to make given that he owns the Triforce of Power, capable of transforming him into the Pig Demon from the classic 2D games… and because in one timeline, he actually wins.

In a series that has reduced Ganondorf to a reincarnation of an older evil and an anime supervillain, I love how grounded and parallel to Link this version is. Link and Ganondorf are both outsiders to Hyrule (Ganondorf being not only a Gerudo but the first male Gerudo in centuries) both are products of war and both were raised by magical beings for a grand destiny but whereas Link was guided to a path of goodness and of light, Ganondorf covets the verdant, decadent Kingdom from the harsh, haunted desert he grew up in.

Ganondorf is chosen to wield the Triforce of Power because no man alive could have seized the Kingdom using nothing but guile, sorcery and sheer will. Link is chosen to wield the Triforce of Courage because this child rises to bear the burden and the battles of a grown man, with the world against him.

I try not to include too many images in the spoilers section in case people are scrolling past so instead I’ll put the music here and say this: the final battle of Ocarina Of Time might be my favourite boss fight ever. The dark, almost mournful music reflects both how Link may lose but also that the two are battling over the ruins of a great Kingdom; Link ahs already failed to save Hyrule.

The sight of Ganon swinging his golden swords, the flashes of lightning giving the player a brief glimpse of the monster they’re doing battle with is an unmatched spectacle. It’s a shame the fight with Ganondorf in human form is so derivative of the Forest Temple fight against his phantom.

In the end, Adult Link is sent back to his own time and forgotten from history, forever doomed to live thanklessly but reclaiming the years that the Sages and Zelda took from him. The Hero Of Time is the most tragic hero in gaming history. He either dies, loses Navi: his only friend or vanishes entirely, for this selfless warrior, there is no future, he saves the world but loses himself.

Sealing The Door

Ocarina Of Time was surpassed long ago, first by Twilight Princess and then again by Breath Of The Wild but in my heart? No other Zelda will beat it; I cannot in good faith call this the best Zelda game anymore… but it remains my favourite and likely always will.

A Link To The Past has better dungeons and more to do, Breath Of The Wild is a greater challenge and brought millions of new fans to Zelda and the NES original is more open-ended but none of them have the soul that Ocarina does.

It’s not surprising that Ocarina Of Time is my ultimate nostalgia game… because it’s a game all about nostalgia. At its core, this is a story about growing up, how silly childhood friendships become bonds of blood and faith and how time can be corrosive if you let it but also healing and strengthening.

Ocarina Of Time is a game that always makes me stop and reflect. When I was a child, I wanted to be Adult Link and always found the ending unfair but as an adult… I see the lesson the writers were trying to convey. In the pursuit of power, you cannot fast-forward life: you cannot gain power without growing and it’s necessary to make amends with the past and your inner child to reach a greater future beyond.

The minor characters in your life might be sages later and the outsider is powerful.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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In today’s post, I’m going to be comparing the consoles in key areas and laying out the kind of gamer I think would get the most benefit out of either machine. Let’s get started.

Library

If there’s one thing the Switch 2 and PS5 have in common it’s that they both haven’t got any games. Of course, I’m exaggerating and the Switch 2’s life has barely started yet but when 2/3 of your big first-party launch titles are a 4K, 60FPS patch for an old Zelda game I’m not going to pull my punches. The PlayStation 5 is even more embarrassing, that console is approaching 6 years old and off the top of my head, excluding any Japan-only titles, I can only think of about half a dozen exclusives that aren’t on PC or PlayStation 4.

Excluding any performance upgrades or tacked on mini-DLC, your hard-hitting Switch 2 exclusives are Mario Kart World: a divisive title but one I personally like a lot. Donkey Kong Bananza: a great 3D platformer. Kirby Air Riders: a sequel to a racing game nobody I know who had a Gamecube had ever heard of, with no upcoming add-ons. And finally, Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment… still not as good as the original.

For the PlayStation 5 your heavy hitters are games like Astro Bot: an award-winning platformer in the vein of Nintendo. Gran Turismo 7: the cream of the crop in the ‘simcade’ accessible racing simulator space. Ghost Of Yotei: an open-world samurai revenge romp through icy Hokkaido. And Death Stranding 2: Hideo Kojima’s continuing descent into self-indulgent mania… but likely coming to PC this year.

Winner: PlayStation 5… but not for long.

The PS5 has more to offer at the moment, especially with the Switch 2’s Game Key Card situation but once the Switch 2 gets its own Zelda, Splatoon, 3D Mario and Pokémon game it should surpass the Sony first party line-up easily, at least in my own gaming tastes; the Switch 2’s handheld nature makes it the best platform for indie games. You ain’t seeing Mario on Steam.

Hardware

On paper, the PlayStation 5 should win this by a landslide. Sony’s machine is more powerful, has better storage, can be customised and upgraded relatively cheaply, has the more versatile games medium with Blu-Ray and has a wider range of specialised peripherals such as the Pulse 3D headset line and even an upcoming 27” monitor specifically designed for use with the platform.

There’s just one problem: the PS5 itself and the accompanying DualSense controller are big, ugly, cheap feeling crap.

After just one month, the texturing on the back of my DualSense already feels worn, it has a small nick on the grip, the buttons feel more mushy than they used to and after playing Demon’s Souls, my R1 (that game’s attack button) is noticeably less clicky than L1; the battery life is dreadful and the build quality is shoddy, with every inch of the pad feeling cheap, the two analogue sticks using the most low-cost rubber you could get away with and having visible seams from the manufacturing process. The console isn’t quite as dire but those wobbly, flimsy swappable panels add to the bulk of the machine while making it look like the collars of a white shirt. Hideous.

Now, the Switch 2 has its own flaws too. Obviously, this dockable tablet with detachable controllers isn’t quite as powerful as the PS5: it’s capabilities are about on-par with the Series S instead (or about on-par with a stock PS4 in handheld mode) it’s un-ergonomic too and those Joy-Con 2’s still aren’t ideal with the buttons being tiny, noisy little things but where the Switch 2 excels is build quality. The materials used are tough yet pleasing to hold, the screen is probably the best I’ve ever seen on a non-OLED device, paired with the dock, the Switch 2 easily blends in on a desk or TV stand and damn is the pro controller good, apart from not having analogue triggers, it blows the DualSense out of the water.

Winner: Switch 2.

It isn’t as powerful and it lacks ergonomically but the build quality is fantastic across the board and my Switch 2 Pro-Controller has been dropped once or twice and looks newer than my 1-month old DualSense. My PS3 Slim feels more premium than the PS5.

System And Services

This is the section in which I think personal taste and nostalgia will matter most.

With the most basic subscription for both, you get the ability to party chat, play online and some free stuff: either a few free games monthly on PlayStation which seem to exclusively be either amazing or awful and with Nintendo you get pretty much every SNES and NES game worth owning available to play as long as your membership is active. If you’re a big retro gamer, Switch 2 is better here, if you’re more modern-inclined, particularly a digital-centric gamer then PlayStation 5’s basic membership is better.

Upgrade a level: to PlayStation Plus Extra and to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack and the retro versus modern focus becomes even more strong.

With Expansion Pack, you get the greatest hits of virtually every Nintendo console ever made before the Wii, with more games added monthly, plus the Mega Drive, which I don’t need to tell you was also brilliant. This is the best way to play retro games today, full-stop. I don’t have the Expansion Pack because I own all of these consoles already but if you don’t and you want a trip down memory lane? This is perfect.

PlayStation Plus Extra on the other hand gets you an enormous suite of modern games to install or stream: virtually all of the PlayStation 5’s biggest titles, lots of PlayStation 4 games and most of Ubisoft’s catalogue too. If you’re a big Sony fan, are gaming on a budget and like a good Far Cry or narrative-based exclusive to switch off to after a long day then this is the one for you.

Nintendo’s memberships stop here but Sony has one final tier: PlayStation Plus Premium. Premium gets you a suite of PlayStation 1-3 and PSP games as well as access to some of Sony’s films. This one is a pretty hefty £18 a month but if you want to revisit a few games you grew up with and enjoy Sony’s films then this might be worth it.

In terms of the services available? PlayStation 5 wipes the floor with the Switch 2. You can get YouTube, virtually every streaming service, Discord and even listen to Spotify while you play, the servers tend to be a bit better for multiplayer as well; Switch 2 has a significantly better user interface than the bloated mess on PS5 but you can’t even watch YouTube on it and Nintendo’s lack of giving a shit about multiplayer is infamous at this point.

Winner: PlayStation 5 but retro gamers will love Switch 2.

Apps And Ecosystem

Both the PlayStation 5 and Switch 2 have tertiary apps that provide some extra functions.

The PlayStation App lets you browse the store, download screenshots and recorded footage to your phone, browse your friends list, trophies, see when downloads are finished: basically, it does everything you could ever want. All of that being said, I find the layout to be quite unpleasant and uploading game captures takes forever in comparison to the Nintendo equivalent.

Nintendo have an absurd number of apps for you to download: Nintendo Music, Nintendo Today, Nintendo Switch App and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting; I’d rather they were consolidated together into one place. Anyway, the Nintendo Switch App does a lot of the same things the PlayStation one does except the download notifications are locked behind the Parental Controls App for some God-forsaken reason and game captures upload almost instantly once you tell the console to do so.

Winner: Nintendo… but only by attrition.

Nintendo wins here not because the Switch App is better than the PlayStation one but because it’s not a fair fight, Nintendo has a whole suite of options for your phone whereas Sony just has one.

Settling The Score

If it hasn’t been made obvious already then this isn’t a Wii-U versus PlayStation 4 situation: both the Switch 2 and the PlayStation 5 are great consoles that will be worth the price for the right owner… but the right owner is a matter of taste.

If you want a streaming, gaming and potentially Blu-Ray playing box all in one, aren’t so attached to physical media, enjoy narrative-focused, technically flawless games with the latest graphics and also like to party up with your chums and play some CoD then the PlayStation 5 is for you.

If you want a portable, dock-able, fashionable and shareable gaming device, are more committed to physical media, are just as happy playing games from 1986 as 2026, aren’t too fussed about multiplayer and if the thought that the best is yet to come excites you then the Switch 2 is your console.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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Midweek Read: Switch 2 VS PS5

Long time followers of Scanlines’ Journal will know that I got the Switch 2 on launch day and posted a substantial article soon after with my first-impressions including a full review of Mario Kart World.

About a month ago, thanks to some hefty UK sales and an influx of cash, I also bought myself a PS5. A lot of bullshit and fanboyism permeates the console gaming discourse online and being an enjoyer of both platforms I’d like to compare Nintendo and Sony’s flagship machines and contrast the ways in which they differ, what both have to offer and to give my opinion on which is the better purchase.

Main Post: Ocarina Of Time Review + Memories

Ocarina Of Time made me a gamer.

I’ve been playing this game since I was 4-5 years old and it never loses its magic for me. This month, as I cross into the second half of my 20’s I’m going to be replaying OoT, as I always do this time of year and taking you along for the ride. I’ll be talking about my earliest memories with Ocarina, what it does well, some of its blemishes, how the 3 main versions stack up and why the ‘Has it aged well?’ question is difficult to answer.

Retro man does an Ocarina Of Time retrospective, how original.

Week 2: The Hardest Game I’ve Ever Played (Rondo Of Blood Review)

Castlevania: Rondo Of Blood is peak lockdown nostalgia for me. Every night for several weeks I would sit, DualShock 4 in-hand doing my very best to conquer this beast with no save states. Rondo Of Blood is fun, atmospheric, well-balanced and above all else: really fucking difficult. This month I want to go back as a more experienced retro gamer and try to conquer it again in a week and to give it the review it deserves; Rondo is completely overshadowed by Symphony Of The Night in popular memory but it is every bit as good.

Week 3: The Most Nostalgic Video Games

I try to avoid nostalgia as best I can here on the Journal: it clouds judgements, warps memories and makes people put obviously flawed pieces of entertainment on a pedestal but in this month’s list… I’m going to allow it in. This will be a list not just of games that I find personally nostalgic but of games that evoke the feeling of nostalgia even if you’ve never played them; certain games make us long for a world we’ve never known or pine for experiences we wish we’d had when they were fresh.

Week 4: ??? Off-Topic

I’m feeling non-committal with my monthly non-gaming posts; I have plenty of ideas but at this point in my Substack life, I’m beginning to miss the days where I could zig-zag from topic to topic and niche to niche without one of my posts getting 20% the normal number of views; you’re all amazing and incredibly supportive, especially my subscribers but the Journal definitely isn’t as grass-roots as it once was, people expect certain things from a Scanlines’ Journal article now, hell I expect myself to uphold a certain tone and level of detail.

What I’m trying to say is, I’m going to write about whatever I want. It might be about books, it might be about goth music, it might be about a trip out and about or it might be a think piece on the merits of skinning influencers alive, you never know!

I’ve delved into a whole plethora of different topics here on Scanlines’ Journal, from video games to Formula One and CRT TV’s but until now I’ve never discussed the one thing that unites us all on this platform, as a species even: the written word. Every great civilisation recorded their legacy in writing, you could even say that writing is civilisation. We are not the first to write and neither will we be the last.

Today, I’m deviating from scheduled programming: not just the gaming but the goth article too (next month, probably) to bring you a particularly bookish edition of Scanlines’ Journal where I’m going to speak a little more personally than usual, share some of my favourite page turners and discuss the long series of events that led to me taking up the keyboard and the word processor rather than a tennis racquet or having a social life.

The Big Question

Why do I write?

I have a million different answers for this question, all of them true and in typical me fashion, I’m going to put some of them in a sentence that goes on for far too long and lists too many items.

I was born in 2000 and grew up in a golden age for British children’s literature: Horrid Henry, Tracey Beaker and of course, Harry Potter all appeared in the 1990’s and were brought to life in successful film and TV adaptations in the 2000’s leading to new editions of the books with colourful illustrations; there were no smart phones yet and the internet was confined to a cubby-hole under the stairs on a PC only my dad ever used, so the only way to escape reality was the PS2 or the beige pages of a book. When you’re surrounded by great books and growing up in a West Midlands civil parish: the exact kind of leafy, peaceful, small-town English setting Tolkien based the Shire off, it’s difficult not to get inspired. I read voraciously. Greek myths, sanitised Old Testament stories for children, those Doctor Who choose your adventure books but my favourites were books by Roald Dahl.

Everyone has that author whose voice sounds like an old friend, that author who makes everything feel better, that author who you hear in the back of your head when you write, for me? That’s Roald Dahl. If I have to point to one author as my ‘why’ it’s him.

Of course, I graduated onto J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books as I got older and would stay up late into the night reading them with a lamp or night light.

I mentioned (more like, I revealed) a few weeks ago that I’m on the spectrum: not the ZX but the ‘tism, this is a disorder that eases with age but when I was younger I would get all sorts of tics, moments of being overwhelmed and short periods of dissociation; a read in the school library or outside in the Summer was always the perfect cure. Reading was the only thing that soothed my insomnia and stopped me from driving myself crazy.

I write in part. because I want my writing to bring others peace, like the words of Dahl, Rowling and the rest did for me.

Last reason and simplest of all: I write because I must. The Norse called it the Mead Of Poetry, the Greeks called it Apollo’s Gift and the Bible says the world and humanity were sculpted in God’s image: power, wisdom and love made-manifest. I’m no deity, neither have I a belly full of mead but I think, being made in God’s image, that will to create and express is in everyone; we all feel a compulsion to procreate but some of us have a very real need to create works of art, criticism and thought too. This isn’t a voluntary action for me, my brain gets full, my creative energy has nowhere to go, I have to write.

Literature might be the only scenario in the universe where we can create something from nothing, worlds and people that don’t exist are made material.

A Lover Not A Hater

Next, I want to write a brief section about criticism more specifically.

I get the impression sometimes, from restacks and whatnot, that I might be considered a harsh critic or opinionated… but the idea of criticism being harsh or opinion-centric writing is a bit alien to me. Isn’t all criticism, to some extent, an opinion? Sure, spaghetti shouldn’t be crunchy and the sauce shouldn’t taste of only salt but isn’t the acceptable extent of these flaws down to the individual? I’m shit at cooking, so I’ll drop the analogy. What makes criticism harsh? Is it tone and language? Or the extent to which the granular details are examined? I genuinely want to know damn it! Is it really that harsh to call things what they are?

To me, there is no ‘critical lens’ or a different mindset when I’m critiquing a game or some other piece of media, this is my natural thought process. I can’t fathom either enjoying something or hating it then not wanting to work out why.

Dissecting something piece by piece, evaluating every detail and studying what each cog in the machine does to elevate (or defile) the greater whole doesn’t tarnish my enjoyment, it enhances it. To me, critiquing a video game or a film or a book is like taking in that wonderful cross-section when you cut off a piece of cake or slice a burger in half, you get to assess, layer by layer, what fits, what doesn’t and what there should be more of.

Page Turners

I’ve waffled on for long enough, in no particular order here are some of my favourite and most formative novels, novellas and plays. Many of these I read as a child, others I came to appreciate through education and others I chose to seek out myself.

Going Solo by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl wrote 2 autobiographies: Boy and Going Solo, the former exploring his school years and upbringing and the latter his early adulthood, particularly his Royal Air Force Service and time working for Shell in Africa. Going Solo is my favourite of the two and one of my favourite Roald Dahl books overall.

It’s been a very long time since I last read Going Solo: probably 17 years but there are moments from this book I still remember to this day. During Dahl’s time in Africa, he saved a woman who was being carried away by a lion, learned Swahili, survived a severe bout of malaria and had a local house servant: Mdisho, who was so loyal to him that he took it upon himself to behead a local German once hostilities broke out. Furthermore, what most people don’t realise about Dahl is that he wasn’t just a pilot in the RAF, he was a full-blown fighter ace and shot down 5 German planes over Athens.

Read Going Solo. I don’t want to spoil it all, it’s a wonderful book written in a way that’s suitable for children without compromising on the facts of Dahl’s life.

1984 by George Orwell

1984 Is a foundational pillar in the modern British literary canon and I’m happy to have read it in that formative 15-18 years age span when I was young and impressionable enough not to be fatigued with politics and political literature but simultaneously old enough to understand such topics.

I don’t want to veer too deep into hyperbole but 1984 is a book that makes you very awake to the mechanisms of control different groups and organisations in our world use and when you notice the parallels to this book, it always produces an uneasy feeling in the stomach. Orwell’s ‘newspeak’ and the re-writing of history is something I spot every day in our political discourse and in the news. Western-aligned countries are ‘governments’ and ‘states’ while others are ‘regimes’ and ‘establishments’ Eurasia and Eastasia-I mean, Russia and China, are framed as eternal foes and antitheses to our civilisation when we were allies in the Second World War less than 100 years ago; phrases like ‘New Normal’ ‘Foreign Intervention’ and ‘Special Military Operation’ become ubiquitous and sinister euphemisms overnight. I’m not taking sides here, I’m talking about the tools all those in power use.

On another note, many of Orwell’s predictions for Britain came true and his depiction of tyranny feels rooted in our culture; when discussing the literary canon of any country, it’s helpful to think about the ways in which a book is uniquely of that culture and in my opinion? 1984’s vision of dystopia could only have come from a Briton. The denizens of Airstrip One: 1984’s Great Britain (a political entity divorced from Europe and subservient to North America, something that was not true in 1949 but certainly is true today) aren’t kept in line with S.S meatheads or economic incentives but by nosy neighbours, armies of dour public servants and government departments with vague names and nebulous objectives.

The Tragedie of Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Romeo And Juliet, Othello… if you were schooled in the UK then there’s a 99% chance you’ve been exposed to one of the above works from William Shakespeare; Macbeth is my favourite. This tale of regicide and the descent into madness should be read by everybody.

When I was first made to read Shakespeare in school (already not the best way to experience a play) despite my love for literature, theatre (I acted at a community theatre and in secondary school productions for many years) and creative writing I just didn’t get Shakespeare. I would go over the same sentences over and over, wringing my grey matter dry for the tiniest drops of understanding, this continued for weeks and weeks until one day I had something of a hormonal, expletive-laden tantrum where I directed my ire both at the material for being so impenetrable and myself for not grasping what is a cornerstone of British culture. Thankfully, I had a great teacher who recognised that my outburst wasn’t an attempt to avoid work or a product of laziness but instead was born out of a genuine attempt at understanding. She wrote down the link to an actual Shakespeare performance on YouTube and gave me an absolute gem of advice: you don’t need to understand every word, it’s better to focus on the feeling and the intention conveyed by each scene.

I went, I watched and I understood. Shakespeare doesn’t speak to the brain, instead it speaks to the heart and soul. To enjoy Shakespeare, you have to give yourself to the rhythm and the beauty of the vintage language. My favourite version of this play is the 2010 Captain Pic-I mean-Patrick Stewart version.

UK Universities are gradually phasing out Shakespeare and Chaucer and including infantile trigger warnings to the texts left and plenty of ways to side-step reading the playwright’s work if you so desire. This is a national tragedy as far as I’m concerned and one of the reasons I quit my degree after the first year.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Hopping across the sea now to Ireland we have another novel I deeply enjoy: Dracula, a true gothic classic.

Dracula is an epistolary novel which means it is told entirely though the medium of character’s written documents such as newspaper clippings, letters and diary entries; if you’ve never read Dracula, or any other epistolary novel before, then the best way I can describe it is as a book made up of Resident Evil notes. Dracula was published in the final years of the 19th century, a time of rapid technological advancement, the decline of the traditional landed nobility in Europe and of great anxiety about the world all this would produce. This is a novel that concerns itself not only with horror and chilling scares but with the conflict between the folk superstition and traditional knowledge of old with the rationalism and science of the new age.

Count Dracula is of course a timeless character, parodied, iterated and committed to film more times than anyone could reasonably count.

I thoroughly lament the rebranding of vampires in media from Dracula: an undead, blood-sucking parasite who hoards generations of treasure from his subjects and preys on attractive young women to the pretty boys we’ve had since Twilight. We seem to be in the midst of a bit of a gothic horror revival with the (rather unenjoyable) Nosferatu and the Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, which I haven’t seen yet, here’s hoping the traditional vampire is elevated beyond two hour long nepo baby vehicles.

The War Of The Worlds by H.G Wells

This is one novel I haven’t quite gotten round to finishing: I’m not the voracious reader I used to be, the appetite comes on suddenly and strongly, vanishing as quickly as it arrives but I enjoyed what I read so much that I decided it belongs here.

Wells’ story about a Martian invasion of the United Kingdom (often swapped to the United States in modern adaptations, the supplanters of the British Empire’s naval and colonial hegemony) just like Dracula, is emblematic of that fin de siècle feeling in literature: that unease at the dawning 20th century and what the rise of new powers, particularly Germany would bring.

The War Of The Worlds was prophetic. Wells’ vision of an advanced, highly mechanised invader routing the armies of Britain came to pass a few decades later in Northern France and the columns of refugees written of in this novel were seen all over Europe; France herself was fully occupied, as Britain is by the Martians and the aliens’ mass incarceration and industrial murder of humans bears an unsettling resemblance to the Holocaust.

Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 4 times but never won it, based on what I’ve read? That’s a damn shame.

The Complete Chronicles of Conan by Robert E. Howard

This gory paving slab of a book is a huge anthology containing all of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian short stories and novels, a universe I got into after loving the 1982 classic Schwarzenegger film.

I read a fantastic article recently by mulling over the idea of an ‘American Tolkien’ and whether one has, can or even should exist; Robert E. Howard is the closest we’ve got. Like Tolkien, the world of Conan is set in a fantasy pre-history where many of the nations and polities are supposed to be primordial versions of real world civilisations but unlike Tolkien’s Aragorn, Conan is not the Christ of this world… he’s more like Genghis Khan: a roving warlord prophesised to conquer the Kingdom of Aquilonia and rule it thereafter. Conan also takes on a more Classical Antiquity feel than Tolkien’s Medieval Middle Earth: a name that was itself, derived from medieval Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Howard’s Conan stories aren’t exactly considered high literature, they often come with partially nude women on the front, fawning over the warrior as he’s moments away from eviscerating an opponent but who cares? Howard’s prose is pleasant, the stories are action-packed and Conan is a great character. The Chronicles span Conan’s entire life and he has more depth than the reputation might suggest, he comes to rule Aquilonia and is feared by his enemies but internally, the Cimmerian knows his faculties are declining and longs for the days of his youth, free of politics and of courts and advisors.

Legends And Myths Of Ancient Greece by Nikolai Kun

Quite a few years ago, I told a friend how I grew up reading Greek myths and I was working hard to get to university to study a combined English Lit. and Russian degree, a few weeks later, just after my birthday, I got this book in the mail. It stands as one of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received.

Nikolai Kun was a prominent Russian historian and educator in the late empire and early Soviet Union, he lived in Rome for 2 years where he lectured on Greek and Roman classics and later in life, he would be a contributor to the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia; this particular book was published first in 1914 and has been popular since: his most enduring legacy.

Nothing expands your vocabulary quite like reading does. If I feel my Russian is getting a bit rusty or I want to learn some new, more interesting adjectives then a quick read of this book soon sets me right. What most people don’t get about learning a language is that it’s a snowball effect; the more you understand, the more you can infer. You might not speak a single word of Russian but if I tell you that we put salt and perets on our food, you can now infer what that word means and bang! You know how to say pepper in Russian… my point is that I know these Greek myths and Russian well-enough to learn by inference and when you get to a certain level of proficiency, the process gets fun like that, so if you’re learning a language this year, don’t give up.

Various Lyrics by Aleksandr Pushkin

I often tell people interested in Russian literature that Dostoyevsky is the best Russian author if you ask a Western European but most Russians you ask would probably tell you that Pushkin is Russia’s greatest literary mind.

Lyrics are short, sometimes musical poems where the author talks about personal thoughts and feelings; Pushkin wrote over 700 of these things. I’m not much of a poetry reader but Pushkin’s charisma and the sincerity of his voice transcend language and time; his work is the only literature I’ve ever read that has genuinely made me laugh, alone, in my room, looking at ink printed on paper.

I see a lot of love Dostoyevsky on Substack and I get it, his works are rich, deep and thought provoking but along with Tolstoy: the other Russian literary titan the West reads a lot, I think this causes people to have a very bleak and limited view of Russian literature. It isn’t all poverty and gloom and murder, some of this stuff is fun! Most people who haven’t had much contact with Russians in my experience assume them to be grey, oppressed and conformist but Pushkin is a better reflection of what I would call real Russian culture: often being deeply unserious and an almost genetic gift for taking the piss out of things that are foolish.

Fathers And Sons by Ivan Turgenev

Turgenev’s Fathers And Sons, published in 1862, was the first novel to break out of the Russian intellectual sphere and find widespread appeal in Western circles. Throughout European history, Russia (despite speaking a European language, following Christianity and being located in Europe) found itself religiously, ethnically and politically othered, a state of affairs that didn’t really change until Peter the Great in the early 1700’s. Turgenev paved the way for Russian literature to be considered among the highest canons in Europe later, in the 19th century.

Fathers And Sons is a story about generational and class conflict in 19th century Russia: between the traditional landed power in Russia, the Nihilists and the Liberals, both seeking to effect change based on Western ideals. This is another book that became prophetic as the inflow of Western ideas and young men looking to change the nation drove massive unrest and political chaos in late Imperial Russia: so much unrest that over a million soldiers died during peace time; these were not standard casualties like missing or injured soldiers, these were deaths. Turgenev had a desire to understand this new generation, Fathers And Sons came about of that.

The Liberals were able to effect positive political and economic change in Russia but the revolutionary fervour and atmosphere of rebellion stoked by the Nihilists laid the perfect foundations for the later growth of Bolshevism and the First World War unsteadied the political structure enough for it to be collapsed.

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky

Here we have it, my final book on the list: Dmitry Glukhovsky’s 2002 post-apocalyptic horror classic: Metro 2033. This book enjoyed widespread popularity in Russia and the rest of Europe but wasn’t translated into English until 2010 to coincide with the release of its video game adaptation of the same name.

Metro 2033 tells the story of Artyom: a young lad living in the Moscow Metro’s VDNKh station (often named Exhibition in English) after a nuclear war. Life in the Metro is brutal: people don’t live long, children are rarely born and if so are often struck with horrible birth defects and exist as weak, pale little things in need of more care than this new world can provide, the different factions of the Metro wage petty skirmishes over the scant resources and left, tunnel collapses threaten to cut off these oases of humanity from each other at any moment and to make matters worse, a new kind of mutant has appeared, inflicting madness and slowly killing the people of VDNKh. After a close ally vanishes, Artyom is despatched to the far away station of Polis to get help.

Metro 2033: both the book and video game were formative experiences for me, I’m going to discuss the video game another time but I read this book at age 16 and found myself identifying with Artyom a lot: his inexperience, his perseverance despite the horrors of the Metro and the fragility of life seen in the novel stuck with me.

I don’t want to spoil it but the ending is a brutal, sobering gut-punch.

Things To Come

I’ve been writing stories all my life with the dream of getting published; I finished my first novel at age 12 and wrote several more as a teen, honing my craft even as I knew nobody so young would be taken seriously. In the years since, I lost faith in traditional publishing and largely gave up on that dream… until now.

Seeing other people’s fiction on Substack has led me to believe that there might just be a place for my work here too.

I don’t want to commit to anything right now, especially as Scanlines’ Journal takes a lot of time and effort to maintain but let it be known: I’m starting a second publication for fiction and some time in the near future, I will begin uploading there. It might be fantasy, it might be sci-fi, it might be a short story here and there… I don’t have a clue yet but I hope you’ll join me when the time comes to send it out into the world.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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I had a gut-feeling this would be a popular post and I put a lot of work into articulating my picks as best I could. My hunch was correct. Exceeding even my wildest expectations, this list generated a surge of subscribers and became my most viewed ever on Substack. Now… I love a good sequel. Even back then I planned to make a similar list but for those years when I didn’t yet walk the Earth, so here it is.

This is my list of the greatest retro games from 1985-1999. I imagine there might be some raised eyebrows that I chose the NES as my starting point, this is because I pride myself on authenticity and recreating the original experience; I have no experience playing Atari, Intellivision or anything like that and the thought of setting up an 8-bit home computer intimidates me.

The difference between PAL, NTSC and NTSC-J regional release dates makes lists like this a bit of a pain in the ass for retro games, so for the most part I’m going to be following the Japanese release dates, unless a game was developed and released first in the West. There are times where I will follow Western dates though because I can’t bear to leave certain titles off this list just because they launched at an awkward time on the Famicom.

I hope you enjoy my picks for the very best of classic video games.

1985 Winner: Super Mario Bros.

I’m not expecting much pushback on this one, Super Mario Bros. might be the most important console game ever made. Its popularity in the United States pulled the nation out of its video game crash, it kept the cartridge format alive when Nintendo in Japan was midway through phasing them out with the Famicom disc system and created a pop-culture icon in the Mario Bros. current day discourse even suggests that Nintendo have supplanted Disney as the characters of choice for children.

Above all else? Super Mario Bros. is incredibly fun to this day. I respect the NES and enjoy a lot of its games but the overwhelming majority don’t warrant a revisit, SMB is an exception, its controls might be slippery and its graphics are spartan but the appeal of a simple obstacle course with hidden secrets and tricky enemies is a timeless one.

1985 Runner-Up: Hang-On

In the early days of gaming, arcade machines were technologically, graphically and enjoyment-ally (I don’t think that’s a word, but it should be) superior to any home console; the appeal of more advanced consoles like the SNES wasn’t better framerates or graphics, it was better games: games closer to the arcade experience. As such, while the Master System, Nintendo Entertainment System and the Atari 7200 only had 8-Bit graphics to work with, arcades were already in the 16-bit era.

Sega was the king of the arcades and their stunning 16-bit portfolio was built off classics like 1985’s Hang-On which was topping the charts.

1986 Winner: The Legend Of Zelda

Once again… I’m not expecting much pushback here. Aside from being one of the NES’ staple titles and largely holding up today so long as you seek out the map from the manual and are willing to take some notes, The Legend Of Zelda kicked off what I and I’m sure many others would consider to be Nintendo’s best IP.

Half the indie industry was built on aping this game and modern Zelda directly takes inspiration from this original game rather than more popular entries like Ocarina Of Time or A Link To The Past… that’s because Zelda on the NES is as classic as it gets.

1986 Runner-Up: Metroid

Metroid has gone down in history maligned, underappreciated and looked over in favour of its highly-casualised and less atmospheric GBA remake but I still stand by this original game and consider it among my favourite NES games. Metroid is moody, cryptic and difficult but so long as you’re willing to meet it halfway: to draw your own map, take notes and persevere, you’re in for a treat.

1987 Winner: Castlevania

Castlevania came out on the Famicom Disc System in 1986 but I’m following the Western release date here because this is my favourite NES game and I cannot bear to leave it off the list. Castlevania is unfair, stiff and quite short: like a teacher with a Napoleon Complex but it also oozes gothic and camp horror charm, has a fantastic soundtrack and is full of great stages and boss fights.

Castlevania is available as part of a bundle on virtually every piece of modern hardware, if you don’t have the Anniversary Collection then you’re missing out.

1987 Runner-Up: Contra (Probotector)

Contra (also known as Probotector here in the UK and in Europe) is one of the jewels in Konami’s lucrative IP hoard crown that it never bothers to use. Contra/Probo draws on the sublime machismo of 80’s action cinema to create a perfect co-op experience where you and a friend or sibling can suffer together through bullet hell. Famously difficult but incredibly addictive, this is an NES must-have.

1988 Winner: R-Type

R-Type came to consoles this year and man, what a great shmup this is. The ideal port is the Turbografx-16 version but that console never released in Europe, so I’m familiar with the Master System port. R-Type, at least on the SMS, chugs quite a bit and is full of flickering sprites but the music is killer, the gross, Giger-esque creature and level designs are like nothing else in the genre and it plays brilliantly.

R-Type Dimensions is this game’s remake and can be bought on PS5 and likely elsewhere, I highly recommend it.

1988 Runner-Up: Super Mario Bros. 3

I’m sure reactions to this will only be positive.

Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3 never hit the same as the first one for me: SMB2 I actively dislike and this one feels like an awkward middle child: caught between Super Mario World and NES-era Mario. It’s still a really good game and one you need to own though. I know criticising this one would get me stabbed by NES kids but I just don’t enjoy it as much as the original. I wasn’t there when this game set the US gaming scene on fire, I wasn’t born yet and in the UK and Europe, Nintendo haven’t ever held quite such a dominant cultural grip.

1989 Winner: Tetris

1989 Saw the Western launch of both the Gameboy and the Mega Drive (or Genesis, if you are Atlantically inclined.) With Nintendo’s battery swallowing handheld came a spinach-green screen and Tetris: a puzzle game developed in the Soviet Union that made it through red tape and politics to the West and would become one of the best selling games ever made. Tetris is the puzzle game, if you’ve never played it then… I don’t believe you, but if you’re telling the truth, you’ve gotta try it.

The ‘Tetris Theme’ is actually based on a Russian 19th century folk song: Korobeiniki. Give it a listen, it’s a bop. I speak Russian and these subtitles are pretty good.

1989 Runner-Up: Altered Beast

There are two types of people in this world: those who say Altered Beast is a crappy beat ’em up and a lacklustre launch title for the Mega Drive and the rest I have to assume, are good people. Yes, I’m coming out as an Altered Beast enjoyer.

Altered Beast doesn’t play particularly well, has those signature farty Mega Drive sounds found in badly composed games and looks quite dull graphically but come on, this is a classic, everyone who has ever set eyes on a Mega Drive has played Altered Beast and it’s awesome when you transform.

1990 Winner: Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is an ultra-expensive Japanese MSX2 title but has thankfully been bundled with various versions of Metal Gear Solid 3 since the 2000’s. While the original Metal Gear (especially the botched NES port) is cryptic and unenjoyable, Metal Gear 2 is brilliant: so brilliant that I may prefer it to the original Metal Gear Solid. This game tells the tale of Solid Snake’s mission to Zanzibar Land, a fictional Central Asian state carved out by Big Boss and his private army on a mission to rescue an important scientist and to slay the aging warlord.

MG2 has one of the best soundtracks ever, tight gameplay and a wonderful, John Carpenter-like presentation along with the usual themes you expect from this series.

1990 Runner-Up: Super Mario World

Super Mario World is an essential SNES title, a fantastic platformer and an incredibly well-aged game that looks, sounds and plays timelessly. If it had more new ideas then I would have put it in the winner’s slot but as with a lot of Nintendo’s first party output on the SNES, it feels like a refinement of what came before and the gap between SMB3 and Super Mario World is smaller than the one between Metroid and Super Metroid for example.

If you’ve never played World then you need to get on that, urgently, this is a classic.

1991 Winner: The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past

Good lord was this a difficult year to pick for: Super Castlevania IV, Street Fighter II, Metroid II and my runner-up… but my number 1 spot has to go to A Link To The Past. Depending on my mood, either A Link To The Past or Donkey Kong Country is my favourite SNES game, ALttP established the Zelda formula for the next 20 years, has an all time great soundtrack and holds up extraordinarily well; the length and the difficulty are perfect and unlike the original, you can uncover most of Hyrule’s secrets through careful observation.

Half the indie scene is made up of inferior copies of A Link To The Past, do yourself a favour and play the original.

1991 Runner-Up: Sonic The Hedgehog

In any other year, Sonic The Hedgehog might have won but my love for A Link To The Past (and the fact that Sonic 2 is better) earned it the second place spot. Sonic The Hedgehog has some wonky level design and stiff controls compared to its sequels but the beautiful visuals, 3-path courses and that soundtrack make it one of my favourites on the Mega Drive. You’ve probably played Sonic already but if not, why are you still here?

Also worth seeking out is the 8-bit version on the Master System, it doesn’t look or sound nearly as good but the platforming is tighter, the challenge is higher and those annoying special stages are replaced with much better ones.

1992 Winner: Sonic The Hedgehog 2

Sega’s Mega Drive was hitting its peak around the start of the decade and Sonic The Hedgehog 2: my favourite in the trilogy, is emblematic of these heights. Sonic 2 features tighter controls, much better levels, that same Sonic sass and introduces Tails the Fox: Sonic’s yellow buddy who I thought was a girl until I was about 20 years old.

This is one of those games I assume everyone’s played but if not? You need to get on that! Sonic 2 is a near-perfect platformer.

1992 Runner-Up: Mortal Kombat

1992 Saw the birth of Mortal Kombat, part of the trifecta of Triple-A fighting games: Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tekken who lead the genre today. Mortal Kombat drew inspiration from Western pop-culture and cinema, particularly Van Damme films like Bloodsport and Kickboxer giving it its own unique aesthetic; of course, who could forget the gore?

Mortal Kombat is quite a simple game today but it’s immensely fun and has aged very well, even if fighting games aren’t your usual go-to, everyone should play MK once.

1993 Winner: DOOM

This was a very easy pick for me.

I’ve always been a big FPS fan and it doesn’t get more classic than DOOM. DOOM is a simple game with simple graphics, simple gameplay and a simple premise: kill demons, make it to the end of the level and don’t die. That’s all you need for a classic game. DOOM’s fantastic arsenal of guns and roster of enemies, a vibrant speed-running community and fast-paced mobility have allowed it to endure while many later FPS games have rusted in the test of time.

DOOM kicked off what I would consider to be the golden age of PC gaming: an era spanning from the release of DOOM in ‘93 and concluding with the launch of Half-Life 2 in 2004.

1993 Runner-Up: Super Street Fighter II

While Tekken is my fighter of choice, every game in the genre needs to pay homage to the classic SSF2 for paving the way for the rest of them. SSF2 gave us vital innovations for the fighting genre like Cami and Chun Li’s thighs, one of the best soundtracks ever, amazing graphics and decades of tournament play and mainstream popularity to come.

If you manage to find an original cabinet to play on then you owe yourself the chance to pop in a coin and have a go.

1994 Winner: Super Metroid… and Donkey Kong Country

There was absolutely zero chance I was going to be able to choose between DKC and Super Metroid… so I’ve placed them both in the winner’s slot, sue me.

Super Metroid is a near-perfect video game and the granite foundation upon which the rest of the Metroidvania genre has been built. It tells a great story given the limited tech, has a classic soundtrack and preserves the moody feel of the NES original while adding in spoonfuls of improvements such as a map, tighter controls and great boss fights. Once you get the hang of Super’s advanced movement techniques you can complete the game’s objectives in almost any-order and bypass many upgrades entirely. Super Metroid is a masterpiece, if you haven’t played it then I’m not sure we can be friends, sorry, them’s the rules.

Donkey Kong Country is one of the greatest British video games ever made and in my opinion, Kong upstaged Mario on his own console. Donkey Kong Country features stunning faux-3D visuals that made the Sega Mega CD look like a big waste of money, a soundtrack oozing with nostalgia and levels that can be hair-pullingly difficult but never feel particularly unfair.

This was my first SNES game. I have fond memories of playing this late into the night with a carton of milkshake in my grandma’s house in Spain on a cool evening. Play this game, for the love of God.

1994 Runner-Up: Virtua Fighter 2

Sega’s ill-fated Saturn launched in Japan in late-1994 and say what you might about the console, its roster of JRPG’s, Fighters, Racers and Shmups is difficult to beat; I’ve had a rocky relationship with this console but over time, the Saturn has really grown on me. Virtua Fighter 2 launched in arcades this year and would go on to be one of that console’s best-selling titles when it was finally ported.

VF2 is the Super Street Fighter 2 of 3D fighting games: Tekken, Dead Or Alive, Soulcalibur, they all trace their lineage back to this game’s design philosophy and while I find it a bit impenetrable today, we should all be paying homage. It’s not easy to get a hold of VF2 today without emulation but I implore you to stick on the OST, especially if you’re in the gym.

1995 Winner: Sega Rally Championship

1995 Was a mammoth year in gaming. The PlayStation came to the West, games like Chrono Trigger and franchises like Ace Combat were born… which is why I feel my pick is going to prompt a wave of thrown tomatoes. Look, I can only be honest and list games that fit my tastes; this is my list and my experiences are a hard limit. I’m not a JRPG man and the original PlayStation didn’t really come into its own until later in the decade in my opinion, so my vote goes to Sega Rally Championship.

SRC’s Sega Saturn port arrived at the end of this year (or in early ‘96 for Europe) bringing with it an amazing soundtrack, arcade-like visuals and vehicle handling that feels unbelievably good for a game this old. Rally may only have 2 cars and a handful of tracks but the fun factor is off the charts. This might be my favourite game on the Saturn.

1995 Runner-Up: Command & Conquer

The 1990’s saw an explosion of quality in the PC gaming scene and the birth of Real Time Strategy: one of my absolute favourite genres; Command & Conquer is the DOOM of RTS games: not the first but the vanguard that led the way. While its mechanics are simple by today’s standards, the scrapping over resource points, rapid base-building and unit archetypes in C&C would become the template for the rest of the genre going forward and who can forget the deliciously hammy presentation?

PEACE THROUGH POWER!

1996 Winner: Super Mario 64

1996 Saw the launch of my favourite Nintendo console: the Nintendo 64 in North America and Japan and with it came Pilotwings 64 and the superb Super Mario 64. Super Mario 64’s camera can be a bit treacherous today and some of the hints for certain Power Stars are too vague but it controls great, the overwhelming majority of the levels are classics, has a perfect, upbeat OST and the non-linear nature lets you grab most stars in any order you wish.

SM64 looks best on a real N64 with a CRT, to play N64 games you really need that controller to make it authentic, even if it is dreadful.

1996 Runner-Up: Resident Evil

I’ve made my deep adoration for the Resident Evil franchise known numerous times on this Substack… just look at my profile picture; it all started here, in the Spencer Mansion with ‘96’s original Resident Evil, also known as Biohazard in Japan. While the Gamecube remake is the better game: my 3rd favourite video game ever in-fact, this original RE deserves to be played for its greater focus on puzzles, more liminal atmosphere… and for its Jill Sandwiches.

1997 Winner: Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night

I reviewed Symphony Of The Night in great detail earlier this month so I won’t say much more here.

To put it succinctly? This is one of the very best entries in the Castlevania franchise and fits easily into my top 5 games for the PlayStation, SotN isn’t easy to get a hold of today unless you own a PS5/PS4 but I’d consider it a selling point for modern Sony consoles to be honest, it’s a classic, one that more people should play.

1997 Runner-Up: Goldeneye 007

Somehow, somewhere, this Substack always circles back to talk about Goldeneye 007 on the N64. This was the first game I ever reviewed back when I intended to make this a publication about Nintendo 64 FPS games and it’s a title I have a great fondness for, even when the level design and technical aspects don’t hold up too well. Goldeneye 007 is yet another iconic video game to come out of the UK’s Rare during their legendary run on this console, 007 paved the way for console shooters to develop their own identity and ultimately, it laid the groundwork for other story and objective-based FPS games going forward like Halo and Medal Of Honour.

1998 Winner: Everyone

1998 In my mind is without question the greatest year gaming has ever seen, therefore it’s impossible to pick a single winner; a Hall of Fame for 1998 is the format I’ve gone with. There were endless helpings of amazing games this year but these are my picks for the very best:

The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time

Ocarina Of Time was the first video game I ever played on a home console, it is also my favourite entry in the Zelda franchise to this day, my favourite Nintendo 64 game and my ultimate comfort game. I’ll be reviewing this game in full next month but to cut-it short? Ocarina Of Time takes A Link To The Past and trims the fat, makes the soundtrack even better and makes more innovations in 3D gaming than I can count.

I loved Ocarina Of Time at 5 years old, I still loved it at 15 years old and now, a couple of weeks out from my 26th birthday I know that no Zelda title can ever dethrone my beloved.

Metal Gear Solid

Ocarina Of Time is the Nintendo 64’s magnum opus and Metal Gear Solid is the PlayStation’s. Metal Gear Solid leveraged the PlayStation’s disc-based format, 3D graphics and Sony’s deep pockets to tell a story that no other video game had on the only console that could; MGS1 is a masterpiece. The voice acting, cold atmosphere and chilling plot are still poignant today even if the stealth was much improved in the sequels, particularly MGS3 which is my favourite video game full stop. This is probably the best game on the PlayStation 1 from a technical and historical perspective.

Resident Evil 2

Resident Evil 2 is twice the game Resident Evil 1 is: twice the length, twice the fun, twice the looks and twice the influence; this game along with Silent Hill in ‘99 propelled the survival-horror genre into a golden-age in the late-90’s and early-2000’s. Resident Evil 2 makes a strong argument for being the greatest game in the franchise even now, if you aren’t a baby and can get over the tank controls then what you have here is one of the greatest games ever made.

Half-Life

Half-Life, in my opinion, is much better than its sequel and well-deserving of its reputation as one of the greatest FPS games ever made. Half-Life directly led to the growth of Valve and the development of Steam which likely saved PC gaming from extinction. As a game? It gets seriously wonky towards the end (you know the levels I’m talking about) but Half-Life’s atmosphere is sublime, it tells a relatively simple story in a great way and the gunplay is highly entertaining featuring a wide roster of interesting foes.

Spyro The Dragon

The PlayStation was packed full of great platformers and Spyro was just one of them. With its bright colour palette and a mascot that was a bit more interesting to play as than a jumping plumber or that orange mutant Crash, Spyro one over millions and would go on to spawn a number of sequels that were arguably even better. It’s not the hardest platformer ever made but Spyro just puts a smile on your face.

Tekken 3

While Tekken and Tekken 2 were largely built to be cheaper, simpler competitors to Virtua Fighter in arcades and to give the PlayStation its own signature fighter, Tekken 3 was really where the franchise came into its own and became the top 3D fighter for the rest of gaming history. Tekken 3 has a lighter atmosphere than its predecessors and introduces a new cast of fighters, many of which would become favourites going forward like Jin and that fucker Eddy Gordo. It plays great, sounds great and saw unprecedented success.

I could go on and on: Fallout 2, Soulcalibur, StarCraft, Gen 1 Pokémon in the West… 1998 was the best year ever for this medium and only 2007, 1994 and a few others come anywhere near it.

1999 Winner: Shenmue

Shenmue launched in late-December 1999 in Japan for the Dreamcast as the most expensive game ever-developed at the time. Truthfully? This is a love it or hate it sort of game… and you can guess which side I fall on. Shenmue is an immersive, narrative-driven adventure based in 180’s Yokosuka Japan where you control Hazuki Ryo on a quest to avenge his father’s death. Beautiful soundtrack charming characters, Virtua Fighter-style combat and forklift racing, if that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will.

1999 Runner-Up: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was a cultural phenomenon: a game which everyone on both sides of the Atlantic of a certain age seems to have owned and played for an unholy number of hours. THPS isn’t quite as good as its sequel and some levels are a bit fetid but when played on the Dreamcast especially, this turn of the century classic is just as addictive, easy to learn and hard to master as it was back then.

And there we have it, my ultimate list of the best games from every year since the NES’ heyday. Every year saw classics of every genre and I certainly haven’t played every critically acclaimed game ever made so undoubtedly your favourite has been left off, feel free to make your own amendments in the comments below.

I hope you enjoyed the list and I’m looking forward to finding suspicious white powder in my mail for leaving off Final Fantasy 7 and Chrono Trigger.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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I came away from this livestream feeling positive… but highly sceptical. Then, the long wait began. Europa Universalis 5 finally came out months later on the 4th of November.

At the end of August last year, I reviewed Europa Universalis IV and in that review I discussed how Crusader Kings 2, EU4 and Hearts Of Iron 4 were the vanguards of Paradox Interactive’s mid-2010’s golden age and that should one of these IP’s fail it would be catastrophic for the company’s reputation and player loyalty. Paradox Interactive have had a shaky decade so far: Crusader Kings 3 launched in a barren state and has consistent issues with its challenge and gameplay depth, Victoria 3 launched in an even worse state and only last year became feature-complete and Hearts Of Iron 4 probably had its worst year yet in 2025 with a string of disappointing and expensive DLC’s.

Does Europa Universalis 5 do enough to reverse this trend and can it live up to its predecessor? Truthfully, 125 hours are not enough to answer either of these questions; I may revisit this review further down the line. But I hope you enjoy this preliminary review of the game so far.

Strife And Pestilence

Europa Universalis 5 begins on the 1st of April 1337: a full 107 years before number 4’s start date and amongst some of the most seismic geopolitical, cultural and global transformations in history.

In Europe, tensions between the kingdoms of France and England are about to boil over into the Hundred Years’ War, the Iberian kingdoms are in the late stages of the Reconquista, the Renaissance is just beginning to bloom on the Italian peninsula, the Baltic Crusade is wiping the last pagan states off the map, the Eastern Slavs are beginning to find the strength needed to cast off the Tatar Yoke and a frightening new power: the Ottomans is beginning to lead the way in Anatolia as Byzantium looks to be on its last legs.

In Asia, the Mongol Yuan dynasty is losing control of China and teeters on the brink of collapse, the Muslim Sultanate of Delhi holds an unstable grip over much of the Hindu-majority Indian subcontinent, a series of Mongol rump states rule over the Middle East with a certain Timur beginning the game as an infant, the Japanese live in isolation and Southeast Asia is dominated by rich maritime kingdoms peddling their wares overseas.

In Africa, the North lives under the shadow of the powerful Mamluke Sultanate which stretches from the Levant to Libya, Morocco and Tunis hold sway over the Maghreb while powerful inland empires like Mali and Ethiopia continue to grow, further south, nations around Lake Victoria, Madagascar and the state of Kilwa sit safe from attack… for now.

The Americas are quiet in the post-Maya Collapse, inhabited only by a scant few tribal confederations, nomads and the many city states and minor kingdoms of the Andes and Mesoamerica but any player with vision, perseverance and the thirst to resist the coming storm stands to create a formidable state here.

A decade into the game, in Eurasia, the Black Death will arrive, cutting your population by at least 1/3 and levelling the playing field across much of Europe as everyone becomes poorer, less stable and more hungry than before.

I vastly prefer Universalis 5’s 1337 start date to 1444 in EU4. By 1444 the wheels of history regarding the rise and fall of certain powers were already turning too fast to slam the brakes but here? The opportunities are endless. What if Novgorod or Kiev, not Moscow rose to power over the East Slavs and threw off the Mongols? What if the Ottomans were snuffed out before they could supplant the Byzantine Greeks? What if Morocco sailed West before Columbus and his Castilian benefactors? These were questions only the most skilled or foolish could dare to ask in Europa Universalis 4 that can now be explored by virtually any player.

I imagine some will be disappointed to see that Paradox have cut down massively on the geographical range of areas you can play in; Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Northwest and other areas that used to have playable tribes now have them no longer. It’s a shame but truthfully, these areas provided the worst gameplay in Europa Universalis 4 and possessed no unique content outside of the basic tribal mechanics, so I can’t say I’m sad to see them go.

The presence of completely blank space where societies were known to have existed though is a step backwards. Victoria 3 does this better with its decentralised states, acknowledging that cultures lived and existed in these ‘empty’ places that were later colonised even if they are not playable. This seems like a ‘coming in future DLC’ type of situation, since the cultures map does have (incredibly detailed) data for all of these areas.

Aside from the scale and sheer number of playable states in Europa Universalis 5, its other most outstanding feature is the cavernous depth of its simulation.

Europa Universalis 5 is a map and data lover’s dream. Culture, language, food productivity, population, trade goods, markets, road networks, migration, virtually every piece of demographic, economic and strategic data you could possible desire is simulated and able to be viewed and manipulated at your will. I will say that certain areas seem to have been touched with a brush of revisionism and modern sensibility but it’s all minor stuff that won’t upset any but the most ardent nationalists.

Unfortunately, this gargantuan breadth does make the game a pretty fearsome draw on your CPU and RAM with Paradox recommending 32GB to play. My PC has 16GB of RAM, an RTX 5070 and an Intel i7 12700KF CPU and despite that recommendation I’ve been able to play the game fine except for when transitioning between the paper map to zooming up close to see terrain, buildings and weather which tanks the framerate; Victoria 3 had similar issues in the past. It is frustrating to see old optimisation issues rearing their ugly heads once more, perhaps it’s time for a revision of the Clausewitz Engine?

A Sore Sight For Expansionist Eyes

As astounding as the simulation and data available to the player is there are 3 major disappointments I have with Europa Universalis 5’s presentation: the soundtrack, the user interface and the map itself.

Europa Universalis 4’s presentation was baroque and opulent: the stirring music, lined mapping paper in undiscovered territory and mission trees put you into the shoes of some of history’s most famous colonial and land-based empires. There was a fantastic juxtaposition between the noble and adventurous tone of the game and the atrocities the player could commit that really gave you the sense that all this civilisation and enlightenment was simply covering up wholesale slaughter and exploitation. Europa Universalis 5 has none of this.

During my first session of Europa Universalis 5 I heard a familiar tune: Falalalan, this song is a remix of ‘In Taberna’ from the soundtrack of Crusader Kings 2, it was a sweet moment, one that caused a wretched smile to curl across my imperialist lips but once the emotional cheap shot was over I realised this was actually a problem. Falalalan is recognisably a Crusader Kings song, it made me feel nostalgic for the times where I would play that game after school at age 16 on my crappy laptop, what it did not do is convey the tone of Europa Universalis; this is the equivalent of putting the Resident Evil 2 RPD Main Hall theme in Resident Evil 7, it doesn’t work! It would harm the game.

This all sounds like nit-picking but my wider point is this: Europa Universalis 5’s soundtrack is repetitive and while the songs themselves are excellently composed, there are not enough and they don’t make me feel the same way EU4 did, in fact, the tone is much less cynical which is disappointing.

Secondly: the user interface, this is a constant point of friction in Paradox games but after decades making these grand-strategy games and reaching number 5 in a series, you have to expect better than this; buttons are broken, there are endless tooltips and vital information and functions are irritating to access quickly.

Bear in mind that this is a pop-out window that takes up a section on the side of the screen.

Highlighted in red is the upgrade settlement button, this vital function allows you to upgrade owns to Cities, Rural Settlements into Towns and vice-versa… and it’s a tiny button hidden in the corner.

Highlighted in blue is the button to expand forts, it’s the same colour as the name tag for the county so it completely blends in. Good luck expanding your defences without squinting closer.

Highlighted in yellow are the road and RGO expansion buttons, admittedly these are less important since most players will be using the road map mode and production tab for either, however, they are still haphazardly shoved in beside similar icons that only show information.

At last we have the green, highlighted in this colour are the world’s tiniest buttons and these are for upsizing or downsizing buildings. Once again there is another tab to expand buildings better but still, this can’t have been the best Paradox could do.

I’ve been playing Paradox games since 2016, I started with CK2 and I’ve played everything from Imperator to Victoria 2 and to be honest? The launch now, clean it up in 1-2 years approach to the user interface is something I’m getting sick of, this is but a small example however even this mess is unacceptable.

Visually, Europa Universalis 5 is plain ugly, whether viewing terrain up close or in paper map mode.

Just look at the difference here, I swear I haven’t edited these images. Europa Universalis 4 lacked detail and only had primitive modelling for things like cities and ports but it was colourful and pleasing to the eyes, EU5’s map is like someone messed with the colour settings on a TV, it’s so dull and unappealing. Furthermore, some areas of the map were given less attention than others and have lacking terrain data, leading to some hideous looking environments when you play zoomed in outside of Europe and the more popular Asian nations.

In conclusion, Europa Universalis 5’s soundtrack, user interface and graphics get the job done but they are a step down from number 4 and feel directionless and bland compared to EU4’s more cynical sensibilities.

A New Campaign

By far the most seismic shift in Europa Universalis 5 comes in the gameplay department.

The previous title was ostensibly a grand strategy game about governing a nation between the years of 1444-1821 with the hopes of leveraging military, economic and diplomatic power to stay independent and achieve some form of hegemony but those with experience know that EU4 was best played as a map painter: a game of conquest with an increasing snowball effect the further you dominated. Think of it as Risk but for PhD holders and ultranationalists.

Europa Universalis 5 is different. The old mana currency system is gone and so are the mission trees; the POP (part of population) system is in, just like Victoria 3 as are layers upon layers of complex demography and economics simulation. The goal in EU5 is not to paint the map and the player’s aim this time is more open to interpretation. Want to cultivate innovation while maintaining the steely grip of autocracy? You can do that, planning to maintain an elite, professional navy while relying on mercenaries for your land forces? That’s possible, want to maintain a feudal economy, living off the land while the rest of the globe embraces trade and rising prosperity? Well, good luck.

This is all made possible through your nation’s laws and national values. Let’s take a look at the latter first.

Veterans of EU4 will recognise many of these national values immediately as an evolution of the ideas group system and I don’t use that word lightly, this is one of the most positive changes in EU5. Through the policies, privileges and positions the player chooses across their nation’s legal and political makeup and during events, the attitudes and priorities of society can be reshaped as you see fit.

There are a couple of these values like the Land/Naval scale and the Capital/Traditional Economy scale where one side is just objectively better (Bohemia players are never going to pick Naval for example and Capital Economy is superior altogether) but for the most part these are choices that don’t have a clear cut answer. Best of all, these aren’t concrete, set in stone decisions, you can switch later in the game if you so desire; a common strategy at the moment is to remain decentralised in the early game to maximise the vassal states’ superior religious conversion powers and tithe payments, then to absorb them later and undergo rapid centralisation in order to affect more direct control over your new territory.

The barrier between tall and wide nations: between nations best played with a small amount of territory and nations who seek to expand constantly has been broken down forever because the player can switch between the two by pivoting their culture towards values that assist one or the other style best. In Europa Universalis 4 I was constantly googling which idea groups to get with which nations, which ones were a waste of time and which were the best but with Europa Universalis 5 if I’m not coping well with the rapid centralisation or my shift towards a capital economy is causing chaos, I can just… slow it down, maybe even reverse my decision.

I love this mechanic and with some further tweaks and perhaps more added, I think it could be perfect.

Your laws tie in closely with your estate privileges and national values; advisors, parliaments and event decisions can suddenly jerk the needle one way or the other in regards to your values but it’s in national legislation that the most consistent, long-lasting progress will be made.

Every 5 years the player can convene a parliament, in which all of the estates take part and debate on pressing issues, this is the perfect time to gather political support for law changes and territorial expansion; political clout is its own kind of currency, earned through bribes, favours and promises and cashed in to pass agendas, change laws or to gain lucrative casus belli which are much harder to come by than in the previous game. The moment to moment gameplay of Europa Universalis 4 was about preparing for your next war, consolidating gains and furthering your grip on power but in Europa Universalis 5 it’s often a good idea to forgo conflict, especially post-Bubonic Plague when chronic labour shortages choke your economy and every slain levy is a serf who can no longer grow crops to feed the realm. War is a means to acquire more power when cultivating existing human and economic resources just isn’t enough.

Moment to moment, Europa Universalis 5 is about governance: trying to build amicable relationships between your estates, creating a diverse and powerful market where others want to come and trade and creating the conditions for future prosperity and everlasting stability. The gameplay loop is supremely rewarding and systems like proximity, control and prosperity mean that in the early stages of the game it’s barely possible to govern anything outside of your own capital and over time, you see the long arms of the state spread across roads, rivers and coastline to encompass your entire territory and to convert serfs into citizens: to turn your population into productivity.

I was a military menace in EU4 but in this game? I hardly bother, I just adore running my nation, climbing economic and political hurdles and I get a bit giddy when I overtake another state in market control.

Like I said at the top, this is more of a preliminary review than something comprehensive since I don’t know how it all works yet; trade is different, that’s all I can say so far, I don’t know if I prefer it or not, I don’t have all the facts.

In Europa Universalis 5, markets (read: Trade Nodes if you’re an EU4 veteran) are dynamic: they can be destroyed, created and their area of dominance ebbs and flows over time. You can see above that despite the existence of Krakow, Minden and Stockholm's markets, I held sway over parts of Northern Germany and Southern Sweden due to my naval dominance in the Danish Straits and some heavy investment into making serious ducats. Once again, I haven’t learned everything yet but from what I can tell? Those stuck in the intersection between larger markets are better off founding their own and sprawling empires should be destroying the markets of small states and spreading their own across every province.

Speaking of taking territory, the whole cores system has been overhauled too and made significantly better.

Rather than dumping a fixed mana cost to add core territory status to new gains, integration is now a gradual process; conquered states are those which haven’t been either integrated or culturally converted, integrated states are those which have been integrated into your realm but are inhabited by a religious or ethnic minority and core territory status is now mostly reserved for land inhabited by pops who are ethnically, linguistically and religiously of a primary or accepted culture.

Growing Pains

It’s been a couple of months since launch now, the honeymoon phase is well and truly over and the community is starting to refocus on all of EU5’s faults, there is a lot of doom, gloom and people complaining that they’re bored after playing 500 hours of the same game in 2 months, so I’m going to cut through the jabber and explain what I think the biggest issues are so far.

The Holy Roman Joke

In our world, the Holy Roman Empire was an enormous confederation that comprised modern day Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechia and parts of Poland and Italy and stood for almost 1000 years: from the time of Charlemagne to the time of Napoleon. In Europa Universalis 5, you’re lucky if you see it last 50.

International Organisations like the HRE and the Papacy have serious issues in this game meaning that the Empire essentially serves as free real estate for larger powers, since many of these German polities are rich, populous and highly developed it creates a horrifying snowball effect propelling the new owners: usually the 4 horsemen, into superpower-dom.

Frenemy Fire

Paradox have flip-flopped back and forth, adjusting AI aggression and behaviour here there and everywhere yet a good balance still has not been found.

When the game launched, it felt as if offensive warfare was only ever initiated by the player, now, regardless of how well the AI can leverage control or integrate new territory smaller states in Europe stand zero chance at survival; my precious Portugal save was ruined when Castile invaded me twice, first for gold and then for my land.

Systems Versus Stories

There is a deep friction at the heart of modern Paradox games: the battle between history and agency. Players want the freedom to rewrite the world any way they say fit and enjoy that special game when the AI does something truly profane out of nowhere but when nations just feel like different starting modifiers for systems and all real life historical considerations are thrown out the window, it makes the game feel flavourless and stale. Europa Universalis 5 has flavour: unique technology, events and estate privileges but not enough of them, it has a lot of real history integrated into its events and decisions but neither the AI nor the player are explicitly steered towards them.

I’m not sure how to fix this problem but it is something I have felt since Crusader Kings 3, nations are less distinct than they used to be and we seem to be moving further from experiences that reflect real history… but the games are getting better too.

There are other minor complaints I have: I don’t like the new tech tree, forts have some glitches and most formables aren’t worth it but these are neither here nor there.

The Die Is Cast

I’ve barely scratched the surface of what is possible in Europa Universalis 5 and what makes it so compelling; this is the ultimate culmination of 5 years of Paradox shifting away from missions and railroading towards systems-driven game design. But let me answer the question you’re really coming here to answer: is it worth buying now and is it a worthy successor to Europa Universalis 4?

My answer to the first would be a resounding yes. Europa Universalis 5 is ugly, unbalanced and unpolished but the depth is unparalleled, the replayability unprecedented and the potential limitless; this is not Crusader Kings 3 or Victoria 3, Paradox have launched a complete game… just with a rough edge that needed some extra sanding.

Is this a worthy successor to Europa Universalis 4? To be honest? I don’t think so. EU5 plays like Imperator with bits of Victoria 3 and Crusader Kings 3 thrown in; the time period, repurposed old systems and the Trade-War-Diplomacy gameplay triangle are the only things that identify it as a Europa Universalis game. If you’re looking to paint the map, complete missions and re-enact real world history then this isn’t the game for you but if you love playing tall, running the apparatus of state and enjoy a slower-paced, more cerebral strategy game then you need Europa Universalis 5 in your library.

Let’s not mix words: I think Paradox have done a fantastic job. I was expecting EU5 to merely meet my expectations but it has exceeded them in most ways and I’m looking forward to racking up many hundreds more hours colonising, conquering and concerning myself with armchair economics.

I haven’t touched HOI4 since this came out, let that sink in.

TL;DR: Europa Universalis 5 is ugly, unpolished and in need of some patches but it blows CK3 and Vicky 3 out the water and has me hooked. I’m looking forward to what comes next.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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this one’s for you, sorry you were demolished in the polls, we’ll call it a Rishi Sunak moment.

The Case Against Metroid

Let me establish 2 things before we start, first: I really like Metroid Zero Mission, this game’s remake. This isn’t a hit piece on Zero Mission, it’s absolutely one of the best remakes ever created and it’s a perfect entry point for Metroid novices should you have the Switch Online Expansion Pass or an old Gameboy Advance lying around.

Secondly: I’m not calling Metroid NES flawless nor am I even defending it really, my message here is that Zero Mission is a reinterpretation of this adventure, not an improvement and that I prefer the original vision of this game.

So, what is wrong with Metroid on the NES?

Clunky And Unfair

Metroid on the NES has slippery controls and clunky gameplay with Samus unable to shoot enemies along the ground or diagonally in a game where creepy crawlies, hopping beasts and oversized bats make up the majority of the hostiles roster. When you die, you are sent back to the beginning of the area and forced to farm for ages to regain multiple life bars. The final boss: Mother Brain is infuriating.

A Cryptic Maze

Aside from a map of the first couple of rooms included in the manual and a vague outlining of your primary objectives Metroid is a directionless experience with no navigational aids. Vital upgrades are hidden behind breakable walls that look like any other and disguised passages; 9/10 rooms look identical and lack any landmarks for the player to commit to memory.

Technically Compromised

Metroid feels especially rough, even by the standards of early NES games. The framerate is poor, sprites flicker and the game contains a lot of bugs even when compared to its kin; I seem to remember Samus flashing when hit and this causing a lot of issues too.

My History With Metroid

One of the main reasons I got into retro gaming in the first place was to play more Metroid; I owned Prime on my Gamecube as a kid and it made such an impression that I regretted never being able to finish it, I wanted to change that. This flourished into a full-blown Metroid binge and spurred me on to purchase virtually every console in existence.

In early 2023, I grabbed myself a copy of Metroid for a newly acquired NES and simultaneously purchased Zero Mission off the (soon to be closed) Wii-U E-Shop, I expected to give NEStroid a try, find it too dated to enjoy like everyone else and then to put it down in favour of its remake… but that’s not what happened. I was sucked into the game: entranced and for a whole hour I remember being spellbound in front of my CRT, completely ignoring my phone, neglecting to get a beverage or something to nibble on and being completely immersed in the game.

The phone I intended to use for a guide was put aside, I got out a sheet of paper and a pen from my drawer and over the next 7 hours I painstakingly took notes, scribbled out my own rough map of Zebes (which is unfortunately lost to time) and played until at 4am, bleary eyed, 2 energy drinks deep and with an empty bowl of snacks beside me I had beaten Metroid on the NES, no guide, no map, just me and the resources a kid would have had in the 80’s. I loved it so much I did it all in a single sitting.

I came away from the experience feeling that I’d just played one of the greatest games ever made and had experienced intimately a fantastic but inaccessible masterpiece.

I remember everything I felt playing Metroid, so many little moments of triumph and of pain but I remember nothing about Zero Mission which I picked up straight after, save for getting pissed off at the horrible stealth section. Zero mission is a slightly longer game even.

Why I Prefer NES Metroid

Like I said, I played both versions of the original Metroid adventure back to back and I like both of them… but the original just edges out the remake for me, here are my reasons why.

Unparalleled Atmosphere

The atmosphere of Zero Mission is derivative and it doesn’t attempt to pay homage to the feel of the original game or to enhance the emotions you feel playing the NES classic, instead it lifts Metroid Prime’s art-style and tone from the Gamecube and grafts it over the original game’s plot and structure.

Please give the first 40 seconds of this opening a watch and pay attention to the tone of this intro and how it makes you feel. This introduction amps me up, it’s intense, it’s stylish, Samus looks cool and the mellow theme song invites you to Press Start and have a fun adventure.

Now let’s see the original.

NEStroid is dark and foreboding, we see nothing but the cold, vast blackness of space and a barren would, accompanied with that threatening, alarm-like beat and the orders from a faceless, nameless Federation officer, you feel well and truly alone, dropped into the belly of the beast. The tension is only broken if you linger for too long: a more uplifting bit of music, as if they were reassuring 80’s kids that they had what it takes.

It doesn’t stop there, NES Metroid came out in a time before complex 2D backgrounds and parallax scrolling, so Zebes is pitch black and eerie, while Zero Mission is colourful and intriguing.

There is a moment I’ll never forget when I played NES Metroid: arriving at Kraid’s Lair, about 5 hours into my 7 hour marathon. I was tired, my reflexes fatigued from hours of map-drawing and difficult gameplay, when I went down that lift into the Lair the music, visuals and low-fi NES charm all came together to make me feel profoundly uneasy. It was magic.

Zero Mission looks nicer, plays better and has great remixes… but it just doesn’t hit the same.

True Freedom

Since the original Metroid on NES, every 2D Metroid since with the exception of Super has been more linear than the one that came before it. Now, linearity isn’t an inherently bad quality, in fact, I’m actually a bit sick of it being treated like a filthy word by Metroidvania fans but the more linear structure and hand-holding of Zero Mission absolutely damage the game. It takes the waypoints from Fusion: my least favourite 2D Metroid and places them into a game world that is already not at all confusing once the player is equipped with a map.

Save for the Morph Ball, Morph Ball Bombs, your first missile tank and one or two late-game upgrades that require the Hi-Jump Boots, Metroid’s upgrade progression is entirely non-linear and so are 2 of its 3 bosses, with Kraid and Ridley able to be beaten in whichever order you choose. This endless freedom will lead many to wander around aimlessly but for those who love uncovering secrets and replaying games, the sheer number of hidden upgrades, obscured pathways and a set of different endings that require speed-running will keep you coming back to Metroid and learning its layout.

Simple, Effective Ingredients

Online, all I ever hear is that Metroid on the NES was ‘raw’ and ‘a good foundation’ but an absolute nightmare to play, needing to be rebuilt in the superior SNES entry: Super Metroid. But let me ask you this: take away Super’s map, diagonal aiming and inventory and is it really any different? The controls are still slippery, the way forward is still obscured and your primary objectives are still the same: hunting down the real life versions of those statues you see near the beginning.

I am of course being reductive here, Super Metroid has many other things that make it the better game but my point is this: Super didn’t succeed in spite of NEStroid but because of it. It doesn’t fundamentally reinvent anything the original had, it just makes the barrier for entry lower.

Furthermore, looking at the wider context of NES games from the era, I find it funny that Metroid has this horrible reputation when say, Zelda does not. Zelda is even more cryptic than Metroid, is horribly translated and also features many areas that look almost identical… but that gets a pass? Because it’s a critical darling and nobody else you know says anything bad about it?

Metroid can be beaten in less than an hour if you’re good and know what you’re doing, it’s easy to pick up and play and the objectives are simple, I enjoy that.

Setting The Mood

Most people don’t put the effort in to give this excellent game the chance it deserves, they’d rather open Switch Online, get neck ache from squinting at a phone guide, die over and over from barely paying attention to the main screen and then write off NEStroid as a dated piece of junk. This is not the way.

Obviously, an NES game from the mid-1980’s isn’t going to be for everyone but if you’ve bounced off Metroid in the past and want to give it another shot, or if you’ve been looking to try it and have been put off, here is my advice.

Read The Manual, Draw The Map

The expectation by developers in the 1980’s and for much of the 90’s was that you’d read the manual before ever booting up the game and keep it on hand to refer back to, you should do this for Metroid too. It’s widely available online as a PDF, print it out for extra lo-fi goodness and paper ruffling.

Once you’ve made it past the initial few corridors, you should start drawing your map, preferably with colour coding and a few little map markers for things you should remember; I would market breakable walls with a zig-zag and red missile doors with an X when I was drawing mine.

Watch Closely

If you are observant, patient and pay close attention to your surroundings then almost every hidden passage and breakable wall in the game is revealed by enemies and unusual patterns in the terrain. If you see anything fly through a wall, crawl through a ceiling or hovering above a death pit then the chances are these are illusions.

Keep Ice-Cool, Learn

Metroid is not an easy game, you may die often, you may have to keep farming to regain your health but as with any difficult game, these moments of defeat are an opportunity to refresh.

You need to be hanging back and watching enemy patterns closely, if you die and have to farm you need to question whether it’s worth dying again to a difficult encounter when you could use missiles to improve your chances, take a look at the corridors on your way back to where you died, could there be some extra help hidden nearby? The more frustrated you get at a hard game, the worse you perform. Anger can help you make risky and rewarding moves, anxiety at losing progress can make you more observant, frustration just makes you whiny and not receptive to improvement.

If you’re really in pain then look up where the Ice-Beam is, it really helps and so does the Long Beam, Metroid’s default shot-type is awful.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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Far from the ill-fated pivot to mobile gaming in the 2010’s and its highly-publicised fallout with Hideo Kojima, Japanese publisher Konami in the 1980’s and 1990’s was instead known for one thing: quality. If you picked up a cartridge or CD and saw that name on the box, you knew what you were about to play was going to be excellent. On the shmup (shoot-em-up) front there was Gradius and its spin-off: Salamander, some of the best the genre has to offer and thankfully receiving some re-releases in 2025. Konami soared to dizzying heights on the first 2 PlayStations with Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and Pro Evolution Soccer, the latter two being the only franchises preventing Resident Evil and FIFA’s monopolies on their respective genres. But there was one franchise that stood apart, one whose influence can be felt from Dark Souls and Blasphemous to Hollow Knight and Metroid Dread: Castlevania.

Castlevania started life as a platformer on the NES. The 1986 original was gothic, mature and difficult as opposed to the colourful whimsy of games like Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man. Modern reviewers like to compare everything to Dark Souls but in this case it’s warranted, Castlevania was unapologetic in its challenge while balancing that difficulty better than the competition and aiming for a demographic older and more seasoned than its contemporaries.

Castlevania, like Resident Evil, is a franchise that looks very different depending on when and where you played it and this experimentation was seen as early as the second entry: Simon’s Quest.

The Angry Video Game Nerd’s 2004 review of Simon’s Quest (uploaded to YouTube in 2006) is an iconic piece of YouTube history and esset the accepted opinion on Simon’s Quest for the internet generation.

To cut a long story short? This early experiment at a more open-ended adventure, wider in scope and in scale wasn’t without merit but deeply flawed, however, this didn’t stop Konami from experimenting further. Castlevania 3 added branching paths and additional playable characters, Super Castlevania IV refined the gameplay and control to its sharpest yet and Rondo of Blood gave the series a veneer of 90’s anime cool and added more than usual to the story and lore.

Symphony of the Night: Rondo of Blood’s sequel is the final culmination of all those experiments and refinements. Let’s finally get into it: this is my review of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Buried Treasure

I can’t review Symphony Of The Night without talking about how inaccessible this classic is in the modern day.

Those who have been following me over the past 12 months will know I have a hard-nosed dedication to authenticity: original hardware, original copies and CRT display, I even have two of the things because 8-16bit games were overwhelmingly played on curved screens rather than flat ones. If you try and purchase Symphony Of The Night on its native PlayStation… you’ll be met with a nasty surprise.

Symphony Of The Night has the 3-punch price combo that no retro gamer ever wants to hear: uncommon, beloved and exclusive. Symphony Of The Night wasn’t a PS1 exclusive in Japan and launched on the Sega Saturn there as well but that version of the game has several obvious barriers for entry and runs poorly on the console.

There is a PSP version of Symphony Of The Night if you still have your old handheld knocking about but it’s included as an unlockable extra in that console’s Rondo Of Blood remake. This sounds good on paper but Rondo Of Blood is literally the hardest game I’ve ever played so I doubt most will ever see Symphony, the original, iconic PS1 dubbing is replaced too and to top it all off this version of the game (while nowhere near as bad) is still really expensive.

The rest of the Castlevania series has been well preserved by Konami and can be gotten with relative ease on virtually every platform. The Castlevania Dominus, Advance and Anniversary collections seem to be on sale every day across all platforms and the original versions (with some notable exceptions) aren’t eye-wateringly expensive either.

The method I used to play Symphony Of The Night and the only viable method in the modern day is the Requiem bundle for PS4 and PS5: a digital-only 2-pack of RoB and the PSP version of SotN. These are the 2 greatest games in the series: two of the best games ever made in fact and they are trapped behind extortionate prices and a bizarre dedication to console exclusivity when the rest of the franchise is free for all.

If Konami delisted the Requiem bundle tomorrow, Rondo Of Blood and Symphony Of The Night would be inaccessible to all but a privileged few retro collectors willing and able to drop several hundred on acquiring beloved old games and hardware. This needs to be fixed, urgently.

Ahead Of Schedule

Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night kicks off right at the end of Rondo Of Blood. You temporarily take control of the blue-clad Richter Belmont for the prologue facing a (much reduced in difficulty) rendition of that game’s final fight against Dracula… but before we get into the rest of the game’s premise, there’s something I have to acknowledge.

The beginning of Symphony Of The Night is home to one of the most beloved, awful bits of dialogue and dubbing in gaming history. If you’ve never played Symphony then I can almost guarantee you’ve seen or heard a reference to this cutscene anyway.

Dracula achieves such profound levels of ham that he could be served with egg and chips while the voice of Richter sounds hilariously sleepy and more wooden than an oak table; the stark contrast, immortal lines and the wine glass shattering elevate the entire scene to legendary status. This is pure kino.

Being a port of the PSP version of the game, this scene has been heavily altered on the PS4/5 Symphony Of The Night, I have to dock points for that.

Once the ending to the previous game has been re-enacted, you’re treated to an atmospheric title crawl with the silhouette of Castlevania looming large in front of a full moon.

Like Rondo Of Blood before it, Symphony Of The Night has much more of a story to tell. The setup is this: Richter Belmont has gone missing inside Castlevania which has reappeared a measly 4 years after the slaying of Dracula, a full 96 years ahead of schedule. Maria Renard, one of the young girls you rescued in Rondo Of Blood, is now a fully grown vampire huntress and delves into the castle to search for Richter, meanwhile Alucard, the son of Dracula who helped the original Belmont: Trevor in Castlevania 3 has awoken from his long slumber and takes it upon himself to storm the castle and put an end to his father’s evil once and for all.

The decision to have Alucard be the protagonist of Symphony Of The Night was a stroke of genius.

Alucard is a complex character: a tragic hero, anti-hero and fish out of water all in one. If you’ve ever seen Netflix’s rather decent Castelvania anime (the first one, not that Nocturne crap) then most of that series’ plot was derived from the events of Castlevania 3 mixed with the lore of SotN, so there’s plenty here to sink your teeth into.

After centuries of slumber, Castlevania and Dracula’s minions are a much more plausible threat to Alucard than to Richter, who already conquered the supernatural fortress a few years prior. Symphony Of The Night was the first Metroidvania to start the player off fully upgraded before stripping them of their powers after the tutorial section, once again, it would have been hard to stomach this happening to Richter, as it’s Death who steals Alucard’s powers: a boss Richter despatched 4 years ago in single combat.

The whip is an iconic part of Castlevania and scant few video games even include one as an offensive option, let alone as the primary armament; in the lore it’s an ancestral weapon of the Belmont Clan passed down from generation to generation, so it would have made no sense for Alucard to have a whip. Not playing as a Belmont enables Symphony to offer a wide variety of weapons and equipment in a way that doesn’t contradict established canon.

Another way in which Symphony Of The Night departs from its progeny to tremendous success is in its art-style and atmosphere.

I’ll discuss the graphics and sprite-work in more detail later but what can be immediately noticed with Symphony Of The Night is its departure from the Schwarzneggerian muscle man, Hammer Horror and 90’s anime bravado-inspired aesthetics of the past entries. There was nothing wrong with these visions of Castlevania: Super Castlevania IV might have my favourite box art of any video game ever but the look of Symphony is much more distinct and came to dominate the franchise for the rest of time.

A lot of people talk about the silhouette test when discussing good character design and I have my own test: would I want to play as this character? I look at every artwork for SotN and it’s resounding yes, for every character.

Ayami Kojima’s classical painting inspired artworks for Symphony Of The Night permeate the entire art-style and give the game such a deliciously gothic look as opposed to the camp horror of before. It’s even more impressive when you learn that she was a self-taught artist and that Symphony was Ayami’s first foray into the industry.

In terms of atmosphere, I love how varied Castlevania is in Symphony Of The Night. Dracula’s moving castle feels like a whole city within.

There’s a lot of love for Hollow Knight’s Hallownest in the modern gaming sphere and while it’s probably a better game than Symphony Of The Night in an objective sense I’ve always found its world to be very uninteresting to explore; whether you’re at the top or the bottom of the map, every area is a dank cave with a different colour or type of vegetation, there are few exceptions. For a game about insects, everything looks and feels human, it does absolutely nothing with the concept of a society built by bugs.

On the other hand, Symphony Of The Night fully explores its gothic aesthetic with a range of different feeling atmospheres. The upper reaches of the castle feel designed only for demons and otherworldly beings, forcing you to walk atop moving machinery and face a constant barrage from flying Harpies until you gain the ability to fly. The ground level and other human-facing areas of the castle are the most regal, projecting occult power with sprawling labs, armouries and libraries stacked with bookshelves reaching to the ceiling and lined with tomes of arcane knowledge for the servants of Dracula to further their dark aims. Uncover the path to the depths of the castle and the environment begins to resemble the original NES trilogy of Castlevania games, set centuries before Symphony. Damp caverns haunted by the alluring spirits of pretty young women who froze to death give way to Medieval crypts and mounds of discarded dead. I love exploring Castlevania.

I don’t even like anime, in fact, I sort of detest it but Rondo and Symphony’s move to an anime style elevated the franchise’s entire presentation.

Between Dimensions

Symphony Of The Night was released in 1997 when the switch to 3D gaming was in full swing and on the most successful 3D console of its day: the PlayStation… yet, it is ostensibly a 2D game. Sony’s original games console was arguably the weakest of the generation and 2D games were seen as old hat by the second half of the 1990’s, so Nintendo outright weren’t interested in a 2D Castlevania, instead eventually getting the incredibly rushed, poorly regarded Castlevania Legacy Of Darkness for the N64. This aversion gave Konami free-reign not only to put their Rondo Of Blood sequel on the PlayStation (which they had clearly favoured over the others) but also to make it a 2.5D game.

Konami knew the PlayStation couldn’t have handled a fully-realised 3D castle and for stylistic reasons a 2D perspective made more sense, despite this, they were able to leverage the PlayStation’s 3D strengths to make Symphony Of The Night the best looking 2.5D game ever made in 1997. Across every area from top to bottom of the castle there are intricate 3D backgrounds and 3D assets that make Symphony a visual treat.

Symphony Of The Night’s save rooms contain a 3D rotating orb that beats like a human heart.

Symphony Of The Night risked looking outdated compared to games on the Nintendo 64 coming out in 1997 and other PlayStation offerings in full-3D but its clever use of the new technology while leveraging the PS1’s power for richly detailed sprite-work created an art-style that has aged like fine red wine. This game is absolutely gorgeous. Playing on original hardware or a CRT you’d avoid the horrible blocky look too.

Something else I want to pay attention to as well is the sheer variety of enemies in Symphony Of The Night.

Most other titans of the Metroidvania genre like Metroid, Hollow Knight or Ori have a small roster of enemies that get repeatedly reskinned, not Symphony, you get everything from vengeful spirits to floating skulls to spheres of the undead here.

The sprite-work is absolutely phenomenal in Symphony Of The Night and when stacked up against the Sega Saturn port with its transparency issues that ruin the ghost enemies, dreadful framerates and worse 3D assets it truly cemented that the PlayStation was victorious, even if the writing had already been on the wall.

We’re not done yet! I’ve spent my holidays getting to grips with video embedding so I’m going to use it damn-it. Look how fluid the animations for Alucard are in Symphony, they’re unbelievable.

Alucard isn’t weightless, he doesn’t snap left and right like so many characters do in a 2D space, he takes time to turn, his hair and cape rise and fall with each step, slide and jump, the blurs and silhouettes make the player feel agile and superhuman. I cannot gush enough about how much I adore every screen of this game’s graphical style and art. I’m hard pressed to name another 2D title that looks this good.

As beautiful as Symphony Of The Night is and as buttery smooth as this port runs I do have a complaint: the same raw, pixelated full motion video shots of Castlevania from the outside have been reused without any attempt at upscaling and they look absolutely dreadful. Capcom’s REmake and RE0 HD versions in the mid-2010’s caught a little bit of flak for the AI upscaling mangling a few backgrounds but in general? The results were solid and more importantly: they actually made an effort, whereas Konami have done nothing to make these videos look any better than they did on the PSP.

Far from just being easy on the eyes, Symphony Of The Night is a pleasure for the ears as well; this is my favourite video game soundtrack of all time. Better than Ocarina Of Time, better than the Mega Man games, all of it… so I have to link more than just 3 songs, sorry everyone, there’s too much quality here to pick only a trio of greatest hits.

Symphony Of The Night opens with an FMV of Castlevania, the camera pans to the stairs outside of Dracula’s Throne Room then you take control of Richter as that sweet electric guitar begins to make love to your ear drums. Every game should open like this.

The first few minutes of the main game where you play as Alucard synchronise to this song perfectly, he jumps across the closing draw bridge and as the song picks up, all the candles in Castlevania’s entryway come to life, casting light on the undead hordes and giant wolves bearing down upon you. One of the first moments that comes to mind when I think of this game.

The Clock Tower is by far the most dangerous and dramatic area of the castle, thankfully, as you’re dodging Harpies, flying Medusa Heads and floating skulls you’ll be treated to one of the best pieces of music in the whole game.

Far from just a bunch of guitar shreds and rock riffs, Symphony Of The Night’s soundtrack gets seriously funky too. Wandering Ghosts is the theme for the Colosseum area and it’s a place I linger around just so I can keep listening.

After the frantic, noisy opening hours Alucard finds himself in the icy caverns beneath Castlevania, it’s less thick with enemies and soothes the player with one of the most relaxing songs in the game. We can’t let people who use TikTok and record 3 hour video essays on YouTube discover this one.

Symphony Of The Night is filled with non-essential rooms and secrets to discover. If you equip the Fairy familiar and have Alucard rest on a comfy chair in a certain spot, she’ll soothe him to sleep with a melancholy lullaby.

Like I said, Symphony Of The Night is my pick for the greatest video game soundtrack, it’s not the most iconic and it doesn’t have the adoration of the TikTok generation like Ocarina Of Time or Wii-era Nintendo but I can’t think of another game whose soundtrack I’ve listened to for so long after playing it. My initial playthrough of Symphony was in 2020 and its tunes have stayed on rotation until now, where I’ve finally been able to replay it.

I’ve mentioned quite often on this Substack that I think a good game should please all the senses: it should look great, sound great, the controls should be as natural as to go completely unnoticed and if possible there should be no ‘stink’ around the game: no sign of abused staff or malpractice. Symphony Of The Night is an amazing game… but I can’t call it a masterpiece for reasons we’re going to get into next.

Mixed Pedigree

Symphony Of The Night is the -vania half of the Metroidvania genre; this is a category of games made up of titles that mimic the design and exploration of Super Metroid and Symphony… but it’s a much less pure expression of the genre than Super is.

Even back in the day when your average video game was significantly harder than now, Castlevania games were considered to be brutally difficult; I’ve beaten the original NES Castlevania, Rondo Of Blood and most of Castlevania 3 without save states… they’re right. Knowing this, the team behind Symphony had several key design goals in mind: to make Castlevania’s difficulty palatable for your average gamer, to extend the game’s length and shift to player-led pacing (because once you master a Castlevania, it’s only 8-10, 5 minute stages long) and to insert RPG mechanics and some variety into the combat beyond the usual whips and sub-weapons. Despite common discourse, it was actually A Link To The Past that most inspired Symphony and not Super Metroid.

Judging Symphony Of The Night on its own goals and setting aside my fondness for the game, I have to say that almost all of these aims were botched or not fully met.

Firstly, the difficulty: it’s all over the place. I’ve heard Symphony Of The Night described both as a tough game and as a very easy game which illustrates my point perfectly. The game begins quite tough with Alucard stripped of all armour and weapons forcing you to tackle your first few encounters bare-handed before acquiring one of the awful starting swords, not long after that, you’re treated to a mimic boss which is absolutely brutal to defeat unless you know how to cheese it by abusing the AI’s jumping pattern. From this point on, Symphony Of The Night is a walk in the park until roughly 60% in where you unlock a huge new area to explore and suffer a colossal difficulty spike. None of this is helped by equally chaotic weapon and item balance. Not a single sub-weapon in Symphony Of The Night is of any use and the shields are also practically useless, meanwhile, certain weapons and item combinations break the entire game. If you’re familiar with Symphony Of The Night, you know exactly what weapon I’m thinking of when I say that a bit of farming in one late-game room can grant you the power to melt any enemy.

Many of the enemies in Symphony are just plain annoying and that classic Castlevania issue of excessive knockback gets absolutely maddening in the later sections of the game. Just look at how many enemies get stuffed into this one corridor and how long I’m bounced around like a basketball, completely unable to control Alucard.

Secondly, the game’s length and pacing have been extended and altered respectively… but I wouldn’t exactly call it an improvement. I’m going to leave the manner in which the game’s length is extended to the spoilers section but in the pacing department? Symphony Of The Night ends up feeling like too little story stretched too thin across a 10-12 hour runtime. I’ll be discussing it in the spoilers section but a lot of Symphony is spent getting you up to speed with Alucard’s past with the plot comprising a single, predictable reveal and a bigger twist before the final act.

Lastly, let’s talk about the combat and RPG mechanics, which are the things Symphony Of The Night gets the most right out of its new direction for Castlevania. The pause menu where you equip Alucard’s armour, weapons, relics and familiars (little companions that follow you and perform certain tasks like giving you potions) is a bit spartan but the information is clear and it’s simple to navigate. Alucard controls well and the enemy variety is broad but… Symphony’s combat does get quite boring. There’s nothing wrong with it: it commits no major sins (apart from healing items needing to be put into a weapon slot before use) but at the end of the day, you essentially mash the square button on every enemy until it dies, no weak points, no parry, no need to change up your approach. The RPG mechanics do enhance the game if you delve deep into the stats but it’s easy enough that I never felt the need to do so.

If you’re expecting a Metroidvania in the modern sense out of Symphony Of The Night then you’re going to be disappointed; Super Metroid is the origin of 80% of this style of game design, Symphony’s contributions are the early-game powering down, NPC’s and the greater focus on combat and equipment. There are only a small number of traversal-based power-ups in this game and all but 2 are unnecessary for progression. Even on the layout of the map, you can see long corridors and towers that are filled with enemies so the player can enjoy plenty of combat.

I’ve had an opinion for a long time that I’d like to share and see if people agree with it.

Rather than Metroidvania being one big genre, I think of it in two-halves: Super Metroid-likes and Symphony-likes, the former being exploration and platforming focused and the latter being combat and boss-focused. I’d consider the likes of Hollow Knight and Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown to be Symphony-likes while games like Ori and the Metroid Prime games are closer to Super Metroid.

A Shambling Advance

WARNING: This section contains full story spoilers.

As I mentioned towards the beginning of this article, Alucard was a character introduced in Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse way back on the NES. 8-Bit era storytelling being what it was, Symphony Of The Night had to flesh out this character alone; it was already known that Alucard is Dracula’s son (write the word Alucard on a piece of paper then look in a mirror) but past that we had no motivations, nothing.

If you’ve watched the anime then you’ll be familiar already but in Symphony Of The Night it’s established that Alucard’s mother and the human bride of Dracula: Lisa, is burned at the stake by a mob. Alucard is there to hear her dying wish: for him and his father to let go of their hate, to take sympathy on the humans and let them live. Dracula on the other hand is not present and is recontextualised as a tragic villain, vowing eternal revenge against mankind.

You learn this bit of lore when a Succubus tries to tempt Alucard over to his father’s side which brings about so many interesting questions: was Dracula convinced of Lisa’s dying wish for vengeance by the Succubus like she attempts to convince Alucard? How does Alucard feel about mankind? Would Dracula truly appoint Alucard as his heir or reduce him to a thrall? This is all left up to interpretation and to be honest? I like that, we don’t need to know every last detail.

You have this wonderful push and pull dynamic between Maria Renard and Alucard as they meet time and time again in the castle. Maria only seems to care about finding and saving Richter whereas Alucard regards her as a foolish little girl and sees the true threat behind it all: Dracula and would rather she got out of his way. Eventually, Alucard discovers that Shaft (yes, that’s really his name, no, there is no character called Balls) the dark priest who resurrected Dracula and survived the events of Rondo Of Blood is controlling Richter Belmont’s mind and made him the master of Castlevania until Dracula can be returned.

By fully exploring the map Alucard will discover a gold and a silver ring which unlock a path to the centre of the castle when worn together in the clock room, once inside, Maria Renard will challenge you to a duel to determine who will be the one to face Richter and break the spell on him, of course, Alucard wins and you are given the Holy Glasses: an enchanted set of spectacles that can see through magical illusions. Reach Richter in the throne room and shatter the invisible, mind-controlling orb above his head using the Glasses and you’ll unlock one of the coolest twists in video game history.

Just when you think the game is going to end, Symphony Of The Night throws an entire second castle at you, which is the same as the first only upside down, twice as difficult and 10 times more tedious.

I mentioned pacing and game length issues earlier and this is where they come in. The Inverted Castle has virtually zero story to offer beyond the final boss when Alucard defeats his father and tells him Lisa’s final words; Richter and Maria do not follow Alucard into the Inverted Castle. The result is that this giant castle contains nothing but boss fights in, the equipment Alucard starts the game with should you choose to reclaim it and the final battle against Shaft and Dracula; there are no more secrets, no more character interactions or traversal abilities, just endless corridors of difficult combat encounters and aimless wandering because you’re supposed to collect pieces of Dracula’s body and are given next to no indication as to where to look or why.

I was really disappointed by the Inverted Castle when I revisited Symphony Of The Night. In my memory it was the ‘real’ game: a more serious challenge after an easy first castle, a treacherous keep filled with bosses and powerful equipment but upon revisiting it? I just wanted it to be over, I ended up using a guide to beeline it to the essential bosses (all of which are laughably easy compared to everything else) and then finishing up the game.

This pathetic Frankenstein’s Monster is one of the final bosses in the game. This was my entire fight. I’m not a min-maxer or a Symphony Of The Night expert and I didn’t farm for Crissaegrim in the Library, this is just me revisiting the game casually after 6 years away.

Symphony Of The Night has a couple of different endings. The ‘bad’ endings come about if you go and straight up kill Richter without discovering his mind control or using the Holy Glasses to see through it and then there are 2 good endings: one where Alucard returns to his slumber after saving the day and the best one, achieved by exploring almost every inch of both castles, where Maria Renard convinces him to stay and they go together into hiding. The ‘best’ ending is sweet and is the canon one as far as I know but I personally like the idea of Alucard vanishing from history into his coffin again more.

You can actually play the game again as Richter or Maria which is fun, either way, Dracula is defeated once again and Shaft is killed for good.

The Wheel Keeps Turning

Symphony of the Night is a game that means a lot to me.

Castlevania: Rondo Of Blood and Symphony Of The Night in particular along with the Yakuza series were what got me through lockdown; at a time of crushingly low self-worth and with an invisible evil holding the world by its throat, putting in a few hours each day to face the brutal challenge of Castlevania made me feel a sense of achievement and that I was actually capable of doing things, even if it was only moving a sprite across a screen. I couldn’t go outside and visit town but I could walk around Kamurocho, I’d messed up everything else in life but at least I could get serious nerd credit by beating Castlevania games and feel good about my gaming skill.

Here’s something I’ve never admitted before, I’m on the spectrum and I ain’t talking about the ZX, I’m talking about the ‘tism… this feels like the least-surprising confession from a retro gamer who writes 25 minute reviews about games older than himself you’ll ever read but it’s a big deal to me, this isn’t something I tell people, I wouldn’t be writing this if you knew my face.

But where am I going with this? Well, I always related to Alucard, or at least saw something of myself in his character.

For reasons I don’t want to get into here, the whole cursed bloodline/sins of the father plot you find in games like Metal Gear Solid and Castlevania always connected with me and so does Alucard and his vampire-dom with my own particular flavour of autism. I hate the term neuro-divergent because it implies that something that has caused me a lifetime of insomnia and pain is just another way of being normal. On the flip side, a lot of people expect you to be a savant with some kind of hidden talent but I’m afraid it’s just not there for me, I can’t name anything I have a natural talent for; you might see a Substack with 300 subscribers after a year but I see the tail end of a conscious effort to write in my free time since the age of 12.

I write with sass and with wit here on my Substack but in the real world I’m almost something of a vampire myself: I’ve had insomnia my entire life meaning I’ve always had an affinity for the night, I really don’t talk very much and I can’t confidently tell you that I know anyone I could call a friend; this night-dwelling, cursed, antisocial warrior Alucard has become one of those characters that connects with me on a deeper level. He doesn’t overcome internal trauma like Joel or defend others like the Master Chief, Alucard inhabits a world he doesn’t belong in, carries a burden others can’t understand and fights a war against his own destiny and that’s what I like so much about this character.

Well, that all got a bit personal, let’s finish this review. Symphony Of The Night hasn’t aged nearly as well as Super Metroid. It’s a game that goes on for too long, can’t balance to save its life and spreads a slither of story across a whole loaf of game; the Sega Saturn version included a few extra areas that I wish made their way into this version of the game. However, Symphony is oozing with style and charm, is incredibly replayable and absolutely deserves its place in the history books. Temper your expectations and don’t pigeonhole Symphony Of The Night into the Metroidvania box and you’ll have a fantastic time with it. This is one of the best games in its franchise and a top 50 video game for me over all.

TL;DR: Symphony Of The Night hasn’t aged as well as Super Metroid and isn’t a particularly good Metroidvania but it’s a game that means a lot to me and when taken on its own merits it’s a fantastic experience and deserves to be played by all who consider themselves gamers.

Consider Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night if you don’t own a PlayStation, it is a spiritual successor to Symphony Of The Night developed by many of the same people. I’ve played it, it’s great, it gets my seal of approval.

Poll For Next Month’s Review

I know this has been a mammoth read but please bear with me a few minutes longer.

I can’t decide what retro game to review next month so I’m bringing back the poll, I haven’t run one of these since the early days of my Substack.

Rondo Of Blood always gets overlooked in favour of Symphony Of The Night when it’s arguably the better game, it also happens to be the hardest game I’ve ever played and I haven’t revisited it since lockdown.

February is the month of my birthday so I always replay Ocarina Of Time for nostalgia reasons. I know the OoT retrospective has been done to death online but I want to build up a catalogue of reviews for some of the most important games in history.

I’ve barely touched the NES on my Substack so far, partially because my NES library is only a handful of games strong but mainly because I feel the console has been done to death already. That being said, on Substack, YouTube and beyond I see the original Metroid taking constant flak, this happens to be a game I really love and have strong words in defence of.

So, which would you like to see me review? I’ll be leaving this poll up for 7 days.

Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.

Scanlines’ Journal is a one-man publication financed out of my own pocket, much-appreciated donations and the subscriptions of my 2 very generous supporters. If you’d like to support the Journal, please consider hitting the ‘Support Scanlines’ button and making a small donation to my Ko-Fi page.

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