/vr/ - Retro Games

I can't help but feel that the Game Gear is a very underrated handheld. Almost every time that this gets discussed here, it's negative, always people talking about how it's got a weak library or how its batteries don't last long, and that's it... there's so much more to the Game Gear, the library features many Genesis ports, which was the main appeal of handhelds back in the day, to play what you'd play on your console, on the go, and the fact that most of its library was shared with the Master System is fine, most people in the US or Japan had an NES, so they were experiencing most of these titles for the 1st time. I'll agree thatit took too many batteries,more than the Game Boy, and didn't last as long... but this is a handheld from 1990, 1 year after the Game Boy, with color and light on its screen, which was just incredible, the Game Boy had an iconic library and its batteries lasted longer, but to me the screen made it almost unplayable, I didn't enjoy a single Game Boy until the GBA SP came out in 2002 or something, but the Game Gear, which would let you play for about 3 to 5 hours on fully charged batteries, was actually enjoyable to play on these hours because I didn't have to fight with the screen constantly, and I could play in the dark, also most handheld ports around this time didn't take longer than an hour to beat if you knew what to do, so having 3 to 5 hours worked, even though it was indeed way worse than the Game Boy in that regard. I'd say that the main flaw the Game Gear had was being ahead of it's time, it was excellent.

I didn't grow up with Castle of Illusion, just QuackShot, but knowing that the team behind one of my favorites had made Castle of Illusion before it, and World of Illusion after it, I had to try them all out... in the end Castle of Illusion became one of my favorite SEGA Mega Drive titles, it just did everything right for a licensed mascot platformer, and even more than that, you could feel all of the love its creators had for Disney and its history. I've been wanting to try out Castle of Illusion's 8-Bit port for quite some time now, and even though I did play it before, I'm only now giving it a proper playthrough. One thing that immediately turned me off, which was in the original aswell, is limited continues, though you have 9 of them here, you still can get a Game Over, being sent back to the title screen, which I always dislike. Anyways, at first things just weren't clicking, its changes to how it played were welcome, like the grabbing and throwing of things, but something felt off, it just wasn't as fun to play and level design felt cheap sometimes... still, I kept pushing and now I'm at a spot where I can clear the first few levels easily and while gaining a lot of Tries, I think this is what so many love about retro video games, how something feels so difficult at first, and then suddently you're good at it by simply playing more, I'm having fun.