Hardcore Gaming 101 (Posts tagged review)

Sonata is a dating sim/RPG hybrid from T&E Soft. The game begins with the protagonist watching a movie with his date. Afterwards, they are both swept up in a mysterious light, just like the fantasy-romance flick they just watched (also named Sonata). He awakens in an alternate world called Paradigm, unable to remember what his date looked like but knowing he must find her.

What do you get when you mix the unique battle system from Megaman Battle Network, the high-speed intensity of Eschatos, Cho-Ren-Sha 68k and other similar shoot-em-ups, and the addictive gameplay loop and procedurally-generated challenges of Balatro, Rogue Legacy and its modern indie kin? You get Thomas Moon Kang and Humble Games’ One Step From Eden, one of the coolest games to have come from the roguelite boom of the 2010s and 2020s, and one that sticks far, far closer to old-school roguelike tradition than it may first appear.

Splatterworld: Rick to Kyoufu no Daiou (“Rick vs. The King of Terror”) is an interesting oddity. The trend of taking action games and turning them into RPGs was not a new one, but would definitely have been a first for the Splatterhouse series, if it had actually been released. It was scheduled to be released on March 19th, 1993. Instead, despite being nearly one hundred percent complete, it was quietly dropped from Namco’s 1993 release schedule. For years, few outside of Japan knew that it even existed at some point. But by the early 2020s, information about it began trickling out to the world.

It could have been anything, really. Maybe it was series fatigue, or just the general slump fighting games went through in the mid 2000s. It could have been mismanagement from Konami, who ended up acquiring Hudson Soft around the game’s release. Maybe, just maybe, Bloody Roar 4 just wasn’t that good, and people took notice. Whatever the case, it’s the game that may have well killed the series for good.

Although it lacks a proper number at the end, Primal Fury is very much a proper sequel to BR3, with the only thing carrying over being some of the stages. It’s also the first Bloody Roar to never get an arcade version, making it a permanent console exclusive. Primal Fury is almost universally considered the best game in the series, and because of that, it’s the one that sees the most play in competitive settings. If you’re only going to play one Bloody Roar game, this is almost certainly the one to go for. While the changes are even more subtle than the previous game, all of them make for a much more polished game.

Bloody Roar 3 is the game where the series really starts to feel like it’s really hitting its stride. It has some rough edges, however, which make it feel more like a prototype for the later Primal Fury. The new changes make for a game that certainly feels different from the previous game, and it stands out fairly well on its own merits.

Released more than a year after the original game hit arcades, Bloody Roar 2 stands as an improvement on almost everything its prequel had. It’s often considered a favorite by series fans, and while it’s more of a matter of taste, it’s certainly a valid perspective to take. It certainly competes a lot better with the PS1’s many 3D fighters, although whether it beats the legendary Tekken 3 is a very iffy call.

By the mid 90s, the biggest craze in the arcades had become the 3D fighting game, as popularized by Virtua Fighter and Tekken. Soon after, big developer in the arcade industry, as well as a few of the smaller ones, were determined to make their own push into the market. Not all of them succeeded – even titans like Konami or Midway were capable of putting out something like Battle Tryst or War Gods. Raizing, mostly known for their SHMUPs before this game, would eventually make their own try at the genre. For their part, they come out with a pretty fine series – not quite at the heights of the genre, but often well remembered all its own.

The universe is full of many weird and wonderful things, such as Bubsy the Bobcat coming back for a second time. After the largely piddling pair of The Woolies Strike Back and Paws on Fire! in the late 2010s, Atari SA acquired the rights to Bubsy in 2023 and immediately sought to do something more serious with him. This started with 2025’s Purrfect Collection, which gathered all of his original games complete with a mind-boggling amount of bonus material that showed a greater reverence for the character.

However, it would soon be followed by a surprise announcement of a new 3D platformer, created by Fabraz of Demon Turf/Demon Tides fame! It’s easy to assume this would be a quick reskin of the developer’s best known work like Bubsy’s previous comeback attempts, laced with cynical ironic jokes about Bubsy’s infamy. But Bubsy 4D manages to do its own thing, resulting in a solid (if perhaps too short and easy) adventure that manages to be charmingly funny and one of Bubsy’s better games.

Have you ever played a gamebook? Perhaps a ‘Choose your own adventure’? If you have, which ones? Have you tried Fighting Fantasy, or GrailQuest perchance?  If you have, then you will be in familiar territory. Released internationally in 2026, written, illustrated and primarily developed by VanillaWare alumni Yoshio Nishimura; his take on the digital gamebook is Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle.