Wow, I actually played a game on physical media for once! And once again it's been about a year and a half since I've played a music dancing game. In this case, the game was Kylie Sing and Dance for Wii. Although I've played other games devoted to a single artist, I wasn't particularly big fans of them, whereas I'm definitely a big fan of the Princess of Pop. That made me look forward to playing this game much more, but I was thwarted for years because although some Wii games do play on my UK Wii on my TV in the US via an HDMI adapter, this one sadly did not. However, I finally got the opportunity to play the game on a PAL TV this past year, and all my Kylie video game dancing dreams were able to come true, haha.

I don't have a USB microphone at the moment, so I'm not able to comment on the sing part of Kylie Sing and Dance, but it seems like it's business as usual where you sing along to the music videos. The dance part is what you'd expect for the most part as well, although the fact that it's developed by a newcomer called Tubby Games and not Ubisoft does give it a different feel. The menus feel more basic as does the interface in general, and you're tossed back to the main menu every time you finish a song, which is a minor annoyance. The movement recognition is maybe slightly worse than the Ubisoft games and the combo system is very unforgiving, but chasing high scores is sort of a fruitless endeavor with all of these games anyway due to the oftentimes puzzling movement recognition -- even after repeated playthroughs of the same song I still wouldn't be able to figure out how they wanted me to hold the Wiimote for some movements, but that's par for the course.

Rather than attempt to portray the petite Ms. Minogue onscreen, the game opts for the usual anonymous dancers with blanked out features. Long-time fans such as myself will enjoy seeing some nods to some moves from actual Kylie routines, but for the most part this is the usual Just Dance type of choreography with a lot of arm movements and a fair dose of cheesiness. Apparently this is the third of three singing and dancing games that Tubby Games put out for Wii within the span of two years, and it's the one that was released the latest. I'll have to track down a copy of the first one, which is a video game version of the long-running pop music music compilation series Now That's What I Call Music , but I've already played through the middle one, Andrew Lloyd Webber Musicals Sing and Dance. More on that soon, but basically if you're a Kylie fan you'll definitely enjoy Kylie Sing and Dance, and if you're not (I'll try not to look down on you) but you're a fan of dancing video games, you're likely to still enjoy it anyway.

The Pokemon Company continues its relentless mission of trying its hand at every possible video game genre under the sun, and so I suppose it shouldn't have been a huge surprise that they would get to MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games at some point. Although I've dabbled in MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games like the free to play Smite and the juggernaut, League of Legends, I haven't really gotten far enough into any of them to be able to make any sort of real comparisons, but Pokémon Unite has been pretty easy to jump into and learn the ropes.

The game seems to have the standard trappings of the genre with PvP gameplay, three lanes, a jungle area where you can defeat environmental enemies to obtain buffs for your team, and a sizeable roster of characters you can play as, each specializing in different roles (in this case ranged and melee attackers, speedsters, and defenders). Pokémon Unite adopts the standard with free to play games of this type whereby the subset of available playable characters rotates, and you have to pony up some of the in-game currency in order to unlock a character permanently. You can accrue this currency over time via the free battle pass missions and various login bonuses, or you could speed up the process by paying real money and/or springing for the paid battle pass. No surprises there, and there are also purely cosmetic costumes that use a different currency that I believe purely require real money.

The game has built-in tutorials and a series of beginner missions that, if you complete them all, unlock a character, and at a certain point you'll unlock the ability to play ranked matches. I had a decent amount of fun getting to know the game and playing through a few matches each day, and although it was easy to win games early on, as my rank increased the game did get more challenging. I found the flow of the game to be a little repetitive as you build up your character and evolve it as the match progresses, but this type of game is all about coordinating your strategy with your team and that whole aspect is completely missing when playing with random people online and with no way to communicate aside from a basic list of phrases.

Pokémon Unite is bright and colorful and as usual for long-time Pokémon fans it's fun to see the variety of 'mon included with additional characters and costumes being released regularly. It's easy to play, so theoretically even younger players could get into it, although I'm not sure how much they would stick with it. I presume the game has enough depth that it could be satisfying to play at a competitive level too, but I have no idea how popular it's become. For myself I can say that this was a game that I didn't mind sinking some time into to finish the beginner missions, but I doubt I'm going to pick up again anytime soon, unless I had a group of friends who wanted to play it.

I'm quite a big fan of old games that were never released outside of Japan originally but that have made it over to Western shores many years later, and so I was interested in trying out the Nintendo Switch Online Famicom title Ninja JaJaMaru-kun (the last game I played in this category was the quite enjoyable if not particularly surprising Mario's Super Picross). The game was originally released outside of Japan on the Wii Virtual Console, but it should have a wider audience on Nintendo Switch Online.

Ninja JaJaMaru-kun is definitely an old school arcade game and of its time, meaning that it's pretty simplistic by modern standards in terms of its mechanics, presentation, and progression. The game reminds me a bit of Ice Climbers in that you can break blocks to move between four different floors, although in this game your goal isn't to reach the top of a mountain. Instead you're just tasked with defeating every enemy in the stage. The game features similarly stiff jumping controls, which definitely adds to the challenge. Every stage has eight enemies, one of which is the more difficult one, and every few stages the eight enemies shift so that seven of them are the previous stages' difficult enemy and a new, more difficult enemy is introduced, which is a novel game mechanic. To defeat enemies you can throw shuriken or jump on them to stun them. In earlier stages you can get by with just using your shuriken, but in later stages the harder enemies require that you jump on them first.

As with the original Mario Bros. game, you can also earn bonus points by collecting the spirits of the enemies you defeat, which float up from where you defeated them. You also earn bonus points from the petals that your love interest drops from the top of the screen, while also having to avoid bombs that your enemy drops. Lastly, there are also bonus items (and occasional hazards) hidden in the blocks you can break. Many of these just add to your score or are only marginally useful, but these bonus items tie into the best feature by far in the game. If you collect three different types, a huge frog jumps in to help you out, and you go into this sort of rampage mode where you can hop around the stage on the back of the huge frog and gobble up any remaining enemies in the stage. It's as awesome as it sounds, trust me. There are also time bonuses as well for beating a stage quickly.

Ninja JaJaMaru-kun does have that old-school difficulty and repetitiveness, but infinite save states and rewind features make it much easier to work your way through the game's 22 unique stages. I wouldn't say that this is an essential game, but it's on par with many of the other Nintendo classics that, from a modern perspective, are similarly awkward and difficult. Apparently the game was a big success for its time, and Wikipedia says that "sold nearly 1 million units, becoming one of the best-selling Famicom games". It looks like there were quite a few sequels, but from what I've seen of them online, I'm not sure they really improved on the charm and simple but fun arcade action of the original. I doubt I'll be coming back to this one any time soon, but it was fun to try it out, and I'm always happy to see previously unlocalized old school games make an appearance in other regions many years later.

Welp, it's that time of the year again. This last year was super busy, and there was very little rhyme or reason to the list of games I played other than a lot of them were pretty mindless and short. By far the most-played platform was Switch, in particular the eShop games, and quite a few of them were free-to-play. As usual, there are a few dance games in there, and also a few Nintendo Switch Online games, but otherwise it's a pretty random assortment. There were a decent number of games that made it onto my list of favorite games of all time, three of which were short but sweet indie titles.

In terms of other things I blogged about this past year, the Ask Iwata book was a quick read and a nice tribute to a great man, and at the very beginning of last year I'd sat down and watched the three Pikmin short films. I continued to play a roster of mobile games daily, including the still enjoyable Fire Emblem Heroes, but those generally didn't make it onto my blog as there wasn't really much new to say about them. Included amongst those was Dr. Mario World, and although I didn't mark its end, it will be very fondly remembered as by far my favorite game of the series.

As usual, here's the summary of what my 2021 looked like gaming-wise (games listed in approximate descending order) with links to each game’s corresponding blog review:

HIGH
- Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
- Picross 3D Round 2 (3DSWare)
- Towerfall (Switch eShop)
- Gris (Switch eShop)
- The Gardens Between (Switch eShop)

MEDIUM
- Ninjala (Switch eShop)
- Picross 3D (DS)
- Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (NSW)
- Knockout City (Switch eShop)
- Pokemon Trading Card Game Online (PC)
- Pokemon Cafe ReMix (Android) (replay; previous 2020)
- Puyo Puyo Tetris (Switch)
- PAC-MAN 99 (Switch eShop)
- The Black Eyed Peas Experience: Special Edition (Wii)
- Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (3DS) (replay; previous 2017)
- Pikmin Bloom (Android)
- Night Trap: 25th Anniversary Edition (Switch eShop)
- Mario's Super Picross (SNES)
- Genshin Impact (PC)
- Mighty Switch Force! 2 (3DSWare)
- Super Mario Bros. 35 (Switch eShop)
- S.C.A.T.: Special Cybernetic Attack Team (NES, Switch online)
- Rubik's World (DS)
- Mechstermination Force (Switch eShop)
- Vs. Excitebike (NES)
- Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova (PS2)
- Train Conductor World (Android)
- Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's Treasure (3DS)
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch)
- Super Kirby Clash (Switch eShop)
- Streetpass Mii Plaza games: set 4 (3DSware)
- Pokemon Quest (Switch eShop)
- PAC-MAN (2020) (Android)
- Dance on Broadway (Wii)
- Puzzle Retreat (Android)
- Pokemon Sun (3DS)
- Flip Wars (Switch eShop)

LOW
- Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts (SNES)

In terms of trends, it looks like I played more handheld games than in the previous year and slightly more non-first-party games, although the number of sequels I played was a little higher. Otherwise no huge differences, other than that I didn't really get through many "serious" games or all-time classics and such.

Well, that's it for another year in review! As always, thanks as always to anyone who’s stumbled across my little patch of cyberspace and found it even mildly diverting, and welcome to another full year of video games at the Intergalactic Video Game Academy! ;)