Daniel Keast

I think this is the first time I’ve finished this game. I’ve played it several times before on different platforms but always gave up before the end. There are only ten levels in the game, but a few of them are copies of previous levels that you go through in reverse. It’s clear that the development was rushed, because even within those levels there are sections that are copied over and over to pad out the game. The level called The Library is the one that people normally call out as having done this, but it is pretty common throughout the whole of the game.

This is a remake of the second Yakuza game, but it is the third game chronologically. I completed Yakuza 0 about the same time last year and very much enjoyed it. I also played the original Kiwami game years ago. I think this series has absolutely clicked with me now. I thought this was great.

This is a late-era SNES action RPG that was only released in Japan and the PAL regions. I live in the UK, and despite the SNES possibly being my favourite console and my love for RPGs, I never played it. It was released in December 1996, by which point I already had a PlayStation, so I imagine that’s why it slipped past me.

This is the twenty-ninth Discworld book, and it features the Ankh-Morpork city watch. Mostly, though, it focuses on Sam Vimes, who is sent back in time with a criminal named Carcer due to a lightning storm over the Unseen University. They arrive a few days before a revolution that Vimes participated in as a young recruit to the watch. In this new timeline, Carcer kills young Sam’s mentor, John Keel, and Vimes ends up having to take his place.

I have read this before, but I could remember almost nothing about it. After having finished it again I can see why. It’s fine, but it feels like it doesn’t have a lot to say after the excellent original book.

I actually have a physical UK copy of this game, it’s supposed to be one of the rarest ever made. It was released after the Saturn was already effectively dead. I bought it second hand I think off eBay when that site was new and you had to post cheques in the mail. It only cost me £30 I think.

I’ve read this several times before, but it’s this month’s pick for the book club. I figured I should read it again to have it fresh in my mind. I remembered almost all of it, the only thing I think I didn’t was the Soul Scrolls shop where unmanned printers are printing out prayers which get recycled into new printing paper straight away.

This is an RPG on the PlayStation produced by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the man that created the Final Fantasy series and directed by Takashi Tokita who also directed Chrono Trigger. It’s set in modern day New York, and you play a cop that is dealing with horrific incidents caused by mitochondria coming alive and trying to take over the Earth.

This is the story of a morbidly obese man that is addicted to food. He has become trapped in his apartment due to his weight, and at the start of the book is going to be removed by crane to go to the hospital and have his lower leg amputated. This goes wrong however when everyone else seems to turn into rage-filled zombies.

This is a Game Boy Advance game where you play a series of “microgames” one after the other. Each one lasts a handful of seconds, and you have to figure out what you have to do before you run out of time. Often this involves even figuring out what the controls are. The aim in each section is to finish a certain amount of them without losing all your lives. Each level is themed around a different character, and has its own intro and ending cutscene.

I was obsessed with this game before release, I was reading up on Internet forums about it when it was going to be on the Nintendo 64. The director of the game was on a lot of forums answering questions and doing interviews. It released for the GameCube in the end, after being delayed several times.

This is the second Mario platformer for the Game Boy. The graphics are significantly improved, it looks quite a bit like Super Mario World on the SNES, although it is obviously in greyscale and much lower resolution. It also has a world map where you select levels like the SNES game too.

I picked this game at random as something to play with my youngest son, Joe. I’d never played this version before, and we managed to get all of the retro achievements within about twenty minutes. It only has two of the original game’s four levels, and is obviously very simple graphically. We both had a lot of fun playing through it though, it definitely has a lot of the feel of the arcade game.

I bought this with the Dreamcast at the UK launch of the machine. I was absolutely amazed with the graphics and speed. The first level with a section where a killer whale is destroying a jetty behind you while you run into the screen was unlike anything I’d seen before.

I bought this with the PlayStation 1 on launch day in the UK, I went halves with my brother to be able to afford it. We both finished the game that day since it’s only really a single track. It has multiple difficulties, and on the higher one an extra section of the track opens up. You then have “extra” difficulties where you drive the track mirrored. We ended up playing the demo disk that came with the PlayStation quite a lot too, I was very impressed with one where you’re controlling a dinosaur.