the pixel art and bleepy music are undeniably extremely charming. it somehow feels nostalgic despite the fact this is my first time playing it. having recently played scarlet, i can't help but feel some of that charm was lost in the transition to 3D.
but also i'm just a sucker for pixel art (even though i wasn't allowed to play games as a kid i used to try to make my own pixel art in ms paint lol.)
and i'm also a sucker for limited-channel chiptune music and the way it encourages implied harmony through arpeggios and such, and the polyphonic vibes. it kinda reminds me (in a good way) of baroque keyboard music like that of Bach, which i played a lot as a kid because my parents wanted me to learn the piano because it looks good on college applications or something.
the sense of forward momentum is unique compared to other 2D platformers i've played, going fast feels fantastic but running into a rock or spring and stopping in your tracks is uniquely frustrating. the pixel art graphics are great and the green hill music goes hard as fuck. but...
i wish hitting one enemy or one spike wasn't so punishing in terms of losing rings, or that there were infinite lives. maybe i'm just spoiled by more modern games but i got to the first eggman fight twice and died both times and got sent all the way back to the start of the game and then got frustrated and gave up.
i think some older games might just not be a good fit for me because i'm used to games having a sort of ratchet of saves or a level select or something where even if you die you don't lose ALL your progress. entirely possible i'm missing something like that though and maybe there's cheats or passwords or something that i don't know about.
tl;dr skill issue (me). i'll probably try it more in the future and i'll update this review if/when i've seen past green hill zone lol. it also probably didn't help that i was essentially playing on a gameboy and also i may have consumed a substance beforehand so take this whole review with a big grain of salt lol
