u/ValerieMayTheGay88

This is gonna be me yapping about this random DVD from 2008, so if you're not interested then you can keep scrolling

Anyway now that we've got that out of the way, let's get onto it

This was a DVD meant to celebrate the highlights of Invader Zim, specifically being titled after the key event of the series Operation Impending Doom 2, and while I love the concept of the DVD and think the artwork looks amazing, there's a lot of little things that build up to one that feels like a lot of missed potential

1 - The episodes chosen, there were some episodes here that definitely make sense to be here, such as The Nightmare Begins, Fry Cook, Career Day, Mysterious Mysteries, and Hobo 13. However for a greatest hits DVD there's some clear omissions that would have been perfect for this type of set, like Dark Harvest, Backseat Drivers, Zim Eats Waffles, Tak, Gir Goes Crazy, Bad Bad Rubber Piggy, but instead they chose ones like Gaz Eats Pork and Future Dib. I'm not saying those are bad episodes, it's just weird that for a greatest hits set many fan favorites are left out.

2 - The episode order, this DVD does a practice similar to SpongeBob in that all the episodes are in a random order and only play the intro for the first episode, while I love that for SpongeBob, I don't think it works nearly as well for a show like Zim. The Nightmare Begins, the first episode of the series, is placed as the fourth episode on the disc, which I know that Frycook is placed as the first one which does make sense since it's an episode exploring Zim's original banishment, but Nightmare Begins has a completely unique intro to the other episodes and again it would have been perfect to have it open up with the first ever episode made (not counting the pilot).

3 - All the episodes are sister segments, each episode is composed of episodes that aired alongside each other, which wouldn't be a bad thing if it weren't for the fact that the Media Blasters volume DVDs already do this, if you wanna watch them in order you could just watch those. It's another missed opportunity to not have segments that diverge from their original airings, like after Career Day you could have an episode like Hobo 13 or Bloaty's Pizza Hog for instance, but having every episode just be both sister segments feels boring and too safe.

Now all of this isn't to say that this DVD is a travesty and you should stay far away from it or anything like that, I love the idea of the DVD, the aforementioned artwork, and the fact they were willing to release an Invader Zim set as late as 2008 is awesome. But as I stated, there were a lot of missed opportunities to make a truly greatest hits level set, and I wanted to ramble about it.

Take care 👋

Everyone knows about Capcom VS SNK 2, it's one of the best fighting games of all time, with it's incredibly experimental free ratio system, character roster, soundtrack, and just being a blast to play both casually and competitively.

However, when I bought the Capcom Fighting Collection 2 game on my PS4, I wasn't expecting to find a new favorite in the form of the original Capcom VS SNK, I had played it once before but that was about it, then I just kept coming back to it again, and again, and again, there's so much I love about this game that I don't see nearly enough people talk about, so I'm here to gush and talk about why CVS1 is one of my favorite Capcom fighters.

DISCLAIMER: Despite the opener, I'm not here to say that CVS2 is overrated or overhyped, I do think it's better than CVS1 in the gameplay category, when I say I love one game that doesn't mean I dislike the other, I'm merely here to gush about the first game, I'm also a casual player so I'm not commenting on the competitive side of the game. Anyways now that we've got that out of the way, let's get on with it.

Atmosphere - This game is unapologetically Early 2000s/Y2K, from the announcer, to the backgrounds, to the menu screens, it gives off Lumines vibes if anyone's played that, the style this game has is very timeless and it makes it stand out amongst the pack.

Music - As mentioned in the last segment, the music in this game is great. Has a lot of that aforementioned Y2K/Lumines styled music and it's just pleasant to the ears while complimenting the game's vibe perfectly, but it's not just that, the game also gives you the option to select what are called Nostalgia remix tracks, which are songs from a various amount of older Capcom and SNK games. These range from Street Fighter 2, to Fatal Fury, Art Of Fighting, Final Fight, and KOF 94, both soundtracks are great and I often alternate between the 2 each play session.

Ratio & Groove System - Easily the most contentious part of the game, unlike the sequel which adds a plethora of play styles while allowing you to assign ratio points to characters freely, this game has 2 grooves (one for Capcom and SNK each) and you're given 4 points to make a team. Now at first I did agree with the criticisms, as it did feel more restrictive compared to the second game, however overtime I did learn to appreciate this system. I like how this game has you strategize with how you form your team, do I go with 4 characters with weaker overall power, do I have a balanced team of 2 characters with equal power, do I have one 3 point character and the other be a 1, or do I have just one 4 power character with amazing strength but risk losing the match in one round? It feels like a more enjoyable and more fleshed out version of KOF 2001's format, though obviously they're very different gameplay wise. Also controversial take but I actually prefer the SNK groove to the Capcom one in this game, one because I prefer SNK's character icons and two because I prefer being able to charge up my meter as opposed to slowly building it up overtime.

Gameplay - Like the point above, this is another contentious part of this game, overall most people do find the game enjoyable but many once again find it not nearly as open or deep as the second game. While I can't say that this is the most complex fighting game I've ever played or anything, it has a very grounded and fundamental gameplay style to it, and honestly sometimes that's all I need. Having 2 different types of ways to play each character and having 4 different sections of characters to choose from that all having varying levels of power is a lot of fun and I don't see many games do, plus there's one aspect of the game that's entirely unique compared to it's sequel that I haven't talked about yet. Similar to the KOF series, almost every character has an EX version you can choose while holding select on the character select screen, these versions are often callbacks to older variants of each character, such as projectile Kyo, SF2 variants of the Street Fighter characters, and vice versa. I always love when fighting games do this and it is sad they didn't bring this over to CVS2.

The roster is mostly what you'd expect, but that's not a bad thing, it comprises most the key players from both Capcom and SNK and still has some nice additions like Morrigan and Nakoruru. The Pro Version is largely just a small upgrade to the base game but it's better for 2 reasons: Dan Hibiki and Joe Higashi, such little additions but so perfect for a crossover title.

Overall in case you couldn't tell already, I love this game. While CVS2 is rightly hailed as one of the best fighting games of all time, the original Capcom VS SNK still holds up today as a simple but satisfying fighting game to play. The aesthetics are entirely unique, the music is great, the roster is fun to play with, and it's just a fun fighter. Both this game and it's sequel can both be found in Capcom Fighting Collection 2, a wonderful compilation with so much love and dedication poured into it while also containing other classics like Street Fighter Alpha 3, Project Justice, both Power Stone games, and Plasma Sword.

This is indeed a future legend 😊 💛💙

Now that the final major update has been released, I've decided to post a review on the game detailing my thoughts, my positives, my criticisms, and overall how I think they handled this. This is my opinion as someone who's dumped over 80 hours into the compilation so even though I've played it a bunch I don't claim to be an authority, you're entitled to your own feelings about the game whether you love it or hate it, and please do not go and harass anyone. Now that that's out of the way, let's get onto it

Positives:

- The vast amount of games on offer is very commendable, detailing almost all of Klassic Mortal Kombat history from the original game up to 4, even including Wavenet UMK3, the spinoffs, trilogy, and the handheld versions of Deadly Alliance

- The inclusion of the console and handheld versions of games is awesome, these are still part of MK history and they have unique quirks that make them special compared to the arcade (my favorites include MK1 Genesis, MK2 SNES/Gameboy, and Tournament Edition GBA), also helps preserve versions that would have been lost to time

- Additional settings such as Fixed AI difficulty, infinite fatality time, and being able to immediately challenge secret fighters like Reptile in MK1 & Smoke/Jade/Noob in MK2 is a lot of fun, makes the arcade ladder more bearable

- Lore & Documentary sections are excellent, so much dedication to the franchise while being super entertaining to read/watch through, I especially love the Documentary and I haven't even finished it yet

Now onto the section you were probably anticipating most, *the cons* , and oh boy there's plenty that went wrong here and some of them are quite baffling, we'll start with the smaller issues and then gradually build into the massive knocks against the Kollection:

- Certain games are missing, such as UMK3 Genesis and MK Gold, these are missing due to either licensing or not having a proper emulator, the former is forgivable so I'm not giving Digital Eclipse and insane amount of flak for this

- Input delay, yeah this one is definitely infamous, move drops and delayed movement are a plenty in the games here, while it has been improved a bit compared to how it was at launch, it's not nearly enough and more dedicated players will notice it while playing it for extended periods

- The online. Oh boy. The online. This is easily the biggest tragedy with this Kollection and easily the part that will live in infamy the most with how mismanaged the release of this was. The game was advertised with having rollback netcode but holy shit there is so much wrong here. Lobbies crashing endlessly, no ability to kick problematic players from matches, many players not even showing up or having inaccurate connections, how did this go so wrong? You can't advertise your game having rollback netcode and then have it turn out like Super Smash Bros Brawl levels of dysfunctional holy christ

- MK4 isn't included on the cartridge and requires a mandatory update. Need I say more?

Overall, I love Mortal Kombat to pieces, I really do, and I don't regret the amount of time I've spent playing the games in this Kollection. But the fact of the matter is that the handling of this release has been a disaster, so many things left unfixed that aren't gonna be addressed due to Krossplay being the last major update is depressing. This method of releasing your game unbaked and then fixing it later is a practice that I loathe in gaming, even if it's an enjoyable game there's no reason to rush a game out without checking over for any massive issues that might have slipped through, STOP DOING THIS WITH ALL YOUR GAMES!

And there's some things I didn't even mention in the bullet points, like MK4's lighting being messy or at launch the pause period being an ungodly amount of time or MK2 32X missing audio samples. I tried to be optimistic with this Kollection as many people were trashing it before it even released and naturally I distrust any anti-woke/drama merchant channels that peddle out the same slop to drive up clicks, but this was genuinely a problem, there were tons of issues that can and should be fixed but the fact that they're stopping here and not fixing the netcode or input delay further was the last straw for me.

It's sad too, cause I think Digital Eclipse has put out some great collections before this, I adore the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection they did, Atari 50 was a great love letter to the company, and Samurai Shodown Neogeo Collection proved they can do fighting game compilations without the abundance of input delay or other issues (lack of training mode notwithstanding), but this was just rough man. Me and many others gave them so much patience, good will, and optimism that they'd at least fix the remaining issues with the game, but they're deciding that they've already done enough despite the glaring problems that still plague the game, it's like throwing glitter on cardboard, it may look prettier but it doesn't solve the issue, in fact it creates more of a mess cause it shows clear promise but a lack of drive to finish the job.

At the end of the day, I can't tell you to buy or not buy this game, that's for you and you only to decide. It's not the customer to blame for a company putting out a half baked product, purity tests don't magically make everything bad go away. All I hope is that my review can inform those in whatever decision they end up making.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day 😊 💜

This game is commonly known for 2 things: it's insane price tag, and being the inferior counterpart to Rondo Of Blood

I first played it when I got the Castlevania Advanced Collection on PS4 a few years ago (crazy to think about it) as it's included as a bonus game, I didn't get very far into it

Then I felt the urge to play it again and then unbeknownst to me I'd end up beating the whole game

I actually really enjoyed it, obviously it's not as good as Rondo Of Blood, and it's definitely got it's cheap moments, but it was fun to play and I liked some of the little callbacks in the level design

It is brutal ofc, the series is known for that, but with save states and rewind it makes it easier to appreciate this game as an alternative remix to Rondo Of Blood, also the soundtrack is incredible

Would definitely recommend the Advanced Collection as it not only contains this game but the 3 GBA Metroidvania titles as well, but honestly I'd recommend you grab all the Castlevania collections, they did a great job with them and they're outstanding games for the most part, brutal but uber satisfying 🩷

Haven't seen a question like this posted before here to my knowledge

Anyway the one I highlight for this is Code Lyoko, a series that aired on Cartoon Network from 2003-2007

This is one of the interests that ruled 2021 for me (others include Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Ed Edd N Eddy)

I love the blend of 2D/3D animation it has and it just gets more inventive as it goes on, the show also stays consistently good, Season 1 is a little rough but it ends well and Seasons 2-4 are great

While the characters don't go through *insane* development, they do subtly grow overtime and the characterization is very good across most the cast (though William definitely deserved more time in the final season)

It's theme song is also incredible, whether it's English or French doesn't matter it's a bop in all languages (fun fact the song was written by a trans woman), same goes for the soundtrack

The English dub is definitely very budget feeling but it has it's charm and I've grown to associate these characters with these voices (interestingly they do both the English and French voices)

It's a great show, one of my absolute favorites from Cartoon Network and I think it still holds up nicely, wish it had more attention, it's on YouTube for free officially if anyone wants to watch it :3

For the record I don't believe this narrative that DP was only a good concept and that the show itself was either below average or even bad, I still think it's a great show and every time I've rewatched it's been an enjoyable time

But God I wish this man would just STFU, he doesn't own the rights anymore but still is like "I did this, I did that, I wanted it like this, memememememe", it's so goddamn annoying it made me tune out, though I did like hearing from the other cast members