Alright, here goes:
Complete list
Game 7 - Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins (3DS VC) ~2h
And on with playing classics from my childhood via 3DS VC. Good stuff. Mario Land 2 is a pretty cool game. It is much more expansive than the first game by including some aspects of SMB3 or SMW like a world map. It's actually more nonlinear than even those because you can freely move between areas. However, it still maintains the relative weirdness of the first game and is actually pretty inventive in terms of scenery. SML2's biggest problem is probably its difficulty curve. Since every area can theoretically be played first, there is no real difficulty progression, and 99% of the game is rather easy. Except... the last level. Wario's castle is an intense step up in difficulty. It's actually not too bad in the grand scheme of things, but the jump is kind of jarring.
Game 8 - The Legend of Zelda (NES) 8h
This was actually the very first time I have played this game. And it was pretty fun. Being thrown into the world without any sort of guidance can be a little intimidating at first, especially since everything seems to look the same, but after a while you really learn your way around. The difficulty is a little uneven at times (some normal enemys like the knights you can only hit from the back can be supremely annoying, while every boss including Ganon was pretty much a pushover) but yeah. Great game. Also interesting how many elements of the later games show up as early as here.
Game 9 - Kirby's Adventure 3D Classic (3DS) ~7h
Well fuck me. This game is absolutely amazing. First things first: it is absolutely beautiful. Like... stunning even. And not only because they somehow managed to do this on the NES (which blows my mind). The backgrounds are incredible, the sprites are beautiful and clean. A masterwork of pixel-art and there is nothing much else like it, because then came the SNES era which looks markedly different. Plays fantastic as well. Really inventive levels, great powers (much more interesting ones than in Dreamland 2 as well), and that little shout out to the first Dreamland at the end of the game warmed my heart. tl;dr: Had a blast!
Game 10 - Gone Home (PC) ~2-3h
Okay, first things first for the game police: give me any academically sustainable definition of "game" that Gone Home does not fit into and I might be willing to listen to you. If you tell me that Gone Home has "not enough gameplay", then you have to tell me what "gameplay" actually is. Is it quantifiable? If shooting qualifies as "gameplay," then is "gameplay" maybe spatial interaction? Because Gone Home has plenty of that. Bottom line is: I don't think this claim is sustainable. This is also not really the argument people are making, as it only very thinly masks "I don't want this stuff in my games culture." So whatever. Why am I even talking about this... So yeah, Gone Home. Exploring spaces and learning about their story by examining artifacts is something that has always deeply fascinated me, so I really had a lot of fun playing this. The story itself is a neat and well-told coming-of-age young adult tale that was just really pleasant. Made me kinda just... feel good. A feel-good game. That's it!
Game 11 - Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner - Soul Hackers (3DS) ~35h
Fact: I love first person tile based dungeon crawlers. I love mapping out floors, I love it when these floors feature teleport pads, trapdoors and other nasty things, I love expansive "are you f'n kidding me"-dungeons. In short: this was right up my alley. Few things: I really liked the cyberpunk aesthetics. Remember when the internet was just promising this really magical thing? CYBERSPACE and stuff. Yeah. However, I think the game does not really do anything really exciting with it. It lacks the world-ending gravitas of the originals, and replaces it with a more detective-mystery-like thing, but the actual mystery turns out to be not all that interesting. The characters are cool however, with Nemissa obviously leading the charge. Mechanically, I found the game to be a little too easy. You don't even really need Demons, since the Protagonist and Nemissa are extremely strong. You're also just swimming in currency really quickly and never have to worry about any resources. That actually made the Dungeons feel a little tedious sometimes. Dang, I sound like a real negative nancy here... all in all, it's mostly just niggles and I enjoyed the game very much.
Complete list
Game 7 - Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins (3DS VC) ~2h
And on with playing classics from my childhood via 3DS VC. Good stuff. Mario Land 2 is a pretty cool game. It is much more expansive than the first game by including some aspects of SMB3 or SMW like a world map. It's actually more nonlinear than even those because you can freely move between areas. However, it still maintains the relative weirdness of the first game and is actually pretty inventive in terms of scenery. SML2's biggest problem is probably its difficulty curve. Since every area can theoretically be played first, there is no real difficulty progression, and 99% of the game is rather easy. Except... the last level. Wario's castle is an intense step up in difficulty. It's actually not too bad in the grand scheme of things, but the jump is kind of jarring.
Game 8 - The Legend of Zelda (NES) 8h
This was actually the very first time I have played this game. And it was pretty fun. Being thrown into the world without any sort of guidance can be a little intimidating at first, especially since everything seems to look the same, but after a while you really learn your way around. The difficulty is a little uneven at times (some normal enemys like the knights you can only hit from the back can be supremely annoying, while every boss including Ganon was pretty much a pushover) but yeah. Great game. Also interesting how many elements of the later games show up as early as here.
Game 9 - Kirby's Adventure 3D Classic (3DS) ~7h
Well fuck me. This game is absolutely amazing. First things first: it is absolutely beautiful. Like... stunning even. And not only because they somehow managed to do this on the NES (which blows my mind). The backgrounds are incredible, the sprites are beautiful and clean. A masterwork of pixel-art and there is nothing much else like it, because then came the SNES era which looks markedly different. Plays fantastic as well. Really inventive levels, great powers (much more interesting ones than in Dreamland 2 as well), and that little shout out to the first Dreamland at the end of the game warmed my heart. tl;dr: Had a blast!
Game 10 - Gone Home (PC) ~2-3h
Okay, first things first for the game police: give me any academically sustainable definition of "game" that Gone Home does not fit into and I might be willing to listen to you. If you tell me that Gone Home has "not enough gameplay", then you have to tell me what "gameplay" actually is. Is it quantifiable? If shooting qualifies as "gameplay," then is "gameplay" maybe spatial interaction? Because Gone Home has plenty of that. Bottom line is: I don't think this claim is sustainable. This is also not really the argument people are making, as it only very thinly masks "I don't want this stuff in my games culture." So whatever. Why am I even talking about this... So yeah, Gone Home. Exploring spaces and learning about their story by examining artifacts is something that has always deeply fascinated me, so I really had a lot of fun playing this. The story itself is a neat and well-told coming-of-age young adult tale that was just really pleasant. Made me kinda just... feel good. A feel-good game. That's it!
Game 11 - Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner - Soul Hackers (3DS) ~35h
Fact: I love first person tile based dungeon crawlers. I love mapping out floors, I love it when these floors feature teleport pads, trapdoors and other nasty things, I love expansive "are you f'n kidding me"-dungeons. In short: this was right up my alley. Few things: I really liked the cyberpunk aesthetics. Remember when the internet was just promising this really magical thing? CYBERSPACE and stuff. Yeah. However, I think the game does not really do anything really exciting with it. It lacks the world-ending gravitas of the originals, and replaces it with a more detective-mystery-like thing, but the actual mystery turns out to be not all that interesting. The characters are cool however, with Nemissa obviously leading the charge. Mechanically, I found the game to be a little too easy. You don't even really need Demons, since the Protagonist and Nemissa are extremely strong. You're also just swimming in currency really quickly and never have to worry about any resources. That actually made the Dungeons feel a little tedious sometimes. Dang, I sound like a real negative nancy here... all in all, it's mostly just niggles and I enjoyed the game very much.