GUEST REVIEW by SUPER BAD ADVICE 

I hate Captain Toad. Not the game, you understand – that’s excellent (and more on that in a minute).

No, I hate the character, because he reminds me of the terrifying 1980s mushroom marketing board adverts from the telly, where a platoon of marching fungus guys would sing "Make room for the mushrooms!" while stomping ever closer.
 
For the disgustingly youthful amongst you, I should explain this was an effort to encourage people to put more allegedly delicious mushrooms on foods.

​You know: like on pizzas, in cakes, in big mouldering piles all over a roast dinner, and probably in cups of tea as well. Mercifully it wasn’t a suggestion you ‘make room’ by taking immunosuppressants to render yourself a thrush-addled leper, but then the mushroom ‘troops’ on the advert looked fairly militaristic so WHO KNOWS WHERE IT WOULD HAVE ENDED?
 
In light of that potential mycelium-based coup it’s probably just as well everyone ignored the request on the basis mushrooms just taste vaguely of dank cellars and potting compost, and are thus horrible: no one in their right mind really wants the ones that are already there, let alone wanting to make room for extra ones. What? Oh yeah, I’m supposed to talk about the game, aren’t I?

DRUNK PURCHASE
​Like many a Switch title, Captain Toad started out life on the Wii U. But as only about 7 people accidentally bought the beleaguered console while drunk, then hid it in a hedge out of shame without getting any software for it, Nintendo have sensibly realised they can re-release the game and it’ll be new to more or less everyone. And that’s grand, because Captain Toad is a bit of alright.
 
A spin-off from the bonus levels found in Super Mario 3D world, Captain Toad sees you guiding the bulbous-headed dude around a bunch of mostly small, rotatable levels, collecting stars and coins and stuff as you go.

This revolve-o-tron mechanic is the key to the whole game, as all but the simplest stages have plenty of hidden tunnels, lifts, doors and the like to navigate that you’ll only discover on closer investigation of the whole stage, not just the view from the front.
 
It’s also essential to your progression because, despite how it looks, Captain Toad isn’t really a platformer as we’d usually know it.

PUZZLE BOX
Why? Well unlike Mario, Toad has crippling sciatica (a heavy backpack) so can’t jump; circumventing this physical rubbishness means you have to find him a walking route to his goal – a bit like when you’re out with your Nan in her scooter and you have to go round and round the access slope to get out of Lidl, rather than forcing her to ‘off road’ down the steps like you did last time when she ended up dropping all her pickled onions and gin down a drain.

This means every level is a sort of little 3D puzzle box to solve. You’re not entirely helpless though, as an onscreen cursor is used to activate things around your fungal adventurer to aid him as he goes.

Or, in 2-player mode, a friend can irritate the hell out of you by taking control of this cursor and not listening to a bloody word you say about where they need to point it.
 
Because the game comes in these bitesize chunks it’s a perfect fit for the Switch – you can bang out a lot of levels at home, or drop in for a quick play on the move.

​For a bit of variety there are also on rails levels (in this case, literally on rails as you’re in a minecart) where you’re hurling turnips FPS-style, and bonus collectables where you have to search every level for a tiny ‘pixel toad’ character – and some of these are absurdly well hidden.

MAKE ROOM FOR THE MUSHROOM
​You might think all this plodding about sounds fairly uninspiring, and it probably would be in the mitts of some developers.

However, as we all know Nintendo can’t help but rub their ‘magic musk’ all over their games, and Captain Toad is as aroma-sodden as you’d expect. It’s full of delightful little touches, hidden secrets and clever mechanics that’ll bring a smile to the face of even the most jaded gamer.
 
Sure, it’s not going to do anything for the occasional criticism that Nintendo just make games for kids, but then it’s worth recalling that the sort of person who says that is usually a joyless blancmange who probably smells a bit funny from spending too long indoors playing some intense, grim online shooter.

And there’s the delicious irony – they’re probably riddled with fungal infections like athlete’s foot, whereas Captain Toad is infectious simply because it’s clever, fun and charming. That, and the cartridge comes covered in mysterious spores. Oh mama! It’s the mushrooms again!

SCORE: Toads (loads) out of Mush (much)

"Fire, I'll take you to burn.
Fire, I'll take you to learn.
You're gonna burn! 
You're gonna burn!
You're gonna burn! 
Burn, burn, burn, burn, burn,
burn, burn, burn, burn, burnahhhhhhhhh!
Fire, I'll take you to burn.
Fire, I'll take you to learn.
Fire, I'll take you to burn.
Fire, fire ahhhhh...!"

So sung Arthur "Brown" from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, on their 1968 single Fire. And never has a truer word been spoken. 

Given how exciting and dangerous fire can be, it's surprising that there haven't been more purely fire-based games released over the years. Perhaps it's because fire is so difficult to recreate, or maybe it's because gamers prefer shooting foreigners. However, there have been at least a handful of bold attempts to simulate the firefighting experience. And here? Here are but ten of them. 

"Button" of them. Button... Butt... bum...? Bumbum... poo! 

<FIRE ENGINE SIREN NOISE>

Nostalgia can be a powerful aphrodisiac. How many of us can say we have never attempted to woo a potential suitor by showing them a picture of an old puppet that used to be on telly? It's for this very reason that retrogaming exists - to propagate the human species through the medium of nostalgia. 

Indeed, the unquestionable success of Sonic Mania and Sonic Mania Plus has demonstrated that old/new games can breathe fresh life into previously dead franchises, and titillate the nostalgia gland while still doing something new.

But what other dormant franchises could be revived, while still holding onto everything that we all loved first time around? I'll tell you what ones: these 10 ones. 

GUEST REVIEW by SUPER BAD ADVICE

The brain is a funny old blob of goo. Despite being little more than a mix of snot, brine and electro-beeps, it’s able to regurgitate for you the entire feeling of being somewhere else from the tiddliest of inputs, like a multisensory version of Google. (Only unlike Google, it doesn’t e.g. sell your email to every sodding carpet shop in a 200-mile radius so they can bombard you with marketing guff just because you once thought about buying a new doormat.)
 
An example of this kind of thing is that, for me, the whiff of petrol on a warm summer evening triggers memories of a lovely family holiday in Canada.
 
The son of the friends we were staying with had a cruddy, fuel-leaking trails bike he was forever tinkering with, hence the general pong of ‘gas’ pervading our hols. A lungfull of hydrocarbons now, and I’m transported right back to that place and time – which is why (other than the lure of discarded rustler’s burgers) I’m often found lurking round the back of Esso garages; 4-star-based reminiscence being a hell of a lot cheaper than another transatlantic holiday, after all.
 
Regardless, I mention these nostalgia chunks because on level 2 of Danger Zone 2 there’s a moment that triggered another such a mem-o-reaction. On the stage in question you hit the boost button and – as well as your car hoofing off forwards at an absurd rate of knots – suddenly the field of view falls back and the horizon telescopes away.

When an arcade machine isn't being played by anybody, it typically switches into something called "Attract mode". It's exactly what it sounds like: the game attempts to attract passers-by into playing it. Usually, this would include the game playing itself, displaying high scores, cut-scenes, or - in certain instances - exhorting players not to "do" drugs.

Some games machines, however, take this attempt to attract players to another level of ridiculousness - and are housed in hardware which is in itself an attraction. Indeed, it's probably fair to say, that most modern arcades are entirely full of machines of this ilk, like being at an entertainment industry party where everybody is trying to be noticed.

​Maybe somebody should tell them not to do drugs!!!!!! 

Here are ten arcade games which took their cabinets to the absurd heights of peacockery, ensuring that players had to have a go, regardless of whether the game itself was any good or not. 

Hype - derived from the word hyperbole (derived from a Greek word meaning "excess") - is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device. It emphasises points, and - in most definitions of the word - isn't meant to be taken literally. Though, of course, we sometimes forget that, and often do take it literally, because we just wanna believe, man.

​<COUGH>Crowdfunding<COUGH>

Gaming has long been a competitive and cutthroat market, with overheads the size of whales. Most games companies would do anything to have the edge on their rivals - even if that means debasing themselves with half-truths and outright lies. In other words: hype. 

Here are just five times reality never really lived up to the marketing. 

The most notorious unreleased SNES game was, for a long time, the completed-but-never-released Star Fox 2. Cancelled due to the impending release of the Nintendo 64 - with Nintendo fearing it would compare unfavourably to the better-looking N64 3D games - it went on to achieve legendary status in the intervening years. And then they put it out as part of the Super NES Mini bundle, and everyone realised it hadn't been worth the wait.

But what other SNES games might still languish in an unreleased state? Imagine there was a listicle which revealed some of them... Now imagine no longer, child: for that listicle shall unfurl itself below. 

Oh - and one more thing. Also included in this list are several dogs who appear to be saying "No!". It seemed like a funny idea when I started doing it yesterday, but now that I look again... I'm not entirely sure what I was going for. Enjoy! Very cool.

Inside is not a new game. It has been around a couple of years, but it has just draped itself onto the Nintendo Switch - and feels like a perfect fit for the system's handheld qualities.

I've been diving deep into the Switch's indie game crannies over the past couple of weeks. A lot of it has seen me catching up on games which have been available on other formats for a while, but also it has been about countering a degree of fatigue I've been feeling towards triple-A games.

I've had Detroit: Become Human sat next to my PS4 for ages now, and not been able to muster sufficient enthusiasm to play it. The joy of Indie games is that they're cheaper and shorter, but tend to be more authored, more personal - and stuffed with more ideas than most blockbusters.

Frequently, they offer as much worth, and similar gameplay values, to the best games I grew up playing. Albeit with the benefit of everything we've learned since. 

To be fair, Inside is not a tiny-budgeted game - it was created with the help of a $1 million grant from the Danish Film Institute (which also assisted Lars von Triers' controversial Nymphomaniac) - but it nevertheless feels like a singular vision. As, indeed, did its thematic predecessor Limbo.

The two games are similar in a lot of ways; they both have a dark, almost monochromatic, art style, both are physics-based platform/puzzle games, and both are unremittingly bleak. In many ways, they're an extension of games like Flashback and Another World; a mute protagonist finds himself in a strange and mysterious environment, where progress is made via repeated deaths, and the buildings are full of power buttons.

Inside, however, builds on everything that made Limbo so feted, while also pushing video game storytelling forwards in an incredibly brave fashion.

I don't know much about football, but I know slightly more than I generally let on. I've no real interest in it whatsoever, but having grown up in a family that's obsessed with the game, I've sort of picked up stuff by osmosis. Indeed, football - for better or worse - has been a massive part of my life. 

I tried so hard to like it as a kid, mainly in a fumbled attempt to fit in, and find a way to bond with my dad. I went to Watford and Wealdstone matches with my him, including the 1984 FA Cup Final between Watford and Everton. Alas, my favourite part of that was a display of remote controlled planes at half time. 

Of course, I collected the Panini stickers - I especially liked the shiny ones - and even tried playing football, but was never much good at it. It was a choice of either wearing glasses (which I soon stopped after they got knocked off my face), or being forced to play half-blind.

Generally, I was always far happier drawing, or playing Dungeons & Dragons, than having to suffer the ritual indignation and abuse that would come from fumbling the ball, or letting in a goal. Simply, football never appealed to my over-active imagination. There were never enough aliens or robots involved, and it was rarely funny.

Inevitably, I'd be picked last at school when they were choosing teams, and then shoved into defence where it was felt I posed the least risk to their insignificant victory.

Seemingly, it didn't matter to the other players on my team that I was crap, because a) I couldn't see, and b) My mind was generally on other things that I thought were more important, and c) I have no physical co-ordination; if I did something rubbish, it was the most terrible transgression.

At school, it felt to me that sporting ability was valued above everything else, and teachers would tolerate name-calling (and sometimes join in) so long as it was in that environment. 

I do love a good 2D platformer. The best ones manage to lob new ideas at you with every stage, but even then (with - admittedly - a fistful of exceptions) there are certain tropes and conceits which seem to appear in every single one of them.

I've never understood this about games; why - just because a game has a certain style - do they insist on adopting ideas, visual cues, and gameplay from all the other games which came before? Yeah, alright, they generally do their own thing too... but from Donkey Kong, through Pitfall, Miner 49er, Pac-Land and the watershed that was Super Mario Bros., ideas were introduced which were - and there's no less accusatory way of saying this - stolen by all which followed. 

Of course, there have been exceptions - typically, when the aesthetic is more realistic than cartoon animal - but, for what it's worth, here are the 10 biggest cliches in platform game design.