continuing my series of AOTW reviews, here are all of the games i played for quarter 2 of 2026, from April to June. enjoy!

week 13
Game: The Maid-Fuku to Kikanjuu (PS2)
Achievement: You're Safe Now, Young Master
Goal: Clear Stage 8
Game finished?: Yes

can't say i'd heard of this one before this AOTW, but it was a really interesting experience getting to play it for the first time! this game is part of the Simple 2000 series, which was a lineup of games published by D3 Publisher for many different consoles, with the goal of making lower budget, affordable games for the masses. a lot of them aren't super notable, but sometimes you find a diamond in the rough, like this game. The Maid Uniform and the Machine Gun is a nifty little action game, sorta like DMC (at least, it's what i think DMC is like, i haven't actually played that game...) where you play as a maid. with a machine gun. pretty self explanatory. it's straightforward, but pretty fun all things considered. i didn't really know what i was doing for most of this game, there were a bunch of controls i didn't know about, so i was only using like 4 buttons and the control stick. this kind of became a problem once i got to the final level, because i hadn't been upgrading any of my stuff, and it lead to me being very underprepared for the final two levels. i had to use my sword to kill most of the enemies in level 7 so i could preserve my bullets for the boss, and even then it was a close shave. and then, oh boy and then, when i got to the final level? i couldn't do it. so... i cheated, kind of. there's a dodge move you can do by pressing triangle when an enemy hits you, and holding square afterwards makes you do a couple counter attack pistol blasts. so, i just held square and mashed triangle, which can beat the final boss without taking any damage. is this cheap? maybe. but i kinda didn't feel like replaying the whole game to get a better score so i could unlock all of the guns and upgrades i was missing... i was really surprised with how much style this game had though, the character designs were cute, the gameplay was relatively fun, and i liked the story more than i was expecting to.

week 14
Game: Pokemon Emerald Version: Party Randomizer (GBA)
Achievement: I'm Not a Doctor - I'm an Electrician!
Goal: Defeat Wattson in Set Mode without using items and with no Pokemon over level 24
Game finished?: No

i do have a soft spot for pokemon, especially gen 3, but when this week came around i was REALLY not in the mood to play pokemon. it's something where i really have to be already ready to play it, and i was just not feeling it. that being said, the party randomizer was kind of a cool spin on regular pokemon. it almost felt like playing as Tainted Cain in The Binding Of Isaac, nothing matters in the state that you find it in, which makes it so that everything has a weird inherent value to it. you could catch a Wurmple, and it could transform into a rayquaza in the next battle. now, will that rayquaza have any good moves? that's up for debate. that's sort of a funny thing about level 5 legendaries, their movesets are always REALLY janky. famously, the Regis only have explosion at level 5, making them kind of a beginner's trap. either way, i had fun with this cheevo. i named my pokemon Geddy, Jogganoth, Issechar, Zork, Dartanyun, and Abraxas. i just tried to come up with the most powerful names i could. in regards to the fight with Wattson the cheevo was actually focused around, my team was Zork the Sableye, Geddy the Bellossom, Issechar the Pinsir, Dartanyun the Politoed, Abraxas the Poliwhirl, and Jogganoth the Kecleon. as a side note, i had some really unfortunate luck with this week. my internet had been kinda weird and touchy around the time i was doing the cheevo, and as my luck would have it, it crapped out *after* i had gotten the achievement and saved, but *before* the data could be sent to the RA servers to tell them i had actually unlocked it. i spent hours waiting for my internet to come back, since it WILL resend the request so long as the emulator is open, but my bad luck struck twice, and my computer started to be a little funky. it wouldn't reconnect even when i tried to hook it up to my phone's hotspot, and ended up crashing and restarting. luckily, with the forbidden technique of abusing steam retroarch cloud saves, i was able to salvage things. since my main computer wasn't connected to the internet, it couldn't send my save where i had just beaten Wattson, and my save from where i started that day was still on my laptop. i connected that to my hotspot, did the runback through Brawly, got to Wattson, and got the cheevo for real that time. what a journey.

week 15
Game: Horrible Histories: Ruthless Romans (DS)
Achievement: No Sight, All Fight
Goal: Complete the Andabatae trials and defeat the Andabatae gladiator
Game finished?: No

man, RA got me playing some fuckin' BULLSHIT yet again. first drawn to life spongebob, now this. admittedly, i did enjoy this a lot more than DTLSB, it was actually kinda cute. it felt like a book fair game, y'know? like when you'd go to the book fair as a kid and you'd have your mind blown when you see an ACTUAL VIDEOGAME in the mix with the books there. it would never be a good videogame, of course, (i saw fossil fighters once, now that i think about it, and that game doesn't look half bad...) but seeing videogames at all always got me hyped. as for HH:RR, i think this is based off of a book series? if it is it's a series i certainly never read as a kid, but i also didn't read very much to begin with. in fact, when i first read the title, i mixed it up in my head with Drunk Histories, which i think is a youtube series. either way, HH:RR is an edutainment game about the romans. it's kinda cute, you play shitty minigames, you learn yourself some things about the romans, and you have a good time, damn it. it's about what you'd expect from a late 2000s DS edutainment game. though i will say, i got a weird enjoyment out of some of the minigames. there's one where you have to react to button combos being shown on screen and press them as fast as you can, (like, it would prompt you to press X and L at the same time, then Y and A, etc.) and something about challenges like that are fun to me in a very simple way. it's like doing a typing test.

week 16
Game: Puzzloop (Arcade)
Achievement: Beating the Clock
Goal: Clear Level 30 in Panic Mode on Normal or higher difficulty
Game finished?: No

you know Zuma? the game made by Popcap where you play as a stone frog and you shoot rocks to try and clear out a line of balls by making matches? or how about Magnetica, the game where you shoot balls at other balls to try and make matches? maybe Tokyo Crash Mobs is more your speed, where you throw people into a line of other people to make matches? yeah, Puzzloop is like that. Zuma is probably the most well known rendition of this type of game, and i knew it was based on another concept, but i guess it never really set in just how many similar games there are. i think Puzzloop is the original though, it came out in 1998 and was published by Capcom, of all companies. the achievement here was to beat level 30 in the "marathon mode", which is called Panic Mode here. something i've noticed whenever i play puzzle games, especially ones where you can technically keep going forever, is that i tend to zone out and go into really deep thought when im playing them. i end up thinking about a lot of topics i normally wouldn't, it's like being on a long car ride without any music. in terms of game feel, i'd say Puzzloop feels half-baked in comparison to something like Zuma, the music and sound effects just aren't really there. additionally, Zuma has buttery smooth mouse control, while Puzzloop is controlled with an 8-direction arcade stick. which kind of fucking blows. i was expecting it to be tank controls, but no, it's point 'n shoot, which lead to a lot of inaccurate shots. over the course of the ~hour and a half i played this game though, i did slowly start to get used to it. on my third attempt i actually got all the way to level 30 before losing, but because i didn't beat it and advance to level 31, the achievement didn't count. i actually had so many close calls, i got to levels 27, 28, 29, and 30 multiple times before finally winning. in the end though, i did enjoy Puzzloop! my main complaint is probably just the music, it's so damn boring dude.

week 17
Game: Alex Kidd in Miracle World (SMS)
Achievement: Up High! Down Low!
Goal: Defeat Paper Head/Parplin in the Bingoo Lowland
Game finished?: No

y'know, this one was kinda pissing me off at first, but by the end i came to appreciate Alex Kidd a lot more. the controls are a little sloppy-feeling, at least to me, but i did eventually get used to it. Alex Kidd is one of those series i knew about, but not much more than it was Sega's mascot before Sonic. for the time though, this game feels really impressive. just one year after Mario 1 and they were already pulling some really fancy stuff, even if it wasn't all great stuff. i found the dying in one hit thing to be a little frustrating at times, and the stinginess with the lives to be VERY annoying, until i found out that you can use the ring you find sometimes to give yourself a ranged attack, and that there's a way to continue at the game over screen by holding up and pressing the II button 8 times. things got a lot easier from there, though the tight one-block platforming over deathpits were still a bit scary. and like... man, the question mark blocks were really annoying. sometimes they'd have a powerup you really needed, sometimes they'd have an extra life, and sometimes, even if it was pre-defined to give you something good most of the time, it can have a wizard in it that is instant death and chases you through walls relentlessly. that shit pissed me off so much, so at a certain point i learned to just not really bother with the question mark blocks. the rock-paper-scissors minigame was also annoying until i found out the opponents have pre-defined choices for their first two rolls, so you can beat them consistently every time. one last thing i'd like to mention about Alex Kidd, after i got the cheevo (which, by the way, this Master System game from 1986 has 124 ACHIEVEMENTS..!!) i decided to check out the other games in the series, and like... talk about changing things up with every entry. first came Miracle World, which is a typical 2D platformer, then there was High Tech World, which is like... an adventure game, as far as i can tell? then there's The Lost Stars, which feels like a game from a completely different fucking planet. it has like, voice lines? Alex screams every time he gets hit, it's really funny. The Lost Stars was easily the weirdest one i played. Enchanted Castle, which is the Genesis game, feels a lot closer to Miracle World, so i'll give it a pass on that at least. i then decided to play a little bit of the demo for the remake of Miracle World, that being Miracle World DX. fun fact, when i worked at gamestop we had this little keyring that had keys to everything in the store on it, and on that keyring was a little keychain with the logo for Miracle World DX on it. i actually took this keychain for myself and still have it, so i'd always wondered what Miracle World DX was like. and boy howdy, it... sure is a videogame. it feels like the most "we updated this OLD game to feel NEW!!" remake ever, they try to keep using pixel art, but its the most "make your first videogame class" stock assets lookin' shit ever. idk if anyone has seen that meme of "triple AAA version of blank game" going around, but it literally feels like that. music was bad, unnecessary dialog added in because idk they felt like it, didn't really like the graphics, and the hand drawn artwork looks like a youtuber's rantsona. jesus, why am i being so mean to Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX? i promise i have no hate in my heart for these devs. either way, despite my problems with it i liked Miracle World.

week 18
Game: Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii)
Achievement: Small Debt
Goal: Pay off the first home loan
Game finished?: N/A (but yes)

uh, so i was like, already playing this game. like, a LOT. i've been in a big Animal Crossing mood, as i am known to be every April. i don't really know what you want me to say about the achievement, i had to make a new character to pay off the first loan again since i'd already done so on my primary save, and i gave money from said primary save to the secondary character to do so. idk. maybe this is a good opportunity to talk about City Folk. as of the time of writing (may 7th, 2026) i am in the process of writing a huge, nasty Animal Crossing New Horizons review for the site, so i guess this might be a good breather to take. i like city folk! its easily the animal crossing game i have played and know the absolute least about, so anytime i play it it feels very fresh. weirdly enough, it was also the first animal crossing game i played, my sister had it when i was like 5 and sometimes i'd watch her play it. as such, even though i have very little experience with it, small things like certain sound effects or locations give me this HUGE nostalgia hit, like the title music or the museum. in terms of game, i think its pretty cool. it feels like if Wild World was allowed to be finished. i don't know if wild world was actually rushed, but it certainly feels like it, or it was at least limited a LOT by the hardware. i would compare the difference between wild world and city folk to like, the difference between doubutsu no mori+ and doubtusu no mori e+. they feel very much cut from the same cloth, though there are clear differences and improvements. hell, sorta like dnm+ and e+, you can transfer your character from wild world to city folk, which is very very cool. though i should clarify, wild world and city folk are more distinctly different games compared to dnm+ and e+, they feel more similar than like, the difference between new leaf and new horizons. does that make sense? idk. city folk is cool though, it's been fun finally getting to fully explore this blind spot in one of my favorite series.

week 19
Game: Medievil II (PS1)
Achievement: Tusks of Terror
Goal: Defeat a Standard Elephant-Bot and obtain Elephant Key 1
Game finished?: Hell No

i didn't like this one. i ended up swapping it out for Final Fantasy IV, not even because i couldn't beat the cheevo or anything, i just got so bored with this damn game. i think i would have preferred it to be Medievil 1. i literally have jack shit to say about Medievil II, probably the least interesting game i've played thus far for AOTW.

week 20
Game: Pikmin (GC)
Achievement: This Thing Chugs Right Along At Its Own Pace
Goal: Recover the Automatic Gear.
Game finished?: Yes

i've played a fuck ton of Pikmin 1 before. as a game its quite good! but i grew up playing Pikmin 2, and coming off of playing that first, i simply just can't ever get used to how damn SLUGGISH Pik1 feels. i like the gameplay loop quite a bit, it's very much a different type of game from 2, (the lack of caves has a lot to do with that) and it's a lot simpler because of that, but the unresponsiveness can feel... weird. still, i do enjoy Pikmin 1, just not as much as 2.

week 21
Game: Super Mario Advance (GBA)
Achievement: Boss! But Of Course.
Goal: Beat Wart and complete World 7.
Game finished?: Yes

Super Mario Advance was the first game i ever truly owned for myself i'm pretty sure, not mooched off of my dad or sister. it's a port of the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. 2, which was a game i fixated on pretty hard as a kid, with some little additions and changes. most notably all of the voice lines they added. every character in this game never SHUTS UP, but i kinda love all the voices they gave everyone. the player characters talk of course, but the main attraction has to be the bosses. i love the voice for Birdo, her screaming "I'LL REMEMBER THIS..!!" is ingrained into my head, it's almost a completion of the concepts they had in the Famicom Disk System version of Doki Doki Panic, where the bosses made more realistic sounds when they got hit, which was made possible with the extra sound channel. you can tell they were so excited to show off what the GBA could do with all the sprite scaling effects and voice clips they crammed in here, it's adorable really. i've never actually played the original SNES version of All-Stars SMB2, but i've played a fuck ton of this. the cheevo here was to finish the game, and i procrastinated all week on it. so on sunday night, immediately after getting home from work, i speedran the game, getting to Wart as fast as i could with the warps and all that. for the sake of keeping my Gamer Integrity, i HAVE beaten this game warpless as a kid, so don't get it twisted. overall verdict, i know a lot of people probably find this port to be pretty bad, but i've got a soft spot for it. i never did get all those Yoshi eggs, though... i should really do that sometime.

week 22
Game: Dragon Quest III (GBC)
Achievement: Magic Bomb
Goal: Obtain the Magic Bomb.
Game finished?: No

as a Final Fantasy girlie, i feel this sort of rivalry with Dragon Quest. i played a good bit of Dragon Warrior for NES, and really enjoyed it, but i still haven't finished it. it feels almost sacreligious for me to skip DQ2, so i think i'm gonna play that before i end up finishing this one. that being said, DQ3 is fucking awesome. the story, at least so far, feels pretty lacking, but there's no way i could get away with that being a real point taken away from it, considering Final Fantasy 1 is one of my favorite games of all time. i feel like Gameboy Color games always look so pretty no matter what, and DQ3 is no exception. like, have you SEEN the battle animations of this game?? specifically the enemy attack animations, it's some of the smoothest animation i've ever seen in a game of this era, and it's on the damn ass Gameboy Color! there's also a ton of collectibles for defeating certain amount of enemies with the enemy medals, i feel like i could very easily get sucked into playing this game. maybe this is the beginning of my Dragon Quest era...

week 23
Game: Metal Arms: Glitch in the System (GCN)
Achievement: Wasteland Thunder
Goal: Complete Level 5.
Game finished?: No

surprisingly not a licensed game, i was convinced it was going to be from what i saw of it before playing. naw, metal arms is its own standalone thing, and like... honestly? it's not all too bad! VERY cheesy, don't get me wrong, it absolutely reeks of "its the 2000s and we want to seem cool," considering its a military shooter with a wise-cracking main character. it does have the unique appeal of having the slightest sense of humor, which while not SUPER funny did have a few lines that made me laugh inside, though not enough to elicit a sharp exhale from my nose. i would say that it also feels like the prime example of "im a 5th grader and my mom won't buy me call of duty so we got this instead for 4 player sleepovers", if not for the fact that there is some strong language. its like, what do you want this to BE, man? do you want it to be a kid friendly alternative for COD? or do you want to prove youre not a pussy in the eyes of early 2000s gamers? either way, the gameplay itself is pretty solid. i absolutely fucking SUCK at shooters and they're not really my thing outside of Quake, but even i can tell it's still pretty fun and well made, even if the budget was a little tight. i think if i were more into the genre i'd have probably played more of this, but it really just didn't grab me.

week 24
Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai (PSP)
Achievement: KAKAROT! KAKAROOT!
Goal: Complete Arcade Mode as Broly on Normal or higher difficulty.
Game finished?: Yes (technically)

i've got some friends who, if they read this, would kill me for this opinion, but i REALLY don't fuck with Dragon Ball. i hate saying this because i know he was highly beloved and he's now sadly passed away, but i do not find Akira Toriyama's art style appealing... at least in dragon ball. (i like how his artwork for Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger looks! also Arale... but i know next to nothing about that series.) i'm cool with same face syndrome, but only if i like how the faces look, (see Kazuma Kaneko and Yoshitaka Amano) and i don't in dragon ball. i just feel like a lot of the designs look dumb as hell, i had a friend in high school who said Android 16 is one of the objectively coolest looking characters in any media, and i just don't fucking see it. vegeta's crazy widow's peak is another design choice i'm not fond of, and super saiyan stuff in general just never really came off as all that cool to me, not even when Sonic did it. idk. im sure if i read or watched the whole series i could probably get into it, but do you REALIZE how much dragon ball there is on this planet?? speaking of dragon ball media, the game i played for AOTW this week was Shin Budokai on PSP, a fighting game. i have never felt more out of depth playing a fighting game, with the exception of like, Pokken Tournament. from what i can gather, the character you have to play as for this cheevo, Broly, is a crazy overpowered boss character, so it wasn't TOO hard when i got the hang of it, and you can do stuff to make things easier like lower the amount of time a round lasts for or setting the amount of rounds to 1... but i still didn't find this one very fun at all. at least it's not Budokai Tenkaichi, i played that at a friend's house when i was a kid and it's one of them dreaded... arena fighters. blegh. but this one isn't! it's a little closer to Tekken than Street Fighter, you can circle around people, but it's still mostly 2D. still, i dunno, i got no joy playing this. probably at the bottom of the list in terms of stuff i'd want to continue playing. for reference, i think i'd rather play Medievil II over this. at least the ending cutscene was pretty funny. i guess in universe "KAKAROT" is the only thing Broly says? (which is Goku's real name of course, that's something my friend taught me when i was really young) and when Shenron is asking what Broly wants his wish to be, all he says is, of course, Kakarot. so Shenron teleports Goku to him. and then it ends.

week 25
Arkanoid R 2000 (PS1)
Achievement: Sky Beam
Goal: Complete level 27 of the Arcade Mode [Difficulty Normal or above]
Game finished?: No

Arkanoid, or Breakout, or Brick Break, whatever you wanna call it, is a game i have sort of fuzzy feelings on. my mom had a flip-phone with a trackball in it when i was a kid, and she had a version of Arkanoid on it called Brick Break that i would always ask to play on the way home from school when i was like, four years old. that is about the extent of my experience with this type of game, because otherwise i just found them all exceptionally boring. at least, that's what i thought. yeah, turns out, there ARE good Arkanoid games out there, and this is one of them! it's difficult for sure, expecially if you play the game with a d-pad like i did, but i was surprised with how much fun i had. (i wish i had a paddle or a dial or SOMETHING to control this game with...) the presentation here is really good, i love the moai head in the intro on the title screen. the power ups are all fun to use, my favorites were probably the Multiball, which spawns 8 balls that go in all different directions, or the "meteor", which careens through every brick on screen, instead of bouncing off of them. if you've ever played Peggle, it's like the Fireball. however, i did start to get pretty sick of it part of the way through my playthrough, and the later levels can get really tough and annoying. the goal for AOTW was to get to level 28, and it took me about an hour and a half to do so. out of curiosity i looked up how many levels there are total, and there are 100 FUCKING LEVELS. jesus christ, i was getting pretty work out by the 1/4th mark!! and it's not like you can make a suspend point or anything, if you quit you go ALL the way back to the start. i can't imagine doing this shit, not even WITH a paddle.