I call the Game Log the MEMORY CARD.

It sounds more fun and a bit more unique than just calling it a game log.

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This is my [work-in-progress] take at an idea between short summaries of my experiences with certain games and whatever Backloggd does [which I use for keeping track of games started and completed, but I don't use the review section too often unless I'm particularly inspired or baffled by a game]. Aaaand...that's it.

If you've seen my previous take at this with the icons, then you may think I'd bring back that fancy setup...but if it wasn't obvious back then, maintaining that was more cumbersome than I expected :,] - more so having to give EACH GAME their own html, cramming it into an iframe - and only recently [August 2025] realizing that the setup is kind of bad for both mobile screens AND for linking purposes to specific entries since I'd have to link to their unformatted pages or link to the whole index.

SELECT A STAGE [Last Update: August 30th 2025]

• 1080° Snowboarding [N64]
• F-Zero X [N64]
• Kurohyou: Ryu Ga Gotoku Shinshou [PSP]
• Kurohyou 2: Ryu ga Gotoku Ashura-hen [PSP]
• Monkey Ball [ARC]
• Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan [NDS]
• Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii: Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 [NDS]
• SEGA Rally Championship [ARC]
• Sonic Unleashed Recompiled [PC]
• Yakuza [PS2]
• Wave Race 64 [N64]
• Wave Race Blue Storm [NGC]

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1080° Snowboarding

Nintendo 64 [N64]

First Time Revisiting Recently: July 10th, 2025

First Time Completed Post-Revisit: July 10th, 2025

Mastered in RetroAchievements: July 12th, 2025

WORK YOUR BODY WO-WORK YOUR BODY...WORK YOUR BODY WO-WORK YOUR- GET DOWN

Add one more game to the pile of stuff that I got hooked with that almost if not no one today would care about [except for the N64 subreddit, thanks y'all], because 1080 Snowboarding was relatively short yet tough one to crack through in just around two days.

I wrote A LOT when I wrote a review for this game on my Backloggd account, but long story short, if you can accept that the controls may not be easy to handle [most likely because its designed for the N64's precise analog stick...so you'd need to excercise careful driving with it] and that you really have to practice enough to get a natural feeling for landing, with how important it is to do so yet how easy it can be to wipe out and lose your races, I'd say you'll have a good ol' time with this one.

Don't pick up this game expecting something like SSX, but don't look down on it because it isn't that either. There's sure a charm on focusing to race down the big mountains in one piece while outrunning the rivals that often keep up with you - between the simplicity of it beyond actually grasping the controls well and the analog controls giving it a nice feeling compared to its contemporaries that were stuck with digital inputs. Trick Attack is cool for the most part, but you'll need to play in RetroAchievements to have some actual steep challenge in high scores for those [and also wrap your head around the TEN EIGHTY input].

Completed it for the second time [first time was looong ago] through Bizhawk and RAProject64 for achievements. If you want to try mastering the set like I did, not only be prepared to be patient with the trial and error, but to also record your Dragon Cave time attack run in case you need to send a manual ticket for the Dragon Dominator achievement if it doesn't work normally...which is what happened to me. At least I eventually got my Mastered badge when that request got picked up :]

Videos

Expert Match Race completed [ICE MAN + PENGUIN]

All Race Courses in Trick Attack Mode [30K+ score on all, GOLD + PENGUIN]

All Time Attack challenges in RetroAchievements completed [GOLD + PENGUIN]

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F-Zero X

Nintendo 64 [N64]

All Master Clear (last revisit): uhh, 2025

FINISH!!!! ALRIGHT, FIRST PLACE!!

As Ray0ken's video of playing all the Master cups in Black Bull gave me a reason to try and revisit it again, I ended up tackling the Master mode cups again back in June 2025.

The only thing that was crazier than doing that with Blood Hawk with a less tham optimal analog stick (through the power of sensitivity options in emulators) was to beat the 64DD cups in Master for the first time though. "Way to go, its a new record!"

THE BLOOD HAWK MASTER RUNS

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Kurohyou: Ryu Ga Gotoku Shinshou

PlayStation Portable [PSP]

First Time Playing: July 23th, 2025

First Time Completed: July 25th, 2025

THERE'S A HOLE IN THE MUPPET [yes, this is a yakuza game]

Easy recommendation not only thanks to the unique fighting system [it has some stuff like Def Jam Fight for NYbut it isn't EXACTLY the same] and cool comic-styled cutscenes that add to the story, but also a no brainer to try out on a low-end PC or even on a phone [which is where I played it through] as it is a PSP game, all thanks to TeamK4L's translation patch.

I'd say this is worth checking out if you liked playing Def Jam FFNY...but funnily enough I actually played DJFFNY BECAUSE I played through BOTH Kurohyou games first and was left waiting for more, although this game's combat behaves more like a 3D fighting game like Tekken more like the street wrestling of Def Jam due to the way the camera is setup and controls are adapted for it.

Completed it for the first time through PPSSPP on my phone during the time I couldn't use my PC. Did a few challenges the moment I could try it on a controller at a PC though - more on that later if I update this entry.

Videos

Beating Kumite II Challenge

Beating Shinjo without healing items (Normal / No NG+)

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Kurohyou 2: Ryu ga Gotoku Ashura-hen

PlayStation Portable [PSP]

First Time Playing: July 26th, 2025

First Time Completed: July 31th, 2025

BORN TO BE WIIIIIILD [WILD] DANGEROUS [DANGEROUS]- you know how that song goes

Definitely a fun one to play through if you've already played Kurohyou 1 [more so with the bonus you get if you have a KH1 save detected for getting the fighting styles of the final two fighters of KH1], and also recommendable that you do so if only because the game has things seemingly meant for experienced players...those being the new EXP system [you can't pump your stats with money anymore, only increase it a few notches every time you level up].

...And the Yakuza enemies. They are identifiable with suits and have a Hideki Naganuma banger for a battle theme, but you'll be dumbfounded when you first run into one because they are almost ALWAYS some levels above you on top of having Extreme fighting styles. In short, they have long combos, they may parry your attacks if careless, and are a noticeable wall that can pop up way more often than the actual bosses you fight at the end of each chapter.

But at least the other fights are more fun [even the bosses can be a bit more manageable], there's some improvements in the combat [can push enemies from a grab like in Def Jam FFNY, enviroment heat actions can be used if an enemy is near a wall without heat cost, KO Strikes now have unique effects more than just the animation itself, and if fighters clash, a mini QTE challenge appears that can benefit you a lot if you hit them all right to then be able to ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA IKUZO KORA] and said Yakuza fights can also be a cool change of pace if you want a more challenging fight out of nowhere to practice for bosses [as long as its not in EX-HARD, because in that case, they take WAAAY longer to defeat than even bosses themselves for some reason], although it can be jarring when they may not give as much EXP as a super weak enemy that's tied to a substory lmao

The story is neat even if it doesn't have the same dynamic of Tatsuya developing along the way...because he's already wised up from the first game, so it involves more his connection with the new owner of Dragon Heat and a couple of folks who fight there, getting involved in the first place as the Ashura threaten to take over Dragon Heat and Tatsuya by this point had grown an appreciation for the place as it was why he could grow in the first place. Also, the final boss had a more prominent role and buildup in the story, on top of the main theme actually using the vocals unlike KH1 [which I also think its cool when the theme is used in the menu in an instrumental...as if it were teasing for the actual banger when you get there - and if you complete the game, it DOES play with vocals on the menu from there onwards].

Completed it for the first time through PPSSPP on my phone during the time I couldn't use my PC. One day I have to try out the Multiplayer mode since its essentially a side story mode with your own custom character rather than challenges in KH1, but I also had at one point got the chance to try the Premium New Game in Hard and have a field day steamrolling the enemies [as your character by the time you beat the game in Normal is leagues above the early game Hard enemies].

geez, I wrote a lot more here than usual - may even have to leverage some of what I put here if I ever plan on writing a proper sized review lmao

Videos

VS Meteor Suzuki [Normal / Ancient Martial Arts / No Heal*]

VS Final Boss [Normal / Taizan Style / No Heal]

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Monkey Ball

Arcade [ARC]

First Time Revisiting: March 10th, 2025

FALL OUT [in a robotic voice]

Before Super Monkey Ball became Super, Monkey Ball was on the arcades...and it's virtually the first game except with different looking levels [far simpler here], only the last Master floor as the single one available, different soundtrack/announcer and even a few hidden cheats to enable that I only heard of through the RetroAchievements available for using those in Beginner and Advanced.

Regarding why I revisited it, I booted the game up to try a friend's controller to see if I should get it too for myself [Marvo Scorpion GT-019 - there are zero reviews for this thing so I had to do trial by fire myself with a game like this that depends on analog stick precision] and ended up stubbornly powering through Expert in an hour after endless continues lol

Expert 22 [SEGA] was surprisingly tough for me, but on the flipside, Expert 49 gave me a surprise achievement as the third attempt I took at it was VERY lucky...because I went straight into the goal - the achievement in question being beating the stage without touching a bumper. Note that the goal is spinning with other bumpers spinning around it, so it was quite the luck to run into it at the perfect timing.

Completed for the first time through Flycast on PC. Glad I had RetroAchievements enabled to have the game completion registered on my save file.

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Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan

Nintendo DS [NDS]

First Time Revisiting: August 19th, 2025

First Time Completed after Revisiting: August 20th, 2025

OUEEEEENDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN

Playing this on a phone was a bit finicky at first due to the slight delay when tapping the icons, but that aside, its still as fun as I remember it being - down to the panels complementing well the song AND being super easy to understand despite the text being exclusively in Japanese.

That final stage with READY STEADY GO [absolute banger song btw] was also a surprise in how it happened to be indeed as tough as I remember it being back when I first beat it many years ago on a real DS/3DS...the game doesn't give you much room for error on the health meter should you keep getting too many 50s/100s, let alone if you miss a couple and try to recover with those instead of always hitting 300s. Although there's also some evil tricks in the Hard stages with beatmaps that like to switch between the beats you'd expect the song to use...and using beats that are in theory logical but are a different signature from what came before and you wouldn't be able to guess that AT ALL unless you trial and error enough to remember how exactly to tap those. That aside, silly fun game.

Melody [MEEEEEELODY- I mean its used as the credits theme too so of course how would I forget it], Kokoro Odoru, LINDA LINDAAAAA and Ready Steady Go were the songs that stood out for me the most on my first playthrough, and those still do, but now I also have to give it to some other more songs like Thrill [dodgeball], Koi no Dance Site [maybe I shouldn't have learned what the original plan for that song was, but at least that plan was scrapped as soon as the devs realized], One Night Carnival, and the one with the guy running for major which I don't remember the name lol [Over the Distance also deserves a mention as the mandatory sad curveball song of the game].

Completed it for the first time through melonDS on the phone. Not sure if trying for A or S-Ranks may be a good idea on the PC - I have good practice with osu on the PC [have cleared a few four star stages] but not sure if there's also be delay when tapping through the keys on PC to know if I can actually get a high rank.

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Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii: Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2

Nintendo DS [NDS]

First Time Revisiting: August 26h, 2025

First Time Completing All Stages in Hard: August 29th, 2025

MOERO NEKKETSU...RHYTHM DAMASHII!!!

That is a VERY long name. But essentially its a fancy extra title for what's a new set of Ouendan stages paired with some new mapping tricks to throw you off...but also has the Quality of Life features [song intro skipping and replay saving] that Elite Beat Agents added as it was made after Ouendan 1 but before this game [which is also why with a save file you can get the Agents as skins]

In any case, while the setlist here may not be as immediately impactful on the first visit to most than Ouendan 1's and EBA's, it actually quite grew up on me for the most part - although I won't lie and omit the fact that some of those songs with fun tunes [Go my Way, VISTA, Bambina, Monkey Magic, Music Hour and the last two songs + the bonus Samurai Blue] were EVIL with their beat switch-ups when playing in Hard difficulty, and even a few of those I mentioned also have hints of that same trickery in the Normal chart, something that will only be a true obstacle against you when you are first playing the game in Normal...but can be sorted out easier the moment you're forced to really go through it in Hard, let alone Insane [I even first thought they were unique beatmaps of flipped Hard variants, but later I saw I was wrong lol]. I had to beat a handful of those just to get enough points after the previous three difficulties in order to get Samurai Blue.

Completed it for the first time recently through melonDS on the phone. Definitely felt like I kind of adapted to the slight delay when playing this game way more than in Ouendan 1...because there were WAY more songs forcing me to keep my accuracy up if I didn't want to suddenly get kicked out [Insane maps obviously employ this, but you have no idea how many times I had to retry Countdown and ESPECIALLY the Sambomaster song - that last one is lucky that I love the song itself and is also perfect as a sendoff to Ouendan, because dealing with the beatmap itself was some really tough deal].

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SEGA Rally Championship

Arcade [ARC]

[Migrated from previous version - Last Entry Update: March 11th, 2025]

RALLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Daytona's rough and tough brother that ran on the same Model 2 board, but boasting a very different gameplay style and having three back to back races in the main Championship mode [four if you beat Mountain in 1st to unlock the toughest challenge in the form of Lakeside]. A treat to play whether through the Model 2 Emulator or even through emulating the PS2 version with PCSX2 - and while the Saturn/PC ports may not be of the same caliber visually [which is understandable], those manage to adapt the gameplay extremely well to the digital D-Pad and buttons setup the SEGA Saturn [or your keyboard] use.

MY ARCADE/TIME ATTACK TIMES [Listed with videos]

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Sonic Unleashed HD

Windows [PC]

First Time Playing: March 2nd, 2025

First Time Completed: March 8th, 2025

ENDLESS POSSIBILITYYYYYY

Thanks to the Unleashed Recompiled project, I've finally been able to get my hands at playing Sonic Unleashed for the first time in my life, which is crazy to think about when I write it like that - more so when years ago I remember playing snippets of the Unleashed Project mod for Sonic Generations (although those mods look WAY closer now to making Gens look like Unleashed more than ever).

It has been quite surreal to not only play those levels I hadn't ever ran into before at Daytime, but also to experience Werehog the way it was meant to...with a sprinkle of upgrading Combat levels early thanks to a helpful hint I had read early on somewhere. Big props to the Guide at Neoseeker too for saving my ass repeatedly whenever the game decided to ask for medals out of nowhere or when it wanted me to do something before accessing a stage without actually telling me.

Completed for the first time through Unleashed Recompiled [of course - initially had marked this as X360 until I realized the game runs at half the framerate on a real one so its a bit unfair to say this is the same experience than on console] while running that on my brother's PC back then. He had a way stronger GPU than me that could run it without breaking a sweat, so it was the perfect avenue [and my only avenue for that matter] to finally dive deep into Unleashed once and for all.

VIDEOS [My stage runs]

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Yakuza

PlayStation 2 [PS2]

First Time Playing: July 18th, 2025 [PC] / August 12th, 2025 [Phone]

First Time Completed: August 16th, 2025 [Phone]

TEN YEARS IN THE JOINT MADE YOU A-

Infamously memed dub aside, which for the record you can sidestep through Yakuza Restored [unless you want to play with RetroAchievements...], this game still has some good meat and bones for being the first title of the franchise, with some stuff being spot on from the get go [like the versatility of Heat, Kiryu as a character and his starting story, the setting of Kamurocho] while also having other details considered to be superior than its remake Yakuza Kiwami [the ambience with the green colors, some cutscenes having more care - mainly substories, characters often being more expressive than in Kiwami].

The gameplay gives me Spikeout vibes but simplified or expanded in most ways [button combos instead of timing Charge with your Beat combos, can press X to do a quick dodge while shifting/locked-on to an enemy] along with letting you use weapons in far more useful ways [whether by better range or from heat] and healing items you carry whenever in a pinch.

Completed it for the first time through NetherSX2 during the time I was unable to use my PC.

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Wave Race 64

Nintendo 64 [N64]

First Time Revisiting in Years: June 27th, 2025

First Time Completing Reverse Championship: June 28th, 2025

Mastered on RetroAchievements: July 1st, 2025

Last Entry Update: July 9th, 2025

BANZAAAAAAAIIIIIIII!!!!!!

Wave Race 64 hits different from other waterbike or just water racing games in general - rather than having the presentation being focused on making the racing look cool and extreme like you'd expect, the bright colors of the polygons and waves powered by the Nintendo 64, as well as a surprisingly upbeat soundtrack for the most part and a narrator that would be worthy of sliding in a SEGA arcade racer of old, making for a strikingly unique vibe for what you'd expect about a waterbike racing game, and one that makes the waterbike riding action feel more of a fun breeze than you'd think.

I think the only thing that sticks out from when I played through this game's Championship modes is, besides finding out by accident about holding down to steer sharper [plus a few other strats I looked up], that there are NO Credits for beating the Reverse Championship, the last one you can get and unlock from beating the Expert one [and the ones before that]. It is quite weird that it has no credits sequence at all as an extra reward or even an acknowledgement for clearing Reverse Championship [besides your records], even for an early N64 title [MK64 had a credits sequence].

That aside, it was a blast to play through that game and finally go beyond the Hard Championship, as I went for it thanks to the RetroAchievements set allowing me to keep those completions tracked. Getting a perfect record over Hard still eludes me though, but something that I may achieve one day if I can survive Twilight City in first one day. Also yeah, you read that right at the top, I eventually mastered it :D

VIDEOS

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Wave Race Blue Storm

Nintendo Gamecube [NGC]

First Time Playing: July 1st, 2025

First Time Completing Expert Championship: July 3rd, 2025

The Wave Race 64 sequel: The waves are stronger, the CPU racers are stronger, and even the waterbike is stronger to the point of being harder to control - but if you're someone who can take in the jump in difficulty, then you'll feel rewarded by mastering it.

I have more in-depth thoughts written in the previous version of this page [although I may bring them over here under a button], but the summary is that you'll either love to tackle this game's fickle difficulty...or walk out of the game because of it. It really feels like a SEGA arcade racer with how the handling doesn't try to handhold you at all while the now seven racers are also more consistently competent, meaning that you really have to practice the tracks and your driving to tackle the Hard and Expert championships succesfully. Getting all 1st in Expert wa particularly grueling and had to rely on final laop buoy skips to make sure I could take an decisive advantage by the end - although I have seen one or two videos of Expert All 1st runs WITHOUT buoy skips [only that you have to avoid any mistakes at all costs].

VIDEOS

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