Producer: Tatsuya Minami Designer: Koji Okohara Release: 2000 Console: PS1   Released three years after the masterful Mega Man X4, X5 was a game made at a time when 2D platformers were looked at with disdain as relics of the pa...

Quintet was a legendary under-the-radar developer in the days of the SNES, responsible for making games such as ActRaiser and the brilliant Heaven and Earth Trilogy (Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma. The fact that this brillia...

Producer: Keiji Inafune, Yoshinori Takenaka Designer: Koji Okohara, Mitsuru Endo, Hiroyuki Yamato Release: 1997 Console: PS1/Saturn I have a confession to make regarding these series Retrospective blogs: Mega Man X4 was always a fa...

The PlayStation 1 had such a massive library of games that it is impossible to do it justice with a simple top 100 games list. As such, I decided to supplement my usual review of a top 100 games list (this time, I used the top 100 PS1 ...

Released at the tail end of the PS's cycle, more than a year after the release of the PS2, C-12: Final Resistance was incredibly late to the party. Yet, being so late in its release may have been in its favor, as all the development se...

Producer: Tokuro Fujiwara Director: Keiji Inafune Release: 1995, 1996 Console: SNES, PS1/Saturn   Developed at the tail end of the 16-bit era, Mega Man X3 was as anachronistic to the times as Mega Man 6 was at its release, even...

The move to 3D game development in the 5th Generation of Consoles introduced several interesting design problems regarding translating well-liked genres, such as 2D Shooters like Contra, into 3D space. Many developers went in different...

After the two COVID years, I thought I will finally tame my backlog. Yet, what many predicted came to pass, and the post-COVID game releases came thick and fast, obliterating my control over it. Now, I have many games released in 2022 ...

Producer: Tokuro Fujiwara Designer: Sho Tsuge, Yoshihisa Tsuda Release: 1993, 1994 Console: SNES   Making a sequel to the excellent Mega Man X was never going to be an easy task, and Mega Man X2's divisive reputation is a testa...

Producer: Tokuro Fujiwara Designer: Yoshinori Takenaka, Keiji Inafune, Sho Tsuge, Masayoshi Kurokawa Release: 1993, 1994 Console: SNES   After spending the latter years of the NES crafting a distinct and almost unaltered identi...

Being the third game in the series, but only the second game released in the West after Tales of Destiny, this game was mistakingly branded with the Tales of Destiny II moniker as to attract fans of the first PS1 Tales game. This decis...

Producer: Kazuhiro Tsuchiya Director: Koji Oda Release: 2018 Console: Switch, PS4, Xbox One   After an eight-year hiatus, in which one of the franchise's main founders (Keiji Inafune) left the company and a long-awaited project...

Producer: Keiji Inafune, Takuya Aizu, Hironobu Takeshita, Toyohiro Serita, Akiko Ito Director: Ryota Ito, Hayato Tsuru Release: 2010 Console: WiiWare, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade   With the success of Mega Man 9, Capc...

The Tales JRPG series is nowadays synonymous with comfort food; a satisfying meal that is neither complex nor memorable. Full to the brim with anime archetypes and genre cliches, it is honestly difficult to pick the different games apa...

Producer: Keiji Inafune, Takuya Aizu, Hironobu Takeshita Director: Hayato Tsuru Release: 2008 Console: WiiWare, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade   After the release of Mega Man 8, the classic series underwent an extended h...

Past the halfway mark in Retro Sanctuary's Top 100 PlayStation 1 Games list and we are supposedly going to get to the good stuff. This appears to mostly be the case despite Tomb Raider polluting the list (it deserves a place on reputat...

Producer: Keiji Inafune Director: Hayato Kaji Release: 1996, 1997 Console: PlayStation, Sega Saturn   As the first Mega Man produced by Keiji Inafune after the legendary Tokuro Fujiwara left Capcom, it is fitting that this game...

If you notice in the game's cover art, it's titled Tomb Raider II: Starring Lara Croft. At this stage, it was clear that the character and game became iconic in the gaming landscape, and that was enforced by an extensive and extremely ...

Producer: Tokuro Fujiwara Director: Yoshihisa Tsuda Release: 1995 Console: SNES   Mega Man 7 occupies the awkward spot of being the first game officially confirming that the Classic Mega Man series that started on the NES is di...

There is no doubt that the first Tomb Raider is an absolutely iconic game. Not only was it a pioneering title at the start of the 3D era, but it also introduced the iconic character of Lara Croft, one of gaming's most famous leading la...

Producer: Tokuro Fujiwara Programmers: Mitsuteru Fukushima, Nobuhito Shimizu Release: 1993, 1994   Released very late in the NES lifecycle, well after the SNES established itself and, in the US, after the release of the amazing...

Valkyrie Profile is just the type of game that is typical of the many hidden gems in the PS1 library. Experimental in every way, both trying to expand the genres before it and forge its own path, it ends up becoming an entirely unique ...

Producer: Tokuro Fujiwara Director: Ichirou Mihara Release: 1992   At this stage, the SNES was picking up steam, but the NES still kept an audience. As Capcom worked on the first SNES Mega Man game, they also were still making ...

Producer: Tokuro Fujiwara Director: Yoshinori Takenaka Release: 1991, 1992 Released after the launch of the SNES, it wasn't immediately apparent that Mega Man 4 lagged behind technologically to the new 16bit device, except if you c...

Producer: Tokuro Fujiwara Director: Masayoshi Kurokawa Release: 1990   After the success of the first two games, it was clear that Mega Man has become a stalwart Capcom franchise, and a third game was in order. In fact, a third...

Producer: Tokuro Fujiwara Director: Akira Kitamura Release: 1988, 1989   There is no doubt that the first Mega Man game was a demo of the concept by Capcom, albeit a complete and very good demo, and that's because its immediate...

Producer: Takashi Nishiyama Director: Akira Kitamura Release: 1987 With four years of experience with the Nintendo Entertainment System, Capcom went on to create one of the most iconic franchises in gaming. As the starting point of...

Moving away from aping the Survival Horror formula of Resident Evil like the first game did, Dino Crisis instead crafts its own identity as an Action-heavy take on the genre, giving justice to the concept of fighting dinosaurs for surv...

What would Resident Evil play like if all the enemies in the game were mobile and aggressive dinosaurs? Not very differently, as the first Dino Crisis game demonstrates. If you were not aware that the game was actually made by Capcom, ...

The PlayStation 1 had such a massive library of games that it is impossible to do it justice with a simple top 100 games list. As such, I decided to supplement my usual review of a top 100 games list (this time, I used the top 100 PS1 ...