Captain Silver

System: Sega Master System

Cheats Used: None

I like pirates, so considering the fact that there aren’t many pirate-themed games, the ones there are should be fun, right? Not in this case. The game is simple enough. You walk to the right killing enemies with your sword to get letters that spell out “captain silver”. As far as I could tell, nothing happens when you collect all the letters, they just disappear and you have to collect them again from the next group of enemies. This in itself wouldn’t make the game bad (although it does seem rather pointless), but the game is way harder than it needs to be due to you dieing after only one hit. I couldn’t even make it past the first level because of this, so I have no idea whether the rest of the game would have been any better. My advice? Give this one a pass.

Kirby's Dream Land

System: Game Boy

Cheats Used: None

This first game in the Kirby series is no less than a classic. While it is very short (only five levels), it is a ton of fun. The level design is fantastic and the music is excellent and very catchy. The game is easy enough that anyone, even young children, can finish it without too much trouble, although there is one boss that I couldn’t get past without being at full health (this is where save states come in handy). From this humble beginning, Kirby would go on to bigger and better things (Kirby’s Adventure for the NES is one of my favorite games for that system) and, although it’s not as high-profile as Nintendo’s other franchises, the series continues to this day with the release of Kirby’s Epic Yarn for the Wii. If you’re interested (and if you can find it) there was a very cute and enjoyable Kirby anime series. The English version was done by 4Kids and I think it’s the second best series they’ve done (after Pokemon, of course). Happy hunting!