Dino Wars - Kyouryuu Oukoku heno Daibouken (SNES)

So, this game is based on an early 90s kids' movie that no-one remembers: "Adventures in Dino City", which is about a couple of kids who get sucked into the world of a TV show. Though I'm sure I remember the movie just being called "Dinosaurs: The Movie" when I saw it. Strange.
The game itself is a platform game, but going against the trend of licenced kids platform games on the SNES, it's actually not awful.
The game looks and sounds pretty nice, with the backgrounds on the outdoor stages standing out in particular, being very well drawn and colourful.
It plays great, too: the stages are pretty varied, and you can get pretty far into the game, and it'll still be throwing new gimmicks and obstacles at you. Although there are quite a few stages that follow the formula of "ride a moving platform across a long bottomless pit while stuff tries to kill you", but while the later incarnations of these stages get frustrating very quickly, it's a credit to the game that there are at least three types of them (rollercoaster, jetski-type thing, and large mode 7 rotating wheel thing with platforms on it) that all play quite differently to each other.
To fight enemies, you can choose to either jump on their heads, or punch them. Neither are especially great: the punch is very short range, and there are a fair few enemies (especially later on in the game) that like to jump around, and they can do it almost as high as the player character. Despite the combat in stages being poor, the boss fights are actually a lot better, and all very different to each other.
This is a good game, and I'm somewhat surprised it isn't more well known, considering it got a worldwide release. If you're wondering why I reviewed the Japanese version when it got a worldwide release, the reason is that whoever was in charge of localising the game for the west partook in that most hated 90s habit: they messed with the difficulty and made the JP version's hard mode into the western version's normal mode.

Toryumon (Arcade)

When you're looking through a big long list of ROMs you've never heard of, how do you pick out the ones you want to play? I picked this one because it had the same name as the wrestling gym/promotion founded by Ultimo Dragon, that eventually changed it's name into Dragon Gate. But obviously, this game has nothing to do with wrestling at all. It's a kung-fu themed puzzle game.
It's pretty simple to play: yellow blocks fall into your pit in pairs, and some (or all) of the blocks' corners will have blue quarter-circles on them. Put four of those blue quarters together to make a full circle, and the four blocks disappear, the surrounding blocks get more blue quarters on them, and some junk blocks fall into your opponent's pit.
The junk blocks are actually an essential part of playing, though, as when you get rid of some regular blocks, any junk blocks touching them will gain a blue quarter on all four corners, which is (as far as I'm aware) the only way to get combos in this game. This means when half your pit is full of junk, it's very possible to make a dramatic and cool comeback! In a way, this is similar to the timed junk blocks in Super Puzzle Fighter Turbo, though in that case using them to your advantage is as much about waiting as skill (not that I'm saying that Toryumon is better than SPFT, though. Although Toryumon is pretty good, that would be crazy talk.).
The AI is pretty good at the game, too. If you let your guard down for even a few seconds, they can quickly mess up all of your plans and beat you in no time at all!
Toryumon is good. Strange that it never got a home or even handheld release, really. It just seems to have sank without a trace, never to be heard from again. What a shame.