Elevator Action Old & New (Game Boy Advance)

So obviously, everyone knows of the Elevator Action series, probably through the amazing arcade game Elevator Action Returns, but I think this entry into the series has gone mostly unplayed, released as it was, only in Japan, and apparently not in great quantities.
The cartridge contains both the original Elevator Action and a whole new game. The original is what it is. I won't waste too much time talking about it, but it's definitely a game that lives in the shadow of its sequels: it's

brutally hard, fiddly to control and moves like it's set at the bottom of a treacle ocean.
The new game lets you pick from three playable characters, with different stats. There is a fourth character unlocked after completing the game with all three characters, but I didn't go that far. I got most of the way through with one character before giving up on the game. The game's stages are split into 8 sets of four, which all have to be played through individually, which presents one of the biggest problems the game has. Because you get a whole new set of lives every four stages, this makes getting through the first three quarters of the game incredibly easy. You might argue that this is to make the game more palatable for a handheld console, but compare to another GBA game, the excellent Ninja Cop (which itself has a few similarities to the Elevator Action series), which allows the player to start at any set of stages, but also goes straight into the next once one is finished, with the continuing score adding an extra incentive to play the game from start to finish in a single run. Elevator Action New doesn't even have scoring, so the player is literally just trying to get from start to finish.
With that complaint out of the way, you might wonder why I didn't complete the game, even once. The thing is, once you get to the penultimate set of stages, the game does two things that totally throw the difficulty from "pointlessly easy" to "unfairly difficult". The first thing is a new enemy, big robots that stomp around the floors shooting lasers, and who take ten shots to kill. For context, consider that your ammo is limited in this game, even for the default gun, and the player starts each stage with only 30 bullets. The second is the fact that the stage layouts are no longer simple vertical buildings with the exit at the top or bottom. I gave up on

the game, when, after finding all the secret files in one stage, dying to a time out when I couldn't seem to find the stage exit anywhere.
The game isn't a total write-off, though. There is one new element that I really liked in this game: the disguise power up. It turns the player into an enemy for 10 or so seconds, allowing them to walk about the stages freely, without any enemy interference. It's only a simple little thing, but it's a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it's not enough to save this game. I never expected EAN to be able to stand up to Elevator Action Returns, but the fact is, it doesn't even stand up to its Game Boy Color antescendant Elevator Action EX, which is a great game, and one which I definitely recommend, should you have a need for some portable elevator-themed espionage.

Kouryuu Densetsu: Elan Doree (Saturn)

So, it's a fighting game, and as was the fashion at the time, it attempts to stand out from the crowd by having a gimmick: the fights take place mid-air, with the characters riding on flying beasts (most of whom are dragons).
Aesthetically, the game is excellent, going for the always-welcome "mid-90s fantasy OAV" style. The characters are all fairly appealing, in their own ways, and though most of the characters are riding dragons, those dragons aren't just lazy re-colours, all looking slightly different, with Rubone's poison dragon standing out in particular with its smooth black skin and whale-like face. And as I said, most of the characters are

riding dragons. Marielle the magician rides a kind of flying dolphin creature, Tina the magical girl rides a furry orange beast, and Eriorna, the coolest character in the game, is a Takarazuka-inspired swordswoman who fights with the power of "estheticism" rides a large bird. The stages in which the fights take place are also worrth a mention, being as they are, huge in scale and definitely appropriate for providing the kind of gravitas you'd expect from fights between dragon-straddling warriors and the like.
As for how the game plays, it's pretty good. There's three main buttons: weak attack, strong attack and jump (obviously in this case, the human character jumps off their steed, rather than the flying beast jumping in midair). It's jumping that stops the dragon-riding gimmick from being purely aesthetic, as taking an attack midair will knock a character to the ground, leaving them prone to attack until their steed swoops down and retrieves them. Another unique point is in the way special and super moves are handled. While you might see in the screenshots beneath the health bars something that looks like a traditional super meter, it's actually two

seperate items. The number in a box does show how many super move uses a player has remaining, though this is a set amount each round, that, as far as I can tell, isn't replenished until the next round (the amount is sometimes two and sometimes three, though I haven't figured out why). The meter next to it measures a player's "dragon power", which is depleted whenever the player guards or uses a projectile attack, and fills back up when they take damage or land a melee attack. Obviously, the developers were attempting to curb projectile spamming and players that constantly guard. Speaking of the developers, this game was apparently made by a company named Sai-Mate, who, as far as I'm aware never made another game before or since, which is a shame.
Elan Doree is definitely worth playing, if only for how nice it looks (though it's not exactly a chor to play, either).