Oniken: Unstoppable Edition

As far as gameplay goes, it's pretty damn solid.

If anything, these "retro" games often use simplistic graphics to mask otherwise modern gameplay and lack the same design philosophy that made the games they claim to be inspired by instant classics.

It's essentially a "neo-NES" game that goes far to capture the look and feel of games from that era, using lots of black filler space skillfully like later NES games tended to do to maximize color usag eand depth, and even including Ninja Gaiden-esque cutscenes with some well-done pixel art for the characters.

Graphically, the game has succeeded nobly in what it set out to do, though sadly the audio doesn't quite match up; the sound effects are fine, but the music is quite drab (some of it's alright, but most is really almost surprisingly bad) and sounds a bit more like something like GXSCC that tries to emulate this kind of sound rather than something from the system itself (should've used Famitracker probably).

It's not a terribly long or difficult game, surprising considering the era and style it's trying to emulate; the game automatically adds each stage to a 'natural stage select' on the main menu as you pass them, there are plenty of powerups and you have a huge life bar that's slow to deplete with relatively few platforming challenges.