Balan Wonderworld

And yet for all that, I kind of adore Balan Wonderworld, to a degree that's surprised me. Maybe it's just come along at the right time, when I needed a colourful comfort blanket of a thing, a nostalgia strip as strange and insubstantial as watching a YouTube compilation of 90s TV adverts. Maybe it's because my expectations were low - Sonic Adventure has always been the game where the scales fell away from my eyes when it comes to Sega's mascot, and to Sonic Team, and I can't say I've ever enjoyed too much of the series since...Or maybe it's just because this is how games used to be, and sometimes it's comforting to slip into a 90s netherworld, and back into the old ways. When games were often clunky, unexplained, awkward and often downright frustrating. Balan Wonderworld is all those things, an almost too exacting facsimile of a type of second tier 90s platformer that never quite achieved greatness, even if it's fascinating all the same.