But these titles do deserve to be remembered as part of the overall patchwork that the games industry grew out of, and I’m genuinely happy that I had the chance to discover Rammy’s Great Adventure. It’s not an easy thing to recommend to anyone because… Well, the Switch already has so many great roguelikes. But if you’re in the mood for something eclectic and eccentric, or just a piece of gaming history that you absolutely haven’t played before, Rammy’s Great Adventure and its sequel and the existence of this remake is genuinely fascinating.

More than 10 years on, Mugen Souls remains a wildly entertaining little game. It’s never going to appear in those “1000 games you must play before you die” books, but that’s okay. Not every project needs to aspire to be that. For those who missed out back on the PlayStation or PC, or who always wanted to play the full experience with that missing minigame, EastAsiaSoft has done you all a favour with this release.

The campaign tells a safe narrative that is made more impressive by the intimacy of the gameplay. The multiplayer Blitz mode may not be for everyone, but between it, and the rest of the multiplayer, there's enough there to keep people going for quite some time.

Soulstice is an excellent first effort in what must be an enormously difficult genre. Just imagine the work that must go into crafting such big, challenging action set pieces and leave the player feeling satisfied rather than infuriated. Soulstice isn’t perfect, but I hope the development team does stick at this, because they’re on to something special.

Another decent, if unspectacular effort from Nintendo. The series needs better balancing if skill is to ever become a factor again and the single player mode may be a total slog, but Mario Kart is still a hit where it always mattered: with friends.

It’s a game for people to play and give themselves heart attack after heart attack, to the amusement of whoever is watching. There’s value in that, and this game does that better than most, but it doesn’t get its claws into you – it doesn’t really even try to. When playing with Emily gets too scary, all you have to do is stop.

I haven't been as conflicted about a rhythm game as I have Melody of Memory. On the one hand, the rhythm game action itself is wonderful and the music, across 140 tracks, is sublime. On the other hand, being forced to play through a truncated and baffling summary of the Kingdom Hearts narrative just to unlock those tracks has done little to enamour me to the series, and there are far, far too many little additions that distract from what the game does best (i.e. the rhythm action). The grand sum of it is that Melody of Memory is much more a game for existing fans of Kingdom Hearts than it needed to be, and once again Square Enix has struggled to fully capitalise on the rich opportunity that the Disney license provides them.

Certainly it is aimed squarely at a niche audience, but anyone who can get past that weird cultural quirk that we have in the west where sexytimes are somehow meant to be completely inappropriate in games should find themselves having a grand old time here.

I'd say Unearthing Mars is well worth a couple of hours away from the real world. It's rough around the edges, but there are some great ideas at play and an enjoyable adventure to be had.

I don't want to take anything away from Sackboy: A Big Adventure. Platformers are one of the genres I am least inclined towards, and were it not part of a (fairly limited) launch range on the PlayStation 5, I might not have been inclined to play Sackboy at all. I am glad that I did, though, because for pure whimsy and quality level design it's a real challenge to Nintendo at its best in this genre, and that's no mean feat. Just don't go in expecting the same qualities that made the LittleBigPlanet series itself so beloved.

It lacks the charm and wit of Danganronpa, but Zero Time Dilemma, like its prequels, is still valuable, smart, and stimulating. Its presentation really badly hurts it, but once you push past that distaste, what you’re left with is an intense, engaging and intelligent narrative with some thoughtful and well-designed puzzle rooms to sort through.

OkunoKA is exceptionally serviceable to the hardcore-platforming brand, and there’s not a whole lot for me to say beyond that.

Lies Of P is a decent Soulslike, but it does squander the main opportunity that it had to differentiate itself. The “dark Pinocchio” theme is intriguing and the developers went about it with the right spirit, but struggled to convert it into something as thought-provoking and deep as it should have been. Take that out of the equation and you’ve got a Soulslike that’s a little heavy-handed in how it makes players engage with it, in a world that looks more inspired in screenshots than it is to actually journey through. Ultimately, as enjoyable as it is, Lies Of P stands testament to just how difficult FromSoftware’s formula really is.

Siralim 2 simply does nothing substantial to build on the foundations of its predecessor. It’s very much like those sports games that simply update the roster of players without actually changing the game in any way from one year to the next… except that sports games developers don’t really do that any more. I want to see more Siralim, but if there’s to be a Siralim 3, I do want it to be something different this time.

Ultimately, Hidden Dragon: Legend is a fairly average beat-em-up/platformer, but its sky-high production values and sheer love of spectacle is sure to delight players.

Fans of survival horror should give this title a go, and this is especially true if you have the opportunity to experience it in virtual reality. It may not have ghosts and goblins, but Narcosis still provides a suitably haunting experience worth undertaking.

A game that is acutely aware of the great titles that it draws inspiration from, even it falls a little short in its well-meaning execution.

For a first attempt at a kart racer, All-Star Fruit Racing shows that the team behind it is talented, and they know how to make a genuinely fun game. There’s a lot of joy involved in playing this one, and it’s an ideal party racing game, particularly on the PlayStation 4, where there’s no Mario Kart equivalent to reach for. If it wasn’t for the infuriating AI, I’d even argue that All-Star Fruit Racing takes a step forward in a genre that Nintendo itself is almost painfully conservative about.

It's a fairly by-the-numbers dungeon crawl that borrows the Steampunk aesthetic, and offers some genuinely clever twists, as far as combat goes. There aren't too many dungeon crawlers on the Switch, and even within that category Vaporum is flat enough that it doesn't come out on top, but it's a pleasurable way to bust a few hours on a weekend nonetheless.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't highlight that this game wants you to keep investing in it; the dreaded loot boxes and other monetisation models are present in the game, and are proving to be quite controversial. In fairness, the game does almost get to the point where, like in mobile free-to-play games, you'll feel an urge to spend real money just to speed progress up a little. That said, while that kind of grinding isn't really acceptable for a premium-priced game, the loot boxes are just on the side of "optional enough that you can still have a blast without investing in them.

Yakuza Kiwami is an excellent game, and if this is the start of the entire series making its way to the Switch 2 then it’s still worth having it on the device in the interest of completion. It’s a solid 5-star game that unfortunately is just a bit too much for the Switch to do full justice to.

The game comes so very close to being an amazing experience but the gameplay doesn't quite match with its excellent concept.

My Hero One’s Justice 2 is a straightforward expansion of the first game, offering new characters and stages galore. Although it relies on the same disappointing implementation of the anime’s story, the arcade mode compensates with humour. The refined arena fighting gameplay carries this one to being among the more unique anime arena fighters in recent years. The sheer personality of each character might be enough for those vaguely interested in the My Hero Academia craze to give this one a shot.

Jurassic World Evolution claims a victory of sorts in being the best "big-budget" simulator currently available on Nintendo Switch, though it cruised through there on the back of the port of Cities: Skylines being less than ideal. The fact that the game has a deep library of DLC built into the package certainly boosts its value, and when the only other options are the indies like Project Highrise or ports of the old Rollercoaster Tycoon titles, it's nice to have an option like Evolution for on-the-go play, though I am hoping that the port of Tropico 6 - a much more complex and detail-orientated simulator - proves to be the big one for the console. Jurassic World Evolution is enjoyable, but a little too simple to hit the peaks of the genre.

3 Stars of Destiny is a perfect example of what of a classic styled RPG should be like in this day and age as well as exactly what can be achieved with something like RPG Maker when in the hands of talent.

Releasing another version of this game doesn’t feel like it adds anything to the Pokemon franchise as a whole, and just makes me want a new Pokemon game on my Switch all the more. It’s still a very, very fine game, but as a product release, this one is quite disappointing from Nintendo.

The Adventure Pals is a welcome addition to the platforming genre, holding its own due to its quirky story, colourful graphics and accessible gameplay. I fell in love with the game and didn’t want to put it down. It's not the most essential, original, or unique that's ever been made, and it has some technical issues, but these are minor complaints in the grand scheme of things.

The big question for me, personally, though, is whether Project Cars 3 just zigged when it should have zagged. The thing is, that I do like accessible racing games. I spent many, many hours with Real Racing. But this new entry with Project Cars has given the series an identity crisis, and where the developers could have taken their existing learning and delivered the previous Project Cars vision to an all-new degree, instead we've got the team effectively starting from scratch again. I guess we can look forward to Project Cars 4 being a repeat of Project Cars 2, in taking and refining the initial idea and actually delivering to the vision.