Table of Contents
My Favorite Games of 2025
Biggest Surprises of 2025
What was I Playing in 2025?
– Mario Kart World, Mario Maker 2, GeoGuessr, Starcraft, Earthion, Fast Fusion
The Atari Lynx
First Impressions on Some Top 2025 Titles
– I, Robot
– Kirby Air Riders
– Sonic Racing CrossWorlds
– Hades II
– Avowed
My Favorite Games of 2025
Best New Game Releases of 2025
1. Mario Kart World (NS2)
2. I, Robot (XSX) (also on PS4, X1, PS5, PC)
3. Donkey Kong Bananza (NS2)
4. Fast Fusion (NS2)
5. Kirby Air Riders (NS2)
6. Earthion (PC) (also on PS4, X1, PS5, XSX)
Didn’t Get Yet (so not ranked): Metroid Prime 4 (NS2)
My Most Played Games of 2025 (Guesstimate)
1. Mario Kart World (NS2)
2. Starcraft: Brood War (PC)
3. Super Mario Maker 2 (NS)
4. GeoGuessr (PC)
5. Wordle maybe (PC/Mobile)
Best Overall Games I Played in ’25
1. Starcraft: Brood War (PC)
2. Super Mario Maker 2 (NS)
3. Mario Kart World (NS2)
4. The Atari Lynx (Lynx)
5. 3DS Picross Games (3DS)
6. Donkey Kong Bananza (NS2)
What Retro Systems Was I Playing in ’25?
– Atari Lynx
– Nintendo New 3DS
– Sega Genesis
Biggest Surprises of 2025
– How great the Atari Lynx is really surprised me. I was expecting it to be yet another old handheld with stuff kind of neat for the time (sprite scaling, etc.) but that is somewhat meaningless compared to a DS or 3DS given that they can do that stuff better and have better plaformers and such too, but… nope. The Lynx is actually super cool and has the most impressive screen of any handheld of its age that I have used. Note, I have a Lynx 2, from the early ’90s. The screen is so good wondered if the Lynx I got had had its screen replaced with a modern one – I got a refurbished Lynx 2 from ebay – but this isn’t one of those updated modern screens as far as I can tell, it’s front-lit and the Backlight button turns off the screen. So yeah I assume it’s just that good.
– That Mario Kart World actually has an open world that I find compelling and interesting and like exploring despite my general strong dislike for open worlds is something I never expected. I know that some Mario Kart diehards are upset about MKW and its often straight-driving routes, but this doesn’t bother me in the slightest, what’s wrong with straight line driving? OutRun and such are fantastic games!
As for a few of the other games of 2025 that I bought in 2025 but didn’t get around to playing until now…
What was I Playing in 2025?
According to Nintendo, I ended up playing 145 hours of Mario Kart World in 2025. It’s easily my most played game of the year. On the Switch/Switch 2, second place was Mario Maker 2 at 90 hours, third DK Bananza at 7 hours. Bananza is pretty good, there’s no actual reason why I stopped 7 hours in and never went back… I really should finish it.
As for other consoles, I’ve barely touched my Xbox Series X since the Switch 2 released. I’ve played a bit of a few games but certainly I have used it a lot less. Mario Kart World pretty much got me to stop playing Diablo IV and Dead or Alive 6, the two Xbox games I had been regularly playing for the past few years. I don’t know what my most played Xbox game was in ’25 and Microsoft doesn’t give you play data, unlike Nintendo, but my guess probably would be… uh, maybe Diablo IV from when I played it early in the year? It’s more likely that than anything else. I did play a few hours of Vampire Survivors, trying out that game a bit, but there’s no way that one is in first. It’s too mindless for me to stick to.
But anyway, Mario Kart World vs. Mario Maker 2, which is better? Well, MM2 is certainly the better game, I have no doubt about that. Mario Maker has the best concept of any game ever and I am frustrated at Nintendo’s lack of recognition of probably their best idea ever with, well, anything, but MM2 is still amazing despite that. However… well, I started playing it a LOT less once MKW released. I’m just so addicted to playing some of this game on a regular basis! I admit though, I haven’t tried to get good at MKW, and I don’t know many of the cool driving-on-walls shortcuts or such. I mostly play the simplest, but maybe the most frustrating, online mode, online Knockout Tour. It’s amazing but so unfair, I lose because of random luck constantly. Of course I shouldn’t get TOO frustrated by this because that is the games’ design, it is still Mario Kart at its core, but when I get eliminated because of random nonsense several times in a row I usually quit out of the game and do something else, it’s too frustrating to stick with… heh. Despite that though I always go back, because MKW Knockout Tour is amazingly fun for a few sessions a day.
Perhaps I should try getting better at the regular tracks instead of mostly sticking to the point-to-point-focused Knockout Tour, but I haven’t done that at all. I also haven’t gone to hunt for more of the primary skill challenge part of the game, the P-Switch missions. I don’t know, they are pretty cool, but Knockout is just simple fun, you know? Just drive, play a few tours. see how I do… it’s exactly what I want.
And all of that is why Mario Kart World has to be my pick for best new game of 2025. Is it the best game I played in 2025? Of course not, I’m still playing Starcraft of course, never mind Mario Maker 2. But it is a fantastic, addictive, brilliantly — and irritatingly –designed game which does a lot right, as well as some things wrong. I wish that it had some missing features such as saving replays and adding a lot more knockout tours because for a game with 30 tracks and 202 routes it’s just insane that the Knockout Tour mode is locked to eight preset 6-section races and that’s all you get, but the game is amazing regardless.
As for the other games I liked the most in 2025, obviously the best game including old games is Starcraft. And yeah I’m still playing. Am I still horrible at it, yes, I still lose like 95% of the time and don’t learn as much as I probably should. But I love the game regardless and have no plan on stopping anytime soon. It’s simply the best thing.
The other PC game I have played off and on for like five-ish years now is GeoGuessr, which actually in its online multiplayer mode is also incredibly frustratingly random. The problem with the versus mode is that as a match goes into deeper rounds the damage multiplier increases, so if you get a great guess on the first round and they guess horribly you do only a little damage, but if you guess badly on the tenth round and their guess is great that’s it, you lose instantly no matter what the point differential is. It’s one of the worst game design concepts I have ever seen, seriously, and it’s a horrible shame that a multiplier-free ranked mode does not exist; every time I play the game I’d say I quit more because of how much I hate the damage multiplier than anything else. Well, at least the single player 5-locations mode is pretty great. I haven’t played this much in a bit but I’m sure I will be back. I should play the single player maps more, that’s a fantastic game. It’s only the multiplayer that is badly compromised and kind of awful due to multis.
The other PC game I need to mention is Earthion. This title is a shmup designed for the Sega Genesis by Yuzo Koshiro of Ancient and his small team. Koshiro is a musician, not a game designer, but he and one other guy at Ancient made this game and it’s pretty good. I’m playing it on PC because the actual Genesis release hasn’t happened yet; he decided to release it first digitally on modern systems, then later, once he was sure on the balance, on physical cartridge. That is okay. The game is a pretty good, though somewhat easy, shmup. This is one of those modern retro games that’s good, but definitely doesn’t hit ‘classic game hard’. You have a health bar here and it is somewhat generous. You can make the game hard by turning up the difficulty, though, so don’t worry that there is no challenge to be found. The graphics are fantastic for the Genesis and the music, of course, is great. Gameplay is fairly straightforward but good. Fly, shoot, use the simple mechanics to stay alive. This isn’t the best shmup on the Genesis but it’s fun stuff.
On the Switch 2, I already discussed MKW, and I mentioned Fast Fusion in my early Switch 2 articles. The other Switch game I play obviously is Mario Maker 2, which, as I said, I’ve played a lot less of since MKW released last summer. Even so, MM2 is still maybe the best game idea ever and is something I will never entirely stop playing. I only made four levels in ’25, I should make more levels… I’m sure I could come up with some ideas.
Other than those four, well, I don’t know if any other single game actually reached double digit hours of playtime, but I am still regularly using my 3DS, primarily for what’s left of its Picross and other puzzle games that I haven’t finished yet. I hate finger touch so Switch 2 Picross or touchscreen stuff doesn’t appeal to me much at all, I’d need a good capacitive touch stylus and I tried one of those once and didn’t like it much.
For another game, I didn’t buy Kirby Air Riders in 2025, but I got it in early ’26 and played it a bit. See below for my thoughts on the game. It’s okay but I don’t love it. As for Metroid Prime 4, I haven’t gotten it yet.
(What about my PlayStation 4? I don’t think I even plugged it in even once in 2025, much less turned it on, and it still isn’t hooked up. Good riddance.)
The Atari Lynx
What about my retro collection? As with other recent years I only rarely used most of it, sadly. However, one thing I got in 2025 is something I did end up playing quite a bit of: the Atari Lynx. I don’t know if I mentioned here that I got a Lynx midyear this year, but I did, with pretty low expectations. I’d played Lynx games in emulation decades back and wasn’t all that interested, and I don’t especially like the other handhelds I’ve gotten in recent decades such as the Wonderswan or Game Gear. The Game Boy line are great, but I don’t use them much anymore. Of course I do use the DS and 3DS regularly, but much more for touchscreen games than button ones. I thought the Lynx would be, like, yeah it has great graphics for its time, but modern systems do better, you know? Just something to add to the collection. I got a Lynx II from ebay. I had always planned on getting the Lynx II if I ever got a Lynx.
But… well, two things. First, I ended up getting a discount Lynx flash cart, which unlocked the Lynx’s large homebrew library. There are a lot of Lynx homebrew games and some of them are pretty good. And… well, I actually like the system a lot! I like the Lynx so much more than I expected, it’s kind of crazy. Of course it helps that I got a refurbished one that works great, but I didn’t splurge for one with a replaced screen, I’m pretty sure this has the original screen, and it’s really good! Yeah, it blurs a bit, but compared to the other screens of the early ’90s this seems by far the best in terms of visibility and blur. It is front-lit also, of course, like the Game Gear, except way more powerful than GG, with impressive sprite scaling 3d effects. But even when games are just 2d, they seem to run better than most GG games do, usually smooth and fast. The vertical resolution of the Lynx is quite low, it’s got a widescreen aspect ratio with a vertical resolution far below the GB or GG’s resolution, so some games have tiny sprites, but I think the look works for the screen size the Lynx has.
As for the negatives, well, the platformer library is decidedly second rate. You have some very weird Western platformers by second and third rate teams. Too many of these games have no music and iffy framerates; the Lynx is powerful but clearly not ideal for platformer games, it’s better at sprite scaling 3d and such. For Japanese platformers, ports of Rygar (the arcade game), Ninja Gaiden III (from the NES), and Toki (arcade). And that’s about it from Japan. Fortunately all three ports are pretty good, though. It’s neat that this is the arcade version of Toki, the Sega Genesis game is entirely different. Of course now you can play Toki HD on modern systems, but still it’s a good port. Rygar… that arcade game always was kind of boring, so that it’s a good port isn’t saying all that much. Still it’s okay I guess.
Of the other official Lynx games, S.T.U.N. Runner and Rampart are probably the ones I’ve played the most.
From the Lynx homebrew library that I’ve tried, of stuff I found, I need to buy some of the paid homebrews, from Songbird and AtariAge. A few of them look pretty good, I need to get Odynexus (there’s a demo and I played it, it’s pretty cool) and some others. Ynxa seems decent, and Red (or Green). Those have paid releases now too, I should get them. For free stuff, there’s a little homebrew solitaire card game title that I’ve been playing, it’s well done. There are a lot more free Lynx homebrews, many of which I’ve been trying on the system; I’d need to look through the list to say more about them. Suffice to say, I like the Lynx now and regardless of having the flashcart will certainly be expanding my collection of physical carts for the thing; it’s just so nice to play games on.
First Impressions on Some Top 2025 Titles
I, Robot (Xbox Series X) (also on Xbox One, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, and PC) is a Llamasoft and Atari (Infogrames) collaboration. I got it when it released back in May of ’25, but didn’t spend as much time with it as I should have until fairly recently. It is Jeff Minter’s latest title. I’m a huge fan of Llamatron 2112 and Tempest 2000, so I usually try his new games, and I tried this one. After over 45 years as a game developer, he’s still making basically exactly the same kinds of games he always has, which is quite impressive. The game is an insane acid trip of a game, overwhelming to try to keep track of at times but brilliant in so many ways. It’s another remake of a classic early ’80s arcade game, Minter-ized, and that’s just as it should be. This game is kind of a hybrid of Amidar and a shooter. For those who don’t know Amidar, think Pac-Man, Q*Bert, and such. You need to move around a single screen space, touching every tile to switch its color.
The first challenge is, there are many gaps in each stage. You can jump by walking towards a gap between two platforms of equal height above the ground, but there is a giant eye floating in the background, and when it is open you die if you are jumping, it shoots you with a beam. Additionally, every level has some kind of special ruleset, which is displayed on screen when the stage begins. You basically need to relearn the rules every time you get to a new stage, which adds to the overwhelming feeling that the usual insane visuals and aural overstimulation that Minter always uses also create. There are a huge variety of stages and rulesets, and seeing each one is a major draw of this game. It’s really cool stuff, I love the variety. Additionally, each time you beat a level you do a flying-forwards shooter bit, where you need to destroy polygons for points. These sections are fun, but don’t game over here! If you run out of lives in a shooter section, you need to redo the level you just beat. Yeah. And in this game you get just 3 lives per try. Fortunately you can start from any level you have unlocked, as usual in Llamasoft games.
This game may seem very frustrating at first, as you struggle to line up your character with the paths and not accidentally jump when you meant to move down the path one tile above or below the one you are actually on, but you do get used to it eventually, stick with it. This game is pretty amazing. It is not very accessible to beginners, but nothing Llamasoft has made in the last few years is. Jeff is getting even weirder game design-wise in his older age, isn’t he. It’s pretty great to see really. I don’t love this game quite as much as Akka Arrh, it is more frustrating than that game and can feel less fair due to how hard tracking everything going on can be and how easy it is to misjudge which tile you are on, but still it’s a really fun A-grade title.
Kirby Air Riders (Nintendo Switch 2) – So recently I played a few hours of this game, and… eh. It’s good I guess, a bit better than the first one, but I’m sorry, I do not understand why this got a lot of reviews saying it’s better than Mario Kart World. So for context, looking at my collection spreadsheet, I have the original Kirby Air Ride at a C- grade. The tracks and core gameplay were good, but City Trial being ‘5 minutes to build up to one minigame’ wasn’t great and there was basically no single player at all. The one button design also was too simplified for its own good.
This sequel improves on the game all around, and I’d probably give it a B or B- now. The addition of online play adds great replayability, and having a single player campaign to go through is also welcome. It’s not the longest campaign but it’s much better than nothing. The controls are similar, but a second button for special attacks has been added, which is nice. The graphics are fantastic now, this game really shows off what the Switch 2 can do. The new tracks are very flashy. Also the board full of achievements returns, but with some improvements making it work better than it did before. I’ve never cared about achievements, though, and this is no exception, so whatever, it doesn’t matter either way. Those things are good. The 18 tracks are all good also, and the new floating island you do City Trial on is solid, though it’s disappointing that the original City Trial map isn’t in this game given that basically everything else from the original game is.
However, the game still doesn’t have cups, tournaments, or any of that stuff that most racing games have; it’s single race, City Trial, or the campaign only, which is pretty disappointing. I do not understand why Sakurai doesn’t care about a multi-race points championship mode but the game still feels lacking for not having it. It really drags down the single player and makes this a game primarily focused on first the short campaign and then just online play. But well, at least it has that online play, that does add a lot versus the Gamecube original. (Yes, I remember that the GC game had LAN play. No, I’ve never tried it, or owned a GC modem.)
Also, City Trial and the single player campaign also put the minigames in a very prominent spot. The single player has you riding along a straight path, and you choose from up to 3 things, with three lanes which each send you to a different activity. A lot of those activities are minigames, and the minigames are quite mixed in quality. Some minigames are actually impossible with some of the vehicles, too — if you aren’t on one which can float around the ‘fall through rings’ one is literally impossible, for instance. In single player this is okay so long as you remember which vehicles are good in which minigames — the game doesn’t really tell you this, you just need to know — because you can choose your vehicle before each race, but in online this is sometimes an issue; you do choose from 4 tasks but in some situations you can be forced into a minigame you can’t do anything in. But even if you have the right vehicle, why is so much of this game about the often-forgettable minigames? Shouldn’t the main point be about races? But in the single player mode, actual full races are infrequent. And the most popular online mode is City Trial, where you just drive around randomly for 5 minutes getting powerups and then play a minigame. It’s weird, what is this game about? Racing, or minigames and random driving around? I know that it is both, but the balance is a bit off in favor of the much less interesting part of that, the minigames. Sakurai’s a genius but his tastes are weird and often don’t really line up with mine. (For another example of this, his love for timed modes. I’m sorry but I have always hated the timed modes in Smash and never had any interest in playing that stuff, not in Melee or anywhere else. In contrast, he usually makes it the default setting.)
Also, I would like to quickly just comment that this game has 9 new tracks and 9 old ones, plus it also has Top Ride tracks in each setting, and also Skyah. That’s a pretty solid amount of content. Meanwhile, Mario Kart World has 30 tracks plus a huge open world much much larger than Kirby Air Riders’, and a lot of people were complaining that it doesn’t have enough content because… because what, they were so spoiled by the ridiculous amount of tracks in the MK8 Switch version Season Passes and such that a “mere” 30 isn’t enough? Don’t be absurd, it’s a lot! Like, yes, I want DLC for Mario Kart World. I want Nintendo to announce more content for the game. But the game already has a lot in it, there is no question about that. It’s got more than Kirby, certainly. But anyway.
Sonic Racing Crossworlds (Xbox Series X) (also on PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch) – This one I also only played for an hour or two so I can’t say all that much, except… I don’t get it, a lot of outlets gave this higher scores than MKW also? How? It feels so much lower budget! It’s not even close, MKW has more and better across the board than anything I’ve seen in this game. I definitely haven’t seen all the content here yet, I’ve only played a few cups, so I’m not going to grade it for sure, but my first impression is ‘decent B game I guess, or maybe even C+’. How did IGN give this a 9 but MKW an 8.2? The items seem harder to learn than MK items — mushroom for speed and shell for attack and such just make sense, but… blue creature for speed? Erm, I don’t see the connection, that is not obvious. Also, the CrossWorlds thing. So, in this game, you start out on one track, but at some point it branches, and the person in first chooses which other course to go to. Then everyone else must go to that track. So, only the person in the lead at one specific spot actually ever chooses which other course to go to, and because you see multiple ones on each race it makes all of the tracks of each cup kind of blend together, you know? You see the same things multiple times as you warp around in “different” races… I don’t know, I get what they were going for but I don’t love it.
Also, I know a lot of people disagree with me on this but I like the open world and the interconnected nature of the MKW tracks. You don’t NEED an open world, but that does mean that this game only does one thing, races on circuits. Those circuits are long and do have some long straight-ahead stretches, but that is what you get. There is no analog here for MKW’s Knockout Tour and its straight-line point to point driving, and that is the thing I’ve played the most in that game by far.
So yeah, I will play some more Sonic CrossWorlds, but my first impression is that Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is still the best of Sega’s attempts at Mario Kart. I like that Sega finally got to making Mario Kart games with Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and its sequels like this game, but they aren’t usually at the quality of Nintendo’s efforts.
Hades II (Nintendo Switch 2) – This game is an overhead-ish action-RPG. The first Hades was hugely popular, but I wasn’t sure if I would like it because of its run-based design, so I didn’t get it. Well, I did get it for Xbox eventually, but still haven’t played it. I decided to get Hades II for Switch 2 though and tried it a bit, and… well, it’s another mixed bag. On the one hand the game has great graphics and art design and a decent, though simple, story. The combat feels good, also, with responsive controls. However, when compared to Diablo IV, this game is much more restrictive — you are one character, Melinoe, and she has basically one combat style. You can switch weapons, and each one gives you a different type of attack, but you will always need to be very careful to try to avoid damage, because healing is difficult in this game. This is no Diablo or Guild Wars where you heal up after fights automatically, quite the opposite healing within each run is limited. This makes the game challenging and tense, sure, and it is fun to play, but I’d rather
Also, exploration here is minimal. You don’t run around environments in this game; instead, each room is a small, generally one screen plus a bit, combat arena. Kill all the monsters in the area, go through a gate to a new room, repeat. You never explore areas beyond the semi-random choices of which gates to go through. You cannot go back to the previous room once you’ve gone through a door and it is all at least semi randomly generated, so while you do have choice — little icons on the gates give you a hint at the contents of the area — you don’t have much choice and it doesn’t feel like it means anything. As someone who loves exploration in games this is a huge loss that really takes me out of the game, I strongly prefer a game where you explore a persistent map over this kind of run-based randomness.
Overall, this game is good but as I suspected isn’t really my thing, primarily because of its run-based randomness and the harsh penalty you take for taking damage. I am not good enough at games to want to deal with that kind of tension all the time, I think. It’s a shame because there is a lot to like here in the setting, characters, graphics, and controls. Why is it in this stupid roguelike with very limited healing? That’s really too bad. I’m not sure how much more I will play this, I like Diablo IV’s game design more even if I have plenty of issues with that game as well in its mostly bad story and overlong bossfights. Anyway, Hades II is certainly a solid game, a B grade title at least, maybe B+.
Avowed (Xbox Series X; also on PC and PS5) – Avowed is a first person action-RPG from Obsidian, published by Microsoft. This game is a challenging first person action game take on the universe from Obsidian’s traditional overhead RPG series Pillars of Eternity. I quite liked Pillars of Eternity, but this one is much less my thing. I like the setting, find the story decently interesting, and think this game has great graphics, but the gameplay? I’m sorry but I do not enjoy this kind of combat much at all. Sure, when out of combat I like the usual good Obsidian dialog trees, but in combat? Ugh. You do have multiple different ways to play this game, as a melee character, mage, archer, or such, and each plays a bit differently. That’s good.
As any character, though, the key is to dodge or block your enemys’ attacks, then attack them back. You need good timing with your dodge rolls, shield blocks, and such, and just as good timing with your attacks back when the enemy is vulnerable. Timing all of this is hard and is something I have always been awful at; I’m someone who gave up on Metroid Prime halfway through back in the early ’00s despite thinking it was one of the best games ever because I found trying to dodge-roll out of the way too hard, after all. I am not a Soulslike combat fan, not one bit, and Avowed’s dodging and such reminded me of that. I had a bit more fun with the mage character, trying to keep my distance and shoot enemies, but it’s still not something I would call fun. I very quickly was thinking, why do people actually want to play games with combat like this? I know they are popular, the Soulslikes, modern Bethesda titles, and such, but I just do not get the appeal, I was kind of hating it at first and it only got a tiny bit better once I got a little more used to it. My tastes are different from what a lot of people like, that’s for sure. Maybe I should turn down the difficulty below the default and just try to enjoy the story, because that’s just about the only way I can see getting much farther in this one. I know this is for someone but it isn’t me. Average game.
Overall, obviously I, Robot is high on my list, but as for the rest of these, if I was adding these three games to the list… they’re not in the top six, no way.
7. Kirby Air Riders
8. Hades II
9. Sonic CrossWorlds
10. Avowed
