Recent reviews by Odjn Ryu

Beyond Good & Evil - 20th Anniversary Edition launched without Steam achievements, despite being available via Ubisoft Connect, PlayStation 4/5, and Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S. Then, in mid-2024, Ubisoft patched the Steam version to have Steam achievements, and all was well. Then, inexplicably just weeks/months after patching the game, Steam achievements stopped working. It's been a year now and these achievements continue not to work with no promise of a patch. Bottom line: Don't buy this.

I've longed for an affordable port of this game for a long time, and now it's finally here!

Elevator Action Returns is an emulated port of the Sega Saturn version, which I hear was pretty much arcade perfect. My wife and I enjoyed the co-op, and the quality of life mode toggles like slow, rewind, quick save, and infinite lives are all greatly appreciated. TBH, every arcade-esque game should come with these options. Additionally, there are some visual options, allowing you to utilize scanlines (yay!) and sprite smoothing (yuck), and thankfully you can turn off the wallpaper background and intrusive side-prompts.

The game has a cool style to it. Up to 2 players engage in intense shootouts and explosions while hopping on and off loads and loads of elevators. Despite the brevity I'd happily replay it again. The music is neat too, although it seems to stop repeating after a few times (was probably a carryover from the Saturn CD version).

My only issues with this title are:

*It launches in a small window and doesn't go into fullscreen until you go past the initial S-Tribute splash screen
*Initial config is confusing. Xbox controllers don't work right off the bat; you'll need to enable the Controller Configuration via right-clicking the game and enabling controller support under "Manage". Otherwise, you'll need to use the arrow keys and Z and X on a keyboard to bring up the main options menu.
*It looks like 2-player requires 2 controllers to be connected. I wasn't able to use 1 keyboard/1 controller as a setup.
*The default control layout is awkward, putting Xbox 'A' as shoot and 'B' as jump, when it makes more sense to have 'X' as shoot' and 'A' as jump. Thankfully this is all easily changeable.

More classic Sega Saturn ports, please! Especially for games that are too expensive to purchase on the original Saturn due to rising secondhand costs.