I've been playing it on Switch for the last few days - fifteen minutes here and there, from one save room to the next - as a bit of a treat. Isn't that the most honest approach to next-gen sequels anyway? The thing you love, but now it's super.Īnd I think Super Metroid might be the most super of the lot. What I love the most, though, is that you could reinvent a series by just adding the word 'super' to it. I can still remember bunking off school to read the Mean Machines that had the first reviews of Super Mario World, Pilotwings and, y'know, Ultraman. I think the move from NES to SNES was probably my favourite upgrade of all time. You can pick Gyromancer up for pennies on Steam and it's also available - and fully backwards compatible - on Xbox. The cleverest thing about it is the way it builds an entirely single-player battle mechanic that's just you versus the board, so you're never waiting for an AI to take a turn and your greatest enemy is always just your own lack of foresight or elegance. It has to be said, it's an ugly clash of aesthetics, but a harmonious mesh of ideas. It's basically an elaborate reskin of PopCap's classic match-3, Bejeweled Twist, with some Pokémon-style creature collection, levelling and battling layered on top - and fey, ornate, Final Fantasy-inspired artwork and story layered on top of that. While not my favourite puzzle RPG of the Xbox Live Arcade era - that honour belongs, of course, to Capybara's mighty Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes - Gryomancer is a wonderfully refined and satisfying design. Some recent chat about the return of Puzzle Quest sent me back to 2009's Gyromancer, an attempt to jump on the original game's bandwagon that's notable for the names behind it: Square Enix and PopCap.

Bejeweled twist soundtrack