Jumpin’ Gem Heist: Skipping the oddly dark backstory for this game, you play as Solly the Sandan, throwing rocks up at the baskets overhead to knock the gems out and keep them from getting into the hands of the Bori Miner while dodging… volcanic rocks? You must catch your rock after throwing it or you will lose it, equivalent to a life.

While the Flash game allowed you to control Solly with the mouse allowing for rapid movement, you are delegated to WASD in this collection with (Ctrl as a sprint as a small silver lining,) making the gems harder to catch. The thrown rock is heavier in this version too, which may catch veteran players off-guard. I couldn’t stop staring at the Bori Miner’s stiff animations or his lazy eye, probably a result of porting the spritework over instead of recreating it from scratch like Solly. Not the worst experience for someone new, but it’s a minor let-down for me.

Spinacles: Spinacles is a unique twist on the classic match-colors-to-burst-them game template. All the orbs are connected to a central gray orb, and the impact of the launched orb from above will send it spinning like a pinwheel. This clever mechanic adds a new puzzle element to the levels requiring a switch to the second lined-up orb or ricochets off the walls, and is thankfully preserved fine in this adaptation.

Kass Basher: The most-played game on all of Neopets has big shoes to fill and… it’s a swing and a miss. Rather than a gradual unlocks of the three batting options, all three are available by default, and the launch distance has been considerably lessened, even with the maximum wind for your benefit. The score doesn’t even provide any fanfare anymore, good, great, or bad; and I have to assume the easter egg of batting with the entire tree has been removed as well. This is where things finally hit me that this wasn’t going to be the experience I had hoped for.

Turmac Roll: Another popular classic, this one has been completely redone. Rather than high-speed rolling, platforming, and collecting until you die, this has been changed to a Sonic-esque rolling/jumping style where different berries will speed you up or give a few extra points, hitting something will instead slow you down temporarily, and there’s a 60-second time limit. It makes sense why this one feels like more effort was put into it though, see “The Ugly Truth” down below.

Ultimate Bullseye: I was really bad at the Flash version of this game, so I was worried this would be the end of my progress when playing here. Thankfully, you’re given twice as many shots, and instead of one target that changes its location each turn, there are a variety of stationary targets with forgiving hitboxes. Hitting 0 targets, 1-2 targets, or 3+ targets all get different sound effects. Honestly, I’d call this one of the few improvements compared to the original games!

Extreme Herder: Collect the grazing petpets and place them in their enclosure before Balthazar can catch them. While the environmental graphics have improved considerably, Balthazar looks rather ugly, and not in a good way. Worse still, he loves getting stuck in any sort of collision, so the only way you’ll lose is when too many spawn near the top-left of the screen, where he arrives from each level. Later levels get rid of the edge portals or enclosure gates, but it doesn’t change the difficulty when bad luck is all that kills you.

Snowball Fight: It might be hard to see, but that yellow Chia in the picture is missing her arms and legs. That pretty much sums up this entire game. Throw your dozens of snowballs at Neopets and petpets while avoiding the friendly faeries. Like with Jumpin’ Gem Heist, mouse controls have been replaced with WASD, lessening your movement speed and options. Throwing snowballs (the only animation in the entire minigame, all of two frames of a paw!) is instead moved to the space bar, giving a quick bullseye target up the screen to show how high the snowball will be thrown… and instead of coming back down if you hold it long enough, the marker goes right off the screen and never comes down, requiring you to waste a snowball to fix it.

Polarchucks occasionally parachute down in the background as an extra obstacle, and hitting them earns you ten bonus snowballs, but instead of becoming rarer over the course of the game like in the original, they maintain their original spawn rate, allowing the game to go on endlessly, which is even more frustrating when the main targets speed up faster and faster the higher the level you reach, to the point where the charge time for snowballs isn’t long enough to reach a character popping out to hit… except the still falling Polarchucks. You won’t lose this game as much as you give up on it. Easily the worst in the collection.

Snowmuncher: Dig down through the blocks by eating them, collecting “Bloat-B-Gone” potions to ease your stomach by 50%, and make it to the bottom of ever-increasing levels before time runs out. I was hoping this would be a breath of fresh air after Snowball Fight, but if anything it left me even more sour. Level 1 works perfectly fine, but making to Level 2 permanently removes the music. Furthermore, dying for the first time bugs the mechanic of falling blocks clearing out blocks of the same color when landing upon them, while dying a second time… fixes it?

Hitting 100% bloat will instantly kill you (without any animation) instead of getting a free move in the original Flash version, and the worm enemies pictured spawn out of what are supposed to be power-ups, getting mixed up and placed in the wrong object. These issues should have been caught in any amount of testing, so them being left in the finished result (with later patches, no less!) is just insulting.

Ice Cream Machine: “Survive as long as possible” was a common theme for Flash games in the 2000’s, and Neopets had possibly the king of this concept in a delicious, sweet package. While the mouse thankfully is usable in this version like the original Flash game, Adee, the controlled (or carried, in this case) character, has a larger size and less forgiving hitbox, which is a bit ruder when close-calls and fast movement is required in the later stages. The music also uses the original, unlooped version of the Flash game’s song, sounding almost like a remix as a result. Combine that with adorable blinky eyes when blasted by ice cream, and while it’s not an improvement over the original, there’s at least some charm to this game.

Moon Rock Rampage: Originally made as a tie-in to the “Return of Dr. Sloth” plot, you are given the choice to pick between two identical-playing characters, Gorix and Cylara. It’s a simple top-down game where you push the titular moon rocks to drop them in lava and open more paths to collect spaceship parts, while avoiding or defeating rock monsters (who, blasted by your laser, will transform into more moon rocks) or robots (who simply explode, but their death animation can still inexplicably kill you.) While instant death via random enemy spawning was also a problem in the original version, I don’t recall being completely softlocked by enemies spawning out of laser range in Level 12. Another let-down.

Nova Defender: As the most recent Flash game remastered for the collection, this personal favorite was one I was really looking forward to playing when I first got it. The new looks on the Novas are neat, the animation is fluid, and controls on the non-Steam version allow for 360° firing, which is hopefully enjoyed by other version players.

Unfortunately, the flaws are more distinct: level openings no longer give an explanation for the new enemy/mechanic, the shop UI is bland and stops bothering to preview the upcoming Nova type, and the music cuts out when starting every other level, another clear sign of no testing. I also have a theory that the projectile hitboxes stop working if enough enemies are stacked in one spot, though I can’t prove this. Either way, avoid Hard Mode if you do want to play this, and hopefully you’ll find at least something comparable to a good time.

Meerca Chase: Like with Turmac Roll, this game has been completely redone, with a checkerboard floor showing the movement tiles in this Snake clone. Rather than collect simple yellow “Happy Neggs” like in the original version, you collect a more vibrant striped color, while a dangerous “Ferocious Negg” spawns each time you collect one. Instead of continuing until you hit a wall or obstacle (although that can still occur here,) a 90-second time limit has been added to cease your chase, though it can be extended by collecting blue or green stopwatches that occasionally spawn on the map. Overall, the game is harmless, but it doesn’t add anything new to distinguish itself—a shame, since for the longest time, “Meerca Chase II” was the most popular game on Neopets, only recently in its history being beaten out by “Kass Basher,” and both received subpar remasters in this collection.

Spellseeker: The premise is pretty simple: Select numbers or symbols in sequential order chains, then submit it to remove those numbers and replace them with new spots, while your chain builds up a progress bar represented by the scroll at the top of the screen. Fill up the scroll before green “poison” tiles eat their way to the bottom of the collection (sinking down one space per submission, but are dissolved if used in a chain,) and you’ll move on to the next level.

Unfortunately, the chain submit animation is much slower in this version, and animations by the Gelert Wizard only play after the chain is finished (and not when a level is completed or the game is over,) so you spent a long time doing nothing. Interestingly, letters are no longer allowed as selectable options alongside numbers and symbols because… an internalized dictionary was too much work? Level 3 also completely fails to add 4’s as options (see the picture,) leaving 5 tiles as nothing more than obstacles (or unavoidable hazards, if a 5 becomes a poison tile.) Another game that feels rushed and unfinished.

Meepit Juice Break: Guide a connected line of juice to the Meepit waiting at the tree within the time limit; matching the color of the juice with the color of the Meepit gives bonus points. Feeding enough Meepits will bring you to a new level, adding extra items in pipes that will add to/subtract from your score, and increase the number of Meepits in the tree at once while decreasing their time for patience. It’s a fine remaster, though some of the pipe placement can be a bit unfair (such as corner pieces as the final connector, though that could just be me being bad at the game.) The game was also unintentionally given a 10x NP bonus, meaning a skilled enough player can walk away with 40,000 NP from a single submitted score. Three times for the daily submission is 120,000 NP… I smell another exploit in the Neopian economy!

Dubloon Disaster: Steer a rowboat around a square ocean to collect dubloons while mines continuously spawn and home in on your location- the closer you are, the more of a magnetic effect they have to you, and you have only one life. While fine in its Flash form, this “remaster” lacks any animation for mines or dubloons spawning, and the intended target goal can be completed from collecting a single dubloon if the first one you get is silver (such as in the picture.) You can be in and out in less than a minute, which is not how any game should play, fast-paced or not.

Sutek’s Tomb: It’s a special type of embarrassing to mess up a Match-3 game. But here we are, with tiles that don’t load, random screen wipes, and a time limit hourglass that never seems to speed up or actually have time as a factor at all. Each match gets you only a paltry couple of points, so by the time I got to the 2,600-score range, I got bored and waited out the clock for a painfully long time. Snowball Fight might be the worst game in the collection, but this is certainly a contender for second place.

Pyramids: Click to remove a face-up card from the titular pyramid, as long as the card is one unit higher or lower than the one in the top-right. The more cards you clear and the higher you go, the more points you get. It’s neat to see updated versions of the old card sprites instead of low-definition versions from the original site, but… it’s a game of solitaire that’s been on computers since the 1980’s; is this really what you wanted in a remaster of Neopets games?

Faerie Bubbles: The predecessor to Spinacles, this game got around the mediocrity of color-matching games by adding different effects for clearing four or more of the same type of bubble at the same time (green adding another layer of random bubbles, purple randomizing the colors, etc.) Well, that, and not actually showing the specific trajectory of where you’re firing, which I feel would’ve made a great addition to the remaster. Beyond that, it’s a perfectly mediocre remaster of a perfectly mediocre game.

Destruct-O-Match: Break colored bricks that are together in groups of two or more—the more bricks broken at once, the more points you get. Despite the name, this remaster takes the appearance and mechanics from Destruct-O-Match III on the site, rather than the Game Graveyard forms of I and II. Unfortunately, it only retains the classic form of III, rather than the numerous options that were available in that game.

Black and gray bricks look very similar when you unlock them in the game, no level complete screens are shown once you run out of possible moves (assuming you have enough points to make it to the next level; there is no bonus given for completing a level with only a few bricks left, or even none at all,) and the power-up to scramble the bricks allows you to click them mid-scramble, rather than waiting for the full refresh in the Flash version. The serene background music also doesn’t work for this game.

Unfortunately, awkward results with missing mechanics are what we’ve come to expect in these remasters, as this is another of those continuous examples.

Hasee Bounce: Jimmy and Woogy are two Hasees trying to collect as much of their favorite food- doughnutfruit- as possible, and do so by jumping from treetops to launch each other off a seesaw to catch the doughnutfruit flying through the air. Collecting a letter with the right-colored Hasee gives you two more seconds of play and adds it to the top of the screen, and filling up the full word (a la Bubble Bobble or Mr. Do!) will give you a larger time bonus.

While the Hasees can slightly move from their positions on the tree and seesaw, it doesn’t help much in the way of aiming for the doughnutfruit, especially when the point count differed depending on whether you were launching up into it or falling down upon it, something that wasn’t in the original Flash version. There’s also a lot less doughnutfruit that show up in this version, making combos far less likely and actually making the goal score of 50 much more difficult.

Worse still is that the wacky music (containing various random Hasee sound effects, turned off by default in the Flash version) cannot be muted, so you’re just stuck with it as you try and try again to reach an oppressive goal score. You don’t even get different screens at the end respective to your score, like the original game. Another dud.

Gadgadsgame: This game functions similarly to Puyo Puyo (or Puyo Pop, as it was previously known,) but instead of the colors “popping” when enough were gathered together, they grow into a larger berry when a square of the same kind is made (2×2, 3×3, etc.,) and only are deleted when a rare flashing berry appears to clear every berry of the same type out connected in a chain (or the rarer bomb power-up.) I suppose it’s a fine recreation, but being stuck waiting and hoping for a flashing berry to show up makes this less of a puzzle and more of waiting for the right luck.

Jubble Bubble: You play as Kelby, blowing bubbles to catch the falling JubJubs from falling into the sand (must be some fragile coral if even a slow fall through water hurts them!) Like with Jumpin’ Gem Heist, the WASD keys replace mouse movement, limiting your speed, which might be the correct move here, seeing as Kelby is based on a sea turtle. Holding space will launch bubbles upward, but they will only “catch” the JubJubs if their upward momentum has stopped and they are beginning to float back down at around the same point as the JubJubs are, meaning you can’t just spam bubbles to catch everything… at least, you’re not supposed to.

The Flash version has an invisible line just above Kelby where bubbles cannot catch JubJubs to avoid button-mashing to catch anything low enough, but whether to rectify for the low speed or just a result of rushed development, this isn’t in effect in the remaster. Bonus seashell items also give the same amount of points as the much rarer dubloon items, leaving the latter pretty useless… which puts my money back on the “rushed development” theory.

Kou-Jong: Match two available tiles with the same design (with the exception of flowers and Neopets locations, which may take some getting used to.) Three different difficulties are available, with three stages each, and three hints available per stage. The original was quite addictive, but the immersion broke with this version due to using a song not even in this game (“Imperial Exam”,) and the hint button targeting unavailable tiles. Strangely, the controls preview has completely different sprites for the tiles, using creatures that don’t exist in the game, presumably as placeholder sprites. It’s not the worst, but again, I doubt you purchased Mega Mini Games hoping for a remaster of a matching game.

Bouncy Supreme: If you liked Ultimate Bullseye, get ready for another game requiring angles and directions to launch forward! At least this time you are given a slight visual indication with some early arches and eventually a white line with data to show your estimated bounce, but as someone who has always failed at this game, I had better luck with trial-and-error launches. Rather than the mouse in the Flash version, the angel and force are decided by small adjustments using the keyboard, although I don’t think it helped as much compared to the larger, more forgiving platform collision of the Unity engine.

Starlight Symphony: For the grand finale of story mode and the bonus game exclusive to this collection, we get… a slow-paced rhythm game awkwardly using vertical buttons in a non-vertical controller setup. Animations are poor (does Nyx look like she’s having fun?) music is unfitting (taking bits from Hasee Bounce, Meepit Juice Break, and even a game not included in the collection, Spacerocked!) and there are no toggles for speed or difficulty.

The controls preview even seems to show a different build of the game, with the health and combo on the top of the screen, whereas the current version has the health meter below Nyx and the combo on the right side of the screen with the score. For salt on the wounds, the buttons even stop showing up at the 2/3rds point of the third song, leaving you sitting and doing nothing. It’s awkward, clunky, and charmless… which unfortunately matches the overall feel of the Mega Mini Games Collection.

Turmac Roll 3D: While a secret 27th game is supposed to be available by entering a cheat code, I was completely unable to get it work, hence no picture. Hearing the name, I was excited to imagine it was a reimagining of Turmac Roll in a 3D environment, covering new movement mechanics in a more vibrant world. As it turns out, the people who did get it to work found it was just a reskin of the previous Turmac Roll minigame in this collection, but with all the objects modeled in 3D, and absolutely no difference in gameplay. I feel insulted, to be honest.