LogFAQs > #949004157

HM05: SimTower (PC, 1994)
Despite being almost certainly the inferior counterpart to SimCity 2000, SimTower won me over by being the more micro-level Maxis urban simulation game of the 90's. I spent more time than I'm willing to admit naming individual sims and following them around their day(s) in the tower.
On the other hand, the game is pretty shallow and fairly limited in the amount of things you can tinker with - there's a lot of different restaurant and retail shop types, but they all function basically the same, and the bulk of your gameplay time is going to be spent on managing elevator traffic and making sure you have enough housekeeping staff. Still, it's a very charming game and emblematic of Maxis' creativity in their many 90's hits.

HM06: Kirby Air Ride (GameCube, 2003)
Two mediocre racing games in one! Kirby Air Ride features a unique control system where you're always accelerating forward and have to hold A to stop. "Top Ride" is, fittingly, frozen in a top-down view with more simplistic courses and graphics. They're both...totally fine, but the real reason Kirby Air Ride is so good and memorable is the City Trial mode - an open map scramble to collect power-ups and find good (perhaps Legendary!) vehicles before a single challenge, such as a race, a long jump, or a demolition derby. Despite the limitations of this mode (there's only one City map, and there's no way to do multiple challenges after the power-up gathering) it's by far the best thing the game has going for it. If they ever made a sequel (Whatever happened to all the Kirby spin-offs we used to get? Why does Mario have a monopoly on fun spin-offs nowadays??) it could be genuinely incredible. Sadly, that ship has probably long since sailed.

---

it's an underwater adventure ride