Review Round-Up - March 2026

Between tennis and golf, mascot-driven sports game fans were well served this month!

It's time for your monthly recap of reviews on SuperPhillip Central. For the site, March came in like a lion with some big reviews of some enjoyable games. It may be April 1st today, but we're not fooling around with that previous statement!

Things started on an indie note with the Zelda-inspired Under the Island, which proved to be a fun island excursion indeed, earning a B. 

Following up with adventuring on an island to adventuring in a world of tennis, we gave Mario Tennis Fever some coverage. Its Adventure Mode was rather anemic, but everything else about the game impressed me, so it scored a B with its serve.

Diving into another indie adventure, we set sail and entered the deep platforming waters and world of Demon Tides, and it managed a B as well for its excellent efforts. 

Things started to take a downward turn in review grades for March, but still saw some worthwhile titles get covered, such as Disney Golf and the clever Piece by Piece (not to be confused with the release of the same name released the same week). Both of these games got C+ grades.

Finally, things unfortunately went downhill from there with our lone subjective stinker of the month with Snowboard Kids 2. The CPU was too crafty/challenging/cheap/whichever adjective you'd like to put in there, it works! A white whale of a game I wanted to play, and the experience ended up to be disappointing at best. A D+ was the game's given grade.

All in all, a lovely month to ring in spring with! As always, check out the SPC Review Archive for every review ever posted on this site. Some of them are like my GameFAQs days more than a decade ago: volatile and cringe-inducing--for real! Ha-ha, but also oof!

Under the Island (Multi) - B

While its combat is a bit too loose, and its dialogue a bit too much in general, all in all, Under the Island won me over big time. I was able to tolerate those small-to-medium sized quibbles to fully enjoy and complete the game. There's such a wonderfully enjoyable world to explore with Under the Island's... well... island, that tracking down every last Heart Coin, every last item, and making Nia one lean, mean, baddie-defeating machine through upgrades discovered around said world was something I thoroughly loved doing. If you're yearning for a new, highly competent, top-down, traditional Zelda-like experience, Under the Island will fulfill that yearning indeed.

Mario Tennis Fever (NS2) - B

Camelot Software doesn't exactly serve an ace with its first Nintendo Switch 2 offering, but Mario Tennis Fever serves in general as an excellent starting point all the same. The tennis gameplay is great as ever, the amount of characters and rackets means that you'll have loads to experiment with to find the best character and racket that suits your play style, and the level of content is absolutely satisfying this time around. The Adventure Mode disappoints once again, but the rest of the package is more than worthwhile.

Demon Tides (PC) - B

Demon Tides is a superb and ambitious 3D indie platformer that casts a wide net of adventure. The ability to customize your playing experience through the helpful talisman system is a pleasure to have. It truly assists in making the game more enjoyable and less frustrating when control and camera quibbles try to ruin the fun. While these problems do rock the boat a little bit, making for a non-ideal experience, all in all, Demon Tides offers more of a smooth ride rather than one in abundantly choppy waters. There's more fun than frustration to be found in Demon Tides. And like many of the locales in the game, there are clever level and gameplay concepts and a robust repertoire of moves that are mostly well executed to discover throughout Demon Tides, making it one I recommend 3D platformer fans to play.

Disney Golf (PS2) - C+

With nine playable characters, six courses, standard modes, and basic gameplay that doesn't reinvent the wheel--or deviate from the norms of arcade-style golf for that matter--Disney Golf is a nice enough game that is accessible enough for casual players and veterans alike. The latter may find the game a bit too easy mechanically, but Challenge Mode's abundance of impairing power-ups used by the computer can frustrate even the most levelheaded player out there. ..I'm glad I spent time with Mickey and friends on the links, and if you're a fan of the genre like I am, you probably will be glad to spend some quality golfing time with the Mickey Mouse crew, too.

Piece by Piece (PC) - C+ 

Piece by Piece doesn't waste the player's time with filler or linger too long on a given gameplay idea. It's a clear, concise, and clever puzzle-platformer with a fabulous concept to it that is iterated on near-perfectly throughout its six hour length. Once you clear the game, you might not have too much of a reason to return to it, but what an experience it was during those six hours for me while the game lasted! 

Snowboard Kids 2 - D+

Snowboard Kids 2 is relentless in its cheapness masquerading as "challenge", and for a game I yearned to play for the longest time, I step away from the snowy slopes, as a player, left out in the cold. What started as a game that I was open to enjoying quickly turned into one that gave me quite the frosty reception.

Two indies, two gals with orange hair, and two satisfying adventures were found 
with Under the Island and Demon Tides this past month!

Under the Island (Multi) Review

Our first review of March takes us all over the island, atop the island, and yes, under the island in... Under the Island, a Zelda-inspired title from Slime King Games that launched last month on most current platforms. Let's take our hockey stick in tow, raise it over our head, and proceed to take to the island with this SuperPhillip Central review.

A strong Zelda-like that won't grind your mystical gears.

Indies are exceptional for their creating unique gameplay ideas and mechanic concepts, and so many times we see such off-the-wall experiences that would be deemed too risky for larger devs. Sometimes, however, it's also awesome to see indies take previously built, tried and true concepts and expand upon them in their own, unique way. This is what developer Slime King Games has done with its game, Under the Island. Taking the formula and foundation that Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda franchise created, Slime King Games offers a charming and enjoyable adventure that was for me, quite reminiscent of Link's Awakening.

Under the Island follows a teenager named Nia who begrudgingly relocates with her archaeologist parents to Seashell Island for a one-year research expedition. Quite quickly, she meets a girl named Avocado, and the pair unexpectedly stumble into some ancient ruins under the main town of the game. There, they encounter a bipedal bird who informs them that Seashell Island will sink deep into the ocean if four mythical gears are not collected and reassembled. Thus, Nia has her mission, the MacGuffins to go after in the form of the gears, and an entire island to explore, one area at a time.

Time to get our rears in gear, it seems! We've got an adventure to embark on!

The narrative of Under the Island is one that engages in plenty of verbose cutscenes. These weren't annoying to me, offering some further personality to flesh out characters, but I do imagine that a fair number of players will prefer a "less is more" experience. This is especially so because a lot of the conversations between characters are rather long-winded and don't provide too much on offer to say. Furthermore, some typos and dialogue issues are present in the game, and a notable puzzle in the final dungeon of the game confuses "its" and "it's", the contraction, which is somewhat immersion breaking.

Don't mind me. Just passin' through!

Regardless, that niggling nonsense aside, Under the Island is a rather lovely Zelda-like experience. It offers an expansive map to explore, opening up little by little as Nia obtains new items--generally the more robust set of tools offering the most utility are discovered in the game's dungeons. The items range from a flower that spits out flames, which gets plenty of use throughout the adventure--from lighting torches, to burning faraway bushes, for example--to chow that can lure animals on top of buttons to weigh them down, for instance.

This plant, for our purposes, has one welcomed case of heartburn!

Nia herself sports a hockey stick as her main weapon. I say, "main weapon" because while you can unleash that previously mentioned fireball-shooting plant at foes, it's much too slow and weak to actually be useful in the heat of battle. The hockey stick allows for a three-hit combo, though I must admit that this weapon takes a bit of getting used to. It's rather clunky to use at best, and it's also not very powerful at the beginning of the game. Fortunately, there is a tent in the central town of the game, which provides upgrades for a price of money and dropped materials from enemies. 

Thankfully, penalties involving "high-sticking" don't happen off the ice!

Thus, combat is not the best part of Under the Island, though it also doesn't ruin the experience either. Instead, I would say the most entertaining portion of Under the Island comes from its exceptional environmental, world, and dungeon design. The island is both entertaining and enjoyable to explore, offering dozens upon dozens of dense areas--many of which are optional but reward players for careful investigating and going off the beaten path. Areas are interconnected in ways that make logical sense, with it always being a pleasure to figure out the path forward or how to reach a certain, seemingly inaccessible doorway or cavern. 

Fortunately, if you're not feeling like hotfooting it across the island, fast travel is an option, and even this brings some clever ideas and requires some exploration to unlock as well. For each fast travel location, there is a hidden nearby, block-pushing puzzle room, necessitating Nia to solve. Once solved, these open up the means to fast travel to that given destination. 

These block-pushing puzzles can certainly be brain-busters, but the fast travel reward's more than worth the effort.

Of course, Nia won't always be out-of-doors despite being on an island, as there are dungeons to delve into. These aren't always your typical dungeon fare, offering such locales like a greenhouse and even a cereal factory. These dungeons are home to various puzzles to solve, treasure chests to open (many of which containing Zelda-specific dungeon items like maps and compasses), and baddies to beat.

These baddies include bosses, which, too, take a different, unique approach to your traditional Zelda game. Circling back to the greenhouse, the first major dungeon within the game, the boss here is less a major enemy and more a set piece. It features Nia making sure a stage production goes off without a hitch, requiring her to adjust the lighting and culminating with her needing to fend off overzealous fans backstage from ruining said production. 

Weave through this boss's bullet hell-like attack.

Outside of the main dungeons and story progression, an immense number of optional side quests are available to take on, granting wonderful rewards to make the extra effort worthwhile. These can be exclusive items that Nia would otherwise never encounter on her adventure, or of course, a Zelda staple, the means to generate additional health. Though, this is performed by visiting a gym freak who in exchange for four Heart Coins will bestow Nia with an extra heart container, for lack of a better term.

Under the Island took me about 13 hours to fully complete. That was with unlocking all achievements, which included clearing the story, maxing out Nia's health, obtaining all cassette tapes, and other optional objectives. Overall, it was a really good time, and I found myself extending my play sessions just because I was enjoying myself so much.

Caves, treasures, and more await skilled explorers.

This extended to the presentation, which I also liked. The chibi sprite art is remarkably cute, the environments and landscapes are outstanding in detail, vibrant, and colorful. I was impressed by the enemy variety as well. Rather than utilize a simple handful of enemies and sprites across the entire game, Under the Island instead opted to change enemies up depending on the locale with matching monsters and sprites that fit each indubitably. The music, too, offers plenty to enjoy, full of tunes that are decidedly nice enough to bop one's head around to and tap one's toes to, as well. 

While its combat is a bit too loose, and its dialogue a bit too much in general, all in all, Under the Island won me over big time. I was able to tolerate those small-to-medium sized quibbles to fully enjoy and complete the game. There's such a wonderfully enjoyable world to explore with Under the Island's... well... island, that tracking down every last Heart Coin, every last item, and making Nia one lean, mean, baddie-defeating machine through upgrades discovered around said world was something I thoroughly loved doing. If you're yearning for a new, highly competent, top-down, traditional Zelda-like experience, Under the Island will fulfill that yearning indeed. It won't rival the highs of exploring The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening's Koholint Island, but then again, what does?

[SPC Says: B]