 Next on my endless list of action platformers for the NES is Journey to Silius. My childhood friend and I actually rented this game a couple times back in the day, and I remember it being okay then, and it's pretty much okay now. You run to the right, shoot stuff, jump over pits, fight a boss, pick up a new weapon, yeah. My thoughts on this game have not changed in the 20 plus years since I've played, and that is why would I want to play this when Mega Man is right there. I'm not calling this game a Mega Man rip-off because it's not. I'm just saying, why would I want to play this instead of any of the 6 Mega Man games for NES? Those games have the exact same game mechanics in addition to a lot of other stuff, as well as a lot more levels and a hell of a lot more personality. The one area where Journey to Silius matches Mega Man is the difficulty, because holy crap this game is hard as balls. It should be said though that Journey to Silius was originally developed to be based on the original Terminator movie, but apparently the movie license expired during development, so they scrapped the idea and just made a new game entirely. See, I could dig this game being a Terminator-styled game. I would have liked it a lot more as a kid for sure, imagining that you're in that world fighting the machines, but as it is, it's just blah. The story that came up with this standard fare for the time, Earth is getting too crowded so humanity is trying to develop colonies on other worlds to accommodate everyone, and you play as Jay McCrae, whose dad was blown up by terrorists, who are eventually against the humans for colonizing everything. And hey, wait a minute, wasn't this the story of the game I just reviewed? Logeman? Come on, man. I don't want to hate on this game too much though, it does have its strong points. I do enjoy the boss fights quite a bit. The presentation here is great. You enter a room with ominous music, there's a dramatic pause, and finally here's the boss, some machine-like monstrosity of some kind. I just really enjoyed the timing here and how the boss was built up as this big deal. And I really enjoyed the music. The entire game has an absolutely badass soundtrack from start to finish. Sunsoft developed this game, and they tend to have memorable and catchy tunes for all their NES games. Journey to Silius might be the best of them all. I mean, this seriously kicks ass, just listen. Anyway, is Journey to Silius worth playing today? Kinda sorta, not really, but maybe? I guess if you really like side-scrolling action platformers, but you're burnt out on games like Mega Man and Contra, then give it a shot, or maybe you just really like 8-bit-styled music, because that's my favorite part of this game by far. It's too bad there's only five stages, because I wanted to hear more. But yeah, Journey to Silius is okay, if not kinda generic. It's good enough, but it's not worth going out of your way to find.