Sauron, Green Lantern, and the Pope all have something in common. They all have a sweet ring. The protagonist of Jewel Master has several sweet rings at his disposal and, if we judge someone's sweetness by way of possession of sweet rings, he'd be pretty sweet. The problem is he's not. Jewel Master for the Sega's 16-bit Genesis console is a side-scrolling platform game which allows you to collect magical rings and use them in combat. Each of your hands has two ring slots and, depending on what two (sweet) rings you choose, you get different attacks. Equip just the “Fire” ring into one slot and you'll have a short-range fire punch. Slap the “Speed” ring into the second slot on the same hand and your fire punch becomes a long-range fire ball. On your other hand you can mix two more rings. The combinations are endless! Sort of. Enter the realm of Mythgard, land of poorly-controlled heroes and funky hitboxes, and become master of the jewels. Such is the stuff of legends. (It says so right there in the opening sequence.)

Games are a weird medium, as they require you to to something physical to enjoy them. If the act of playing them is hindered then the whole thing goes down the tubes. No amount of sweet rings can help a game that can't play well and here lies the problem with Jewel Master. Your controls are just awkward. Movement is very binary. Doing more than one thing at a time is difficult. When playing a game like Mega Man 2 you feel relatively in control of the situation. Running forward, dodging attacks, jumping gaps, and all of the fun stuff we do in platform games feels pretty tight. Fast forward thirty years and games like Super Meat Boy have perfected those controls. Jewel Master suffers from these absolute basics being stunted. Your jumps feel strangely tall and very gravity-heavy, horizontal movement while jumping is difficult, and the ability to let you crouch ends up being more annoying than you'd think. It's not always very apparent how low enemies are, or how low they're hitting. This makes dodging a hassle, and hitting certain enemies needlessly difficult.

Jewel Master would just be another crappy platformer lost to the ages if it weren't for its ring combination mechanic. That first level has some pretty cool music, too. The game doesn't look particularly good and levels range from such innovative settings as a forest, a desert, and a castle. The walking animation for the hero looks unfinished, too, as only your legs move. He looks like a broken 50's robot. I'm not going to sit here and tell you which platformers got platforming controls correct (super secret hint: Mega Man X). I will, however, go over some games that got customization of abilities right while remaining playable unlike our jeweled friend here.

Magicka, from Swedish developer Arrowhead Game Studios, is an isometric game where you and some friends can obliterate enemies with a huge choice of magics. There are ten total schools at your disposal each of which can be mixed with any other school except one (fire can't mix with cold, earth can't mix with lightning, etc). After choosing which magics you'd like to use on the fly, you then use it either as an enchant, an area-of-effect, or directly on opponents with no penalty. There's no mana here to hinder you. One of the schools of magic is “shield” so remember that you can make any of the schools into a shield, too. I'll admit that in the beginning the controls to Magicka eluded me but, unlike Jewel Master, they weren't bad. They were just different and once you get the swing of it you're melting evil goons in no time. I, myself, enjoyed Lightning and Arcane together.

Supergiant Games' latest wonder, Transistor, has some top notch customization options. Every single one of the sixteen abilities in the game can be either a main attack, an upgrade to another main attack, or a passive ability. You can unlock slots so main attacks can even have two upgrades. Maybe you want a strong long-range attack, or maybe you want to augment an existing ability to include a ranged component. After playing around for a bit you'll no doubt find a combination. My personal favorite? “Spark()” upgraded with “Crash()” and “Flood()”, “Help()” upgraded with “Purge()”, and “Bounce()” and “Get()” for passives. That lets me blast enemies with a mid-range area-of-effect that deals damage, then more damage, and makes them weaker. Then I can summon an ally that hits enemies with a damage-over-time attack, and then my passives allow me to absorb an attack and also collect pick-ups from longer ranged. And that's just my personal combo using seven of the sixteen abilities.

Customization has made its way into the most popular FPS and sports games. It's an awesome tool that can keep a game running where it would otherwise grow stale. Unfortunately for Jewel Master, it's not enough to drive a title exclusively. If your game doesn't work then it's not a good game. Just like the film Cloverfield was too nausea-inducing to enjoy on any level (also the dude with the camera was named “Hud.” Uugh). Look, Jewel Master really isn't the worst game in the world. It will always hold weird, angst-ridden place in my heart and in my Sega Genesis collection. My best friend growing up had it and we found it maddeningly difficult. We also found Super Mario 3 very hard but the difference is that with age we came to understand we just sucked at games. As we grew older Super Mario 3 became easier, but Jewel Master did not. Nine out of ten times I still won't be able to beat that stupid phoenix boss on the desert level. After my second “Game Over” I'm likely to tear the cartridge from the console and pop in Gunstar Heroes. Now that's a platformer worth losing to, sweet rings or not.