RH

If I had just $100 to spend, I always browse the NES tapes for ones in good shape I don't have that are $10 or less. If nothing catches my eye, I head over to the N64 area and then last the PS1/PS2 section. Of course, I am trying to get a full set of Game Gear games but to this day I've not found anything uncommon in the 4 shops I have around me so, even though I'd prefer to put it all in Game Gear, that's just not gonna happen.

I think what he meant by "your local spot" is your local game store... unless your store also sells groceries. That's both cool and a hard-to-accept pivot for game stores to make it these days. Still, seeing groceries would be a better experience to me than seeing all those Pop Vinyls littering stores these days.

I agree with @Sumez comments but to it more simply, there's a difference between a game that kids can enjoy playing vs. a game designed specifically to appeal to little children, and I'm not knocking older fans either. When my son and daughter were both under the age of 5, we enjoyed playing Candyland together. If you're familiar, there's no skill at all. Role a dice, land on a square and, occasionally, you move forward or backward extra spaces. The only appeal to children is that it's "candy" theme and since it's luck-based, they can beat their parents. But then there are games like pick-up-sticks or checkers. Each is very different but a 5 year old could learn how to play them. However, skill will vary from person to person. A 5-6 yo kid who's played a lot of checkers a lot with his grand pa could probably mop the floor with an adult who's only been casually exposed to the game. A kid can learn it with a degree of mastery. Same with pick-up-sticks. It's a dead simple concept but the skills involved to be good are earned with time and young kids, maybe as young as 3 can start to get into it. You literally pick up sticks, plus getting hyper-focused to see if your opponent moves other sticks is "fun" to smaller people. So Pokemon is like Candy Land to us seasoned RPGers. Super Mario Bros is more like checkers. The analogy isn't perfect, but it gets the point across. By the time Pokemon came out, I wasn't offended by it's existence, nor did I laugh at anyone who enjoyed it for being "simple' minded. It was cool. It just wasn't for me. I had matured as an RPGer well beyond it.

I played this around 2005, I think, and I recall having the same general opinion. I struggled between giving it a 4 or a 5 and went with a 4. I also know it shouldn't matter but for some reason, sprite-based RTSs are more enjoyable to me, running in an isometric perspective. It seems like it'd be cooler in the 2000s era for any game to high quality 3D graphics but when it came to the overall experience, I preferred playing all games like this in 2D.

Regardless, Nintendo has to give the stamp of approval on these games.

Earthbound? Regardless, they stamped their name on it. I didn't know all of there RPGs were made out of house, though. Maybe Earthbound is too? There's also the Xenoblade games, though those might not entirely count since I've only tried XC2.

1211.

Well, I know this will be a hot take but other than the Paper Mario games, Nintendo can't seem to make an RPG that I neither enjoy or feel isn't uninspired. Even for the Paper Mario series, the appeal is largely playing an RPG in the Mario universe. If it were some other generic theme, I wouldn't enjoy it. I'm not saying RPGs have to be complex to be good but, eh... Nintendo needs to do a bit more work in their storytelling for me to really get pulled into their RPGs. The ironic thing is that some series like Metroid tell fantastic stories and those games have used little to no dialog to get the point across.

Yeah, I had the same general experience but as with most British humour, to me most of it isn't funny until about the second or third viewing. The first time I saw it, I thought it was dumb and then didn't get it. Then I heard people quote it just in general and a few months later people were watching it again. I had more chuckles that time. The next year on another viewing, I found it more enjoyable by a wide margin. I wouldn't say it's the best comedy ever, and I've probably not seen it in over a decade, but it was definitely fun to watch more than a few times. Regardless, that first viewing felt rough and I just didn't get it.

Corn mash is good for catching pigs too, apparantly.

I've not been much of an indie/homebrew guy for the NES but I have to say Full Quiet has looked amazing to me and I definitely am tempted to buy one.

I own Metal Gear Solid, but other than 5 minutes of the original NES Metal Gear game, I've never played a Metal Gear game. They are high on my list though. I definitely need to get the PS2 titles before they get too insanely priced with time. I feel like all of those games would be right up my alley.

I’d wait, cause otherwise the rest of us will steal the win! lol I think I have a strong educated guess on 3 of them.

Generally, I'd agree but considering that I have over 1,400 games and "collecting" is often more than just playing, that's why I'm in the camp of wanting something like a sealed Blue Thunder VHS tape. There are certainly a lot of games I'd like to play one day that I don't own and, yes, I am the gamer who prefers to play on OG games and hardware when that's an option, however, with over 1,400 games, you don't really need more games to play cause if I did, I was doing something wrong when I acquired all of those games because if most of those games don't have an enjoyable purpose, why did I buy them in the first place. I mean, my shelves might be about 15% "filler" because I pick up cheap, excellent condition stuff when I find it at thrift shops, or if I buy a lot of games and Madden 19xx is in it, I'll likely keep it because no one wants to buy it but, still, the other 80-85% of my library are very-playable games. If I have 5 left to get, it's going to be rarer stuff that I find to be really cool for a purpose. It's not so much about acquiring "value" but there's a reason why NWC carts are valuable and it's not just because it's rare. It's because the NWC was probably the coolest gaming "thing" to ever have and owning one of the related carts is about the awesomest thing you could collect, other than maybe a verified original NES and/or PVM they used in the competition. Even with something like that, though, it's not as immediately recognizable for what it was.