MagusSmurf

Yeah don't use the gamefaqs length averages expecting much accuracy, they tend to be ridiculous inflated. The game length ranking based on those averages might be okay for quickly identifying particularly long or short games (see here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/rankings?platform=84&list_type=time&min_votes=2&page=7 ) if that would be of use but that's probably it. And of course people there probably didn't have "skip straight to the playoffs, win, roll credits, game beaten" types of clears in mind. Howlongtobeat is generally pretty good, but for pre-modern games you can sometimes fall victim to people assuming the in-game time-played clocks are reasonably accurate, which is not always the case. Quest 64 is a ~20 hour game but the inaccurate in-game clock time near the end is around ~12 hours and HTLB says the game is the latter length.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero - Beaten 02/05/23 It's a Trails game in a pretty similar vein as FC and SC. Good story, tons of worldbuilding, slow pacing for most of it but gets pretty crazy later on, lots of sidequests, jokes or weird comments in every single treasure chest, and a neat quasi-Materia customization system. The extensive optional NPC dialogue seemed less well balanced than in FC and SC if you're the kind of person who talks to everyone every time it updates. You can freely roam a pretty large city area from early on and get access to several more major NPC locations not too far into the game, which leaves a massive pool of people to talk to every time NPC dialogue updates, which it does maybe slightly less often than FC/SC but there are way more NPCs than in any individual FC/SC region so it seemed more time consuming. On the plus side though, this lets you follow their lives for a longer time period. The battle system has gotten a couple minor tweaks but it works pretty much the same as it did in the Trails in the Sky games. The harder difficulties were actually an intended part of the original game design so are better balanced than they allegedly were in FC and SC; I went with Hard Mode and outside maybe a couple early fights (that didn't trip me up for long but that I felt I kind of lucked out on) it was generally pretty reasonable. No grinding was done and not much trouble was had. Nightmare difficulty might actually be reasonably playable this time? Lloyd is a decent enough JRPG main but I don't think he compares well to Estelle in the first two games, who just had vastly more personality. You're mostly stuck with the same 4 core characters all game plus an occasional guest member. The main cast grew on me but I feel like the developers were probably holding back a little too much for the sequel - or at least I hope they were. The story does a pretty decent job at wrapping up the game's plot while leaving some unanswered questions. I'm interested to see where the sequel takes the setting and characters. I guess 8/10. I'm pretty fond of it but it's not an all-timer and it'd be tough to ever justify a replay.

Have started Banjo Tooie, should be done well before the end of the month. Will probably move right onto Mischief Makers after finishing.

wait I don't think that one voice acting DAMNIT

Cthulhu Saves Christmas.

Overblood 2

Metal Wolf Chaos

Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2

Nope. Feb 2 The title was changed to Beat Every N64 Game - 2022 - 87/303 1 yr (February 1st) The title was changed to Beat every N64 game - 2021 - 58/303 2 yr (February 2nd) The title was changed to Beat Every N64 Game - 2020 - 49/303 Note, though, that despite 2022's faster start, it ended up way behind 2021 by the end.

Totally Rad

This matches my memories of how things went down as well. And in particular, I don't think SotN itself mattered much in the coining of the name. Back in the 2000s Konami was cranking out another "Metroidvania" on GBA/DS every year or two to rave reviews so it wasn't like people were trying to hearken back to SotN when the term started to apply more broadly - the "Metroidvania" Castlevania games were at the time simply some of the most current, popular, and well-known games in that style and there weren't a ton of notable recent competitors then with any western popularity outside, like, GBA Metroid and maybe Cave Story until around 2009's Shadow Complex or so.

Rayman 1 being the hardest PS1 game (assuming you don't cheat. I don't think the game works especially well without cheating due to some poor developer decisions but hey) that people actually care about sounds about right, at least.

Gogo’s true identity is

Of the real-ass SNES JRPGs (turn-based/strategy map-based) released in the west that aren't quite good enough at this point for you to be missing much by not playing, I'd say Breath of Fire II is probably the best. (Disclaimer: I haven't played Robotrek or given a real chance to Ogre Battle) Good enough game, worth a try if interested, but with the random encounter rate and grinding in that game it's not the smoothest thing to actually progress in or get through a playthrough of. It's a game that feels like it has about as much core content as FFIV (plus some mini games and customization options that I'm not particularly fond of) except instead it takes about as long as FFVI with all side quests finished. And I don't think either the gameplay or story (its translation certainly doesn't help there) is special enough in 2023 to get it over that hump to warrant a general recommendation. Probably the strongest thing that still stands out is the character design and how good the battles look. I'd give it a 6 on Reed's scale - despite all its warts I still look back on it favorably but 7's "very good" sounds like a step too high. (Talk about FFVI? Nope, too busy with Breath of Fire II discourse.)

7/10, same ones as DefaultGen.

I probably don't! I never seem to like these artsy-farsty games as much as most people though. I'll give it this: It certainly beats Journey.

Those are definitely way up there. For me Kirby Canvas Curse is the # 1 for Nintendo on DS but those are #2 and 3. ...Shame it looks like nobody will ever get to play that remake of 1 and 2 Nintendo made but won't release!

Oh, and the reason why 3 was probably so low in a lot of those was because that game has a lot less polish than usual. More slowdown and sprite flicker than seems warranted, glitches, Rush Jet is broken, some questionable design in the Wily Castle stages, and a couple of the Doc Robot fights might be less than totally fair and balanced. Can see why some wouldn't rank it particularly highly but I do think focusing too much on the issues would tend to miss the forest for the trees.

High Tier: 3 > 2 > 4 > 6 > 9 > 5 > V Good Enough Tier: 7 > 8 > IV > Dr. Wily's Revenge > III Decent Tier: 1 > II I haven't played 7 through 9 in awhile. 7 and 8 could conceivably flip places or slide past IV.

I decoupled from your mom last night.

the box is more important than the game itself huh? Well, I guess that’s definitely a VGS-appropriate opinion...

Decoupling the Pokemon Yellow discussion from the Decoupling the NES from the Famicom thread huh?

iirc Japanese Yellow does not have the Super Game Boy-originated colors on GBC, so yeah, they’d probably be correct not to classify their version of it as a GBC game.

I’m not sure the programming implementation works the same but I do think it was true that GBC Pokemon Yellow uses the same coloring as on Super Game Boy. ...But that’s the thing. Other non-GBC games that have Super Game Boy enhancements DO NOT retain said enhancements when played on GBC. Pokemon Yellow having its Super Game Boy colors on GBC is NOT Game Boy game behavior! Also, while simultaneous colors are more limited than you’d expect of a GBC game, it has some tricks to break the 4 color limit (since Super Game Boy could do that too and all), which is easily demonstrable in battle.