MagusSmurf

We don't have a similar topic anywhere for Turbo CD games, right? Currently playing Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes.

Genesis 6/10 SNES 7/10 Both probably borderline on slipping into the next integer below them. I beat the Genesis version on every difficulty earlier just this year, my opinion on that one's not gonna change. It's a decent enough game that looks great and is worth checking out if interested, but it's hampered by the distinctive western lack of polish characteristic of that era and I just didn't think there was anything really cool or distinctive enough to elevate it. SNES Aladdin itself is merely good, not great. I haven't played this one recently but I remember it being a pretty competent game with SUPERIOR CAPCOM POLISH and all the bouncing, hanging, and flipping off stuff gave it somewhat of its own identity. I recall it was kind of a lightweight game but it's not like the Genesis game is an exceptional challenge either, some of the difficulty Gen Aladdin does offer is because of bad design here and there, and I guess SNES has the additional challenge of collecting all the red jewels though I never really bothered with that. So yeah, I'd say SNES Aladdn is better. Both are worth playing if you like the movie or old 2D platformers, but neither is great.

We should also probably define "first party" here. Nintendo has published lots of games in certain regions they didn't have anything to do with the development of, a fair amount of games using Nintendo IP are not actually developed by Nintendo or its subsidiaries, and then there's various developers it works closely with and owns some of the shares for but are technically separate companies. Assuming we're being fairly inclusive though, I'd probably concur about the DS for similar reasons as the OP. The bulk of the Nintendo IP on that thing are pretty mid and underwhelming. Nintendo on GBC is probably worse overall but between its brief period of relevance and higher average quality it was hard to care; there weren't a lot of good, new Nintendo games on GBC, but if you picked one up it was probably pretty good, barring a couple unfortunate Rare titles. Definitely can't say that about their DS lineup.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly This probably has the most fun combat I’ve played in a traditional survival horror (faint praise I suppose?) and is good-to-great in general and an improvement over the first game but I don’t think it excels otherwise and I prefer REmake and SH1-3 as total packages. The biggest issue on its own terms is probably the difficulty. Way too easy. 8/10

not sure tough actin tinactin is gonna cut it this time

The Golden Sun games probably have the worst overall story in anything I've played because it's just such a nothing plot and characters delivered through particularly dull and unskippable dialogue scenes that drag on forever. Oh, and guess what? The 3rd game does the cliffhanger ending thing again! Except this time they're never going to get a follow-up game.

look man car and motorcycle racing was old news at the turn of the century forklift racing was the hot new thing all the cool kids were doing

Didn't stick with my alleged plans for this year but I'll probably do better in 2023. Had been thinking about this for awhile. Went with a list heavy on lots of sequels to stuff I liked plus a few standouts I've never given a proper chance to. Have previously dabbled with a few of these but never gotten far into any of them. Beaten: The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero - 02/05/23 - https://www.videogamesage.com/forums/topic/11578-the-2023-backlog-challenge/?do=findComment&comment=332211 Banjo Tooie - 02/18/23 - https://www.videogamesage.com/forums/topic/11578-the-2023-backlog-challenge/?do=findComment&comment=335068 Chaos;Head Noah - 05/24/23 - Higurashi When They Cry - Rei - 07/01/23 Super Robot Wars - 07/17/23 - https://www.videogamesage.com/forums/topic/11578-the-2023-backlog-challenge/?do=findComment&comment=362805 In-progress: Hollow Knight - I like the proper 2D Metroids and might as well try the more-or-less consensus best modern Metroidvania. Backlog: Mischief Makers - 2D platformer with good reputation by a trusted non-Nintendo developer on a home console in the 3D era? Sounds great. Silent Hill 4: The Room - The consensus on this one seems to be great atmosphere and horror, bad gameplay? I really like the first three Silent Hill games but never thought their combat was especially strong (not that it necessarily needs to be be, it's not the point) so I figure even if this one does bug me, the things I come to Silent Hill for are still present so I'd probably still like it. Fatal Frame III: The Tormented - Fatal Frame I was good, Fatal Frame II was even better, so does that mean Fatal Frame III is even better!? Based on reviews, probably not. Likely a good time anyways though. New Super Mario Bros. Wii - Was not a fan of the DS game but it was fun. This one seemed to be a little more enduringly popular so it could be pretty cool? Jak II - I beat Jak I this year, it was a pretty good but typical 3D Platformer, so what I've heard about Jak II sounds totally baffling. Sly 2: Band of Thieves - The first game was good, this one is supposed to be better, yay? Ratchet & Clank: Goin' Commando - Spyro 1 and 2 and Ratchet 1 were good so this probably will be too. Resident Evil 5 - Can't wait to go punch a boulder to death. Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls - I think the gameplay for this was supposed to be bad? I liked the first two games and some say Danganronpa V3 is pretty good and this is before that one so I should give it a shot. Doom - Yeah, the 1993 original. I have NEVER played this game. Was too young when the old Doom games were fresh, never got into proper FPS games in general, I didn't really like Wolfenstein 3D, and due to that I never put much priority on playing Wolfenstein 3D Spear of Destiny but felt I should play it before moving onto Doom. Decided this was getting absurd, finally just moved the latter onto my "never gonna get to it" list, and here we are. Pikmin 2 - "Pikmin 1 but infinite days and more Pikmin types and maybe better?" Great. God of War II - God of War was good. Not great but good. Everyone says this one is better and depending on who you ask might beat out III for best of the old God of Wars. Sounds good to me. Okami - When you really look at it, there are shockingly few 3D Zelda clones out there, at least with any reasonable level of popularity. This really seems to be the only one that a notable amount of people strongly go to bat for. I figure worst case scenario I get a game slightly worse than any of the first 4 3D Zeldas, which would still be nice enough. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword- Got through the first real dungeon back in the day before getting distracted. It seemed reasonably good if annoyingly slow? Soul Reaver 2 - Soul Reaver 1 was good but not great, based on the first few hours this one is much heavier on the dialogue which is good since that's been a consistent strength of this franchise so far. Kingdom Hearts - Got through the first few worlds back in the 2010s but wasn't that big on the game. I'm much less willing to give a chance to games I don't think I'll like at this point but it's such a landmark title and seems not insufferably long that it deserves another chance and (with a possible detail through Chain of Memories) it'll at least open the way to the by-all-credible-accounts mechanically solid KHII. Star Ocean: Til the End of Time - Most of the bad things I've heard about this were also true of Star Ocean 2 which was still a pretty good game and I already know the twist to this one going in so that can't disappoint me. Shadow Hearts Covenant - First game was cool, many call this the best of the franchise, and the kickstarter for the spiritual successor to the series got funded. Final Fantasy XII - I've beaten all of I - X and the first two Tactics games, XI doesn't really sound worth playing, and I'm not sure I want to bother with X-2 and Dirge so this is the next step. Might as well get to this so I can at least have an opinion on it, and some reasonable people seem to think it's pretty good. Mother 3 - Earthbound is great and all those people calling this an all-timer couldn't be drastically wrong enough for this to not be pretty good, right? Wild ARMs 3 - First two were games were good and the kickstarter for the spiritual succcessor to the series got funded. Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter - This one seems pretty polarizing but I think none of the first four Breath of Fire games shake out to being that great so I'm not gonna be that annoyed that they changed lots of stuff. Ar Tonelico 2 - I played a decent chunk of this last year but my laptop sucked too much to run normal-speed PS2 emulation and that was no way to do this game justice. Have since upgraded. Ogre Battle - The only high profile western released SNES JRPG I haven't put much time into and there's the even-better received Tactics Ogre beyond that. Deserves a shot. Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma - I am prepared to be underwhelmed but I need to see how the hell this series all shakes out. The Silver Case - I've never played a Suda51 game before and while I've heard great things about Killer 7 I might as well try this first since it came out earlier and I like Visual Novels. Will definitely be skipping Flower Sun and Rain that came out between them though. I've heard what that game is like and there's basically no way I'd be able to tolerate it. I/O - Root Double was really good so its predecessor is probably good too? This one seems to have a reputation for being absurdly convoluted or something but I love ridiculous confusing mystery VN stuff so it's probably fine with me. Seabed - It's supposed to be pretty good and I already bought it. Xenosaga Episode I - Xenogears is great. People love Xenoblade. I know some people liked Xenosaga back in the day. Worth a try. Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga - I'm enjoying Nocturne a good bit and this is the natural next Megami Tensei game to hit.

I've beaten Madara 1 and that all sounds about right. It's got some neat and weird aspects but is not a fun game to actually play. Would not recommend unless you're gonna use it as a playable RPG-themed side activity on another window (for the most part the battles pretty much play themselves) while you listen to or watch something else.

That's correct, yes. Thanks!

Kinda hard when I have no idea what you might own! Got Silent Bomber?

Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy Game was good. Probably not quite great; they come up with some neat ideas but it never feels that special for long. Jak has a neat moveset though. Probably beats Mario Sunshine as far as Gen 6 Collectathons go. Upper 7/10 I also beat Sly Cooper 1 last weekend but it was through the PS3 collection so I assume it doesn’t count?

1. Umineko no Naku Koro ni Convoluted, glacially-paced, over 100 hours long "what the hell is going on?" visual novel with almost no real gameplay that kept me captivated throughout. Kinda hard to summarize the story in much detail without letting out significant spoilers or descending into total nonsense but starts with a rich family gathering on their own private island for their annual family conference. Deals with themes of mystery, truth, identity, fantasy, gender, and abuse, while also having lots of ridiculous anime nonsense. Also has an extremely good soundtrack and (in some versions) great Japanese voice acting. The original character designs used in the game (nowadays there are alternatives) were also done by the author, Ryukishi07, whose ability to draw is, uh... yeah. UMINEKO THE BEST can't wait to see what this man does with Silent Hill f. 2. Chrono Trigger I feel like SNES RPGs are in general a bit overrated and at least once you get past a few of the top games probably not as good overall as a lot of what followed. Chrono Trigger pretty much deserves its reputation though. Squaresoft around the height of their powers gave us a game with great sprite graphics and music, a great time travel-themed story, and some of the smoothest pacing and progression in the genre. If only they could be all this great, but you generally can't make great games without great staff, and you seldom get as much talent as those that worked on this game. 3. Super Metroid Compared to a lot of other well-regarded sidescrolling Action-Adventure games, I always really liked the focus on movement and the avoidance of RPG stats here - I never liked the Metroidvania Castlevanias nearly as much. And I have particular issues with Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission so while those were great games there wasn't really much that could surpass this for a long time. I should get around to the more recent 2D Metroid games and Hollow Knight and Ori and stuff. 4. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island I really like the kind of platformer that stood atop the 16-bit(-ish) era. Superb polish, heavy on the action but also with lots of room for secrets and exploration, long enough to probably take you multiple sittings, sprite graphics because trying to shove 3D models into a 2D sidescrolling just pretty much never looks great. Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, the Donkey Kong Country trilogy, Sonic 3 & Knuckles. That's the good stuff. Rayman 1 clearly wanted to be a game at least sorta in that vein but the difficulty curve and polish really aren't there for that game. Yoshi's Island stands out for me because of all the high production values, strange mechanics, and creativity on display. Then the shift to 3D happened and they pretty much stopped making games like this for like a decade, and a lot of the attempts to recapture the magic have fallen flat. They were reasonably good games but the likes of Yoshi's Island DS, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and New Super Mario Bros. just don't compare. At least Shovel Knight basically delivered. (I own New Super Mario Bros. Wii. 3D models and a disappointing predecessor be damned, I'd probably still like it a lot. I should try it.) 5. Super Mario RPG Was the first game I owned that wasn't a 2D Platformer or Mario Paint, got it for my 7th birthday. I think it's really great objectively too but the personal touch there is unquestionably what pushes it over into my top 5. Love almost everything about it to this day.

Fatal Frame. good horror game 8/10

Cool game. I've played the first 9 Dragon Quests and the GBC remakes of 1-3 and this is my favorite. Looks fantastic, good soundtrack, might have the best dub of any PS2 JRPG, has the usual Dragon Quest charm and polish, puts forth more effort than the franchise usually does with its cast and characters, and the scale of the world and exploration thereof was a huge step up for JRPGs at the time. Top 100 JRPG? Yeah, probably. I think it falls a bit short of the JRPG all-timers though. On PS2 the game's well over 60 hours long just to roll credits and as neat as it is, the big exploration-heavy large-scale world is a big contributor to that. And while I don't play modern games much, the scale of the world seems like something that could be done better by applying modern AAA budgets plus not being stuck on PS2; as far as I know Dragon Quest XI, Final Fantasy XII and XV, and the Xenoblade games all went for something at least sort of similar. For all that it offers though, I'm not sure an approach that bloats up a game's length so much was necessarily a good change for the genre. At games around Dragon Quest VIII's length, the novelty of a game wears off a bit and having unique or really well done gameplay or a cool story becomes more important to me. And Dragon Quest VIII doesn't do quite enough there for me to really love the game. The battle system is...pretty much standard Dragon Quest stuff, with the new Tension mechanic seldom mattering that much. I mean, it's good JRPG combat. And it looks great, way better than Dragon Quest ever did before! But yeah. I've never thought Dragon Quest combat was top tier. Skill points (the game's character building system) aren't particularly good. The game doesn't offer sufficient information for the player to make informed decisions about how they're distributing skill points. If you don't look it up on gamefaqs, you basically just pick a weapon type, put points into that and/or your character-specific attribute, and hope the game gives you good skills in a timely manner and provides good weapons for whatever weapon you picked. I just never feel like Dragon Quest does all that great at these systems. However, in the 3DS version you apparently don't have to distribute Skill Points right at level up, which is a good change that would let you stockpile points for a bit and them test out what putting large chunks at a time into various attributes gets you and resetting if you don't like the results. And the story. It has a slow start but has some decent build-up, then there's a big scene a dozen or so hours in where it seems like things are maybe picking up...and then kinda doesn't follow up at all quickly and while there are some neat scenes here and there the game just doesn't maintain a good pace of cool stuff going on. The game sets up some neat characters and at least has party chat, but doesn't really give them proper focus. Nice beats occasionally but other than Yangus being fun they don't really amount to that much. In other words: Steps in the right direction were taken but the game is ultimately still too much a Dragon Quest game to really deliver. So yeah, great game with a big beautiful world that sounds great and delivers solid Dragon Quest combat and has charm for days; but the story and cast aren't all that, the game gets a little long in the tooth, and past maybe the exploration and world that are presumably less standout now than in the 2000's I don't think the gameplay ever feels fantastic. According to HLTB the 3DS version is like 20 hours shorter despite adding new content. If true then that would certainly be big for it.

I beat Ka-blooey. -Very dry puzzle game. -Possibly the worst graphics on the SNES. -Soundtrack variety is abysmal. Same music in every level. -Pointless life and scoring system that really only serves to make it take marginally longer to get back to the game when you die. -Tutorial exists but is abysmally slow. They don’t do a good job fully explaining switches. Also, sorry Brits, but a bomb with what you call an “aerial” attached is NOT an aerial bomb; that’s something else entirely. -The game penalizes you if you stay still too long and also has a time limit, neither of which should generally have a place in a puzzle game like - but with map mode pausing the game and giving you a better view means neither matter much, except for maybe the final level’s time limit. -There was zero purpose served in making this game isometric. It makes the controls unintuitive (although I got used to them after a couple dozen levels) and the map view isn’t isometric. Map view is probably how this game should have played by default and there should have been an option to just view the whole level with the map view button, with scrolling if necessary. -130 levels is too long. 100 is the traditional place to stop for good reason and even that would have felt too long for this particular game. Expect this to take over 20 hours to beat; it probably took me over 30. It’s not like they really had 130 level designs they thought were good either and couldn’t bear to cut any; there were several filler levels pretty far into the game I beat in like two minutes whose entire purpose was to spell something out once you’d removed all the bombs. -Enemies exist for no good reason. They’re not really that important or hard to deal with but the game does not benefit from their existence and the controls and hit detection are simply not fit for dodging enemies. -The puzzles are often not “fair” and rely on trial-and-error, which a puzzle game based on reasoning things out and that generally punishes mistakes by making you restart the level really shouldn’t do. You can’t view the rest of the level to easily know what input a move you’re considering might have. You have no way of knowing which tile a switch might affect or what it might do to it other than flipping it, hoping it doesn’t ruin everything, and if it does noting that for your next attempt. No way to know where a teleporter will send you other than going for it. The worst might be when you hit a switch and it does something to a tile off-screen. Despite it all, there is some sense of satisfaction at taking down a tough puzzle. Not worth it though. 4/10. Maybe even 3/10.

Super Ninja Boy. That was bad but not really notably so. Squeaks out a 4/10.

Darius Twin - 5/10 Competent but uninspired shmup with kinda bullshit final level. If I cared a lot about co-op play that would probably bump this up to a 6 but I...don't. So far I've only beaten Easy Mode but I came away sufficiently unimpressed that I dunno if it's worth bothering seeing Normal Mode to the end. Legend of the Mystical Ninja - 6/10 The game's decent enough but feels like it's banking heavily on the charm and co-op to carry it through. The platforming levels are generally fun but don't amount to that much on their own. (The sidescrolling sections of Warlock Zones I and IV-IX as a 7-level standalone game would be extremely short and probably not all that notable) And the remainder, the town stuff, doesn't do much for me. The town gameplay is indeed worse for me than the 2D sections, but I'm more annoyed at it throwing out like a dozen different shops and establishments per level the purposes of whose wares you can't easily ascertain. Didn't like it in River City Ransom, didn't like it here, though at least there's less (but unfortunately not zero) grinding than there was in that game. I don't feel like adding "really annoying shopping" to an action game is of much value. The minigame stuff is mildly amusing though.

Most of the day. Started sometime probably a bit before noon, had to eat, take my dog for walks, and go to the bathroom while paused, and that picture was taken 11:36 PM.

I tend to associate demands for a particularly literal translation with teenage weebs who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about so outside of very specific cases I find it hard to even consider that a serious position.

So, the completion criteria for Super Off-Road of "1st place after 99 races" seems to have been inappropriately copied from the NES thread a couple years back. Both threads seem to have originally had a different requirement but then the_wizard_666 made this post over there: This sounds like probably the appropriate requirement for the NES version Problem: This concept of an "overall 1st place" doesn't exist in the SNES version. The game just doesn't openly track overall standings or even the number of races you're done so far. So yeah, the one we've got just doesn't work. (to clarify, Bearcat_Doug's completion of the SNES game predated the_wizard_666's above quoted post so he's done nothing dishonest here; presumably he did complete, uh, whatever requirement we had previously?)

Beat Link to the Past again over the weekend. No Game Overs, no Save and Quits, no save states. It was fun but probably won’t be playing it (or any game) in quite that manner ever again.

3D Zelda seems to scratch a special itch for a lot of people and I'm not sure this type of game has ever really been done better than in Ocarina of Time. I certainly haven't experienced any that were. Majora's Mask is really cool but I feel like the game only works as well as it does because you should already have your knowledge of how Ocarina of Time worked to fall back on; the time stuff and general weirdness might have been too overwhelming otherwise and even as it is some people still can't get around it. And then there are only 4 real dungeons of which the 1st still felt fairly "First Zelda Dungeon-y" (seemed really unnecessary too; if they were wary of scaring off new players, WHY THE HELL DID THEY START THE GAME LIKE THEY DID!?) and I thought the 3rd was a bit too cumbersome. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess have fairly bad, annoying starts (I guess Majora's Mask kind of does as well to an extent? but at least it feels sorta justified there); overly large and empty overworlds; and often long and annoying out-of-dungeon quests that kill the pacing. These are overall great games with some improvements over N64 Zelda but when you break down how these games actually flow it's really hard for me to pick them over Ocarina of Time given the added busywork. If you liked Ocarina of Time really well to begin with, it's hard to say incremental improvements here and there outweigh the nuisances. Skyward Sword I only played the first few hours of before getting distracted but it got enough criticism that I'm gonna assume there were indeed issues with it. Mystical Ninja starring Goemon is a good game (and predates OoT) but the camera/controls/general handling are too janky and I don't recall any of the dungeons being very inspired. Not much on PS1 really compares. Soul Reaver is kind of neat for proving that, with some clever workarounds, the console was technically capable of hosting a good Ocarina of Time-ish game and it's a fairly good game in itself. Better than Ocarina? Nah, basically nobody thought so then or now. If you ever thought 3D Zelda went too heavy on the block puzzles, man, do I have a game that's not for you! If we were gonna get a game to out-OoT OoT it probably would have happened around the PS2 era. Nobody was likely gonna bother put the major studio budget, time, and talent it'd probably take to do so much after that when there are much more recent, relevant Action-Adventure or Action RPG trends to chase or invent yourself. *Looks over list of PS2 Action-Adventure games and Action-RPGs for highly regarded stuff I haven't played that might be remotely like 3D Zelda.* Hm, okay. Okami doing this kind of game better than any 3D Zelda sounds at least plausible. I don't have a good grasp on quite how Dark Cloud 2 or the Onimusha games play to know if they're easily comparable and I'd be pretty skeptical at them beating out OoT but it might be possible. Not seeing much else and nothing on PS3 seems to be "like Zelda" while also having the decent acclaim and popularity to make it remotely likely that they're "actually better but don't have the nostalgia, influence, or name brand to get recognized as such" or whatever.

Is Dark Souls vastly better than Demon's Souls? Like, I realize it's the iconic one that got super-famous and not Demon's but by most accounts Dark Souls is pretty much in the same vein and the Souls crowd almost all seem to think Demon's is a really great game too so I always wrote the rest of them off as not for me based on my experience with Demon's.

Didn’t take a picture but I beat HyperZone. I guess its passable. 5/10