MagusSmurf

No need to sell me on the Ys franchise. I haven’t gotten to Memories of Celceta or VII-IX yet but I’ve played some version of all the other “real” games. Oath in Felghana is excellent (~9/10ish) but it’s actually only my second favorite. Dawn of Ys is my #1. I love bump combat.

Final Fantasy IV (Super Famicom version patched with J2Evisceration Fix) - 8/10 Set Battle Speed to 1 (fastest) and Active instead of Wait for a challenge since I knew the game relatively well from multiple playthroughs of the SNES and GBA versions. In general the game still wasn't that hard overall but some battles were kind of quirky with those settings and things can go south quickly if you aren't prepared. In general this is my baseline for "great JRPG." If a JRPG from the 16-bit era or later is supposed to be great at some particular aspect, I expect it to beat FFIV there. The game's not super special at much besides pacing and is notably lacking in customization but it's a good time and a step above pretty much all the turn-based stuff from the NES. Was torn between "lowest 8/10 turn-based JRPG" or "highest 7/10;" went with the former. If this winds up being, I dunno, "my 20th favorite SNES JRPG" or something then maybe that doesn't hold. Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (SNES) - 4/10 (this might be too generous) What the hell? Way back when this had been the first version of Ys III I played fresh off Ys I & II from Virtual Console; after enjoying that game a lot I remember being pretty unimpressed. It was several years before I tried the Genesis and Turbo CD versions and came away from them thinking they were notably better than what I recalled of the SNES version. Most of the comparisons you get from the top search results will indeed tell you those are better than the SNES one for various reasons, so okay, made enough sense to me. What they generally don't do properly is emphasize how awful and otherworldly the hit detection is in the SNES version; it seemed alright for the one-hit enemies in the first dangerous area but goes to hell shortly afterwards. It's also too grindy for its own good. I played the Famicom version last year and even there I don't recall them botching things like this! I had to make sure I wasn't going crazy which led to: Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (Genesis) - 6/10 Yep, this game is fine. Probably not better than that but it's decent. The hit detection just...functions properly this time. Still too much grinding but less than on SNES. The graphics and music are better too, although the text wasn't properly proofread. Apparently Genesis does what Nintendon't.

#295 - Tecmo Super Baseball "Tecmo Super Baseball is the first of the final four baseball games I have left with this project." #221 - Extra Innings #194 - Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run #126 - Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball #118 - Super Baseball 2020

Congratulations on the conclusion of a fantastic project. Read every single write-up and added your rankings to my personal spreadsheet of every SNES and Super Famicom game as an easy guideline for "how good is this game?"

NHL Stanley Cup writeup needs to be slightly revised now that you've moved it again.

Umineko is best. Worst is...maybe Chaos Wars if this is representative:

I see no purpose served here in incinerating the original. You made a copy of someone, cool, and then you're just killing the person you copied afterwards for no particular reason other than maybe not wanting to bother adjusting rules, laws, and norms to accommodate the ramifications of the new technology so mass slaughter is okay? It's really dumb.

Typically I’m a dub guy for either video games or anime. I’m generally gonna need a real stellar Japanese performance or an a mediocre or worse English dub to not go with the dub. If that’s not an option though, subbed is generally fine with me. I will echo @Tanooki on DBZ Japanese Goku being particularly bad and unfitting. I can see how this happened - seems like the actress probably would have worked fine for most of Dragon Ball-era Goku and they didn’t want to replace her when she’d been involved for years just because the story warranted it - but it was a mistake. And then she started voicing Gohan shortly after adult Goku shows up anyways, and as it turned out later, Goten as well, so it’s not like she’d have been booted out of the franchise after years of work.

I guess the topic title...

I tried it out on Steam like a decade ago. I didn't have a mouse available and was stuck using a laptop touchpad so the game never had a chance; I didn't get far and didn't particularly enjoy it before I bailed. Seemed like a neat setup but I didn't get far enough for anything to really happen after the beginning. I do remember thinking the controls put all together used way too many keys. Maybe that's normal for FPS games after they hit a certain point of development. Didn't like it though.

Trying to beat or re-beat every Super Nintendo or Super Famicom game that sounds interesting to me, besides those I've already done in the past few years. Those in the latter category would be: Concentrating on the 1990 and 1991 games for now but will skip around. We'll see how far I get. If this goes anywhere I'll probably also decline to replay SNES Tales of Phantasia, a long-ish game I don't like and that has better versions elsewhere I haven't tried. Super Mario World - 10/10 everyone knows Super Mario World, it's awesome. Joe & Mac 2 - 6/10 Fairly typical 16-bit action-platformer but on the good side of that. Looks and sounds good, plays fine, has co-op, some decent setpieces, nothing too special in the actual gameplay though. Kinda short with basically only 5.33 levels (decently long ones though) and 7 bosses, the first 6 of which reappear in an endgame boss rush before right before the final boss. Mickey's Ultimate Challenge - 4/10 A glorified minigame collection - fairly standard takes on Sokoban, Concentration, Simon, Mastermind, and a Slide Puzzle, but then there's, uh, Hangman with Infinite Guesses and Also Platforming? I've had this game since childhood so I know exactly what to do but it only lasts for like half an hour even even on Challenging mode and there's very little to it. Smart Ball - 4/10 A 2D Platformer where you control a goo-like thing that sticks to walls and ceilings and stuff sounds like a good idea but I don't like how the main character handles and it's just not that good of a game. Joe & Mac - 6/10 Doesn't quite have the setpieces of its sequel but is still a fun nothing-special co-op action platformer. Hit detection is fine for the enemies but is bad against spikes and falling rocks and whether you land on a platform or not seems more strict than it should be; thankfully combat is the focus. The entire thing is also a bit too easy and all Difficult Mode seemed to do was crank up how many hits enemies took to kill. This made some of the bosses last long enough to get boring, especially the Anklyosaurus whose pattern is so easily grasped that he basically never hits you but only has brief periods of vulnerability. I'd have to replay it to be sure but at this point I'm thinking the Genesis version is probably better. SD The Great Battle - 4/10 Overhead shooter with lots of platforming but something seems to have gone wrong with the determination on whether you made jumps onto/from moving platforms properly and it often doesn't work when it seems like you should have made it. The bosses and mini-bosses seem generally decent enough but the generic enemies and platforming leading up to them are pretty whatever. As far as I could tell, you can't strafe. The game demands near pixel-perfect precision when moving on narrow paths which caused me some high-damage cheap hits on the final stage. The 6th level has limited visibility and is an annoying maze. Never quite figured out how to stay safe while fighting the final boss without spamming your special move so I settled for staying right on him after he first approaches you and abusing post-damage invulnerability to quickly rack up hits; he died before I lost my last life. It's probably this or Populous for worst SNES game of 1990.

Apollo Justice is usually regarded as more or less the worst game in the series. Outside the first case its cases are not generally well-liked and Phoenix himself is kind of annoying and monopolizes too much attention instead of letting Apollo have his own story. At least they eventually got around to giving Apollo the spotlight in a later game.

I'm sure the strategy guide would be nice to have but I don't recall needing one to beat the game at all - I certainly didn't have one. I'd be surprised if the original Japanese release had anything nearly as elaborate either. There probably are a couple places where how to progress is made a little too obscure but nothing stands out to me as especially "HUH?"-worthy. The NA release having such a thing probably had more to do with marketing demands and as a crutch for NA gamers generally being less familiar with RPGs at the time than with the game itself being especially obtuse. If you've played a JRPG before - especially any at least as old as Earthbound that aren't the SNES Final Fantasies - you'd probably be alright without it.

48 hours left before the kickstarter ends in case anyone who hasn't pledged yet is interested.

"A 16-bit 2-D platformer by a well-known, well-liked Japanese developer? It can't be bad!" *A few hours later.* Eh. I guess it wasn't bad, really, but a bit subpar. 4/10 for Smart Ball.

Psycho Penguin is not generally the most credible guy out there. https://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?155484-Steve-McFadden-Psycho-Penguin-traders-�-get-your-money-back

Most of the fans who really liked Paper Mario and TTYD have spent the 15 years since Super Paper Mario hoping the series would get back on track and continue on in the vein of the first two games (optimally it would improve on them and be even better!) but the series never really did (to considerable disappointment and complaining) so rest assured that at the very least you're in good company with the fanbase on the matter of the later games. @RH With all of the times people have been disappointed in Paper Mario since Super Paper Mario on Wii, the game doesn't stand out as particularly hated at this point. Back in the day by some, sure, but I think the anger has cooled. That said, it certainly wasn't what people wanted regardless. It has maybe the best and funniest dialogue among the first three games (presumably the entire series; I was scared off from playing later games when I saw the reaction to Sticker Star). But it scrapped the established Mario JRPG "timed hits" battles for a sidescroller action-adventure world and combat which is functional but just doesn't have much "oomph" to it. They have some creative sections and ideas and the game sorta works as an "experience." MAYBE it could be said to have decent boss fights (I haven't touched it since back in the day). But overall it just doesn't really work as an action game. It kind of leaves the question of "well if you guys weren't going to be that serious with the new combat, what was so wrong with the old combat?" And while most of the game is 2D, Mario has the ability to "flip" the level from 2D into 3D and it's a neat idea. The 3D world isn't great though, it generally has to correspond to the 2D level so it's stuck with pretty straightforward layouts and is kinda dull-looking and I recall it's main function generally being to have hidden stuff that's not there in the 2D world or allow you to go around 2D obstacles. Your access to the 3rd dimension also depletes a meter that I recall being annoyingly slow to recharge but I might just been annoyed that the meter existed at all when they should have just given you free access from the beginning (I think there might have been something postgame that allows this? I forget). If they had gone with any of old-style Paper Mario combat, focused on making it a legitimately good action game (maybe with more influence from a long-lasting sidescrolling series like, I dunno, THE MARIO FRANCHISE), or went really hard after the 2D/3D gimmick to the exclusion of everything else (because you'd probably have to for it to really shine), it probably would have been a better game. As is, it's kind of stuck as a decent-to-good oddity whose failure to really nail down its gameplay makes it hard to recommend to any particular audience other than Paper Mario fans craving more of the first two games' sense of humor and vibe.

yeah what kind of an asshole would spoil the rest of the list for everyone

rubik's and copy paper coming right up!

Excellent game. Did a playthrough a few years ago where I beat it after choosing Badge Points every single level-up, was fun. Didn't mess around with minigames enough before the final dungeon to get a (the?) third HP Plus Badge so I only had 20 HP for the final boss. Made it through though. Complaints about the backtracking are legit though!

I haven’t played all of them but so far Super Bomberman 2 is my favorite classic Bomberman game for single-player. I wouldn’t call them brilliant or anything but its stages are actually designed rather than being generic layouts or spat out by an RNG and it’s just...better that way.

The Krion Conquest always looked like one, particularly for being an officially licensed game on the same console as the franchise it's ripping off.. Never played it though.

Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible Special. Dungeon crawler with basically no story, terrible party recruiting mechanics, terrible puzzles, and terrible battles. Hilarious that this was a Game Gear game given how long the biggest dungeon lasts. If Majin Tensei hadn't already taken the crown for worst JRPG I've ever played, this probably would have been the king. And it mainly "loses" just due to lacking the ridiculous time investment required to beat that game. Close to having beaten some version of every 4th gen Megami Tensei console game now. Just Majin Tensei II and Last Bible III left. Those are actually supposed to be at least decent like SMT1 and 2 were!

FFIV was my second RPG, after Super Mario RPG. I consider it to be the earliest turn-based JRPG that still holds up as being better than merely "good." The improvements in story, presentation, and quality of life over 8-bit JRPGs and the creation of the ATB system were huge. It remains a very well paced game that is extremely easy to get into and is just fun to play. On the other hand, I think it's not really in contention for being one of the all-time JRPG greats. I kinda dig how all-in the game goes on its melodrama, but it undermines itself a bit with the And while the ATB system and the effort they put in to making the different bosses feel different and have their own gimmicks was enough for the gameplay back in the day and is still fun now, it kinda comes off nowadays as a "very standard no-frills ATB battle system" (EXCEPT WITHOUT VISIBLE ATB BARS IN THE SNES VERSION ARGH). The lack of customization besides equipment is a missed opportunity. We've also obviously seen better looking games with better QoL since. pretty cool game though, spoony bards and all.

62. And he’s already played at least The Firemen and Terranigma so 60 or less to go!