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Crash Bandicoot 4 - Beaten 16/3 + all stages 22/3 Making a sequel to a franchise which already has at least 10 existing games and calling it "4" is a pretty cocky move. But a point could probably be made that Crash Bandicoot has suffered more consistently than the Contra series, and going back to the original trilogy, ignoring everything else and making a direct sequel in the same style was the only realistic way to actually make a respectable sequel to Naughty Dog's old flagship series. Naughty Dog themselves still aren't touching the game - they are too successful making movie-games like TLOU to ever create anything fun again, but Toys For Bob manages to pick up the torch and then some. Holy shit, this game is brimming with passion and a love for Crash's unique approach to the 3D platformer genre - doing everything the original three games did well, while also completely ditching any of the superfluous mess also added by the second and third one. It's only been a year since I played those three games for real, and my takeaway was that although all the games were surprisingly fun, the rest of the trilogy was never able to fully live up to the pure gameplay challenge focus of the first game. I don't think that's a popular take among the series' fanbase, but judging by this game I'm clearly not alone in that assessment - because Crash Bandicoot 4 tries to, and greatly succeeds at, elaborating on exactly those strengths! But it also manages to go a bit overboard. Instead of having one gem to find on each stage, you now have six. Three of them feel superfluous, as they are all based on how many fruits you are able to find, and when you are going for all crates you will get them regardless. Of course, there's the "all crates" gem as usual, and a hidden gem on every stage which is a pretty fitting addition - and finally there's a "beat the stage with 3 deaths or less" gem, which to be honest feels like a pretty fair compromise between the original's demand that you get every crate without dying even once, and the sequel's relaxed approach of letting you retry from every checkpoint as much as you want. The stages are all quite long, at least twice as long as any stages from the original games, and probably even longer, too, and there are a LOT of them, more than twice as many, so going for every gem on every stage is a really absurd ordeal. On top of that, each stage also has three individual speedrun trophies, a "flashback tape" to pick up, and a hardcore "get all crates with no death" achievement, which is obviously much more demanding than the equivalent in Crash Bandicoot 1. It's all way too much for me. I understand it, though. If you want to revive this series for one single game, allowing it to go out with a bang, you really want to get everything in there. You want to allow dedicated fans to keep playing this game for ages and still be able to achieve new goals. Where it breaks down completely, though, is about halfway through when you unlock "inverted stages", giving every single stage a new mode, which tracks the same six gems separately, meaning now there are a whopping twelve gems to find on each one, most of them requiring you to just do the same thing again, but mirrored and with an awful graphical filter applied. I don't think anyone enjoys that, and as expected it's an aspect of the game that has been quite universally panned online. Of course, you could just ignore all this, no problem - so on one hand it's really hard to fault the game for it. But at the same time... In Crash Bandicoot 1, 2, and 3, the true enjoyment came not from just playing through the games, but from learning the stages, playing better, and getting every gem. And if you want to do the same thing in Crash Bandicoot 4, where do you stop? Getting every gem is arduous, especially when you start factoring in the inverted stages, and then there are all the other challenges also presented to you. None of them are really recognized ingame either, outside of a completion percentage on your save file, which doesn't really mean much unless you are going for the mind-numbing 100%. It's not the only issue with the game, though. Although I mostly really enjoyed the core gameplay, the game's difficulty quite often just came down to stuff that felt outside of my control. Issues like unfair collision boxes and a lack of depth perception was by far the most common cause of death in a stage. It's funny, because this is something the series is often criticized for, but I don't think the old games had much of an issue with it. The first game had much more stiff movement that felt less three dimensional, but that also meant your jumps were always much more precise, and you'd always hit the exact block intended by the stage design, and I very rarely felt that falling into a pit was anyone's fault but my own. Crash 4 is intended to be quite a challenging game, which is welcome, but often it felt to me like the most difficult parts were the ones that weren't even intended to be challenging. I ended my game at 55%, which doesn't sound like much, but that represents over 30 hours of play. I did go back to get a few more gems and complete every optional stage, but by that point I was already so fed up with the game I'm actually disappointed that I never even managed to get into the speedrunning challenges, which was one of the most fun aspects of Crash Bandicoot 3. I know it sounds weird to criticize a game for just being too much, but it really is Crash 4's biggest weakness, and I'm definitely far from the only person who has taken that stance, judged my the most common criticism you'll typically see of the game.

Or Streets of Rage 2 or 3, Rocket Knight, or Hard Corps Also how the fuck did Sonic 2 win out over Sonic 3/Knuckles?

Why would anyone not want to play PCE?

Pretty good game, I even think it's slightly better than the more popular Master System game with the same title and box art, though they are two different games entirely. Land of Illusion is cool too, but few people ever talk about that one. It's quite short and easy though, so I don't think it's anything particularly memorable. It's definitely overrated, that goes for both of them.

Oh man, so it's a game with a crate in it. That really narrows down our options. I hope it's one of the games reviewed in this article https://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html

Yeah I was confused by the wording too. I don't think Reed meant the cartridge is bricked in the traditional sense. Just that you can't realistically complete the game on one? That said, I'm pretty sure there must be a way to circumvent the glitch. There's no way no one has done a deep dive into exactly what triggers it (clearly it can't be *just* that action if it doesn't trigger it every time)

RNG and luck aren't the same thing. You can prepare for bad RNG. That's like saying Tetris is luck based. And I feel like I've made that exact comparison before in a different thread.

I don't usually regret purchases, but if I end up spending too much money on something that wasn't what I thought it was, or I buy stuff that takes up a lot of place but which I end up never using, that's pretty much an immediate regret. In recent memory, two games stand out to me, both were my own fault for not doing some basic research: Devil May Cry Trilogy on Switch. I bought a physical copy because I wanted to own the game, and a real copy of especially the Switch port of DMC3, which by most fans is regarded the ultimate version of that game. What I didn't realise at the time, is that the physical release only includes the first game, and the other two are download codes. Completely useless garbage. Uncharted Waters on SNES. I've never been interested in this game on any platform. But @Reed Rothchild's insane praise of the game in his SNES Rankings list (better than TNWA? must be really fucking great) convinced me to shell out for a game that's unfortunately an import exclusive, meaning absurd shipping, customs, etc. Buuuut it turns out there are apparently two Uncharted Waters games on the SNES, and the game he praised was the other one, which is also an import exclusive. Sucks. I'm never going to play this game.

Nah man, I understand grievances like this completely. It might be a small thing, but if it affects your experience with the game, it counts. When you said controls I imagined what you meant is that Lara moves slightly different, causing you to miss jumps etc., but sounds like it's mostly a question of input settings, and the lack of the ability to change it. I haven't played these games in decades, so it probably wouldn't bother me - but it would bother me if I knew that I was playing a game that didn't play according to how the game was originally designed, in a package advertised as the new "ultimate" way to play those three games.

This is something you'd only say if you have never played the original game. It looks like them, sure, it's a really nice homage. But it has nothing of what drives the original arcade game, it's barely the same genre.

Yeah, I don't think people beating Dark Souls without getting hit would ever be valid as an argument that the game isn't hard. Rather, the fact that it took so much practice is proof that the game is hard. Likewise, all you're saying about Slay the Spire is that it's a challenging game with a lot to learn and improve at. Saying the game is about luck makes no sense at all given these arguments sorry. As someone who only played through each class once or twice, and then a couple more runs to have some stabs at the heart, it was extremely clear to me that the game wasn't about luck - you don't need insane dedication to see that, IMO. That said, that level of dedication wasn't for me either.

A supergun is really just a mapping between controller ports, power supply, and RGB+audio outputs on the arcade connector, so IMO you're not gonna get a meaningful better quality out of more expensive solutions, I guess they're just less likely to break (and some times come with extra bells and whistles you don't know if you'll ever need). That said, depending on where you live, the stock RGB output from an MVS might not be too useful for you. If you're in Europe (or have a PVM or similar professional monitor) you can just hook it into a CRT, but if you live somewhere else or only have a HDTV that's of course a challenge. I wouldn't want to invest in a supergun with any built in video encoding, however, as you're always gonna get a better and more future-proof result with an external box. For example, if you get one that outputs component or s-video instead of standard RGB, that's not gonna help you with a HDTV that needs HDMI input - that's just gonna result in more useless conversion steps and a slightly lower quality. Instead I'd use a RetroTink or OSSC for lag-free HDMI upscaling - this is something that any video game nerd with an interest in old-school console hardware should probably have at this point anyway, unless they are still hauling a bunch of CRTs around. And if you do intend to hook it up to a CRT, but don't have the option of an RGB input, there are also cheap s-video or component encoders out there you can get. These should all be lag-free, so no worries there. I'm sorry, this ended up sounding a lot more convoluted than it needs to be. You probably already know how to deal with RGB video.

MVSX is really cool because it looks like a classic red Neo Geo cabinet, but it's actually quite space effecient and can fit into many discreet locations. BUT it really is "just" emulation. It's an emulated Neo Geo on a modern flat LCD. You get the exact same experience out of just booting up MAME on your PC, except that comes with a bunch of other advantages as well. The big distinction to me between going the MVSX route or MAME is whether it's important to you that you own the games legit (and even then, every MVSX setup I've seen, has been loaded with pirated roms anyway, so they could play any Neo Geo game ) Like @glazball said, if the goal is merely just "playing the games", emulation is in many ways the "ideal" way. At least if minimal extra setup and zero money spent are important factors to you. A MVS system itself isn't too expensive, but a few games can be a bit spicey at this point. Of course, this depends a lot on how you look at this. I rarely play emulated games at all, and if I'm interested in a system, and not just curious about a few individual games, getting the actual system means a lot to me. I also prefers playing these sorts of games on at least somewhat original setups, ideally on a CRT. Personally, I play all my Neo Geo games on my Astro City cabinet, and I wouldn't want it any other way. This may matter less to another person. Also, if you're considering emulation but want to keep it legal, the Neo Geo Arcade Archives series released across all modern console platforms, offer a vast majority of the best Neo Geo games at this point, available to purchase individually at a ridiculously low discount price.

There's a lot of things to criticize Facebook for, but your account getting hacked over and over might be a "you" problem. I've never seen it happen to anyone who didn't click something dumb

What is the difference? I've heard lots of praise for the remaster, but haven't seen anyone mention this before.

To be fair, you could have played the first SNES game, or even better the new remake/sequel from Tengo Project which is phenomenal. You didn't hear good things about Kiki Kaikai because of the GBA game

I guess I need to bump this one up my backlog. Got a physical copy sitting around

I remember people getting the Saturn port of Duke3D just to play this game: IIRC a secret code on the title screen or some such thing

MVS is absolutely the way to go, as it has been since forever. Games aren't as dirt cheap as they have been, but compared to how much NES and SNES games, etc. have gone up, MVS isn't too far removed, and the motherboard ("console") system itself is still super cheap because they are so ubiquitous. There are a few really cool titles that'll set you back over $100, but the majority of interesting games can be acquired for less, including every Metal Slug lower than 4 (ie. the good ones). Compare AES games, most of which will set you back $1000 or more. If you're going with an AES console, definitely get a cart adapter. But honestly unless you really want your setup to look sleek, I'd just get a single-slot MVS motherboard and hook it up to your TV with a cheap supergun - no reason to modify it right off the bat IMO, and while a unibios is cool, it's by no means mandatory - I had my neo geo for nearly two decades before I got one. Also, the RGB output from an MVS is better than what you get from an AES anyway.

Can't really argue with this show's peak era. Looking back at some of the most memorable episodes (which is nearly every episode from that era), it's actually unbelievable just how much wit and creativity worked its way into The Simpsons - it's truly like nothing else, despite seemingly not really doing anything to visibly distinguish itself from its peers. It's not trying to be weird or edgy, it's not over-the-top joke-heavy, or based on strange ideas and gimmicks. It's just really well written! It's remarkable, honestly.

Easy 10/10

None of these games are in the MegaDrive's top 4 haha Contra is pretty good tho I missed both the top 16 and top 8 votes since you posted and ended both of them during the easter holidays. This thing is moving too fast.

I'd say '75 is right at the verge of where this sort of counter-culture was still considered rebellious. That said, the mid-to late 70s was also the point in time where any young artistic output was expected to embrace that same sort of rebellious nature. If you were in a band and you wore nice clothes and had a haircut short enough to see your ears, you were considered the outsider.

Seconded. Parodius was the absolute first thing that came to my mind when I saw the thread title! It should be anyone's.

In a world where <any good beat'em up> exists, neither Turtles beat'em up is particularly good