koifish

Part of it is the wording for the polls. I would give batman for nes a 10 personally, but would never say "everyone should play it". It's not a foundational game. It's still great though, so I give it 8. In this case, symphony isn't a bad game, just a boring game. Too easy is a cardinal sin for my gaming needs. Having to make the game hard for yourself on purpose is more often than not a failure on the devs. That said, I did play a while and I might enjoy playing it again or on occasion, so 6 text speaks to me. Music is my other most important part of a game. There are plenty of games where the only part I like the soundtrack (ie. FF7). I won't rate boring games highly just because the music is good however. Just mentioning because symphony is a great soundtrack. Yamane also did my favorite CV, Bloodlines, so there's a little extra bias there. Anything that isn't gameplay won't change my opinion 99% of the time. Great atmosphere /music/you name it is meaningless if the game is bad. When I want a story I read a book. When I want visuals I go to a museum, or to a park, or to a movie. When I want music I put on an album. When I want to play I boot up a game. If the game is dull then why am I here? I can get story/etc by watching someone else play it instead.

Are there modern big-budget games with scores in them? I feel like that died decades ago now, aside from intentional anachronism (ie. New Super Mario Bros and successors).

People always yell at me when I say this about Kanto in Pokemon Gold/Silver.

It's not bad, but not great either. Cardinal sin is that it's way too easy (you have to make your own difficulty) and it gets boring long before its over (I quit before even getting to the upside down castle). Meaningless padding of a billion items and abilities that you'll never use is novel for replays and detritus otherwise. Great music and art though, and if you suck at games then you can just grind until you win, a great boon to hack journalists and internet game reviewers. I'll give it a 7/10; If you suck at platformers then this is the one for you! The soundtrack is 11/10 though; Download that and listen to it a lot. In fact, download every CV soundtrack. EDIT: Changed my mind. 6/10 Let me know when you're in Seattle and I'll take you up on that! Your ebay notification is showing. XYZ

Why compare these games? While they occupy American minds as key long-running JRPG series, they don't have much in common beyond genre. DQ is known for consistency while FF is known for changing core systems. Moreover, some of these games aren't even a similar genre; How can you compare FF10, a linear JRPG, to DQ10, an MMORPG? Or FF11, an MMORPG, to the "open-world" (and not online) DQ11? I feel like I might as well be comparing Mario and Sonic games simply because they were rival mascot series.

I feel the same way about Sonic 06. That game is like The Room for me. No such love for superman 64 however; Second time I failed a mission and had to fly through rings is when I chucked the cart.

My favorite anecdote about FDS is that Volleyball on FDS sold better than Kid Icarus, Metroid, and both Zeldas.

Rubber is different, I can't speak to that. If it's just the pads though, then I bet fixing them is easier than finding replacements that aren't junk.

I'm surprised you can't retrofit existing pads. Is there no conductive material you can apply to them? Maybe graphite would work.

One of my top NES platformers. I wouldn't say everyone should play it though, because it's pretty difficult, and also because some will complain that it is not a "real" batman game. If you like hard platformers though? Play it, it's worth it.

recently got a retrobit legacygc controller, and it is pretty good, a surprise given my being a hard ass over controllers. My only complaint, aside from the face buttons being just okay, is that the d-pad diagonals are a little tough to hit. Does anyone know of methods that might work to improve the diagonals on a d-pad? Maybe I can do something to improve the feel and make them easier to hit.

so it was like the forklift parts of shenmue?

pretty much same for me, I had no love for the aonuma Zelda games. I liked link between worlds and the four swords games too though. Tri-Force Heroes i never really had a chance to play; Now that the 3ds network is being taken down, I probably never will. For me though, none of them are better than NES Zeldas and Link's Awakening.

1700 games? Is a shovel included?

EDIT: On retrospective, I realize this confusion is my fault, because I didn't explain the game's history well enough in the first post. I've updated it above to reflect this oversight. To expound, you are correct; I bring up 16 players specifically because the game was designed from the start to support it and is feature built for that purpose. See the interview below (incidentally, with the same programmer who was at the event last night): https://web.archive.org/web/20100509163809/http://fb2k.retro-spect.ca/rchampagne.html It does pay to point out that he does allude to 16 having been a chosen limit (probably to match MIDI Maze, which I've read also supported 16 players) and that he claims you could have done more. I've spoken with a team member about the question of going over 16 players, and while they argue in theory it may be possible, it would likely require substantial rework, as the game is programmed around the player ID/player count value being no higher than 16. I won't attempt to answer here whether or not it's possible to go above that, only that 16 was always the stated end point and so that was the goal. As Robert states in that interview, the thing that caused this was that, when the game was developed, the team didn't have enough game boys to test up to 16 players. They were only ever able to get around 10 game boys. So as a result, they never were able to find the bug that resulted when you went for 16. Indeed, we have found the same; On the original release carts, you can do 8 players very stably, and 10 is manageable; It's when you get to the teens that things fall apart. So, it's possible that they got 10 working, and simply assumed the rest would as well, for want of not having time/money/etc. to buy more hardware. I could see if I could ask Robert about that for clarity, but that's my present hypothesis for why it was not found. The team only ever found it by going to the maximum player count, which is what led to the bug fix. So to answer @Code Monkey's question, it's significant because it's finally hard proof of something that has been a known intended feature of the game since Robert's interview in 2005, but that disparate groups have since tried and failed to make work for what is now almost 20 years. Unless there is someone somewhere that has done the same things seen here, and who has simply not recorded and shared it in any way, then this is the world's first successful go of it, and the first to have recorded proof as well.

Yeah, the same group (sans me) tried to do it at PRGE 2022, but it didn't work. That's how the bugs and hardware issues were eventually found. (The funny part is how I learned that they were doing this, only AFTER the expo was over. I was at the same con, at the same time, and literally down the hall from them, and I had no idea it was happening! The main organizer and I met years ago over FB 16 player, but we hadn't chatted in a while, and reconnected only after PRGE was over. Figures, right?) I went ahead and uploaded a "home video" that I took of the event. Here you can clearly see the 16-player mode is live and working. No gameplay, however; This was just the first test run. We shut it down and then tried a few more times before getting it to run for a real game (the main problem we found was human interference; We found from experience that the safest way to start a game was to have everyone keep their GBs on the table, and then pick them up once the round started). Anyway, I will link the proper video when it is finished, at a yet-unknown date. At least here you can see, yes, it's really real! https://files.catbox.moe/uecrt1.MP4

I feel this way but I gave up on it by the time I hit the swamp. This is the kind of game I would rather watch someone else play while only half paying attention.

some of them were for the game boy completion challenge. They include every game boy version of Jeopardy, "Sports Illustrated for Kids: The Ultimate Triple Dare!", and Cool World come to mind. Another one is "C.O.P. The Recruit" for DS, and "Need for Speed: The Run" for 3DS. The latter was a gift and I felt I shouldn't disappoint the buyer. The former, I honestly don't know what I was thinking. I spent like 25 hours beating it and I have no idea why I bothered. All I can remember is the really really lame music for action sequences, which included a guy rapping and saying "what I say is real, I'm not faking" every once in a while. Seriously, why did I play this to completion? It was as long as it was underwhelming. Was I just desperate? Did something captivate me about a very poor man's GTA clone? I still have no idea. I think there's another game I've finished like this, but I don't remember it. Related however; My friend beat daikatana a few years ago. He said the best part of doing it was knowing that he would never have to play it again.

I am ecstatic to share that I was fortunate enough to be part of a historic moment. Tonight, at the Pink Gorilla Games store in Seattle's University District, a group of players became the first in history to play a 16-player game of Faceball 2000! Released in 1992, this game boy game was a conversion of MIDI Maze for Atari ST, a very early first-person shooter which supported 16 player link play, using the MIDI ports on the ST for linking the computers together. In 2005, the systems programmer for Faceball 2000, Robert Champagne, did an interview, in which he confirmed that just like MIDI Maze, Faceball 2000 for Game Boy was also given a 16 player mode! They had intended to ship the game with a custom link adapter to make it work, but never did, because Nintendo told them not to do it. Moreover, he stated that even in development, they never actually had 16 game boys to do it with, and so never fully confirmed it was possible (at the time, they got to 10 and figured that was enough without buying more hardware). However, he cleared the air and confirmed that they never took the 16-player mode out, and it was still present and (ostensibly) working in every sold copy of the game! So, for almost 20 years, people have known about this feature, but have not found a confirmed way of doing it. Over the years, both myself and another team member have independently found that we could make this multiplayer mode work with daisy-chained GBA cables, but as you went higher in player count, the game would freeze and crash, failing to load. The problems ended up being not only unreliable link cables, and voltage creep on the link cables throwing off data signals, but also a software bug with the spawner, which made it impossible to actually start a game with 16 players. Enter the team; Bob, who organized individuals with different talents, Alex, who built a more effective link cable harness, and solved the programming bug, and Zarithya, who implemented the fixes, built and tested/improved the link harness, and created the final patched rom. With all this, a pile of game boys, and a group of 16 willing individuals, we tried several times before getting a working game of 16 players. Finally, real proof that Faceball 2000's long-sought after 16-player multiplayer actually worked! After that, the fun was real, as we finally played 16 players simultaneously on a game boy game! We were even lucky enough that, despite the finnicky nature of the game, the match was completed successfully without crashing! A friend of the group had the good fortune to become the first ever winner of a 16 player faceball game. We were also very fortunate to have Robert Champagne present and part of the group playing the game, as well as other special guest Michael Park, a main team member behind MIDI Maze! It was an incredible experience and I was so glad to be able to be a part of it. One member of the group is working on a small video of sorts to commemorate the event, which I'll share when it is uploaded. I hope someday to play another 16 player game. It was truly amazing, especially after having known about this game personally for over a decade, and wondering if the legendary 16 player mode was really possible. Finally we have proof that it is! Truly amazing stuff. My "home video" of our first test, simply showing the link adapter working, and showing that the 16-player mode is indeed functioning correctly: https://files.catbox.moe/uecrt1.MP4 The original interview with Robert Champagne in which he confirmed a 16-player mode existed: https://web.archive.org/web/20100509163809/http://fb2k.retro-spect.ca/rchampagne.html

The only games whose stories I like are Mother 3 and Ace Combat 4. Both are good stories and generally good games, though M3 drags at points.

not a bad idea; I usually just give 100% directly to a charity and turn down their gifts as it cuts into their margins. The process is still good if you get something out of it and i don't mean to say it is not, it's just me. I'm a weirdo in that having excess stuff becomes bothersome, which is the real reason I turn down tshirts and stickers and tote bags and stuff. I'm a bit stranger though, because for me, any purchases, even digital ones, become clutter or waste in my mind if I am not generally using them. I once collected often, but now find it specifically irritating to have things in my possession that go untouched. They're just burdensome to me. Even with digital things, which don't take up any more space physically, bother in this way. I often go and delete things that are sitting on a hard drive for too long, and I've long hated that steam won't let you sell or trade away games you no longer want, because it bothers me that they exist in my library (which of course is all because it hurts their margins, and would give people too much of an illusion of actual ownership, but that's a subject for a different thread). That's another part of why I stopped doing it. depends on the game for me. Years ago I realized that due to being around long enough, and due to having played enough games, that I can tell how something plays just by watching it and know if I would like it or not. Maybe if it is something truly different from anything you have played before, then it will be hard to get from a video, but the vast majority of games barely step away from conventions established now decades ago. I argue that a video is all I need to get the gist pretty easily of what it feels like to play a given game, simply because they're only so many variations of a same theme. The only exception that comes to mind is maybe something like Baba is You, and even that is still essentially a puzzle/logic game. I mean, if people couldn't get a good idea of how a game might play from a video, then why would anyone watch game trailers or other release info? In fact, I might even argue that the number of trailers for games that show no gameplay and instead show pretty images of the characters and things like that are designed precisely because they know that too many can see what a game will play like from watching and will then know that it is not for them. At least use some intrigue to get them hooked up front before you hit them with yet another follow-on! That's one thing I like about indie games in my experience; They typically don't have the budget for a bunch of nonsense fluff videos and so they just get to the point. But anyhow, yes, I don't think it's strange at all to be able to make a good judgment of what a game will be like to play from a video, or else gameplay trailers would not exist and no one would bother showing off a game at all.

Interesting, maybe I don't spend enough time online anymore. Maybe it is for the best though; listing off indie darlings just makes me tired from reading lol. Too many games and too many life obligations to worry about not playing this or that, and bundles get me frustrated. I used to get humble bundles, for example, and what I found was that I got a bunch of trash I would never actually play. Come to think of it, I think I bought their COVID bundle in 2020 and I don't think I have ever installed or downloaded any part of it XD I learned from touching fire to not do it anymore obviously that is a me problem though, not their problem for providing it.

yeah, I mean 2000s as in 2000 to 2009. Wasn't aware people referred to the entire century as the 2000s. Do people now do that for the 20th century? I've only ever heard people say 1900s to refer to the time at or around the turn of the century. Anyway, it was when gamemaker was first getting really big in my circles and I remember tons and tons of games like this, where you single screen platform in a bunch of spikes and obstacles and shit and just keep retrying the same screen until you win. I Wanna Be The Guy was the most infamous, but overall they weren't so bad I guess, tedious is my main descriptor. The problem was there were just so many of them that they started to run together. Sort of fun when I was younger but I don't have interest now. Moreover they are tiring. I'd rather play something cool like castlevania, that keeps things fresh with new ideas introduced through progressive stages, and moreover, that rewards mastery of technique without being obnoxious about the precise particularities. The doublewalls (forgive my shorthand) were eventually a process like was described by a previous poster for super meat boy; just sit and grind the same stupid screen because I didn't press whatever button combination at the perfect frame timing, and you just keep doing it piece by piece until you have the pattern down, only to have to do it again on the next screen. Things like that, like kaizo Mario hacks, it's a crap game to me. If I wanted to obsessively grind one pattern of extremely time-specidic and overly exacting and obnoxiously demanding inputs forever, all until I clear bullshit stage 437, and only just to go onto bullshit stage 438 and do it it all again, then I would rather just play a rhythm game, where at least you get the fun of a great song out of it (and a much more amusing showpiece for future arcade onlookers), or really at that point I should just learn an instrument, a far more useful observation of obsessively practicing the same inputs over and over. And yes, I realize this description oversimplifies music, and doesn't account for jazz at all, it's just how exacting games like doublewalls make me feel. They give the distinct feeling that I should be using my time for something more useful. Like I said, I played some of these back in the day and they were okay, but overall I think they are boring, and the ones that are stupidly specific about how you beat them are just trash IMO. With all that said, I was surprised to learn from this thread that the person who made celeste also made an untitled story; that was one of these games that I remember being better than the average. I never finished it because I recall it getting boring halfway through. I don't think i would like celeste and would probably quit it too, based on descriptions here. I don't get the feeling that it would be enough divorced from my opinions about meat grinder platformers for me to not get irritated by it, and it would probably irk me that you had to do the stupid grinder shit to 100% it. And I don't give a shit about story in games, so there's no reason for me to play it just for that. I'd rather have no story period, which is why I stick to the games that I do. Maybe I'm mistaken to say so on this game (very very rarely, I do enjoy a game story) but I'm not interested right now. I admit my knowledge could be mostly based on old video I saw when it first came out, and it's mostly a response of "oh it looks like X, pass" and I could find that I am wrong. But looking at it right now and understanding what goes into it, I expect it is a hard pass and that I will live happily having never played it. If somebody wants to send me a crack sometime then maybe I'll try it but that is what it would probably take for me to give a rat's ass. correction: I remember now from above posts that I did play the pico 8 game once. It was unimpressive imo. Also my post above is a bit more edgy than I usually post, hopefully it doesn't bother you too much. If it's indie platformers, the only choice that comes to mind for me is La-Mulana and Cave Story.

oh I see. Well, I definitely knew of celeste but had barely any interaction with it. I haven't kept up with new releases regularly since probably 2013, and basically stopped following game news entirely by 2018 or so, and as such I'm not privy to newer stuff much. I distinctly understand that phenomenon though; I call it "subculture famous", when everybody in a subculture knows of a thing relevant to that culture but it's almost unknown otherwise. You could also use it to describe instagram fame, where people can be famous and known by millions, and yet the vast majority has no idea who they are. People here are excellent examples of subculture famous ideas. For proof, just go ask anybody who doesn't play NES games about Journey to Silius or Rockin' Cats. We all know them pretty readily but the average person has no clue. That's subculture famous in a nutshell. Now I am curious; How do you follow indie games? I have overlooked them for the most part, but I also struggle to sort through them or even find them since they are by definition difficult to find. Curious of your info channels.

Yeah, I don't fully remember, but this is basically another platformer with double jump and wall jump, right? There were so many of them in the 2000s that I'm pretty sure "platformer with double jump and wall jump" was a joke name of one of them. I'm in the same position, I've played too many platformers to want one right now. Maybe a historically noteworthy one, but not just one that happens to be popular. I'm not sure what you mean. Can you explain this?