koifish

yeah, doesn't help there was basically no anniversary celebrations from 2020 to 2022. A shame, didn't get anything for super famicom 30th that I can recall.

You know, I wanna bring up one complaint about classic game download/stream offerings that is hitting me nowadays, which is that I can't port my old saves from some of these games. Sure, NES/SNES games it doesn't matter much, because they're short, or because they have passwords, but some of those N64 and even GBC/GBA unlocks would be pure drudgery to do twice, and I shudder to think of it if we ever have GameCube to contend with. I know it's basically impossible, and really I should live with it as it is and play the cart I have on the console I still own, but if you're gonna sell me on having N64 games, it would be nice sometimes to have an "I already did this shit" option and just get a 100% save loaded in. No way am I gonna have time to unlock all of the Mario Tennis star characters and extra courts a second time. Then imagine if you had to do something like get all the emblems in sonic adventure 2 again. Save me from that nightmare, please!

After seeing it again for the first time in a while, I'm asking the important question; When are we getting t-shirts of this? Even just the sage on his skateboard would be sufficient for me. @T-Pac

it was a late release, but I bet puyo puyo gets mentioned, as does Lolo and Door Door. Maybe Wrecking Crew and Wario's Woods?

I'm not too surprised, kinnikuman probably has a bigger impact on the memory just because it was a big comic. I'm more confused about the murder on the Mississippi game. What is the tag in that? Or is it a spoiler?

makes sense. I loved TF2 when I played it b Yeah, I can agree with this. I don't always like every entry, but I can't say that any game clearly invalidates the others. I feel the same way about F-Zero, though I bet I wouldn't feel that way if I hadn't gone in release order, mostly because of how obscenely good F-Zero GX is at everything it does.

I know Wii has a following, but I am curious, why is it number one for you? I remember it as the most frustrating game in the series by far, and as the one with an endless supply of tryhard funky flame runners. My one friend got good at it and could just shred anyone he played against, but to me the game always just felt like a gimmicky mess of loss of control (on various jump stuff) and of the AI spamming blue shells.

I love this one but I give it an 8 because it's not for everyone. To me it is the best Mario Kart for single player. No other game makes for as much fun during 150cc. You feel like an animal dominating the tracks. Special cup 150cc is a special kind of hell, but the kind that grows on you with continued subjection (like castlevania for gameboy). For multiplayer however, I wouldn't recommend it. It had its day, to be sure, but I can't give you a reason to play vs or battle in this over the other games, even 64, which is far inferior for the actual racing quality. Simply having 4+ players is a huge deal for this game series. I just wouldn't pick SMK for multi. But for solo and clearing the cups, it's the most fun and the only one that doesn't eventually devolve into stuff unlock drudgery. I'm glad it doesn't have clear rankings because I would rage my face off trying to 3 star the 150cc courses (I guess super circuit has them but that game is too cruel to bother with). Incidentally I would pick DS as best Mario kart overall, and 8 Deluxe as best for multiplayer, in case anyone wants to know from where I'm drawing my position.

double post on accident

Your opinion on 1st person being merely transitional is fascinating. It's an interesting way of looking at 3D. I don't agree, but I do find it interesting. I'm curious what you think about VR games. You definitely get the old timey diver helmet view sensation with most of them, though I have heard some very special headsets can do peripherals, but no games go and put stuff in your face, But that is what you're taking issue with, right? the lack of peripherals? I too have had that issue and similarly hate when they put a "helmet" over top of your view. More fun is playing with fov settings in games. Classics like quake and UT let you set the fov as high as you want, though logically the game becomes almost unplayable at 140 and up. The worst are console games that lock it at sub 90. There are often games only showing 70 or even just 60, as it saves on performance as well as being more natural than 90 when you're on a couch far from the TV. Either way, it means you barely see anything. Obviously 3rd person is thus better to see around your character, unless it's an over the shoulder view of course, in which case you have a big player character taking up your camera instead of a big gun. For classic games, Id try Descent as it doesn't have any big objects in your HUD. A number of other games let you turn off the gun showing up on screen (mostly hardcore twitch shooters like quake 3 because players are good enough to know what weapon they are holding without seeing it in front of them).

not my kind of game

I think aging is a good design in games but not necessarily when it's not that obvious. Still, they got you pretty good, right? It's perhaps more permissable when the party is expendable, like in wizardry games. That reminds me, IIRC there are enemies in the wizardry series that can decrease your intelligence stat, and if your character hits 0 intelligence then they die immediately.

So, so many bizarre things could kill you in these games. Roberta Williams has a weird idea of fun, I think.

La-Mulana. Maybe with an eternity I'll finally finish it.

A short list in total; I thought of Sqoon and Mappy.

Yeah, I was confused too, but indeed, as their phonetic versions, サラマンダ and まかいむら both fit the bill. At least for the first one, there are probably way more people who don't actually remember, when asked, the actual kanji for salamander, and who just think of the katakana instead. I don't think makaimura has that much of rare kanji though, so I am more surprised by it.

pretty good but only worth one playthrough. The sneaking and taking out guys is cool, but the stealth could be better (you can tell it comes from the era of design where devs stopped assuming that their audience possessed any patience or critical thinking skills) and the combat is basically a joke. The detective work would be cooler if it didn't give you magic x-ray vision, and indeed, in one part where you sneak through a courtyard patrolled by snipers, it was way more fun turning off the easy goggles and finding/eliminating the snipers yourself. As a counterpoint to batman, think of spiderman 2 on ps2; You start out and you suck at webswinging, but with time you get good and its as fun as it is rewarding. Bamham never does that, so its a bit mind-numbing of an experience. As pointed out above also, the final boss sucks too, but given how none of the fighting is any good, that isn't especially surprising. As a mindless batman sim however, this game rocks. You just fall in and get to really be the bat, and the spectacle of it all is fantastic. The thinking-free focus helps ensure that you never really fail, so like batman you just succeed a lot and beat dudes up and look flashy doing it. Some of the flipping around just looks ridiculous, but it plays fine enough, and moreover all the VAs really show up and put on a good show. I would say, go in and expect a cool batman theme park ride and just turn your brain off for the film. You'll have a good amount of fun and feel like it was a worthwhile batman experience. Just don't bother with it much more than that, I'd say, or you'll just find yourself wanting something with more design substance, like Splinter Cell (for stealth) or Godhand (for combat), as examples that come to mind of games that do those things far better IMO. But it is clear that the goal of this was more to be a "batman fan's game" than a "video game for people who like batman", so I don't really knock it. Still, overall I give it a 5, because other than one time for the spectacle, I wouldn't bother with it, and indeed I sold it not long after my one playthrough. Also, I get a good laugh out of how everybody, even commissioner gordon, is so preposterously WIDE. Seriously, batman is 3 times as wide as he is deep. Reminds me of the comical proportions from the 90s superman and batman cartoons (and by extension the 2000s Justice League shows). Also, screw whomever decided to make a bazillion costumes for batman and locked them all behind different store preorder bonuses. Not cool.

I don't have much time, so I would rather play something that I know loads up quickly and starts quickly, and doesn't waste a lot of time with story, cutscenes, or other distractions. I read enough that I don't need story in a game. I will say though that the "when I was a kid" part isn't entirely accurate, at least to me; There are plenty of games that were around when I was young, but that I had never played, or even owned the hardware for, until much later. I want to be clear as the poll answer seems to suggest a bit of nostalgia bias, which I feel should be pointed out as too often I see dismissive comments in the vein of "you only like this because it was your childhood", and would like to deflect such assessments.

I am prepared for spicy distribution

Ignoring games that have no ending, and games that can be "finished" but also 100% cleared (if you have ridiculous amounts of free time...), I submit these as three groups. 1. Games I like well enough but don't like enough to finish. Includes games like Godhand, Demon's Souls, and Makaimura (series) Often times I think "oh, this game is cool, and I like what they do, but I don't want to play for too much." Another version of this is "I play it but only some of it" like Streets of Rage 2, which I basically just play the first level of and then quit because I hate the bridge level. 2. Games that are just really difficult to finish and I haven't gotten there yet Includes games like La-Mulana (freeware version), Dragon Slayer IV, and Wizardry Trilogy They are games on my list of games I want to beat but they are really tough to figure out. Also includes arcade games with endings that I cannot beat on Hardest yet, such as Space Harrier, Power Drift, and Gain Ground. (Does this kid REALLY like Sega arcade or is he just a poser? Hard to say...) 3. Games I am working on and just haven't gotten the right mix of time and tenacity needed to finish This includes games like Mario Clash, WildCard, Picross DS (and so many other Picross games), Hotel Dusk, the list goes on really. Ton of games that I like or love but haven't found the time to finish yet. When it comes to games that i will just never 100%, there's ones like Lost Planet 2 and Mario Kart DS. The latter, I think I have just six more 3-star grand prix finishes to get, but I just can't be damned to do that, especially now that my hands can't do the snaking anymore. Pretty sure you have to have a time machine and no life to 100% LP2, those games from the earlier days of online/achievements have nightmarish things like "be the best in the world in this game mode" or "beat a developer in online play" which are basically impossible outside of a small window of time. For LP2 there are a lot of random co-op ones, not to mention noms de guerre which is obnoxious to 100%. I don't get anything out of that, since achievements are just a boolean flag on a save file, so I'm okay with never getting all of those. The white whale is definitely La-Mulana. I will probably never beat that game. They say it's impossible without spoilers, but I worry about spoiling too much if I look up answers.

I am BACK for this event. I am DISAPPOINTED that I did not get the ping even though I was called out in the OP. Consider me ready to go for 2023.

Just as well! I have recovered some and now I seem to think of some. In addition to pinball there is also pac-man パックマン and Ninja Gaiden comes back from the all-kanji group, as does Castlevania 3. Dig-Dug and another game I didn't know, ダウボーイ (port of the commodore 64 game "Doughboy") also fit. I expect to find more interesting new titles through this one as well. That's been the real boon of this list, I think; Finding out all kinds of new software to try. I would have never thought to check out some of these games had I not seen them here.

Hell if I can think of how many characters are in each title, I feel happy if I can read the basics...maybe someday, or when I'm less tired. Scrolling through wikipedia lists however, I do notice ピンボール. That seems like it was a bigger release in Japan, so maybe that will make the list.

I totally forgot about Time Twist. I only checked it out once, and it had a load of text and was hiragana-only, so I noped out of there. Maybe I should try it again. The only other thing I know about it is that there is time travel and I think the KKK shows up. Also had no idea that Matsumoto Tooru games existed. From the name I gather it's a game to train you in stock trading. FamicomWorld tells me there is a sequel as well. Doing some more lookup of games I don't recognize, and Wagyan Land is here because of this, I suspect (description from StrategyWiki): " The games features standard side-scrolling stages where the player must reach the goal, as well as boss encounter where the player must compete in a mini-game of shiritori (しりとり? lit. taking the end). Shiritori (しりとり) is a Japanese word game in which the players are required to say a word which begins with the final kana of the previous word. " Some people, especially kids playing it, probably learned a lot of new words by fighting the boss battles, in the same way that successive generations have learned new words from playing text-heavy RPGs in English. Okhotsk is a murder mystery adventure, looks like, so that probably has its bits of education here and there. Mindseeker looks strange, like an ESP trainer of sorts wrapped into an adventure game. Might have to check that out myself. And then Keisan is a basic math training game, so basically DK Jr Math as far as anyone who isn't a kid learning math is concerned. Overall, a very interesting list. Plenty of games we never got in the west, and some strange ones too.

I was thinking of that, even with wiimotes my mind was saying "this would be better on VB pad"