It’s a growing pattern, see! We’re looking 30 years ago at a time when the industry had largely made the transition into 3D game design. I know what you’re thinking, UK developers did that a way back in 1984. Well, now very wealthy companies were doing it. 1996 is also the one year I would argue that the Saturn was better to own than a PS1. Prove me wrong or discover me right. I don’t care!
Here are the rules
You are encouraged to recommend as many games as you like. You don’t even need to have played them.
I will also keep a list of Top 12 Works for Posterity. You can add to the list by voting.
You could use this as an excuse to play Heroes of Might & Magic II.
Please play Phantasmagoria 2. It’s so good. It’s not nearly as much of a supermarket romance novel fantasy as the first one but you get to don the most iconic grey pocket tee in gaming history instead. I like that one of Curtis’ co-workers puts on an indiscernible European accent every time she wants to do BDSM.
RIPPER!!! A CYBERPUNK murder mystery. The second-best interactive movie experience of 1996 only because Phantasmagoria 2 exists, but it’s #1 in my heart. This game has a hilariously stacked celebrity cast so you get to see Cyber Christopher Walken ward you off from entering your girlfriend’s geocities site in VR because it’s an active crime scene. I love this stupid ass game. The puzzles are inane and the identity of the KILLER is randomized each time. The main character is an ACE REPORTER who works for “The Virtual Herald” (I love this so much lmao) and hunts & pecks when he types. His giant leather overcoat groans and creaks like an old galleon every time he does anything. You spend an unbelievable amount of time talking to Paul Giamatti. Six CDs of gaming pleasure!
if this trailer does not convince you that this game whips ass I don’t know what to tell ya
Digital Pinball: Necronomicon is the best virtual pinball game ever. The tables do things you can’t do in real pinball but the gameplay is grounded without ever stopping the action like so many modern tables fall prey to. It’s 90s and Heavy Metal Lovecraft as hell. The soundtrack will sway you one way or another:
My first vote is going to Twinkle Star Sprites. That’s fitting since the last game I talked about in 1991 was Puyo Puyo.
I first played Twinkle Star Sprites as part of @HOBO 's Beautiful Game. If my memory serves, I was pretty good at it back then. Me and @aislesgrises had some really sweaty matches.
It’s striking to think about how competitive puzzlers were so young when this brilliant concept flashed across someone’s mind. It’s an STG where you create the bullet patterns for your opponent. I hope someone comes in here to recommend a Touhou that iterates on this recipe because I’ve never played anything else like it.
The characters are excellent and the translation is delightfully nonsensical. Nanja Monja has entered my lexicon as the perfect way to express the inexpressible.
incredibly weird. Wander around a haunted mansion, solve puzzles, shoot monsters, fmv cutscenes, time travel, overcooked fantasy worldbuilding, somehow feels like the precursor to Clive Barker’s Undying
If you feel a thrill looking at this screenshot and this UI, you understand why I play video games
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri
A tactical sci-fi fps by Looking Glass that has more in common with Mechwarrior 2 and 1993’s Space Hulk than it has with Doom or Quake. Beautiful, overambitious, chaotic and flawed. Everything I love in a game.
That’s incredible. I think video games convinced me I could be successful in an “Introduction to MIDI Composition” course, but it turned out I don’t like working with digital tools very much.
…I don’t know that anyone has actually played the ‘96 version of the game after the year 2000, based on what I know of it I wouldn’t recommend it.
That said I did do a whole SB Let’s Play for the version of it ported into a newer engine with QoL improvements, featuring the beautiful specimen in my avatar, so that has to count for something. Maybe not a specifically 1996 something though :\
Yeah one can argue that it is a 1996, 2002, 2003 or 2005 release if one really wanted to. The 1996 version had a completely different portrait of dear Beethro…
battle garegga is a shmup. because it is a shmup, it operates on a very simple rule set. below that rule set, which you understand the second you press start and move the joystick, there is another, sinister rule set that you do not understand. the first rule set governs how you respond to the game; the second rule set governs how the game responds to you. this second rule set is just as rigid as the first, but because it is insane, hidden, and constantly updating in response to your actions, it is dynamic and unpredictable. you manage how these rule sets interact. you keep finding or learning about little hidden things that update your model of how the game works. all of that shit is in your brain, and it feels good. then blackheart throws some bullshit you ain’t seen yet at you
so yeah I vote for this shit or whatever, I’ve definitely played it in the last month.
Two similar games in theme but different games in execution. WaveRace is strictly single player and WaveRunner was made for multiplayer. WaveRace is console and WaveRunner is an arcade game that never received a home port. WaveRace is more “arcadey” despite WaveRunner being the arcade game. WaveRace changes the track every lap. WaveRunner lets you hit the wake of an opponeent’s craft like a ramp.
WaveRace is pure Nintendo, where everything is distilled to a beautiful aesthetic and rendered in the most videogamey way possible.
WaveRunner is like Daytona USA with water physics gimmicks (and trickes in the air)
what what? How did I never know this? All thse times I was told “no, we’re going to play mario kart because there’s a group here an it’s multiplayer” I was being deceived
