For DQIII I think the GBC version is the version people here generally recommend, followed by the SFC version.
I’m very fond of the NES so I played the Dragon Warrior 3 version, and quite enjoyed it.
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FFVI and Rez are both music games.
There is no other RPG like FFVI. It is a radically earnest romantic escapade forged around its soundtrack, operatic in scope and in presentation, thematically somber without being colloquially melodramatic (despite literally being a melodrama), painted in just the right strokes to not bog itself down. Its characters are barely more fleshed out than they are in any other RPG of the time, but the artfulness and maturity of their construction gets staggering mileage out of what’s there; as an ensemble there is no comparison in gaming, on an individual level the characters at the top of the bill are drenched in so much romantic pathos that it doesn’t matter how one-note they can be, because this isn’t a character study like so many of square’s other RPGs pretend to be. Little vignettes like Cyan’s letter writing or Celes’ suicide attempt (both optional, like large portions of the game) give us more to go with than the sum total of about 50 thousand different anime RPGs. So many villains in pop media are nihilistic ciphers, but Kefka is the only one that works because he’s the only one that is properly nihilist – the rest are either angsty or poor philosophers. Kefka is a force, not a foil, and his joviality is so dearly needed to make the opera work.
You can talk about the game’s structure, which is itself unique and striking, but you don’t need to because it simply follows from everything else. The game is taken where it needs to go. Mechanically it suffers as the first of many FF games with a wild power curve full of broken systems and loose balance that work to undermine character differences. It’s less broken than FFVIII and less homogeneous than FFVII and X/X-2, but IX probably does what it does better overall. VI did it all first, if any of that matters, and the characters are comfortably distinct in the first half of the game, if not well balanced.
I love Rez too, maybe I’ll talk about that later.
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No Mercy is the best of the aki games btw
Mirror’s Edge sucks
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Some big ones here I’m interested in but haven’t played. Dragon Quest III, Yume Nikki, Silent Hill, Rez… It’s Friday night. I’ve ordered a pizza. What to play?
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There sure are plenty of versions out there. Got one from 2005, is the Steam version no good?
I’ve never heard anything so absurd as the idea that you have to vote for games you’ve actually played. staring at screenshots or boxart and dreaming is like half of videogames at least. I didn’t vote in the sonic vs nights one last time because sonic 2 was always my least favorite of sonic 1-3 even though I still like it and saturn era 3d art has always been appealing looking to me and the nights art exemplifies it, but I’ve never heard people talk about it too much nowadays so I didn’t vote in it’s favor either.
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Playing videogames is like one of the less important ways of engaging with them tbh yeah
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I mean I vote regardless of having played them or not but there are some cool ones here and it’s a good excuse to give em a shot.
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ffvi, rez is cool but ffvi is this mythical thing i read about for years in super play before finally getting to play it in zsnes
resident nintendo hater and even i will concede that link’s awakening is brilliant
i am ashamed i haven’t played sky odyssey
fft is fine but outrun is pure pleasure (i’d sooner take outrun 2 and let us cling together, mind)
baba is you has been on my steam wish list for ages, oops
umihara kawase, i love to work myself into a shoot but the n64 is a major blind spot for me in general
gunstar heroes
disco elysium is the funniest game i’ve ever played, the worst thing i can say about it is like, too many podcaster voices
i only played through silent hill 1-3 this past few months and the first is my favourite, it’s the dithering patterns
elevator action returns is flawless innit
super mario vs animal crossing is difficult, i think i’d sooner play animal crossing right now despite mario’s ‘historical relevance’ or whatever the fuck
surprised ouendan is on here and my edf experience is like an hour of the first one that came out on 360
dragon quest 3!!! one of my comfort food games
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Well, “spotty” is a spectrum. The original English release of FFVI has some annoying quirks especially in item names (“Atma Weapon”, “Fenix Down”), but it’s still way more complete and coherent than contemporaries like Secret of Mana or Phantasy Star 4.
For English-speaking fans of FFVI the colorful Woolsey flourishes are an essential part of the atmosphere of the game and how we understand particularly Kefka’s personality, so I am wary of recommending complete retranslations. I have played through FFVI in the original Japanese and I did not feel startled by any major change in meaning from what I remembered of my English playthroughs (although I did perceive a few of the characters came across as having more generic personalities and some memorable comic moments were absent).
Checking romhacking dot net just now there is a fan translation recently updated this year which I haven’t tried yet but seems like the one to go with:
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Thanks @broco!
This bracket is the first one where I feel like I have to play/replay a lot of these again. Glad to see SMB is doing well but I weep for Mirror’s Edge.
Arguments for Mirror’s Edge are always going to be couched in its flaws. Mirror’s Edge has the best and most memorable sewer level of any videogame (woohoo). It’s art direction is flawless imo but the cutscenes are weird animations. However at its highs it is one of the best. Managing a smooth run through a level while trancey electronic ambience pounds to the tempo of your beating heart. Helicopter machinegun pounding the walls and glass; vaulting over trains, cranes, and automobiles; sliding down storm drains and leaping across nothingness. The poof of the giant pillow pads to cushion a lethal fall.
The nausea of doing a forward roll in first person and the way your eyes have to adapt to light really felt like proper embodiment. Look down during a full sprint to feel the elation of a free body in motion. Pick up a gun and throw that shit away because guns are dumb here.
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I know y’all were forced into it by the voting but really shocked by the support and defense of Mirror’s Edge and wonder how much of that is age difference. It is a fine game (maybe the best out of that batch of EA) but not something that has stuck with me 13 years later.
Also reading this I have decided Dangan Ronpa is the FFVI of the 21st Century. So it can’t get my vote.
LoZ NES didn’t have that much of a hold over me until like Broco I thought about the music and transported to five different times in my life so yeah that’s pretty cool art.
Wow all these arguments are all really good!
I might be to blame for REZ making it so maybe I will finally launch the PS4 version after I bought it 2 years ago. I will give bigger thoughts later but for many years I did not think highly of Rez because of a creep liking it. I even owned the Trance Vibrator at least once. It is a hiliarously bulky piece of equipment. Now it is surely expensive. Oh well!
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i’ll give it a shot
if most video games are empowerment fantasies, i think horror games are disempowerment fantasies–genre staples like limited resources and enemies that need to be avoided rather than fought directly are about taking power away from the player. yume nikki relies on a different, more fundamental disempowerment, taking away the player’s ability to reason about the effects of their actions. in one of the first rooms you can access in the dream world, there are these weird purple drooling guys–you go up to one of them and hit the action button and a distorted version of its sprite appears in the background. did that do something? why is it a thing? it’s an unsettling interaction. if the game was any more of a game–say if it had battles or traditional puzzles scattered throughout like other rpg maker games–it would take away from this sense of unfamiliarity
random events abound, which is another way YN takes away the player’s ability to reason about the world. the uboa event probably wouldn’t be nearly so iconic if not for having such a tiny chance of appearing. YN is completely unconcerned with whether its content is seen, which is why the famicom glitch event is triggered by an unmarked tile at the bottom of a massive empty dragon quest dungeon… 1/3 of the time. cracking open the game in rpg maker reveals many maps extend beyond what the player can see. everything contributes to this sense of a world that does not exist for the player’s sake and refuses to yield its mysteries; haunted software.
there’s just enough of a “plot” to inspire imagination, i think. e.g. playing a shut-in girl and looking on at an inaccessible picnic of the hawkish girls who chase you around in your dreams communicates a lot with very little:
there are more games along these lines now (beyond the numerous YN fangames obviously)–i think PT is probably the most famous at this point? but YN was one of the first and it has its own distinct aesthetic of short ambient droning loops, parallaxing void instead of floors, use of ancient mesoamerican imagery, and all the weird locales like the stairs of rising hands or the docks maze or the pink sea or the drawn world or or or–anyway it is pretty singular to me. also it’s one of the coolest things anyone’s made with rpg maker
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I feel like talking a bit more about FFVI. Here is one angle that’s always been one of the main sources of my enthusiasm: how FFVI redefined the JRPG town.
The original town formula of DQ1 is that towns were places to buy equipment, get hints about the next place to go, and above all they were havens where you could rest after a brutal, attritional march on the overworld. As JRPGs evolved their overworlds became easier and easier – and without the march, there can be no haven. With their key role stripped from them, towns turned from a relief into a chore. When I ran into one in most early 90s RPGs, my heart sank because it only meant 20 minutes of talking to every NPC to trigger the next story flag.
FFVI was the first JRPG that fully internalized the “town problem” of the genre, its philosophy is: “all towns must crackle with tension and surprises”. Right away it announces this by having you attack the game’s first town Narshe as a mind-controlled member of the villain’s army, then sneak around its cave system to escape it.
The next town you visit you end up sneaking around in in disguise. Later in the game there is the bandit town of Zozo where you walk up tenement staircases full of random battles in between talking to NPCs who constantly tell you lies. There is the sinister emperor’s capital where you are clearly invited on false pretenses and where you know the friendliness is skin-deep. And there is the seemingly normal town that suddenly triggers a timed “house is on fire, go in and rescue people and take sidepaths to gather treasure if you dare” event in the middle of it.
And that first town, Narshe? You return to it twice: the first time, it is a friendly RPG town you can walk around and buy things in as usual – and paradoxically this is interesting because you remember all the doors you couldn’t open the first time. The second time, it is a desolate ghost town where everyone has perished save one Moogle you can recruit into your party.
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I have not read any posts in this yet, here are my picks.
FINAL FANTASY VI
vs.
REZ
Ahh geeeze I dunno. I’ve never really played either extensively, but Rez is more interesting in my imagination and has definitely made someone cum so I guess Rez.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENING
vs.
MIRROR’S EDGE
Link has legs and you can’t see your legs in Mirror’s Edge, clear winner here with Link’s Awakening
SUPER MARIO 3D LAND
vs.
SKY ODYSSEY
I haven’t played either game! Abstain.
OUTRUN
vs.
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS
ahahahaha good luck figuring this one out nerds, i’m not voting here because i don’t care for either
BABA IS YOU
vs.
BUBBLE BOBBLE
Baba Bobble, baby. Anyway I love Bubble Bobble but Baba is You is the first sokoban game I’ve ever enjoyed and it pleasantly destroyed my brain numerous times, so I’m happy to vote for Baba is You.
WCW/NWO REVENGE (AKI N64 wrestling representative)
vs.
UMIHARA KAWASE
Abstain, baby
YUME NIKKI (2004)
vs.
GUNSTAR HEROES
One of these games is a hideous nightmare with surreal graphics and bizarre controls that I think about at least once a month, and I’ve never played Yume Nikki sooo
I guess Gunstar Heroes?
DISCO ELYSIUM
vs.
SILENT HILL 2
Oof. These games both exist primarily as theoretical games in my mind. I’ve played a couple of hours of SH2 and didn’t really dig it that much, but I was mostly dealing with controller issues. I’ve not played Disco Elysium but I’ve really enjoyed the screenshots!! I think I’m going with Disco Elysium on this one, seems like the writing is better.
SILENT HILL
vs.
KLONOA: DOOR TO PHANTOMILE
Abstain, never played either
DOTA 2
vs.
ELEVATOR ACTION RETURNS
DOTA 2 continues ruining lives and nobody’s ever played Elevator Action, so I’m voting for that one.
SUPER MARIO BROS.
vs.
ANIMAL CROSSING
Fuck this bracket, I hate it. Super Mario Bros is a joy in the hands but I’ve never finished it and don’t plan on it. Animal Crossing brought me so many wonderful memories with my family, and continues to do so in its newest iteration. Gonna have to go with Animal Crossing, despite my misgivings on this one.
OUENDAN / ELITE BEAT AGENTS series
vs.
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE series
EDF! EDF! EDF! EDF!
I played this game extensively with my not-yet-wife when we were housesitting her grandparent’s house for a week. I dragged the Xbox 360 over and set it up in their basement, and it was the first extensive co-op gaming we did. I wouldn’t trade that for anything, including the feeling of finally beating jumping jack flash on the hardest difficulty.
EDF!
DRAGON QUEST III
vs.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA
Bahahahhaa another fucked one. DQ3 wins on monster design alone, honestly, even though I’ve never played it. I love the monsters from Dragon Quest soooo much. Zelda would have won if they hadn’t added that fucked up timeline. Let games be mysterious!!!
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Cania I played Elevator Action Returns in your discord today.
did it ruin your life?
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fwiw, the original link’s awakening (not the dx version) allowed skipping the powerup text boxes by pushing start. maybe it did for these awful things too, but I don’t remember
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Super Mario 3D Land is the joyous apotheosis of Mario games. It is the true New Super Mario Bros. The 3D Land theme music even acknowledges and atones for the music in NSMB.
3D Land is pure video game. It is about the joy of movement in virtual space however you please: walking, running, jumping, squatting, rolling, and fluttering over, around, under, and through beautiful objects.
These objects are a celebration of form: blocks, triangles, cylinders, trees, clouds, water, grass, rope, wood grains, metals, plastics, and stones. These forms are bound together as pathways and structures suspended in air above abstract worlds, forest canopies, and cloud seas. Such configurations are the fundamental domain of video games, and here it is expressed in the purest and most beautiful level design.
Super Mario 3D Land could and probably should have been the last level-based action game I ever played. I played it almost exclusively for many, many months almost bordering on years. Nothing has felt quite so sweet since.
On September 18, I will vote for Super Mario 3D Land. I encourage you to do the same.
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i bounced off of Yume Nikki years ago and never returned to it specifically because of that reason. I don’t like living in inexplicable spaces, it usually just makes me feel uncomfortable and annoyed.
A great example of how I can’t live with mysteries (despite my plea to let games be mysterious): I am reading Gantz, a terrible tasteless trashy manga, simply because I saw the movies and I wanna know what the fuck is with that orb. Part of me hopes that the Manga also does not address this at all as the ultimate “Cania Trolling Cania” moment
Anyway I do want to go back to Yume Nikki now, because I actually think I’m better at living with uncertainty in my old age. It’s almost halloweentime baby, as good an excuse as any