Yknow you’d be surprised how many times I’ve heard that line
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I get the frustration from a wrestling fan but I feel like a 16 years old girl with a boyfriend that tells me to give the Avengers movies another chance
Dismissing these games for being about realistic wrestling is more like dismissing Goldeneye for the gun violence or Binding of Isaac for the gross infantile body horror; it’s about aesthetic / thematic choices and their appeal
In middle school the n64 wrestling games always ended in actual fist fights so I swore off them forever.
I got to watch Tulpa slowly become good enough to beat Umihara Kawase today. Umihara is a specific game that is not for me. I don’t like ultra fiddly abstract interpretations of movements (hi fighting games!) mapped to a controller. It’s why I played so much pvp Dark Souls and FPS. The execution barrier is much lower and I just have to think about the decisions. This will absolutely come up latter in the voting.
Going with Umihara because wrestling causes fights and I do not want my friends to fight because they lost in a video game. That’s why my motto is smile while gaming.
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sounds like the problem was your middle school friends
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This is a conversational detour but I’ve been playing a wide range of fighting games this past month to try and see what fits me personally. I’d say one of the conclusions I came to is that I like when
So Tekken doesn’t work for me but Tobal does. I also enjoyed Asuka Burning Fest for this reason.
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i hope you have at least considered giving trash plotline games a chance… The borderline bizarre rumble roses was some great time when i played it, and i never looked back, which was probably a good decision…
It’s wild just how much I enjoyed this, beginning from the mild embarrassment of saying that while I like the games it had been a decade since I last played them and I was hopelessly out of practice with them. I kept playing until I felt comfortable actually going for an ending. The controls in Umihara Kawase are so perfect. I went from helplessly bouncing around on a fishing line at first to the extreme sense of control I finally felt as I learnt to climb walls, slingshot myself around edges, etc etc. Of course, I had beaten the first game before, but that was a decade ago and I didn’t think my ability to play would return so readily.
Umihara Kawase made me feel confident in my own abilities at a video game because while I could tell that the game is ruthlessly difficult, it is also a game that wants me to become better at it. The practice mode was invaluable, much like free skate mode in the Tony Hawk games, it is an opportunity to approach the game not just as a struggle for survival but as a space to explore possibilities. It was in this mode, practicing while chatting with friends, that I built up the heuristics and intuitive sense of just how the fishing line would react to my movements; just what I could do to route through the trickiest levels. Platforming feels almost magical as I unthinkingly execute a complex maneuver that just 5 hours earlier I would have thought utterly beyond my abilities. I don’t have good reflexes, but Umihara Kawase lets me approach it like a puzzle game where the puzzle is a paradoxically unfathomable and intuitive system of physics.
Okay I do have two criticisms of the first two games: It’s a little too finicky to grab a ledge that I’m bouncing right next to and the fish spawn way too frequently.
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hey look, people only got so many games
some of us were stuck with wwf games and were lead to believe these were the premier wrestling games on n64
yeah, but some of us also really love umihara and getting a better appreciation for wrestling games might not change that choice. I’ve played a few, they all have certain similarities but I can never quite grasp how they work, so I just goof off with friends who are equally clueless. we tend to never really understand how or why we manage different grabs and counters
I would love to play a wrestling game that, mechanically, leans into the pantomime roleplay of it rather than an awkward 3D fighting game grapple system. Better yet, why not set a game in a universe where the ‘fiction’ of wrestling is real. There’s quite a lot that fall into a weird space between 3D fighting game and annual sports franchise.
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Think about Needs of Notice for Human Being
VOTE
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fire pro wrestling world can do both of these things
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I’d been meaning to check out Super Fire Pro Wrestling since it’s an early title that Goichi Suda worked on but hearing this makes me even more curious. I have a friend who swears by the series but they mostly just make characters.
I’ve never watched wrestling and I’ve only ever played one wrestling video game. It was this one and it was great:
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Link’s Awakening vs. Mirror’s Edge
Mirror’s Edge is a great game that I haven’t played in over ten years. I had an obsession with parkour when I was a teenager. Except, I didn’t live in a city. I lived in a rural/suburban neighborhood. My friends and I would climb up sheds and then jump off and roll on the ground. We damaged so much of our Mormon neighbor’s property. We dented gutters and drainpipes, broke fence boards in half, and loosened roof shingles. That family was so patient and kind. I will never say a bad thing about Mormons. Mirror’s Edge gave me a non-destructive outlet for my obsession and it did that family a lot of good as a result. Bravo Mirror’s Edge.
You can take a dog for a walk in Link’s Awakening and that’s pretty special. I really like the illustrations that were made for the game. (Were they done by Katsuya Terada?) Yes, when talking about Zelda, LA is “one of the best,” but there are three others in this bracket and only one Mirror’s Edge.
Decision: Mirror’s Edge
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Silent Hill 2 is a singular experience, but the more I played, the more I started to genuinely resent that it existed.
This has less to do with it’s narrative or aesthetic qualities (which are culled from other popular media that I find more satisfying) but more so with the fact that most of it’s genuinely successful/upsetting moments are derived from how unpleasant the game is to actually play. Ultimately, Silent Hill 2 can only really exist as a videogame and that is both a blessing and a curse.
I’ll try to explain. Silent Hill 2 feels wrong to play. The inertia of James as an avatar is unpleasantly slimy. He glides across surfaces as if without friction. He runs too fast and walks too slowly. There are crunchy footstep samples for seemingly every surface in the game, but they don’t feel punctuated by James’ movement. It’s like someone is offstage doing a live Foley track and botching it. It’s grotesque and I love it.
The camera bobs, sways and pans at the press of a button, scrambling to focus on James within the exquisitely rendered fog. It’s nauseating and frequently disorientating. It becomes necessary to obsessively check the maps. Trying to get your bearings or a clear view of the environment is frequently a chore. It’s maddening but this necessitates players filling in the blanks. Players do half the world-building here.
Combat and time sensitive movements (like James’ turning radius) feel like treacle, unsatisfying, laborious and slow. In contrast, the text display speed is almost instantaneous. Sentences unnervingly hover in front of 3D landscapes and are gone in an instant. It’s uncanny.
SH2 is ultimately very much a work that is more than the sum of it’s parts (as so many good games are) but I kind of hate it because it’s just not fun to play, and i’m all about fun these days. BUT, the fact that I have such strong feelings for it 15 years after first playing it are a testament to it’s enduring peculiarity, never outdone.
Silent Hill 2 deserves every vote it gets.
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Final Fantasy VI vs. Rez
Rez doesn’t have the shooting chops of Star Fox or Panzer Dragoon and I don’t vibe with the music the way I can in Rhythm Heaven or Gitaroo Man. It is something unto itself though and having only played about 30 minutes, I can’t really judge it. It’s cool, but FFVI is like a favourite film of mine, the DVD of which I will wear out throughout my lifetime. I always enjoy revisiting its characters and the story beats, the pacing, it’s all top shelf forward-thinking stuff, to this day still affecting. I am no fan of JRPGs. I don’t like the grinding, and the battle systems in and of themselves don’t really interest me. There has to be some really stellar set dressing and (along with Earthbound and Chrono Trigger) FFVI is one of three I’ve completed and the only one I’ve finished twice. It’s a marvel that emotionally connects with me in a way that I actually feel and care about outside of the game. I don’t even need to talk about the music.
Final Fantasy VI wins.
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening vs. Mirror's Edge
I played Mirror’s Edge for the first time earlier this year. It was OK. I don’t find the first person parkour particularly exhilarating, this kind of thing works better in third person for me (Super Mario 64 Super Mario 64 Super Mario 64). Like, give me Quake-style rocket jumps/DOOM-level run speeds and THEN sick the pigs on me. THAT would be a rush. The most damning thing I can say about the aesthetic is that it make me think of insurance policies. Like I’m trapped inside a Progressive brochure. And those sub-Esurance animated cutscenes? Weak. Not my cuppa. And EA, fucking EA, billing this as an artsy game with these freedom fighting gymnasts sticking it to The Man and corporate corruption, PLEASE. No thank you.
Link’s Awakening was my first Zelda and it’s still my favourite. It has the most charming clockwork world of the series and there’s a mix of wacky mystic wistfulness the series never again captured (though I like the sparse foreboding of 1 and 2 just as much). Maybe it could be blamed for starting Nintendo down the now kind of ridiculous road of crossing over all their franchises, but seeing a Goomba in that game for the first time was an occasion to jump out of bed, run down two flights of stairs (skipping most of them) and show my little brother. Did kids do that when, like, Link was announced to appear in Mario Kart? Maybe, I don’t know, but I do know that Link’s Awakening is a precious gem of a game.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening wins.
Super Mario 3D Land vs. Sky Odyssey
3D Land was the first 3D Mario game in a while that made me sit up and think “Hey, they’re onto something here, Mario is returning to form!” I really enjoyed beating the game. The difficulty split is fine though I’d appreciate the game getting tougher quicker. I will agree with the idea that’s been put forward that it’s kind of toothless and forgettable. The single-player is tighter than 3D World’s but I think the four-player mode (and really delicious graphics) mean I prefer that one. Also, is it just me or does Mario feel a bit sluggish in this game? Like his momentum cuts out too soon (someday I want to do a very detailed analysis of Mario’s 3D controls/physics and figure out exactly why 64 still feels best to me). I do appreciate the run button though.
Sky Odyssey Was a joyful experience for me many years ago right from the initial training mission. All of the controls and considerations for flying your plane seem overwhelming and intimidating at first but there’s a sense that it’s doable, just start with baby steps. You get the feeling it’ll be worth it. And it is! After that initial awkward phase, you’ll be zipping through crooked canyons and pulling up from nasty nose dives, near-missing homicidal landslides (and getting points for skimming them) and the rewards are immediately apparent. The main reward being you Get to Fly and the flying is very good (a really nice middle ground between neurotic sim and arcade meat-headedness). On top of that, the adventure/treasure-seeking context is effective in a very subdued kind of way. The whole game is understated and even bland when it comes to the art style (lots of fog, brown stone textures and muddy grass) and the voice-acted mission briefings but this is a big strength of the game, very endearing. It doesn’t yell at you or try to impress you because it trusts its strengths as well as the player’s interest in those strengths. There are a few segments with obstacles like geysers and I thought to myself, if this were Nintendo or Treasure (whom I love) they’d play this up and have the obstacles meticulously synchronised and forming unnatural geometrical formations, in other words video gamified into a rigid dialogue but Sky Odyssey is not interested in that and it’s refreshing. To go back to the understated quality of the game, this doesn’t make the adventure elements any less compelling. By not overselling the mystery of the ruins you seek, you are allowed to build anticipation on your own terms and the game’s broad sketches of this objective means we don’t have to put up with any baggage that comes with Indiana Jones types and natives vs. “gimme that it belongs in a museum” nonsense. Anyway, I wanna see this game go far!
Sky Odyssey wins.
Outrun vs. Final Fantasy Tactics
I played (mostly watched) like an hour of Tactics at a friend’s house soon after it came out. It was a disappointing thing to someone who was impressed with FF7 and didn’t really get this kind of strategy game. They’re still not my thing. Though I prefer Outrun 2, I’d rather tear down Super-Scaler superhighways than shuffle chibis around a map any day.
Outrun wins.
Bubble Bobble vs. Baba is You
This one’s tough. I’ve played Bubble Bobble and it’s good. I LOVE those cuties Bub and Bob and I think the best thing this series ever gave me was the eventual cover for Rainbow Islands.
Bubble Bobble wins.
Umihara Kawase vs. WCW/nWo Revenge (N64 AKI games)
Growing up, my religious parents (and especially my prude of a mum) did not allow us to watch pro wrestling. There was one time a kid at school had a WWF-themed birthday party and I overheard my parents debating whether I could go (they made me skip the TV viewing part). “They look like they’re wearing bondage gear! It’s all disgusting S&M stuff”. I didn’t know what bondage gear was, subsequently looked it up and was like “Cool!” Many similar situations throughout childhood gave me so many chips on my shoulder that I left home just short of adulthood with practically no shoulders at all. ANYWAY, all of that is to say, you don’t have to like wrestling to dig the AKI games on the N64. I’ll admit (even if I wouldn’t to my parents) that I find watching the actual wrestling on TV kinda silly. I did like the idea of the characters though and these games were virtual dress-up-dolly-dudes and duke it out funtimes for most of the N64’s lifespan. If you don’t dig ‘em that’s cool, but in my experience, people found them way more accessible than Goldeneye and pretty entertaining (my younger sisters would join in sometimes, they thought it was hilarious)! There was the competitive aspect but also we did a lot of roleplaying and setting each other up for cool choreography. We did not get into fist fights over these game and maybe didn’t try a lot of pro wrestling moves on each other irl because we had the game for that… Isn’t that nice? WCW/nWo is the comparatively barebones (yet solid as heck) core of what the latter games would build on. Eventually, Mo Mercy would offer full wrestler customisation (now with women wrestlers) and a dynamic story mode (based on your performance) complete with interstitial trash talk segments. As someone who has been too lazy/unskilled to learn most fighting games, let me tell you, these are not hard games to pick up and that rules. While still fun as single-player experiences, they really do shine in 4-player matches. Also, if this acid jazz-backed intro for a pumped-up polygonal big boy doesn’t put a big stupid grin on your face I don’t know what to tell you.
Umihara Kawase is neat (I’ve only played the SNES one) but I got bored about 15 levels in, not enough to keep me hook-line-and-sinkered. I like the freaky fish baddies but the washed out photos-as-backgrounds, generic tile sets and anime Dora the Explora don’t do it for me. Is the PS1 game better? I can appreciate the love for the hook swing but…up against games as generously stuffed with fun features as the AKI ones are, it’s no contest.
WCW/nWo Revenge wins.
Yume Nikki vs. Gunstar Heroes
I think I’ll eventually come to appreciate Yume Nikki as something special though my first half hour with the game curdled into boredom. You move too slowly and the cool sights (which are quite cool) are too few and far between. Anyway, it’d have to be a mind-blowing experience to beat Gunstar Heroes. I don’t have much to add to what’s been said here. It’s a near-perfect side-scrolling shooter and since Fake Metal Slug 6 and Contra: Hard Corps didn’t get the love they deserved in the first round, I’m sure as heck fighting for this one to pull through.
Gunstar Heroes wins.
Silent Hill 2 vs. Disco Elysium
The Silent Hill games are high on my list to play. I’ve successfully kept myself in the dark (with the exception of the dog ending thing) and really look forward to soaking them up. I haven’t played Disco Elysium either but I’m going to be strategic here and say Silent Hill 2 wins to show support for a cool series. I can’t vote for the first Silent Hill because…
Silent Hill vs. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile
…I just beat Klonoa again a few weeks ago and it’s such a charming game whose sentiment and aesthetic are pure loveliness (and that final boss! polygonal PS1chedelia at its finest). I also like how simple the core mechanic of grabbing and throwing enemies is and how much they’re able to elaborate on such a limited verb set in challenging and interesting ways without getting gratuitously difficult or compromising the immediately legible logic in each level. I have a hunch I may find Silent Hill to be a better game once I get around to it but oh well.
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile wins.
DotA 2 vs. Elevator Action
Some friends and I jumped into DotA for about 90 minutes a few months ago. We hated it. Of course, we sucked and didn’t know what was going on most of the time but I despise its clutter and don’t care for the art style. Now, I did appreciate listening to some of the SB Twitch stream of the game. That was a cool thing for you all to do. However, you burned a lot of that goodwill by reminding me that one of the first games I worked on professionally was Cheetah Girls for the DS. Oh, and Elevator Action rules.
Elevator Action wins.
Animal Crossing vs. Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. is the better game and of course it’s one of the most important games of all-time. I’ve really enjoyed reading some of the recent impressions around here! That said, I’m going with Animal Crossing because isn’t Super Mario Bros. 3 gonna go further? It deserves to. Now I’ll be honest, I like the idea of Animal Crossing games more than I like playing them but the first one on Gamecube (not counting the Japanese N64 release) had a special kind of magic that’s been lost as the series got more…gamified (?) and the villagers became more friendly etc. The NES games (Super Mario Bros. included) were also a big appeal and it’s the only game my mum has given more than an hour of her attention to. Everyone in my family (except my dad) had their own town we could all visit. It was that sort of neat and rare thing at the time.
Animal Crossing wins.
Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents series vs. EDF
Once again, having to be reminded I worked on Cheetah Girls is an infinite negative. Also, EDF (only played one like 6 years ago) is great big dumb fun.
EDF wins.
Dragon Quest III vs. The Legend of Zelda
Oh, boy. I’ve never played a Dragon Quest (again, another series (3 and 5 in particular) very high on my list to play. I think the first Zelda is not too far behind Super Mario Bros. in terms of importance (maybe the same case could be made for Dragon Quest?)…it is a phenomenal game to this day. Still, I hope Link’s Awakening will carry that torch (and Zelda 2, let’s do it!) and I have a feeling that DQIII is really great so it has my vote.
Dragon Quest III wins.
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Oh I am pretty sure Umihara is gonna beat the wrestling game handily, I don’t think there is anything that would prevent that and perhaps nothing should I hear the games are pretty alright. Revenge seemed like a likely two and out “getting nominated was the real reward” entry into this grand experiment. It’s just a good game in its own right that I saw numerous people basically go “lol wrestling, pass” and that’s just kind of a shame I guess.
Plus it lets you play as a dancing skeleton man, I figured that’d be something everyone could appreciate.
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i mean, you’re on selectbutton. my personal “wrestling, pass” analogue is informed way more by wrestling video games than actual pro wrestling and i’m probably not alone.
i have not, however, played that particular game. i did, however, have a lot of fun playing wwf attitude and shit 4player
wait fuck i’m changing my vote maybe