I enthusiastically adopted the DS panel de pon when it came out and played multiplayer with some other people’s DS over bluetooth. Touch/slide controls at first seemed self-evidently better. But it actually breaks the multiplayer design more than it was already broken because everyone’s base skill level is higher and the only win condition is exhaustion from moving the cursor around so much. (Contrast with Magical Drop, where loss of focus is the primary win condition at intermediate skill but has the backstop of quota wins which turns into 90% of games with advanced players.)
the only thing I have to contribute about panel de pon is that it always bothered me that it came out here as tetris attack because it is clearly NOT a tetris game, it is much better than that!!
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Dunno if I would call it better than Tetris, just different. Tetris and Panel de Pon are both inspired games that created their own subgenres while also having visible flaws in the hindsight light of their successors
And the name “Tetris” (along with “Pokemon”) is also the only reason why so many people play Panel de Pon but nobody plays the spiritual sequel Starsweep
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all i really mean by “better” is i like it more than tetris. puyo puyo sun is probably the only puzzle game i ever bothered to get really good at though
found out there was an english fanpatch for sailor moon on mega drive. any reason to replay one of my favorite md games is a good one.
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okay but are you picking Venus and doing her crazy izuna drop suplex on everyone
how about playing the arcade version, made by some Toaplan refugees
you know, the guys that made KUNCKLE BASH
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no i played as jupiter and did all her cool wrestling moves
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SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER
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correct
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I was recently lurking another forum and someone there featured Crusader of Centy, in a list of games on Sega systems which try to out-do Zelda. There are some pretty interesting games on there and if I played games more—I would probably play a few of them.
However, Crusader of Centy stuck out to me, so I got it all set up in emulation and hey, I think i’m actually gonna play a game!
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I literally just finished a playthrough of that about a week ago. It’s short and easy but has a nice feel to it both gameplay-wise and aesthetically, which for me makes it perfect to go back to a least once a year. As far as being a Zelda clone, I like that it doesn’t really follow the Zelda formula at all, and animal companions are much cooler than hookshots and ice arrows.
Personally, I prefer the european translation (called Soleil) rather than the US (Crusader of Centy) version, which makes a few awkward attempts to remove references to religious aspects
now I am onto the spiritual sequel, Linkle Liver Story. So far it seems much more streamlined ( you talk to people by just walking near them, and there’s no money ), but it does seem to have some kind of weapon ‘farming’ system. Some of the puzzle design seems a bit annoying and the weapon range is way too small, but it’s got the same laid back atmosphere and friendly vibe.
Also I like the mid 90s Shoujo anime artwork:
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soliel has a way more interesting story than a zelda game too
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Another vote for Centy being great.
Its got tons of wild ideas, weird characters, great graphics and interesting gameplay mechanics. I really need to play it again.
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SSX3 is just as compelling today as it was 16 (!) years ago.
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gonna expand on this a bit
I think my favorite thing about SSX3 is that it requires constant input from the player, and yet there’s always that downhill momentum to carry the player closer to the goal. So even when you fuck up big time and smash your face into a pole at 45 MPH, you fall onto the ground and slide further towards the end of the course before you get up. This is, of course, a disaster, but the game doesn’t ever stop.
With rare exception, of course - sometimes you can end up getting stuck between two rails or something, but the game is remarkably clever about detecting this and just…immediately resets your rider to the main track with very little delay.
Also: most of the tracks branch so many times that I often have no idea where I am, which is great. As far as I am concerned, I will never see all of this game because there are so many options to take going down the mountain.
Okay last thing. The whole game is completely connected from top to bottom, meaning that I can go from the top of Peak 3 all the way to the bottom of Peak 1 in a single run, and it lasts something like 25 minutes. This definitely adds to the feeling of “never stop” because I just…never have to stop.
Unless I want to pop in to the lodge and buy some new shit, of course, which I have to physically do by either riding down to the next lodge or taking the ski lift up to a previous one.
Really, I feel like the ethos to this game is “never stop boarding” and it works really well. It’s 100% engrossing, partically because second to second there’s always decisions to be made, and partially because I never have to stop boarding!!! I love it.
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Seemingly small decisions about ‘immersion’ (Ubisoft is calling it ‘presence’ these days and have toplined it in their singleplayer games) are the sorts can build up into something really great. And a mountain of careful work towards this aesthetic can be destroyed by a few mistakes or, more likely, a set of preconceptions from the popular narrative driving expectations.
this + SSX3 in general informed my personal aesthetic in so many fucking ways I love that game so much
it’s the first game that did like, sound design AT me in a way that really brought out the “never stop”-ness of the game
the first time I launched into the air and heard my shitty pop punk amazing music high-pass filter itself with a phaser while I stayed up there for fifteen literal seconds and then WHAM-ed back down with the full EQ in and the boost gain SFX up and the deep voiced announcer telling me about what I just did
that’s probably when music and games became a thing for me
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Well shit I want to play SSX3 now.
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and its attitude toward not stopping you if you fuck up is something I wish more extreme sports games thought about? it’s telling that my two favorite boarding games of all time (SSX3 + the skate. series) treat falling over as sometimes more interesting than successfully performing the task! like, skateboarding and snowboarding irl is you eating shit way way more than you ever successfully land things so for those games to integrate that in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you were WRONG for doing so is why I love them so much
the closest thing that I’ve been lightly playing is descenders and everything is pretty great EXCEPT for the punishment when you fall off your bike
I know the system is there to structure the rest of the game but I just want to ride as fast as I can down a dynamically generated mountain and if I fall over I just want to keep going
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you could maybe say most of my life has been me chasing the ssx3 full mountain run feeling
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