I agree.
But seriously these Sonic Adventure tracks are pretty crazy for one-offs or 20 second long segments. This reminds me of a track in Travis Strikes Again that goes on for 10 minutes but the fight it plays for would barely go past 5 minutes. There’s an intense and groovy sax solo that you might never hear in the game.
i couldnt decide which one to vote for here but i think this vid has convinced me
I was playing SM64 and fell off the penguin race slide but landed on it and at the end of the level the fucking penguin chided me for “cheating”
In conclusion, Sonic Adventure Forever
the worst is when that happens because the penguin PUSHED YOU OFF. imagine someone trying to kill you in a race and then you win anyway and they go “actually, YOU’re the cheater” fuck you penguin i was right to throw your baby off the cliff
Opinion fatigue is starting to set in…
Super Mario 64 vs. Ikaruga
I said Ikaruga is kinda like “playing guitar along to your favourite album”. I think that might be overly generous. I’d like to amend that to “playing a recorder along to your favourite jazz-fusion prog rock album”. The tracklist is great but it’s locked in time and your improvisational skills are limited but, yeah, it sure feels good to finger flex in chaotic synchronisation with Hugh Hopper, Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt. To stretch this metaphor over to SM64, a cheap Casio keyboard, I get more enjoyment out of making my own tunes with its range of plastic percussion and sometimes corny collection of instruments. I’ve said plenty about this one (though I can’t promise to shut up about it just yet).
Dark Souls vs. Final Fantasy VI
This one hurts to think about. Dark Souls is more “my type” of game. Maybe I hadn’t been as excited about the action and exploration of a world since…SM64 (lol, actually I was ensorcelled by DS’s world way more than any Mario and being 26 at the time instead of 11…that’s impressive and wonderful (and I’d already beaten Demon’s twice so the bar was set pretty high). Also, I was the most active I’d ever been on SB 1.0 playing along with everyone in that first thread (not that anyone would remember, I was posting like an over-excited puppy dog). I’ll probably vote back-and-forth on these two depending on which way the wind blows.
Portal vs. ICO
Ugh. These are all games I really like and are pretty much equally matched in my intensity for liking them. Gotta go with ICO though because it’s just so tender and lovely (save sofas forever).
Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days vs. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
Here we go again. I’ve had some of the best beer and pizza playthroughs with Dog Days and friends. We just flop down and feed ourselves full of joystick junk food all the way through and lose our minds along with these two psychos. Yeah, you get to kill a lot of cops which is always a plus, but you’re also two entitled white male American criminals who don’t seem to give a dang about shooting up another country but…I’m not going to this game for any morals, whatever. It’s very good. Link’s Awakening is a world without cops though. I’m not a big Zelda fan (1, 2, this one and OoT if I’m feeling generous) but I want this to be the Zelda. Anyway, SB isn’t going to let Dog Days lose in its first match-up anyway, right?
Sonic Adventure vs. Sky Odyssey
You lot have convinced me to give Adventure another go. I’ve only played about halfway through (actually beat and played more of the second one). My opinion is, it has some real cool bits, but it’s kinda trash. Like I feel cheated when I’m not Sonic doing what Sonic does best. I don’t want to listen to the dumb characters talk about their dumb story. I get why people would like it though. Sky Odyssey takes a different approach. Instead of spaghetti-against-the-wall maximalism, it hones in on one thing, does it extremely well, and makes you feel extremely good for doing that thing well. Fly on.
DOOM vs. Outrun
What would happen if DOOM Marine and Red Ferrari collided head on at full speeds? I bet DOOM Marine would survive, not a single tear shed. Go DOOM.
Nier vs. Donkey Kong ‘94
Finally, an easier one. I haven’t played Donkey Kong ‘94 but I just watched King of Kong again for a friend’s birthday so it’s guilty by association for obsessing a father so much that he wouldn’t wipe the ass of his screaming child who I assume died of cholera weeks later. Shame on you Donkey Kong, Jumpman and Pauline. Also, Nier rules.
Chrono Trigger vs. Bubble Bobble
Love ya, Bub and Bob, but I love that Frog knight more. And the singing robot. And the End of Time. And so on and so on…
Dragon’s Dogma vs. Umihara Kawase
Dragon’s Dogma is a weird ass game. Sometimes it’s bad weird (narrative incoherence, overly reused enemies, insanely cluttered inventory, a levelling system that can be maxed to the point of brokenness). More often it’s good weird (pawn buddies, long time geography jogging, scary dark nights by lantern, a levelling system that can be maxed to the point of brokenness). I’ll admit, going back to play it recently, I found it a bit too demanding/sloggy to get into again but it was a weighty, wild and wearying adventure well worth wrestling with.
Super Mario Bros. 3 vs. Gunstar Heroes
SMB3 is just a few pixels short of SM64’s place in my heart. A comfort food game I go back to quite a bit. And I just wanna say, it’s OK Mario haters, not everyone has to like joyful jumping and immaculate action physics with which to feed upon first-class level designs. It’s OK to turn away from The Best There Ever Was but you can always turn back, you can have Fun™ with us anytime.
Quake vs. Streets of Rage 2
Oof! Uh… I just beat Quake again earlier this year, cementing my love for it. I’m going to play some Streets of Rage this week. I think very highly of it but it’s been a while. We’ll see…
Comparing Ikaruga to playing along with the best lineup of Soft Machine is definitely a way to get me to play through it again and appreciate it holistically despite being hopelessly bad at the instruments available to me in or out of the metaphor. It still stings that it is the only shmup in the running.
Yeah, it’s not really a dig! Just my trying to express how differently each game feels to me. A lot of shooters strike me that way (though Ikaruga especially), like you’re one instrument weaving through an unstoppable symphony of death…and that’s cool!
Mario 3 and Gunstar Heroes are both little play spaces full of ideas and unique framing. Mario 3 opens with a curtain over a stage, and all the elements of the scenes that play out on this stage look like little constructed 2d toys. the background platform blocks that make their first appearance in 1-1 have little screws in their corners to enhance their artificiality, their constructed nature. the clouds in the sky look placed. bushes look like paper cutouts. the bonus block game at the end of every stage is placed in a black background that looks torn out of the surrounding environments. nintendo has spent a lot of time over the years coming up with gimmicky unique visual motifs for many of their games. this was the first, and it is by far the best. so many of the levels are designed around one off ideas, mechanics, powers, or visual motifs. the levels are small enough to make you feel good about always having something new, but big enough to feel like they contain something, like you could find a hidden section. you usually can. the first time you fly in 1-1 remains one of my favorite moments in gaming. mario 3 is full of those moments.
Gunstar Heroes is very similar, but with a different central conceit. mario 3 wants to give you a little bite of something different in each level and build a game out of the result. Gunstar Heroes wants to give you all the different bites right away and let you figure out what to do with them as a means of mastery. pick your control method. pick your weapons. pick your combinations. pick your level. throw shit if you want. there’s a slide? cool. it’s a maximalist game. a huge celebration of hitting buttons, unapologetically framed as a play space. all the colors pop, everything is exciting and happy and fast and expressive. Mario 3 opens with a curtain, Gunstar Heroes eventually drops you on a game board. there are bosses everywhere. my god, the bosses.
I’m picking Mario 3, because it’s tight while Gunstar Heroes is loose, and I’ve certainly played it more. There’s no wrong answer here.
Inspired by @boojiboy7, let’s see if I can set up criteria of my own: poetry.
He-ey,
Mario, buddy, howzit goin’?
Step right up.
You look like a fast sleddin’ kind of guy.
I know speed when I see it, yes siree–
I’m the world champion sledder,
you know.
Whaddya say? How about a race?
Ready…
You brrrr
-roke my record! Un
believable!
I knew you were
the coolest.
Now you’ve proven
that you’re also the fastest!
I can’t award you a gold medal,
but here,
take this star instead.
You’ve
earned
it!
Thus achieve your mission without
any regrets. I will not die
until I achieve something.
Even though the ideal is high,
I never give in. Therefore,
I never die with regrets.
We were supposed to understand
it. . . Can we see the liberty
and freedom?"
“Releasing restraint device.
Removal of the limiter
will cause overheat and
possible
destruction of the ship. Was I
helpful for you? I am deeply
grateful to you.” -Ikaruga
“Is this what we wished for?
Don’t worry, we will understand
each other some day. And the life
is succeeded into
to the distant future.”
hmm…
The SA/Sky Odyssey vote was the hardest (best?) considering the attachment I have to that era and the explorative dreamworld early 3D spaces so I felt compelled to type something. I just died way too many times at the train refuel mission. I guess I was expecting it to be light and forgiving, like easy mode Ace Combat or kid friendly Pilotwings Resort, but my plane was too hard to fly. I’m sorry guys.
Sonic didn’t put up resistance and just let me go on the ride it wanted to take me on. And I have dumb fading half-memories of it being the only Dreamcast game I had as a kid and wondering how much I could do with a VMU besides set the time and date while waiting to go home in a Hometown Buffet. Running around Station Square and talking to people gave me the “oh wow, this game is its own living world, it’s alive” feeling I also saw in Shenmue.
I probably enjoyed the Nights pinball game more than Nights itself with the bonus table opening up into a pocket Nights dimension that you flowed through on rails like a theme park ride. When I finally played Nights I just flailed around uselessly and didn’t understand that it was a kind of racing game in which you had to master each “lap” of a given level to get to the boss.
I liked that the pinball table kind of just distilled the essence of Nights into a peek at a secret dream world hidden underground in a casino that had its own Nightopian lives and systems functioning independently of you and not needing a skill hurdle to jump over to experience. And maybe in answer to the why do you play games thread, that’s what I wanted out of these games? I understand and value the dopamine rush of skill mastery when I manage to attain it, but I just wanted hidden cool spaces to poke around in? Though others have already said that so idk, this post is redundant. That was a really good matchup.
Chrono Trigger v Bubble Bobble is surprisingly close to me.
Went for Streets of Rage 2 in the end since the music is excellent. Quake doesn’t really have much that gets me going.
I’m going to defend my picks that are getting owned right now
Ikaruga vs Super Mario 64:
I just replayed SM64 this week-end, all 120 stars. It holds up so well. I don’t think any videogame character controls as well as Mario in this game. There’s a lack of rubber banding that makes every jump feel precarious, it always feels like there’s a chance you won’t make it, but usually you do!
Doom vs Outrun:
I’d have instinctively votes for Doom but replaying it now I find that the downtime (Exploring, looking for keys and secrets) takes up a large portion of the game but is not that great. The level geometry can be interesting but the environments themselves don’t hold my interest, and mashing buttons in front of walls to open secret passages is not riveting
Outrun is 0% downtime, which isn’t necessarily great, but better than bad downtime
Ico vs Portal:
The gender politics in Ueda games are not great but they’re especially annoying in Ico with its graceful, weak, constantly in distress princess you have to order around. It’s worse in Ico than in most games because 1) this character is at the center of the game instead of just being a plot device like say Peach 2) Ico practically begs to be held to a higher standard. It was annoying at the game’s release and it’s worse now
Portal is just so conceptually watertight I must endorse it
omg yes
i love doom a lot, but i’m so shit at these parts that i spend like 70% of my playtime wandering around stages full of demon corpses trying to find the key/door/switch that lets me go to the next area
you were experiencing peak sky odyssey, your only misstep was believing you had done something wrong. sky odyssey forever
I am usually quick to make those complaints but as someone that went though E1-5 and II last year ignoring most of the secrets as long as you pulled up the map occasionally I never got impossibly lost or pulling out my phone.
I’ve written a lot about this over the years, but I think the best point I could make is that the game works better when you realize that yorda is not just at the center of the game mechanically, she is the protagonist. seeing her from that point of view complicates the mythological narrative design that necessitates her lack of agency and eventual sacrifice. the boy is naive and stupid, but video game design necessitates that his hopeless stupidity is successful; every puzzle has a solution, every path leads toward the end, and there is always a way for yorda to make it to places she shouldn’t be able to make it to. this is true in more or less every video game, but in this one yorda’s presence as an unconvinced observer brings things inward a bit. remember that you’re not saving yorda. she lives in the castle, and she seems to know that she cannot live outside of it. the boy doesn’t even know that she exists – he’s the one that has been kidnapped and brought to an unfamiliar setting, and he’s the one who cannot leave without her help. he goes forward until he can’t, because he’s a video game character. she’s the one that has to make the decision, in favor of his naivety and in many ways against her own interest, to help him. the whole game kind of bends in this direction, using video game structural design and mythological fairy tale narrative design against each other.
i have to say, i absolutely adore sky odyssey and i love the music in shadow of the colossus and i know some people here really like the music in sky odyssey but
i really don’t like the music very much. it’s the instrument samples, that kludgy, imprecise fauxchestral shit. the melodic content is nothing too fetching either. it does have an interesting, sort of unique mood, and it doesn’t entirely clash with the game (the game itself does feel a little fussy and kludgy, though rarely in a bad way) but it’s not something i’d ever listen to intentionally
i can appreciate this and co:
in the context of the game but it’s… not really something i’d point to as one of the best elements
The really interesting thing this particular bracket brings forth is how both Portal and ICO have readings that mesh with gender politics in very clear ways but ICO comes out as the more traditional one even if it is subversive through setting and NPC mechanics.
Both Glados and Chell are given somewhat subservient roles (computing tool and test subject) in their own universe that they both try to rise above in their own way. Glados is potentially more tragic given that she is treated as a tool to which horrific parasite AI are attached to to literally hamstring her agency and ‘dampen her intelligence’ (this might be how it’s phrased in Portal 2). Even if Glados is inherently hostile the questions of control and restraint in portal is compelling.