sb 85 pt. 10: the year is 2021

King of Posters
1

oh shit everybody its back

https://challonge.com/cbh5dyr4

we enter into a new year of gamefaqs polls with loser’s bracket matches! this week, discuss:

  • DRAGON QUEST III
  • MOTHER 3

0 voters

  • WARIOWARE, INC.: MEGA MICROGAME$
  • EARTH DEFENSE FORCE SERIES

0 voters

  • ELEVATOR ACTION RETURNS
  • METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER

0 voters

  • SILENT HILL
  • YAKUZA 0

0 voters

  • SPELUNKY
  • RESIDENT EVIL (2002)

0 voters

  • DEUS EX
  • GUNSTAR HEROES

0 voters

  • BUBBLE BOBBLE
  • REZ

0 voters

  • DONKEY KONG '94
  • OUTRUN

0 voters

this is a ~loser’s bracket~ match so remember whatever dies in the game dies in real life. thank you for your patience and remember to like, share, subscribe, upvote, and pray to god that he has mercy for his wayward children!

22 Likes
2

pikachu surprised face because this lineup is stacked

5 Likes
3

yeah like all of these games are fantastic

3 Likes
4

Yeah i like everything on this list even if I have a few favorites.

2 Likes
5

DRAGON QUEST III
vs.
MOTHER 3

I’m just now playing DQ3 (or I was till my phone died) and I can see why people love this one already. DQs gotta get it for the rep alone…? M3 is brilliant but its always either being too heavy or too heavy handed. But that haunted mansions is like one of the best haunted mansions ever… No Vote?

WARIOWARE, INC.: MEGA MICROGAME$
vs.
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE SERIES

EDF wins for not being nin-ton-do. Straight up I dont care, its more interesting. It wins for having like regular but giant animals it describes as incomprehensible monsters.

ELEVATOR ACTION RETURNS
vs.
METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER

GTFO, its Snake Eater. Snake eater is a playground of tactical espionage joy.

SILENT HILL
vs.
YAKUZA 0

I dont know enough about yakuuzies.

SPELUNKY
vs.
RESIDENT EVIL (2002)

Theses are not my game no mater how much I like the concept of them. No Vote

DEUS EX
vs.
GUNSTAR HEROES

Deus a brilliant game that feels 300% done vs a brilliant game that feels 80% done. What a shame.

BUBBLE BOBBLE
vs.
REZ

Rez Vr would maybe get it; what a time that was. BubBob is like repping the entire single screen maze platfomer genre. Its gotta win, my vote.

DONKEY KONG '94
vs.
OUTRUN

love that monkey trouble but I gotta go fast baby

5 Likes
6

dq3 and REmake are the only ones on this list i’m really passionate about but checking the overall brackets this is about to become a nightmare in a few rounds

7 Likes
7
  • I have to go with Dragon Warrior 3 even if that’s not entirely fair because I haven’t played Mother 3.
  • Same with Silent Hill over Yakuza 0. Without experiencing a game, it’s hard to imagine how it could possibly be better than Silent Hill.
  • Bubble Bobble vs. Rez is very difficult. But if I had to never play one of the two again, I think I’d have to choose Rez as the winner and let Bubble Bobble just remain a happy memory.

Here’s a Dragon Warrior 3 map that I drew when I was young.

c5_dw3_map_02_resize
c5_dw3_map_02_resize1024×1441 367 KB

18 Likes
8

DraQue3 vs Mother3
dq3 is really basic, but has this satisfying resistance to it. actually kinda makes me appreciate grinding

WarioWare vs EDF
warioware WAS cute but i just want to shoot big bugs with a friend

Elevator Action Returns vs MGS3
elevator action returns is really cool, i love how the stages are superdetailed dioramas of tiny sprites, but… i’d really like to be able to go through mgs3 again

Silent Hill vs Yakuza 0
ugggghghh… horror games. don’t like voting against my boys but i gotta

Spelunky vs Resident Evil
horror games! much easier. next!

Deus Ex vs Gunstar Heroes
might like deus ex if i give the pc version a run sometime. i dunno. gunstar heroes is pretty fun tho

Bubble Bobble vs Rez
have never played rez but voting for the aesthetics

DK94 vs Outrun
still haven’t beaten outrun but i like giving it a credit once in a while. dk94 is good and has impressive moves, but this specific type of puzzl-ish platformer is not my thing. arcade games however are.

4 Likes
9

I started yakuza 0 recently and sorry yall it just ain’t that good. jank as far as the eye can see. nothing feels good to do. a mini game collection staring kenshiro from hokuto no ken. a great idea for a setting isn’t enough to overcome how shit everything feels and how comically dumb the protagonist is. shit is just weird, idk, this is sega’s biggest series of the last twenty years and the game feels like it was made on a low end PS2 budget.

1 Like
10

I think you just listed half the reasons everyone loves it

14 Likes
11

i don’t even like yakuza but this is a forum primarily dedicated to janky low budget ps2 games

11 Likes
12

yeah and some of 'em are good. this one ain’t. it feels like you can’t even walk around town without plowing over half the people in tokyo. fighting feels like straight button mashing with cutscenes in the middle, which can sorta work during the set piece scenes and really not work when you’re fighting your fifteenth consecutive group of MEN IN BLACK while trying to find the entrance to the arcade. there’s a baseball mini game where the camera is like…sitting in a corner somewhere tilted diagonally upward and it just makes no sense at all. the game starts with a cutscene that isn’t animated, then you go hang out with your bro and he’s like WE GONNA PARTY TONIGHT WHOOO KAMUROCHO IS FUCKIN WILD IN THESE BOOM TIMES BRO and you go to a bar with one singular human being in it and then leave after one drink to eat some noodles. that ain’t it, that’s where they needed some of that football manager money to come through or something, damn. I did a boss fight and that shit felt real bad.

on the plus side bowling was pretty good and I liked that part where you kept opening doors in the bad guy’s house by throwing the same goon through them over and over before you smashed his head into a toilet.

3 Likes
13

Yeah I didn’t really find Yakuza 0 interesting at all… gulp

The whole story just kinda sucks (and is basically misogynist) and goes on forever and the characters are so boring… they’re always saying what they’re saying and never saying what they’re not saying.

Also the second you go into a convenience store and see a magazine with a modern laptop on it the 80s illusion is just irreparably shattered.

1 Like
14

OutRun is on this list twice, technically, which is fun for me.

Also wait, is Resident Evil (2002) the Gamecube remake? And this is the losers bracket?

15

it faced mgs2

1 Like
17

hence it’s the only place i can call home online :heart_eyes:

5 Likes
18

This is my favorite part, just sprinting into people. I’ll even look for bad guys to sprint into to pick a fight cuz I’m such a jerk. You start to get good at spotting potential battles after a time.

It’s like that so you get a better view of both where you’re hitting the ball and Kiryu’s body animations, bc his body tensing tells you when to hit the ball.

This is less the case on hard, but fundamentally Yakuza is a beat em up, so it makes sense there’s a heavy button mashing element. Later fights get large and complicated enough that you can’t just mash, though, and have to play more strategically for fear of getting overwhelmed.

Personally, like bachelor said, everything you listed off as a negative is why I like it. Yakuza 0 has texture through its flaws. I’d rather play it over any western open world pablum any day.

4 Likes
19

damn i am so out of the loop on these and i don’t even play video games lately but i gotta make my brain warm somehow

DRAGON QUEST III
vs.
MOTHER 3

my awful take is that dragon quest games are the conservative political party of jrpgs and i choose to reject tradition and embrace modernity

WARIOWARE, INC.: MEGA MICROGAME$
vs.
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE SERIES

warioware is only fun for like 30 minutes but that 30 minutes is actual fun. edf is fun with the right friends but so is just about anything! so i’m not pressed to play edf! also warioware twisted exists so…bye edf

ELEVATOR ACTION RETURNS
vs.
METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER

the amount of like, intricacy and care put into all the elements of snake eater (and mgs games as a whole) is so so tasty. ps2 craft at its finest, you know i can’t turn away

SILENT HILL
vs.
YAKUZA 0

silent hill has left a tangible emotional impact on me, yakuza games have not…i always come out of playing a yakuza game feeling charmed but relatively unstimulated

SPELUNKY
vs.
RESIDENT EVIL (2002)

another awful take, i really do not give a hoot about spelunky, the gameplay loop is not at all something i want to spend any amount of time on. i don’t have strong feelings about resident evil but i’m at least not opposed to the idea of playing it.

DEUS EX
vs.
GUNSTAR HEROES

90s pc games will never click with me. i’m cut from the wrong cloth. when i had a pc in the 90s and early 2000s i used it to emulate game boy games. gunstar is a great way to spend 45 minutes every couple of years.

BUBBLE BOBBLE
vs.
REZ

rez is a beautiful experience right in the sweet spot of early sixth gen development, when developers had all these new toys via which to explore things not possible on older hardware, but didn’t have the expertise to refine things to the point of frictionlessness. i love rez!

DONKEY KONG '94
vs.
OUTRUN

i don’t think i will ever touch either of these in my lifetime but if i had to do one it would be dk94. the kinetics seem a little more enjoyable; outrun physics never did it for me.

10 Likes
21

okay i will say i would for sure try an outrun cab if i ever found one

2 Likes
22

refuse to believe this is not how any given Boy’s Night with Kiryu would go even in this, our world of flesh

(I punched that misterth*mping Reply Button only to post the above, but then tragedy struck:)

Certainly lots of decisions in these games (as in all others!) defo started as/are still inflected by technical/financial/time overhead–and I’m sure the inertia of a long-running, popular series encourages the developers to cleave unto that Long Hallways With Slightly Denser Minigame Closets life–but the disconnect between characters’ expectations/rigid conceptions of life and the people + institutions in it is a running theme of Strong Punch Himbo Fails Forward (and post-Kinji Fukasaku yakuza films! and… crime fiction in general), so little sequences like this one read like a slice of social verisimilitude in the sea of every loose bike used as a bludgeon, so as to beat up ten thousand men, across 20 square blocks, over the course of one calendar year or less.

Of course you go to Mama Rokkaku’s Family Room Bar Conversion: We’re Sorry, But The Dimmer’s Broken, Every Bulb Is Full Blast. The real party was in your friend’s head all along…

(Also the place probably cleared out when Like A Wet Blanket was sighted coming down the block.)

4 Likes