selectbutton 85: a little less sixteenth round, a little more "voting"

I just grew up with a Game Boy and then became obsessed with Melee which acted as a gateway game to some other stuff. It is crazy how most Zelda games before BOTW seem so clumsy now. When I was younger they were considered the pinnacle.

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Yeah, itā€™s very good. I slightly prefer it to SEGA Transformed even aesthetically because of the good Toads (pit toad, astronaut toad).

I wish theyā€™d do more tracks like Smashā€™s support but Nintendo discovering ā€œserviceā€ game models is a monkey paw waiting to happen.

Maybeā€¦ Smash Kart? Noā€¦ no.

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i would definitely subscribe to like, new tracks. getting a new set of tracks every quarter would frickin rule. i play this game way too much.

Even just like remixes with existing assets or an editor because I have sucked all of the fun out by memorizing a racing line in Toad Turnpike like itā€™s the god damn Nurburgring.

Same issue exists in shooters - even with multiplayer the space defines engagements and thereā€™s only so many encounters.

Anyway, SM64 I guess.

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Pikmin 3 is good, too, even though itā€™s a more-of-the-same sequel. I still have yet to play the co-op mode, but I am looking forward to trying it one day.

I guess you can get Pikmin 3 on Switch now, but apparently they made the game a lot easier? Maybe thatā€™s to make it more accessible for young kids.

I played Pikmin 3 on the wii u for a few hours and wasnā€™t incredibly impressed with it. But I chalk that up to ā€œthe first game did it well and in 1/4 of the time investment so sequels are totally pointless anywayā€. Glad that people liked it but it was not for me. Not as bad as Pikmin 2 though

Totally figures they made it easier though

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i did this, game rules

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my teenage years

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i am losing steam voting for games i dont really care that much about for ten rounds now BUT I MUST PRESS ON. all the ideas for how to do this again are exciting

chrono trigger, mario 64, nocturne, god hand, f zero, mario 1, shiren, puyo

all my reasons are in other threads

To explain myself again (though you already know this) itā€™s never been about saying nintendo is bad. I like every Nintendo game on this list. I like them a lot. I just feel like it doesnā€™t say anything to have them at the top of our list. Where at the end of this if it ended up Sky Oddessy, Outrun, and Deus Ex that would inspire folks to play those 3 games and work out their own feelings on them.

I have certainly been revisiting a lot of games on this list for the last six months. Which is all the more reason to do a second round. And now that we understand campaign more for specific games.

This is a bad reductive example but it is like someone talking to a girl and saying ā€œYOUā€™VE NEVER SEEN STAR WARS?ā€ but about Mario 64.

I disagree with Tulpa and think the popularity contest has already happened when we got down to 85 games. Now itā€™s a binary decision that surprise results ina 51/49 split pretty often. Itā€™s not like one game lost.

I obviously flip my votes a lot in this contest but just when presented with a Nintendo I think is this really gonna change someoneā€™s mind?

Like I am pretty certain Deus Ex will make me pull out my hair in 2021 but it is one of the few PC games representives and is this whole school of game design that still exists and even if you donā€™t like it I think it has a lot to gain from playing and seeing ā€œah yes video games.ā€

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I said this last time but in like 5 years when everyone forgets Iā€™ve made this post we should again ask everyone to make their ā€œbest ofā€ lists and again claim we are correlating them to pick the initial 85, but surprise do the opposite and only include any game that is never listed twice

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Interesting, and totally valid of course but I never really thought of this as a kind of manifesto-type list for some imagined audience. Iā€™ve just been voting for games based on their own merits as I see it like itā€™s not so much an SB consensus as an SB census. If we were aiming for ā€œsaying somethingā€ though I totally would have been down to look at some gamefaqs poll and ban the top 85 games on it and I think I would have voted differently but idk who the audience is? Someone who hasnā€™t played many games? Someone who has strictly contemporary mainstream tastes? Someone ā€œliterateā€ in classic gamefaqs poll adjacent stuff and not much else?

If itā€™s the first two, Iā€™d still push something like SM64 cuz a) Itā€™s 25 years old and plenty of people havenā€™t played it and these days I donā€™t think itā€™s as revered/ubiquitous with players as we older millennials think it is and I still think it kicks and b) Itā€™s interesting to look at as an historical artefact if youā€™re at all interested in 3D action games. I was watching Nina Freeman stream it after not having played it since childhood and it was really fun to see a game designer engage with it fresh and mostly forgotten and find it really compelling! So I think it still has something to offer and I donā€™t really see how having Dark Souls, Katamari Damacy, Shadow of the Colossus or DOOM at the top is saying something while having SM64 up there would be saying less because Nintendo made it. But I guess thatā€™s what weā€™ve been debating, maybe with different goals in mind.

Anyway, all of this is to say: itā€™s interesting to me how people are approaching this from different angles and justifying picks and thank you for tolerating my shameless shilling for SM64 (just donā€™t mistake me for a Nintendo fan plz, I havenā€™t owned a Nintendo device since the Wii and couldnā€™t care less about their brand).

EDIT:

I maybe meant ā€œplayedā€ rather than ā€œubiquitousā€ though this goes back to what audience weā€™re hypothetically presenting to and Deus Ex is probably maybe less played among gamerz at large? I donā€™t even know. So if thatā€™s important to oneā€™s voting I get it. Wow I think Iā€™ve just reached the extent to which I can talk about SM64 anymore. No more no more.

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as the internet still consults the SB Wiki Recommends more than we think I have to prepare.

Not that I am going to re-learn wiki formating to update it I have enough no-pay internet jobs.

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agree. i also think weā€™re maybe misrepresenting what gamefaqs poll/average gamer canons tend to look like in practice. for instance, deus ex has been brought up a few times as a less canonized/represented type of game still in the running, but itā€™s in the ā€œlist of video games considered the bestā€ wikipedia article, whereas outrun 2, killer7, demonā€™s souls, god hand, nocturne and puyo puyo are not, despite mostly being selectbutton sacred cows.

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I think the funny thing is that, on paper, I agree with you. ā€œInterestingā€ is better than ā€œwell designedā€ or whatever.

But I played Deus Ex and it immediately pissed me off and I learned nothing from it. Same with System Shock. Like, I know these are important games but they are so unapproachable as to be pointless to me.

Honestly I think this is a matter of taste more than anything! I really dug Elder Scrolls Arena when I played it, and itā€™s equally unapproachable, but it is very aesthetically pleasing to me and has many of the things I prefer. Itā€™s also a power fantasy thatā€™s easily broken once you get past a certain point, and is far less simulationist than many SB favs

So yeah, I dunno! I would rather play Wario Land 4 for the 15th time than ā€œeat my vegetablesā€ and play Deus Ex or whatever. I think I learn more from playing something I enjoy than something that makes me actively angry.

But youā€™re right and it is uninteresting to say ā€œMario 64ā€ to anyone at this point. I guess Iā€™m notā€¦interested in being interesting, somehow. I just want to say ā€œNo, this is the best game, if you play it you will have a good time, it is likely not important but also nothing is important.ā€

Hence Katamari being my ā€œgame of all timeā€ pick - itā€™s easy to recommend to anyone, itā€™s weird enough to stick in memory forever, and it has no descendants to speak of. Itā€™s a good game!! If you play it for 10 minutes you will enjoy your 10 minutes with it!! thatā€™s all i care about

also this, i loathe doing things with an audience in mind other than the most basic things (i.e. sound quality on podcasts, not wasting too much of peopleā€™s time with nonsense, not being a huge asshole), which is why i donā€™t really have an audience except people who already know and like me. Thinking about an audience will both paralyze and annoy me.

I donā€™t think thereā€™s anything wrong with doing things with an audience in mind, itā€™s just my kryptonite.

anyway just to clarify iā€™m not like, heated about this or anything. I think itā€™s very interesting to hear how people decide to vote the way that they do!! I would argue itā€™s slightly reductive to say ā€œno nintendo gamesā€ because they have made interesting shit (cough gameboycamera cough) but hey, i voted for a game because tulpa told me to. we all have our criteria.

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I keep saying this but this whole thing started 7 months ago and I canā€™t believe people are complaining about the list. It is obnoxious and disrespectful to the people who actually worked on it. If you arenā€™t happy make your own list, get on it right now, no need to wait for this one to wrap up, no oneā€™s stopping you, show us all how exciting a list with no Marios would be, canā€™t wait to see it.

Like, who is gonna come along and take this or any poll as any kind of statement in 2021. If they do they are probably young and not terribly informed about The Days Before Games All Became Services and seeing some of these big older titles placed alongside quirkier fare will probably do more to pique their curiosity than a list of 100 MS-DOS and Twine Games You Missed Out On.

To me this is a fun little thing where I got to see what choices my friends make and any accusations that these choices arenā€™t ā€œinterestingā€ seems to be vastly overestimating the current popularity of most of the games on this list, like even if Mario 64 is still beloved it is quite unlike most of the games it influenced, in 2021 it is a kinda weird game, no one is really doing anything of note in that style nowadays, or at least theyā€™re not doing it very well. No oneā€™s really championing these things for nostalgia reasons, when folks do talk about their favs they tend to be somewhat critical of them, they havenā€™t been rehashing the same talking points weā€™ve heard elsewhere for the last xx decades, who cares, Iā€™m cranky!!

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Hereā€™s the top 20 from the Comics Journal best 100 comics of the 20th century poll. Itā€™s from 1999 so itā€™s largely American dudes. Donā€™t think thereā€™s much manga, canā€™t remember if there are many Euro comics, itā€™s the Journal so thereā€™s Fantagraphics stuff all over the place, but who cares about what itā€™s missing, there are only like 5 superhero comics on there, that is like heaven to me, I wish our culture had so little superhero representation.

Anyway that list is highly flawed, like all lists, and I was familiar with a good chunk of it already but seeing stuff I was either unaware of or had written off or considered pablum ranked higher than a lotta the stuff I loved at the time made me reconsider things a bit. Peanuts and Krazy Kat and Mad over Calvin & Hobbes?? Are you kidding me?!* I wouldnā€™t say I changed my life, I woulddnā€™t say itā€™s a great list, but I donā€™t see it as all too dissimilar to this one and I think criticizing this one for being too normie underrates the value in talking about popular things. That shitā€™s important, it can hook people and change the way they look at things, and Select Button tends to do a better job of it than anywhere else ā€“ thatā€™s one of the reasons why I post here!!

Also these style of games are probably all dying and Dota is the only game that matters on the list, thanks

*Turns out theyā€™re all better than Calvin & Hobbes. Except Mad. Iā€™m still not into Mad.

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Little Nemo is a top comic and a top NES game.

Almost everything by R. Crumb that Iā€™ve read hasnā€™t appealed to me much. The big exception is his Book of Genesis, which is excellent.

Maybe we should do a comic ranking, too. Something equivalent to just the nominations part of this. That could lead to interesting discussions and new discoveries.

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Sky Odyssey lost, and with it, all hope

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Yeah Genesis and a few of the comics about his childhood relationship with his brothers are pretty much all the Crumb I can stomach. Also some of the infotainment stuff like the PK Dick strip. The racist and sexist stuff fucking blows on every level.