- WarioWare (the GBA carts)
- Yakuza 5
- G-Darius
- MGSV
- Night Striker
- 3D Fantasy Zone II W
- Warning Forever
- Bio-hazard Battle
- Curse (MD/Gen shmup)
- Silent Hill 3
- Haunting Ground
- Fatal Frame 2
- Siren 1 PS2
- Siren: Blood Curse/New Translation
- killer7
- Kenji Eno/WARP’s D2
- Drakengard
- Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age Switch
- Dragon’s Dogma
- Breath of the Wild
- Burnout Paradise
- Mr. Driller Drill Land
- bit Generations: Coloris
- Guru Logi Champ
- Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan Advance (or Switch version)
- Art Style: CUBELLO
- Another Code R
- Panzer Dragoon Zwei
- Panzer Dragoon Saga
- Raycrisis
- Sanvein
- Dezaemon 2
- Giga Wing/2/Generations
- Zero Gunner 2
- Sega Marine Fishing
- Seaman
- Cameltry
- Animal Crossing Gamecube
- Animal Crossing New Horizons
- Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 Yuri’s Revenge
- Her Story
sorry for word vomit
I’m paring my list down to those I felt I could write a weird personal blurb about.
WarioWare (orig or twisted) will always have a home within a GBA or GBA-capable portable device for me as bite-sized low-stakes absurdist break time gaming.
Yakuza 5 is the maximalist peak of the series for me, being the most polished of the PS3/4 releases as it was transitioning between platforms, and I see its bloat of side content as a love letter to Sega’s arcade work and scratching an escapist itch for a visit to hyperrealistic virtual Japanese downtowns.
While on average I’m playing Darius Gaiden more because it’s more accessible to me, am also putting in a vote for G-Darius. It has a cosmic sense of scale, the best, most ridiculously satisfying toothpaste laser iteration of the “beam duel” mechanic in an unofficial trilogy with Metal Black and Border Down, planet-destroying multi-screen bosses unmatched by any shmup I can think of, a beautiful epic alien-synth soundtrack typical of Taito’s in-house group Zuntata, and allegorical ending cutscenes that loop back around the series timeline.
Also putting in another vote for MGSV (both Ground Zeroes/Phantom Pain, but if you only have time for one GZ is short and concise, just skip the ending/anything to do with Paz maybe as it’s pretty gross but I guess typical for Kojima). Ground Zeroes on its own is probably the more consistently good product of the two. Buttery smooth third-person movement/shooting/stealth. I really got into TPP’s conceit of being a shellshocked mercenary warlord and gradually honeycombing the world in my oil rig network. Also liked that the story played out as a monster-of-the week TV series of sorts and had fragmented, disconnected cutscenes shot and lit up like Refn movies and detailed audio logs about fitting Metal Gear anime magical realism stuff into 1984 politics that you could listen to while doing other stuff and ended up having more dialogue from Kiefer Sutherland than actually spoken in the cutscenes themselves.
Night Striker is probably my favorite sprite-scaler with great-as-always Zuntata tunes and the branching paths of Outrun/Darius. While you only get palette shifts and different endings for each I think it’s worth prolonging your stay in that 80s mecha anime dystopic-future contrast to Space Harrier’s neon-alien Fantasy Zone.
Fantasy Zone 2, but specifically the 3DS version that includes the Link Loop Land endless/survival mode. Probably my favorite use of the 3DS’ 3D in that you can make the game look like one of those mini-diorama bubble blower toys. Heroic effort by M2 in recreating the Master System game as a full-fledged sequel to the arcade original.
Warning Forever is an endless boss battle doujin shmup with a cool wireframe aesthetic where the boss (and its name, which can grow to equally ridiculous proportions) evolves in response to your attacks. It’s cool to see it develop from a baby pea-shooter Gradius core into a screen-filling monstrous gauntlet. You can shoot in an adjustable cone-of-fire that in retrospect reminds me of Zero Gunner except your ship stays facing upward.
Going to throw in Bio-hazard Battle and Curse bc why not have more organic-themed Genesis shmups with great big bassy YM2612 tunes
Want to throw in more of my favs and support noms I saw come in later but feel like I spent/embarrassed myself enough with my struggle to articulate at length why I’m voting for the above batch. Will try to fill in more to justify each before the deadline. Grouping by platform sort of
Silent Hill 3, Haunting Ground, Fatal Frame 2: maybe a lot of this is because I crushed on the heroines as a dumb similarly aged teen but these are my trifecta of replayable PS2 horror that I don’t come back to for scares, but to reinsert myself into worlds I came to know so well and connect nostalgically with that era
Silent Hill 3 - the making-of documentary had one of the devs mention orange and red colors evoking the autumn when development started after finishing SH2, used as a running motif, from the sunset at the beginning to the otherworld hellscapes, signifying impending danger and it bears out that this one is more aggressive and actiony than the rest of the series. The reality-collapsing endgame that fuses together important places from Heather’s and the series’ past has a grated corridor window you can see out of into the otherworld suggesting that, as it left the boundaries of Silent Hill and infringed on Heather’s reality and safety, its orange-red void could keep spreading forever. Even with that though, maybe because I played it so much and nullified the horror factor out of sheer repetition, some places have a weird, calming “eye of the storm” quality helped along by subtleties of the OST like the return to a quiet, empty mall after the first boss, the gentle churning, breathing ambience used in a hospital room and a quiet area of the amusement park, and a return to a certain sick room that sort of sounds like a faulty air conditioner running on a humid day.
Haunting Ground - escape stalkers in a baroque castle with the dog from Resident Evil 4. Liked that each death trap had its own lavish horror movie death cutscene. I think I was able to tell back then that the first stalker’s depiction of mental disability was stunningly ableist and there is uncomfortable stuff later with implied rape/necrophilia and cannibalism, but, uh, I think as a whole it is still worth experiencing.
Fatal Frame 2 - refined the ghost-photo-killing of FF1 with village paths that unwind and loop back around on themselves like, uh, Souls games. Probably has the best ghosts and consistently oppressive atmosphere of the series, though…even here I enjoyed a handful of quiet moments in outdoor secluded shrine areas and some house interiors. I got my fill on PS2, but OG Xbox has a bonus always-on first-person mode for extra scareability.
Siren - the director of the first Silent Hill imported the PS1 game’s dithered foggy oppressiveness back to Japan. This is probably the most unrelentingly bleak tangled time-loop distorted reality I’ve seen in a survival horror and it is worth going through with a FAQ at hand as it can be difficult to stealth your way through the almost puzzle-like immortal zombie-ridden levels. Also consider this my vote for the much more playable Siren: Blood Curse/New Translation, though I think as a result of the streamlining it doesn’t throw its characters into the deep pits of absolute hopelessness that stuck with me in the original game. I can say that it does you the kindness of not being difficult to the point of giving up as the original was for me and would recommend for reasonable people who only have time for one of these things to play Blood Curse. It also does this neat TV series framing as it was originally released in episodic chunks on PSN, so you will see the weird tonal shift of “Previously, on Siren Blood Curse” recaps at some points. I have Siren 2 laying around but never gave it a fair shot to see where it fits in the series.
killer7 - probably the most consistently good Suda51 work. Liked that (imo) it is kind of a spiritual follow-up to Kenji Eno/WARP’s D2 (am also pitching in a vote) in being point and click adventures on rails pared down to bare essentials with narratives that unfold like an onion of escalating insanity. Cannot think of a game with more style and attitude.
Drakengard - the game narrative presents the best outcome first (or least harmful to the game world) and as you unlock more endings, the progress you make ruins the world (or multiple worlds). Hellish chopped and screwed orchestral OST. Just grouping this together in my headcanon with Siren and killer7 as a trilogy of spiraling interdimensional despair.
Animal Crossing New Horizons - much needed source of relaxation in these times.
Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age Switch - I liked the premise of a programmable pseudo-action RPG set in a steampunk/pre-apocalyptic golden age, and that the game world was internally consistent to the point where even NPCs traded and used gambits to program themselves in combat. It was kind of neat being a bystander to political drama and trudging in the snow while detached scenes play out of warrior-senators outmanipulating each other. Preferring Switch because along with jobs being changeable at any point you can carry your inventory into new game plus, which gets at my completionist itch.
Dragon’s Dogma - I played previous versions a bit but I think Switch portability made it easier for me to sink time into it.
Breath of the Wild - liked the open-endedness of combat and exploration. I never found all the shrines but liked them as conceptual minidungeons.
Burnout Paradise - the open-world racing game I didn’t know I wanted, the islands are littered with a variety of jumps to stunt and races to race. You are never left feeling that anything has the unnecessary padding typical of this genre. I liked that to unlock cars you have to “beat” them first as a randomly-appearing computer opponent. I have to admit that I am cheating myself out of the game’s natural progression by using the best DLC car that unlocks from the start in the remaster but I don’t feel like I lost much for it.
Mr. Driller Drill Land - probably the best iteration of the game by volume with 5 different game modes. It’s punishing but I want to keep drilling.
bit Generations: Coloris - match blocks in a grid of glowing mini-TVs using audiovisual cues that tell you which way you will shift a selected block on a given color spectrum. Sorry, that is a word salad. Sometimes I just boot this up to hear the oscillating synth drone at the end of a stage.
Guru Logi Champ - my favorite picross offshoot where a lot of the charm for me is in the aesthetic, characters and animations. Rather than directly filling in blocks on a grid you shoot the blocks into place and/or suck them back out to chisel out a path to your solution
Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan Advance - arcadey hiragana Scrabble with crunchy sounds and music. Might be redundant with the Switch version as it has the same modes, levels and music in higher fidelity (but with a bigger word bank to pull from)
Art Style: CUBELLO - Hey, you got your light gun game in my block-matching puzzler! While simple and minimalist I dig it aesthetically over the other releases in this series. As the mass of blocks you are supposed to whittle down through block matching gets closer to its core, the music dynamically gets more tense and layered and the text-to-speech announcer drones on into the gray void.
Another Code R - I took a few year-long break from the DS prequel with creative touch-based puzzles, a weirdly dark story for a tween-targeted adventure, all because I didn’t realize the game wanted me to blow into the DS microphone. Well, the Wii game doesn’t have this problem and I liked it more as a breezy, pretty mystery.
Panzer Dragoon Zwei - a step up from the first in about every way. Liked bonding with your baby dragon as it grows into a bioweapon.
Panzer Dragoon Saga - the lightest JRPG I can remember playing. Liked that traversal/item interaction and the battle system merged rail shooting with turn-based JRPG elements. The side content is a bit of a slog but I think optional stuff is clearly signposted and the game helps you keep a steady pace. I loved being able to exist in that world to the extent you were able to.
Raycrisis - my favorite of the Ray-series where you play as a virus trying to stop the AI gone mad from Rayforce and attacking its brain’s defense systems manifested as enemies and bosses. Levels are brief graphics showcases of the late PS1. The order you play the first three is up to you a la Thunderforce and it rewards replay by mixing up enemy formations, graphics, and playing a different OST motif depending on your combination. Unbeatable garish Y2K-cyberpunk aesthetic and an ost that plays variations on a given stage-combo motif ranging from ambient/hard techno/fusion.
Sanvein - dirt cheap PS1 shmup cut into a wireframe hexagonal grid of arena-like mini-levels littered with Evangelion-like computer display typography that I’m pointlessly pairing together with its shared-aesthetic sibling Raycrisis. Your ship’s tank controls and recoil from weapons physically pushing the ship back give it a unique bumper car rink-like feel. You need to cut a path to the boss by beating mini-levels that connect to the boss’ hexagon on the grid, but your weapon strength increases in proportion to the number of adjacent hexagon-levels you beat so you need to make a tactical decision about how much of your limited time to spend clearing out hexagons to power yourself up for the bosses. Crucially forgot to mention that instead of lives, it uses a Warning Forever-style timer you extend by beating bosses. Obnoxious, great chaotic sound design with muffled fragments of house drowned out by detached radio chatter and permeated by amen breaks that blare out every time you beat a mini-level.
Dezaemon 2 - shmup game maker. Don’t know enough Japanese to use/navigate, but there are homebrew releases of a bit under 200 games I haven’t delved into. I got this with the intention of trying some out but never got around to it. I know this isn’t really a recommendation per se but it’s more of a reminder for me to go back and try to learn it or at least play some of the games in those compilations.
Giga Wing/2/Generations - satisfying “reflect-em-ups” with a shield that deflects bullets and turns them into medals. I didn’t try the reflect laser available in 2 and Generations. If forced to pick one, would favor 1 for its pixel art and soundtrack (C-C-COME ON)
Zero Gunner 2 - my favorite Psikyo shmup. I think the difficulty spike is a bit much around level 6/7 of 8 and I keep getting squeezed into death-barrage sandwiches, but a lot of my struggle is on account of not wanting to memorize enemy patterns generally in shmups and I still manage to have a lot of fun when just credit-feeding through a run. The Switch port is a bit off even after patching but still very playable.
Sega Marine Fishing - a beautiful expansion of Bass Fishing and I’m really sad Sega has passed on rereleasing it in recent collections of Dreamcast PC ports. I think what kept me coming back to it was the collectible fish/lures and aquarium that, like Animal Crossing, would be populated with your catches. This has a PC version but I couldn’t get it to work on my 2016-rig.
Seaman - when I got this game I got so frustrated at my Seaman’s lack of response that I started screaming into the foam piece but didn’t realize you had to hold down the A button to talk, so I’m chalking that up to modern games conditioning me to not read or even have a manual (this one is nice and even has an alternate history biology textbook writeup of the Seaman’s backstory). You get a mind-boggling amount of topics to cover in your conversations for a game of this type in this era, though I feel that even with that variety it got a bit repetitive as he/they kept asking the same questions toward the end. I feel like more of the fun is had when you are first hatching, maintaining the tank and helping them grow, and it drops off in player engagement by design as you are supposed to be the sad parent watching them leave the nest.
Cameltry - if you ever wanted the concept of the Sonic 1 special stages expanded into its own game here it is, predating it about 2 years! It was rereleased on DS and smartphones with different graphics and music but my favorite is the arcade original. I mean, if you ever had an itch to play as the disembodied rolling head of the commander from Operation Wolf, that’s gonna be the version you want. There is a SNES version called “On the Ball” in the West but I always thought of its rendition of the ost as too SNES-farty for me to enjoy. One thing I haven’t tried but want to someday is find a dial controller to plug into with MAME and play it as it was meant to be played, although there is a release for the renowned X68000 computer that comes with its own dial that I hope to try out sometime.
Animal Crossing Gamecube - the original is probably the closest to throwing you into a world of aloof, indifferent or even outright hostile sentient animals and its particular stranger in a strange land charm was lost as the series got friendlier and added on layers of complications and things to do. It has the best soundtrack with a weird, toy-like avant-garde electronic instrument set that was never topped as the series kept on reiterating mellow guitar riffs on a motif (they fit the mood but weren’t as interesting). Also a bunch of NES games were thrown in at a time when Nintendo was feeling generous/did not have the urge to monetize its history as it does now, so I guess holistically as a product the original Animal Crossing is the best by volume of content?
Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 Yuri’s Revenge - voting because I didn’t see many RTS recs and this was my childhood favorite, though I knew and loved all the C&Cs up to Generals. The Yuri faction is totally overpowered but I indulge my inner 12 year old through AI skirmishes where I possess all other factions and build a giant map-covering base. Also its cutscenes are the goofiest, campiest shit ever, just worth noting as the first time I saw the great Ray Wise’s acting work.
Her Story - liked piecing together a narrative through search engine and it beat me to the punch in realizing the only coherent game idea I ever had. Also liked that even if you watched all the clips together it doesn’t tidy up every loose end due to the unreliable narrator(s).