he’s a real hardass
4 Likes
A game about playing Zelda to collect ammunition for a gigantic tank. And by ammunition I mean “whatever shit you find on the ground.” Oh, and to do anything with the tank, you’re still playing Zelda but now you’re loading the ammunition into the tank, or firing yourself out of the cannon, or walking over to their tank and smashing in the front door and wreaking havoc on its internal workings.
Fascinating game, literally nothing else like it (except its sequel (which I have yet to play because I couldn’t get the translation working))
4 Likes
Curious here as to why Battle Spirit 2! I used to love the first Battle Spirit because Digimon! Fighting game! I get to play as all these amazingly cute sprites made by Dimps of some of my favorite Digimon! And then when I saw Battle Spirit 2 and I saw that it was only Digimon Frontier characters I got upset and deleted the ROM immediately lmao so I have no idea how it compares to the first one
Well each character plays better for one. The stages are (mostly) better and evolution has been changed from a random calumon spawn to a meter you build. There are also supers!
1 Like
Here are thirty good games:
Jagged Alliance 2 - The perfect tone for a strategy rpg coup simulator.
God Hand – A peek into the world we could of had if Japanese developers never stopped copying hokuto no ken and making it even goofier well into the 2000’s.
Violent Storm – Simultaneously the best konami and capcom beat em’ up. Give me Violent Storm or go to hell!
Breakers Revenge – Condor is the most satisfying grappler ever created.
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 – Peak SNK. Would be the most aesthetically immaculate of all neo geo fighters if it included the announcer from rbs.
Cave Story - Daisuke Amaya did all of this.
Resident Evil Remake - Really what every remake should aspire to. A rich experience that elevates the entire series.
Super Mario Bros. 3 - Nearly one hundred levels and none of them are tedious.
Mario 64 - Making 3d movement so intuitive and enjoyable immediately and then never being able to quite replicate it is an immense accomplishment. A phenomenon you might call “Nintendo magic”.
Donkey Kong '94 - Why couldn’t you make 2d Mario this fun to play as ever again? Nintendo magic.
Wario Land 4 - Though adding health necessarily makes this less subversive than previous entries, I find it difficult not to think of this as the artistic peak of 2d nintendo development.
WCW vs. NWO Revenge – Definitely my most played aki game and has the advantage over No Mercy of including the strike grappling system and ersatz japanese wrestlers.
Giant Gram 2000 – I think the competitive play from mikado speaks for itself.
Symphony of the Night - A maximalist masterpiece. Sometimes putting way too much shit in a game is good.
Dark Souls – Has done more to destroy and demystify the concept of “jank” than Jim Sterling pretending to like musou ever could.
Bloodborne – Elegantly adapts the fundamentals of Souls to make the sickest fucking action game.
Deadly Premonition – “You say Fred Ward and I say Remo Williams the adventure begins”. Maybe games can be art?
Streets of Rage 2 – Having only recently played Bare Knuckle 3, I still have to state my preference towards 2. Questions of overall atmosphere and mechanics are irrelevant in this instance as Max is just more fun than Dr. Zan.
Max Payne 2 and/or 1 and/or 3 – All unique, singular games. Two neo-noirs suffused in norse mythology and the greatest game about being an desolate alcoholic expat. You can’t choose.
Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy: Movie Battles II – Nearly a thousand hours of my life. I have to believe it mattered.
Halo – It’s good. It’s Halo.
Day of Defeat – Few things more satisfying than successfully laying down suppressing fire from running prone dives into heavy machine gun bipod activation on dod_avalanche.
DooM – Excepting the original three episodes, there’s enough quality work on doomworld that you never need to pay for another video game ever again.
F.E.A.R – Consistently interesting encounter design and the most satisfying guns of the new century.
Metal Gear Solid 3 – Cold war espionage action as a vessel for Kojima capsule film reviews.
Earth Defense Force (all) – Sandlot’s dedication to iterative improvements on a now seventeen year old base is beautiful and commendable.
Suikoden 2 – It takes a village.
Contra Hard Corps – What if we just made a Contra with an absurd amount of branching paths, bosses and made it unreasonably difficult for the international market?
Shinobi III – 3d classics port was a complete revelation. Goes far beyond the Elevator Action roots and is one of the best showcases for the genesis.
Final Fantasy III/VI, whichever you prefer – The whole second half was incredibly formative. Searching for Friends has a legitimate proustian effect on me.
20 Likes
Damn it I got a couple more ones:
Zelda: Link between worlds
Earthbound
Bernband
4 Likes
Also cave story.
2 Likes
More blurbs from my list. Will I make it to the end before the end of the month? Check back daily to find out!
Hero Core – 2010 sequel to 2004’s Hero from Daniel Remar. Action adventure Metroidvania with tiny pixel-y graphics, 1-bit (black and white) graphics. You explore the world screen by screen until you find the big bad and defeat him. Normal and hard difficulties but hard doesn’t just give enemies more hp it actually has a totally different layout for the map and new enemy patterns. That’s a pretty cool bonus.
Castlevania – A classic action adventure. Six stages of pure monster slaying mayhem. A very tight, deliberate design throughout the whole thing. It has really great musical compositions that I still listen to outside of the game. I love the Minibosses version of the music. I can make it to stage six but I don’t think I’ve ever conquered Dracula. One day.
Bionic Commando – The hook in this one is that you can’t jump you can only use your bionic arm to navigate up platforms and swing from one point to the next. It’s kind of hard at first but once you get used to it you get into the flow of it. Dominant colors are bright green and blue with orange and red backgrounds. At least in the first stages of the game. I never make it to the end when I play this.
Double Dragon – The NES version of the original Double Dragon might be my favorite beat-em up. They manage to do so much with just two buttons and a d-pad. There’s a punch and a kick button, up jumps and down picks up weapons dropped by enemies. Combine jump with kick and you’ve got jumpkick and a bunch of ass beaten the hell up. Good music and great chunky sprites combined with fuzzy sound effects make a memorable experience from my early childhood. I still love how the most defining characteristic of either playable character are their hair and their fists. This was truly a game of the 1980s.
Halo 3 – I’m going to say this was the peak for the Halo series. Halo 2’s campaign disappointed a lot of people by being rushed and unfinished. Here was where Bungie went back and did it right. Four player co-op, huge battles, great variety of level designs, deployable equipment items like the bubble shield which shook things up, and being able to pull big guns off their turrets and fire them from a third person view were all changes that improved the game for the better. Also the first time Halo had Marathon style terminals with lore dumps and such. And the skulls returned from Halo 2 and were systematized into their current form for the rest of the series. It’s a wild experience trying to get through with all the skulls turned on. Overall just an incredibly solid experience.
Contra 3: The Alien Wars – There are a lot of Contra games I could have put here but Contra 3 was the first one to come to mind. It’s big and colorful and bombastic. It’s Contra what more needs to be said.
BreakoutArkanoid – I’m changing Breakout to Arkanoid because while Breakout is the block busting game that laid the foundation Arkanoid added powerups to the paddle and that changed the whole game. Also if I’m going to play a Breakout inspired game today I want it to in the style of Arkanoid, if not Arkanoid itself.
Todd McFarlane’s Spawn: The Video Game – Debatable on whether or not this is actually a great game to play but I love it to pieces. The art is inspired by then-Spawn artist Greg Capullo’s designs and is some of my favorite pixel art. Check out those sprites! That’s some real artistry there capturing the style of the comic so well in a different medium.
Ghost in the Shell (PSX) – This game has you piloting a tachikoma, a spider-like mech that can walk/run up any surface including ceilings. There’s a strafe button and a lock on for the machine gun and missiles and you’re mostly fighting individual human soldiers in industrial environments. Later levels have you wall crawling around inside vents out the underside of huge building structures. It’s just a really cool game. It controls really well and runs really smoothly for a game of its era.
Spelunky – What can I say that hasn’t already been said? Nothing. If you don’t know Spelunky check it out you’ll probably love it or learn to love it.
Ikaruga – An arcade shmup from Treasure with a clever hook. You switch colors between black or white at will and fight against enemies that are either black or white. Bullets are colored-based as well and you (and the enemies) absorb bullets that are the same color as you (they) are while taking damage from opposite colored bullets. There’s a bit more but that’s the basic gist. It got a cult following in Japan after the Dreamcast version came out in 02 and a year later it was released in the west on Gamecube. The actual box of the Gamecube version has a quote from an IGN article saying “Our frothing demand for this game increases” and the phrase “frothing demand” became a bit of a meme for a while to refer to any kind of hype. If you want to be impressed look up a video of someone playing the game’s two player mode by themselves.
Portal – This was a triumph.
Minecraft – I have got a map I play on with my nephews where I have a gigantic pyramid with another almost equally sized gigantic pyramid inverted above it and connected at the tips and the whole thing is so huge the PS4 cannot actually render all of it in a single frame. Maybe the PS5 will. Inside the bottom pyramid I’ve got about half the floor plan set up as a giant maze broken up into four quadrants with plans to eventually fill the entire inside with either more mazes or upper levels where you can see the totality of the mazes below. The point is Minecraft is cool because you can do stuff like this.
14 Likes
oh yeah I meant to include this one
2 Likes
reminds me of this law enforcement officer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWUmjI2Nc2E
3 Likes
Space for 8 more on my list if I want to do a round 64. On the lookout for some compelling nominations… 
Will add to this over time:
-
Sports Talk Baseball (Genesis)
The only baseball game I’m aware of that allows a double swing. -
Steep Slope Sliders (Saturn)
CAVE doesn’t really care if you want to do tricks or go fast or both. Just enjoy the slopes! -
Dropship: United Peace Force (PS2)
Very fun. Very difficult! -
NBA Jam: Tournament Edition (Saturn)
In the 90’s I carried a Saturn around as if it was as portable as a Switch. If you had me over, you can bet I was bringing my Saturn with 6 player adapter! -
Silent Hill (PS1)
I screwed up my TV by attaching tape to the screen to solve the piano birds puzzle. I used generic tape, and I couldn’t get the adhesive off my screen. (Shoulda gone with 3M or something else name brand!) -
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (Xbox)
This is the only video game that has ever made me yell out loud in terror. -
Mortal Kombat (Arcade)
I’ll never forget the feeling of my young brain taking it all in as the screen and music went dark while I ripped the head off my opponent and extracted his bloody spine. -
Super Monkey Ball (Gamecube)
Concentrated joy in video game form. Sponsored by Dole. -
Road Rash 2 (Genesis)
Kick your opponent’s bike into oncoming traffic. Steal a cop’s club and beat him with it! Unlock the secret bike and crash at 250MPH. -
F.E.A.R. (X360)
Body awareness simulator.
14 Likes
Seeing the faded CRT of the player 2 monitor gave me sad memories of the lonely, badly burnt-in Crisis Zone cab we had in my college’s student union bro-bar area.
Konami probably designed Police 911 specifically for that guy.
1 Like
Even on a SNES this game is loud as fuck
2 Likes
rushes to add Police 911 2 to his post
2 Likes
Oh!
Monster World IV
Astro Boy: Omega Factor
Tetris 99
Hanano Puzzle
Hanano Puzzle 2
Jelly no Puzzle
3 Likes
an unending series of delights. surely overtaken by other games that thrive on novelty but the absolute surprise at how bizarre and wonderful this MAYONNAISE GAME is will cement it in my memory forever. motoko-chan…
6 Likes
I tried to write cogent blurbs about why I like them but I leave that to the more articulate, since most of these appear on other peoples’ lists.
Rondo of Blood – the only Castlevania that isn’t too hard for me. My only criticism is that I like the Castlevania IV soundtrack much better, but it wouldn’t have fit the atmosphere.
Cave Story – I like the weapon leveling system for some reason. Maybe gives the moment to moment combat an interesting ebb and flow?
Momodora Reverie Under the Moonlight – kind of Cave Story lite which sounds like a criticism but I mean it as a huge compliment.
Cannon Dancer / Osman – the best plot in gaming. Soundtrack is much worse or a little better than Strider, depending on how much you like scratchy samples. Graphics better than Strider if you like puffy pants.
Ninja Spirit – IREM doing a lowkey bullet-hell schmup as a sidescroller. No platforming just deflecting projectiles. The second-best plot in gaming.
Mother 3 – kind of made other JRPGs redundant for me.
Demons’ Souls – this one’s a bit under the radar. if you haven’t checked this out, you gotta. I believe it has a few spiritual sequels.
Loom – the most forward-thinking adventure game in Lucasarts’ canon. Or really anyone’s from that period. The EGA graphics make the VGA version look sludgy. The CD Rom version is bad. The truncated dialog is earnest and generic and bad. Who’s this “Orson Scott Card” joker that’s so bad at dialogue?
The Evil Within – specifically the Kidman DLC, which has the best ending in videogames.
Klonoa
Metroid Fusion – I won’t claim it’s the best Metroid. But it’s my favorite. Introduced Zero Suit Samus which ended up being a great evil.
Conquests of the Longbow – Christy Marx is one of only two game developers I’ve ever written fan letters to. I had a crush on Ashley from Jem when I was little.
Furi – The Game Bakers are the other fan letter. I got a warm reply from the lead designer that made me very happy at a kind of downer time in my life.
Quest for Glory 1 VGA – I’ve heard the EGA original is better, but I never got around to playing it. I really liked the kind of grotesque clay character portraits.
Quest for Glory 2 – it doesn’t have the interesting overworlds of the others in the series. Ratrap city corridors and a desert, the worst videogame biome. But everything else is great. For all the love Lucasarts gets, they sure didn’t put women in project leader roles. Sierra has as many classics as Lucasarts, just diffused by a bunch of interesting and varied but janky games.
Super Mario Bros 2 USA – the best looking 2d Mario game? Introduced Shyguys!
Dragon’s Dogma – you can choose your age in the game, from like 12 to 80, but they don’t change the romance subplots. So my 12 year old tomboy character bumbled into sexual relationships with a couple of grown-ass women. That’s not why I like it. But it was, um, memorable. Kind of symbolic of the strangeness burbling under the surface of the fantasy played-straight veneer. I was so excited whenever I unlocked new skills because so many of them were great.
Little Samson – I like it as a sequel to Mega Man 2 better than Mega Man 3.
Ys Oath in Felghana – my first Ys. I wasn’t expecting Adol to be so fast! Hugely pleasant surprise.
Ico
Ranger X – I got a six button controller so I could have direct control over the little cart.
Sonic Mania – replaced Sonic 3 and Knuckles as my favorite Sonic game. The Sonic games are not about “going fast” they’re about dealing with inertia so when a trap or enemy springs out and halts you, the game is doing its job.
Killer 7
Breath of the Wild
Metal Gear Solid 5 – Hideo Kojima finally got the hang of directing cutscenes, and there are ended up being too few of them. Very strange.
Silent Hill 3 – the near-universal preference among video game people for Silent Hill 2 is gaslighting. Heather is amazing. Cults are better than whatever James had going on. SH3 emulated and slightly upscaled still looks so great. Not a lot of PS2 games have held up so well for me, visually.
Mystic Defender – this game goes from a forest biome in level 1 to a giger biome in level 3. That’s so fast!
Edit: Downthread I added four more games
Metal Storm
Bomberman 94
Gunstar Super Heroes
The Ninja Warriors Once Again
22 Likes
Want to mention that, um, the cesspool known as NeoGAF has a thread with links that helped me get the beautiful PC port running, which scales up well to higher resolution if anyone is willing to stomach some fiddling. But yeah, the more sane option nowadays is to PCSX2 it I’m sure. Also the PC port cut out some voiceover lines from SH1 and probably doesn’t render the funky PS2 geometric/flaming blood effects as nicely.
1 Like