Ooh thanks, I was thinking of trying the PC port to see the differences! The geometric effects didn’t work very well with my graphics card so they might end up being better for me than they were on PCSX2.
I know this game is sorta widely loathed around here and I understand why - the last bit of the game is totally bunk. But ordering a crew around a spaceship, teleporting into enemies’ ships or targeting specific parts of it with missiles, opening airlocks to put out fires, and getting absolutely screwed by random chance more than makes up for that in my opinion. It’s a game of breadth rather than depth, and I’m fine with that.
Also the soundtrack fucken rules
2 Likes
-
Deus Ex (Mac)
I first played this game on a pre-OSX Mac. It had a problem with caching some of the audio files, so it would drop a ton of frames any time it needed to load a quick soundclip of someone’s exclamations after seeing me try to sneak past them. This really added to the tension! -
Metroid 2 (Gameboy)
This is the first and really only early 2D Metroid game I’ve played to completion. I skipped right past Metroid, and I never played Super Metroid. -
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link (NES)
The best Zelda game ever made (fight me). -
Crazy Taxi (Dreamcast)
The only way to play this game is with The Offspring/Bad Religion soundtrack and the licensed stores (KFC, Levis, etc.). All other versions are inferior! (Probably not the arcade version. I never played the arcade version). -
Powerstone (Dreamcast)
I bought this game with my launch Dreamcast on 9/9/99. A person I interviewed for a job where I work recently asked me if I knew what Powerstone was during the interview. I had to recuse myself from the interview as my judgment was wrecked at this point.
11 Likes
Wanted to add to my Siren blurb for a Blood Curse vote but I can’t get my edit to my mess of a post to save.
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.
6 Likes
Oh I need to add Gunstar Super Heroes.
The original is better but I like the remake/remix more. I think partially because of the controls – having separate buttons for fixed shot and free shot, as opposed to holding down a button to switch to fixed, is great. Something about the two face buttons and two shoulders on the GBA resulted in a lot of control schemes I liked. It’s the perfect amount of buttons.
Alien Soldier would be on here if I were better at it. I like that it has an insane scifi plot but the first level is an airport.
6 Likes
Castlevania 2
I got my parents addicted to this, and they used to stay up all night playing it. What a horrible night to have a curse.
Quake
I took a class in C because of this game.
We 
Katamari
The maps, especially the final globetrotting one, are just a tiny bit better than those in the original.
Dark Souls
I suck at it but I love everything about it
Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden
Jeeze, I should add SNES Shadowrun to the list
Shadowrun (SNES)
Perfectly small scale and moody take on the setting. I love all the adventure game trappings.
The Legend of Zelda
I replay this at least once a year.
Gunstar Super Heroes
Treasure’s GBA output all rules but I think I’ll pick this one over the other two
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Yes, over Third Strike
Garou Mark of the Wolves
Yes, over Third Strike
Nier Automata
Ending E took me off guard, but I didn’t even think twice about doing the right thing
Maniac Mansion
It’s approach to puzzle solving rewired my brain
Tetris (Gameboy)
If only this had an counter for how much time I’ve spent playing it
Space Harrier
Pure joy
Rez
Those bosses, that final level
Crosstown
@luvcraft did great
NBA Jam: TE
Multitap party time
River City Ransom SP
Single player only but the couple extras give it an edge
Final Fantasy IV
As much as I love the opera in 6, I think this is still my favorite
SNK Vs Capcom (NGPC)
Perhaps my most played ROM
Wizard of Wor
Wizards and aliens and mazes!
Strider (NES)
Anime Ducktales
Earthbound
Of course
Crystalis
I hadn’t really browsed this thread til I was ready to post and I was excited to spot this on other lists. It barely edged out Willow for my favorite post Zelda NES game. I’m finally getting into Ys…
Saturn Bomberman
I’ve gone to nerd conventions to primarily play this
Snatcher
Bladerunner wack-a-mole has some beautiful sprites
TimeSplitters 2
Edging out Perfect Dark
No More Heroes
I played the entire thing standing
Forgotten Worlds
Those knobs feel so good
Streets of Rage 2
The greatest soundtrack
Shadow of the Colossus
The only game that helped treat Adam Sandler’s PTSD
Rock Band 3
I’m one of the top 10 Bernard Sumners in the world
Windjammers
Pong featuring the Ultimate Warrior
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
If I only get to pick one of the SotN-y games
Saints Row 2
The best car stealing game
Songbringer
Infinite Zelda 1s
Left 4 Dead
At the time, co-op was a perfect response to toxic deathmatch culture. 2 is probably a better game but added monsters which punished players for sticking too closely together.
Phantasy Star Online
It was a coin flip between my first 4 player action RPG love and Monster Hunter World
Dragon’s Dogma
If the Capcom beat em up lineage continued mutating past D&D into a Elder Scrolls style game.
21 Likes
OH MY GOD I FORGOT MANHOLE
MANHOLE - IS THE BEST GAME I EVER PLAYED BEFORE PLAYING ANY OTHER VIDEOGAMES AND ALL I WAS THINKING WHEN I WAS PULLING THE MYST LEVER AT CYAN WORLDS WAS ‘WHERE THE FUCK IS MANHOLE’
also seconding crosstown, i cant say zookeeper and leave out those crosstown sounds
10 Likes
-
Manhunt (PS2)
Somehow avoided all the controversy that games like Bully and GTA got. Always wanted to try it with a Logitech headset or better yet, a PS2 karaoke microphone! -
Forza Motorsport 4 (X360)
The definitive Forza (non-Horizon) experience. -
Doom (PC)
What can I say? I still play Doom to this day. Infinite great content and unparalleled control. -
God Hand (PS2)
The game that made me realize IGN was absolutely full of it. -
Nier (X360)
I prefer ugly-dad western version. One of the strangest games I’ve ever played that I continue to think about a lot.
7 Likes
Ahhhh! I was thinking about adding Manhole myself (Cosmic Osmo is also cool). Maybe the first game that utterly entranced me.
2 Likes
DONT THINK ABOUT IT DO IT
2 Likes
- DiRT Rally (PS4/PC)
I forget who, but when DiRT Rally 2.0 was announced someone on this forum said “The best survival horror game of 2016 returns” or something like that. This couldn’t be more accurate.
4 Likes
I’ve never heard of the adventure game Manhole. I totally didn’t have a second thought that @daphaknee was super hyped about a Game and Watch game, but I got suspicious and had to do some research when other folks got involved.
3 Likes
Final Fantasy IX – I spent over a hundred hours playing this in 2000/01 and I still never beat Ozma. I love how central airships are to the game. I love being able to fly them through the world. I want Final Fantasy to be about airships and exploring the world again. And I want to play as a Moogle. I want to cobble together a motley band of distinctive, ragtag characters from vastly different walks of life and learn how to be friends and get the courage to do your own thing instead of following the path laid out for you and all the other stuff.
Earthbound – This is a big, deep mood of a game. Be sincere with it because it’s being sincere with you. It’s okay to let your guard down just watch out for strange hippies.
Parsec47 – Another shmup from Kento Cho. This one was my favorite for a long time. It’s kind of basic though but still really fun. Vertical scrolling. You shoot enemies that come in from the top. Hold the button down for a charge blast thing that grows in size and when you release it it just smashes through waves of enemies for big combos. I think that was the gist of it. I haven’t played it in years but it still stuck with me enough to put it on this list.
Titanion – Yet ANOTHER shmup from Kento Cho lol. I was thinking about replacing one of these with something else but screw it Kenta Cho deserves the accolades. The hook here is you can capture enemies to increase your fire power, kind of like in Galaga but amped up a lot. If you’re good enough you can keep most of the bottom row of the screen full of captured enemies each firing their weapon when you fire yours. That’s the classic mode. There’s a basic mode that’s similar because it was the first mode available when Cho first released the game. The other modes came shortly later in an update. The third mode is a bullet hell mode. Instead of capturing enemies you use your capture beam to provoke enemies into firing more bullets that explode and add to a score multiplier when you destroy the enemy that fired them. I played the bullet hell mode a lot.
QWOP – Cue Double You Oh Pee! At first I laughed because I thought it was a joke but then I kept trying and trying and trying some more and I started making progress and really enjoying myself in the process. I’ve never made it to the finish line but I still felt like a winner because I learned a game doesn’t have to have some standardized set of controls that everyone is familiar with to be great or worth talking about and recommending. Sometimes the weirdest control schemes enhance and give life to the game experience in ways that a more “accessible” scheme just can’t.
Super Meat Boy – This game works as well as it does because you can reload instantly when you die. It’s super difficult but not at all aggravating because there is zero downtime to getting back to the start of the level and making another attempt. Someday I hope 3d games can get to a point where you can reload instantly when you die. Supposedly next gen will have much shorter load times but I’ll believe it when I see it. I know I’d probably spend more time with games like Witcher 3 if they didn’t take 90+ seconds to reload on death.
Star Guard – This is a neat little tiny-pixel character run ‘n gun game from 2009 that’s kind of like Desctructivator. I’m kind of thinking about swapping this with Destructivator, actually. Technically Desctructivator came out first (2008) and then Star Guard (and then Destructivator 2 some time later) but you can find Star Guard for free on itch if you look up Loren Schmidt, the game’s creator, so I’ll probably just keep Star Guard. Though you should check out Destructivator (2) too. The world needs more tiny-character run ‘n guns.
Iji – Kind of a metroidvania from Hero Core creator Daniel Remar. This has big, bright fully animated sprites unlike Hero Core. Iji also has branching narrative paths that affect what you’re able to see and do in the game which really impressed me and still does whenever someone’s able to pull that off. Plus the story is effected by whether or not you’re a murderer or a pacifist so there’s another angle the game can change on. I never finished it (I haven’t finished most of these game lol) but it made an impression on me when it came out and like Cave Story is kind of an inspirational type game for budding game developers that tells you that yes, you even you, can make a whole game all by yourself and it can be however you want.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy – See my comments on QWOP above. Sometimes it isn’t so much about the goal it’s about the journey (but reaching the goal in this game has a really cool surprise).
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES) – I love the sprites. I love the music. I love how it has linear stages that you select from a world map that you can also move around on and interact with. I even love the underwater dam mission. I haven’t made it to Shredder yet but when I do I know the exact pixel to stand on so he can’t hit me.
15 Likes
with the dlc that adds the dr1 tracks to dr2.0 with the improved physics dirt rally 2.0 is better than the first one
1 Like
- Klonoa: Door to Phantomile
- Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil
The first Klonoa is a genuinely brilliant action platformer. The second Klonoa appeals to me because I’m a furry.
11 Likes
I knew I’d forget something
Persona 3
I fell in love with JRPGs with Dragon Warrior 1, and out of love and out of time somewhere around my millionth joyless game of Triple Triad in the name of completionistism. It took P3’s ticking clock to get me back into the genre.
4 Likes
Monster Truck Madness — Pretty much the… *checks handbook of hyperbolic references* Breath of the Wild of monster truck games. This was on everybody’s computer in the middle school computer lab, and it owns. Roads were merely a suggestion, with many tracks having large shortcuts and secrets off the paved path. One track has a soccer field hidden in the middle, foreshadowing Rocket League’s success 20 years later.
Blaster Master Zero 2 — The hopping tank takes to space in this absolute honkin’ mess of a game. Secretly a eulogy to Sunsoft’s 15 year history of making games, nearly 20 years after they called it quits. From Atlantis no Nazo to a novelization of Ikki all the way to Blaster Master: Blasting Again, this game attempts to wrangle as many of Sunsoft’s properties into a shared alt-universe, making this the most ambitious crossover of 2019.
Lyle in Cube Sector — Mid-aughts indie search action game inspired by Super Mario USA. It’s got blue cubes, green cubes, red cubes, pink cubes, yellow cubes, BIG CUBES, and spooky phantom cubes that form from your own hands. Soundtrack is full of borrowed tracker music. I once did an interpretive dance of ST Style at a talent show and got a standing ovation.
Metroid Eris — Edgy Metroid fanfic. Brainblasting tilework that constantly straddles the edges between incoherence and sublimity. Unforgiving, unapproachable difficulty lends the atmosphere a razor sharp edge.
The Incredible Machine 3 — Complete Rube Goldberg machines to dunk a basketball, pop balloons, kill Mel, turn on a blender, launch a rocket, and a bajillion other things I can’t remember. The lack of a rotational physics model makes things predictable enough to be puzzles and avoids the fiddly-ness of its spiritual successors. This song goes way too hard.
Elastomania — Collect a bunch of apples then touch a flower, while occasionally dangling your motorcycle off a cliff by its rear wheel (try not to bonk your head). Comes with a level editor. The physics model for the game apparently has a division-by-zero error that results in a very surreal looking TAS. Rockstar published a clone of this for the GBC starring Evel Knievel which also has an absolutely bonkers TAS.
9 Likes
- San Francisco Rush (N64)
So many secrets I bought a guide! The first driving game that had me truly embrace the manual transmission. Hidden track makes you a toy car in Midway’s 90s offices.
9 Likes
If I had more time, I’d make charts to break down nominations by year or console.
Really I’m just self conscious about having too many “new” (meaning late period SNES to now, in my warped perception) games.
i’m just going to rattle off a bunch that mean a lot to me. sorry for not going into detail but it’d probably get in my craw later if i didn’t at least throw them in the hat (even if it’s just to reiterate others’ picks):
Bad Dudes
Super Mario 3
Bubble Bobble
Little Nemo
Chrono Trigger
Earthbound
Mother 3
Final Fantasy 6
Rocket Knight Adventures
Shining Force 2
Landstalker
Gunstar Heroes
Cruisin USA (the arcade, with the fans that blow in your face)
TMNT: The Arcade Game (the actual arcade game)
TMNT: The Arcade Game (the NES port)
Rage Racer
Suikoden 2
Shiren the Wanderer
Donkey Kong 94
Super Mario 64
Pilotwings 64
Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Ys Oath in Felgana
Contra Hard Corps
I probably better stop since there’s so many more that will come to me later but this is more than enough to list if I’m not gonna essay them out, sorry!
8 Likes