Opera Omnia - VC does a great job highlighting its strength.
Cinco Paus - this is my favorite phone game. Expands on rogue wands in a wonderful way.
Sonic Mania - Ray the Flying Squirrel is my buddy.
Sonic Adventure - One of my favorite virtual vacations.
Super Mario Sunshine - Another favorite virtual vacation.
Super Mario Bros. 2 US - pushing the dreamworld of the original into greater absurdity.
Sega Rally Championship - life is a balance of agony and ecstasy. You begin by bumping the walls and cursing your fallibility. With determination, you end with clean, pure drifts and feel as one with the Earth.
Kingās Field II JP - The fisherman in the beginning is who I aspire to be. I, too, am trapped on an island of poison; however, I have yet to learn how to fish.
Picross 3D - I feel like Michelangelo when I play this game. I touch the marble and feel the statue waiting to be freed.
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - fuck a dark souls
Ikaruga - the development of ideas from stage to stage makes this such a memorable journey.
Donkey Kong 94 - Mario 64 doesnāt exist without this as far as Iām concerned.
F-Zero GX - Best 3D sonic
Titanfall 2 - Best 3D sonic
Quake - sublime level design
RIVEN - RIVEN
Skate - I am this close to buying a skateboard and realizing my teenage dream of landing a kick flip.
Gimmick! - The music fills me with joy and the star block is the freshest thing Iāve encountered in a platformer.
Cho Ren Sha 68k - The music fills me with joy and the power-up wheel is the freshest thing Iāve encountered in a shooter. (okay thatās not true. I just like to sound repetitive.)
Dragon Quest VII - I could nominate virtually any one of these but Iām going to second @alfred because I like how this one paces you through short stories connected to a larger mythology. Itās like the Metamorphoses of video games.
Outer Wilds - How did I forget?
Hearthstone - In high school, my group of friends had rediscovered Pokemon TCG and began playing in the local hobby shop against strangers. We had a lot of fun until we decided to go to a tournament in another town where every one of us was demolished. I rued the money I had spent. Hearthstone was able to rekindle the joy of that period without triggering the regret.
Def Jam: Fight for New York - I think this game was somehow my first exposure to
Wu-Tang anything. I really want to play this again.
Chu Lip - Clock Town expanded into a full game. Explicitly anti-capitalist.
Terranigma - Good and bad will find balance.
Defender - the spermiest sperm game.
D - Occasionally when my mind is completely at sea, a disembodied voice will command my attention, āLaura, Laura! Laura!ā
Trinity - Ruminations on nuclear warheads expressed through the absurdity of Alice in Wonderland.
Galatea - a poetic update on Eliza
Bubsy 3D Visits the James Turrell Retrospective - I saw a James Turrell exhibit at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh and itās one of my favorite museum experiences. I would not have gone if it werenāt for Bubsy. Arenāt these game designers wonderful?
Pathologic - The right game for this moment in history.
Star Control 2 - Juffowup
Killer7 - So much comes together in this game: visuals, sounds, level design. Itās kind of a fluke in retrospect.
LSD Dream Emulator - On the PlayStation, many developers understood how powerful it could be to simply move within a 3D environment. There are dozens of examples from mechanics heavy experiences like Jumping Flash! and Kingās Field to more open iterations like Aquanautās Holiday and Gaball Screen. LSD Dream Emulator represents the purest form of this type of design, an immersion of consciousness.
Way of the Samurai - A brilliant mash up of several genres that dares you to try everything.
Dead Rising - A smart successor to Way of the Samurai.
Splatoon - the chaotic joy of childhood.
Mazan: Flash of the Blade - This is an NAOMI game that I played one afternoon at a Great Wolf Lodge. You wield a facsimile of a sword and get pushed along corridors while slashing at demons. If this had been ported on the wii with motion plus, everyone here would be going bonkers.
Contra: Hard Corps - my ideal action game. Death is immediate, movement is robust though uncomplicated, and you can play as a wolf with sunglasses and robotic arms.
Raw Danger - Survival horror mechanics in the aesthetics of a disaster film. The sort of crossover that should be more common!
Mercenary (1985) - Amazing to me how unique this is for its time, a huge, designed world with tons of surprises.
Devotion - I want to exist in spaces designed by people who have first hand knowledge of them.
Chop Suey (the cd rom game) - I think @thecatamites mentioned this game awhile back and itās a beautiful Saturday afternoon of a game.
Asuka 120% LimitOver BURNING Fest - I havenāt played this version but I hear itās the best for a fighting game I really enjoy. It hits a really sweet spot for me where itās easy to pick up while still allowing for complex maneuvers. Also, itās a fighting game with characters based on school clubs and sports.
M.U.L.E. - A 4 player round of this is my white whale.
Herzog Zwei - A round against a peer in this is my other white whale.
Opus Magnum - This nom could probably go to any Zachtronics game but this is the only one Iāve really played. In addition to the typically brilliant mechanical puzzles, thereās also an in-universe version of solitaire that I played for hours.
Dark Savior - I have only played an hour of this but Iāve seen enough in that hour and Iāve played through Landstalker, so I know this is an all time great.
Hammerfight - Making that circular motion with my arm and smashing my enemies is one of the most satisfying inputs Iāve encountered.
Katamari Damacy - Pushing a ball around with my thumbs is another.
Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts - My absolute favorite Rare game. Not only is it easy to iterate upon blueprints, it also feels good to drive the constructions.
Batsugun - The last Toaplan shooter and the first CAVE shooter.
Death Stranding - Moving around feels so good and despite the photo-realism of the world, the level design is extremely well considered.
Wario Land 4 - The music rains over the whole game and millions of flowers blossom.
Tobal No. 1 - The untextured polygons are so beautiful. They move like water. The music is perfect. I want every fighting game, 3D and 2D, to have a quest mode.
Snake Pass - Noodle is rudle.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - Dense & detailed rather than wide & repetitive. Fell in love at the Ocean House Hotel.
Downwell - It feels so, so good. My favorite detail is how the music doesnāt start until you kill your first enemy.
I need to acquaint myself with @thecatamites noms before September 1st because they all sound really interesting.
The only game that truly knew how to use the DS, and also has a glitchy metallic sounding soundtrack. Best Kirby Games are all Kirby Spinoff Games, and this is the best spinoff.
The Wii wanted to be part of your life. No account required, no online subscription, just a wifi connection. The Wii Weather Channel and the Wii News channel were both examples of this quiet, gentle suggestion that the Wii was for more than video games.
I think Iām coming to the conclusion that Wii Interface was the logical end result of wanting to live in a mall, but in a good way?
alien soldier
armed police batrider
bangai-o hd missile fury
bare knuckle iii / streets of rage 3
battle garegga
battle mania daiginjou
big tournament golf / neo turf masters
breakdown
cameltry
castlevania bloodlines
castlevania rondo of blood
chrono trigger
clash at demonhead
dragon quest vii (ps1)
elevator action returns
final fantasy iv
g darius
gimmick
ghost in the shell stand alone complex (ps2)
ice hockey
legend of zelda
mega man legends 2
metal gear solid 2 sons of liberty
metroid 1
mother 2 / earthbound
outrun 2
panzer dragoon zwei
parodius da
pochi to nyaa
shining force 1
sin and punishment
sky odyssey
street fighter iii third strike
super mario bros 2j
super mario bros 3
tetris the absolute the grand master 2 plus
under defeat
vandal hearts 1
wolf fang
Is the best way to add nominations to post new posts or to add to your own original list post? Not sure how to link to specific previous posts other than replying to them.
Just wanna make sure @anonymous doesnāt have to do too much work
1. Little Big Planet
A. Peggle
2. Night in the Woods
$. Outer Wilds
B. Minecraft
3. We Know The Devil
C. NieR: Automata
4. Va-11 Hall-A
ā¬. Undertale
D. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
5. Hadean Lands
E. Windows Solitaire
6. World of Warcraft
Ā„. Knytt Stories
F. A Short Hike
7. Second Life
G. Chrono Trigger
8. Hearthstone
Some explanation of my nominations: expressiveness and jank are underrated. I admire when a game forces you to make choices that you donāt initially realize youāre making. One of these games is the game of the millennium, as far as Iām concerned. Sometimes, great music and unimpeachable structure is all it takes. One of these games is basically a protest vote against a game that I expect to show up if we do another list like this five years from now. I realize the futility of going too esoteric, but it would feel dishonest not to at least nominate the work of interactive fiction Iām most impressed by. On the other hand, I have an obligation to acknowledge the sublime moments that can come out of an environment thatās ugly and infuriating. Expressiveness and jank are underrated. Expressiveness and jank are underrated.Expressiveness and jank are underrated.
Every battle in 1 feels like an eventā¦there is always something at stakeā¦the battle is always an obstacle to the next part of the adventure. Towns are these generous little rest stops each with memorable gimmicks. The whole game just flows better as entertainment imo.
When I played 2 at first I was like, hell yeah, this is fun, fighting random shining force battles as I walk across the world map, but after a while the game just got kind of tedious and empty-feeling. I donāt think shining force 1 battles are any less tedious at a micro level, but they were less frequent and more impactful for the reasons I mentioned above.
Also, the character designs in 2 really suckā¦1 has some of the best character designs ever.
Gunstar Heroes ā Sublime fusion of shooter amd brawler held together by duct tape, boss battles, and mesmerizing raster effects. The best weapon is the power of friendship, by which I mean tossing your friend at the boss.
ZZT ā One might argue this is less of a game and more of a fantasy console a la PICO-8, however the default games and the built-in object types give the canvas a sort of proto-Mario Paint texture, so to speak.
Mario Paint ā I name dropped it, so I might as well nominate it.
Kirby Canvas Curse ā Best Kirby and best DS game, hands down.
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link ā wehn u think abot it this wuz basically, uhā¦ *checks notes* skryim b4 skryim
Super Mario Bros. 2 (J) ā SMB1 taught you the language. SMB2j now expects you to have a conversation with its designer.
Super Mario Bros. 3 ā Best experienced on the NES in 2-player mode in a single marathon play session, if you ever have several hours to set aside.
Shatterhand ā By far my favorite NES action-plat that can trace its lineage back to Castlevania.
Gimmick! ā Authentic entertainment. Realistic another world. Presented by Sunsoft.
Mega Man X ā Effortlessly artful in all respects. Full stop.
Mega Man X2: X-Men United ā I like this one better tho.
F-Zero GX ā Three games in one: (1) the game you get when you first play it, (2) the game it becomes after learning how to snake, and (3) the game it becomes after learning how to momentum throttle. Game #3 right there is by far the best and most intense.
Lizard ā lizard
SkiFree ā Iām nominating this and you canāt stop me.
BurgerTime! ā Taught me everything I know about making burgers.
Castlevania Bloodlines ā Above all else, I love the absurd FM sound effects.
Star Fox 2 ā The real-time map sells the concept of concept and arcade-like intensity of an all-out war in the Lylat System amazingly well. A fusion of eastern and western design sensibilities that is as novel today as it was when it was unreleased back in '95.
Sub-Terrania ā Nervewracking. (Maybe this is what rogue-likes feel like to other people.)
EDIT 1
WarioWare and WarioWare Twisted! ā The perfect ADHD games.
Rodentās Revenge ā Classic Windows 3.1 game. Can be approached as a turn based affair, but has enough real-time stuff to add some spiciness and commitment to the affair.
Metroid II ā Among a million other things, this is the only Metroid game that provides a plausible answer to the question āwhere would these all these dumb upgrades actually be found?ā Contemplative, disorienting, and harsh.
Elliot Quest ā A rare example of a modern game that understands how to recreate the uncanny mood as the inscrutable and sparse 8-bit classics.
The Guardian Legend ā A good example of a game with that aforementioned mood. Also, a technical showcase by Compile of how to put an absurd number of sprites onscreen on the NES.
Breath of the Wild ā Just a really solid AAA-adjacent open-world game that I spent 70 or so hours chilling out in. Attached to it is a bizarrely written and poorly acted story that somehow strongly resonated with my more pious side.
Contra (NES) ā As much as I love the absurd maximalism of the later games, the nuts and bolts of this game are impeccably solid and well-tuned. The exploding bridges in the first level are a 100% perfect platforming setpiece, rarely equalled.
My dad once made a video for my uncle that started with an animation of someone getting punched in the face made in Mario Paint, complete with a song. He then switched to his video camera and my sister and I pretended we were abused and he pretended he had alcoholism. I have no idea how my uncle reacted to receiving this VHS in the mail. I think all of this was a bad idea. But thatās not Mario Paintās fault.
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 Yuriās Revenge
Her Story
sorry for word vomit
Iām 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 Segaās arcade work and scratching an escapist itch for a visit to hyperrealistic virtual Japanese downtowns.
While on average Iām playing Darius Gaiden more because itās 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 ābeam duelā 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 Taitoās 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 itās 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 TPPās 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 itās worth prolonging your stay in that 80s mecha anime dystopic-future contrast to Space Harrierās 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 3DSā 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. Itās 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 Iām 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 donāt 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 Heatherās and the seriesā 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 Heatherās 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 āeye of the stormā 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 stalkerās 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, thoughā¦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 gameās dithered foggy oppressiveness back to Japan. This is probably the most unrelentingly bleak tangled time-loop distorted reality Iāve 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 doesnāt 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 āPreviously, on Siren Blood Curseā 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/WARPās 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.
Dragonās 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 didnāt 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 ābeatā them first as a randomly-appearing computer opponent. I have to admit that I am cheating myself out of the gameās natural progression by using the best DLC car that unlocks from the start in the remaster but I donāt 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. Itās 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 didnāt realize the game wanted me to blow into the DS microphone. Well, the Wii game doesnāt 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 brainās 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 Iām pointlessly pairing together with its shared-aesthetic sibling Raycrisis. Your shipās 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 bossā 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. Donāt know enough Japanese to use/navigate, but there are homebrew releases of a bit under 200 games I havenāt delved into. I got this with the intention of trying some out but never got around to it. I know this isnāt really a recommendation per se but itās 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 āreflect-em-upsā with a shield that deflects bullets and turns them into medals. I didnāt 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 Iām 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 couldnāt get it to work on my 2016-rig.
Seaman - when I got this game I got so frustrated at my Seamanās lack of response that I started screaming into the foam piece but didnāt realize you had to hold down the A button to talk, so Iām 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 Seamanās 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, thatās gonna be the version you want. There is a SNES version called āOn the Ballā in the West but I always thought of its rendition of the ost as too SNES-farty for me to enjoy. One thing I havenāt 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 werenāt 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 Yuriās Revenge - voting because I didnāt 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 Wiseās 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 doesnāt tidy up every loose end due to the unreliable narrator(s).
Katamari Damashi - because itās ace and has never been surpassed by a better take on the formula.
Shadow of the Colossus - looming large over each playstation console since the PS2, and somehow never gets old. Feels like this game is as much about fighting YOUR inner demons as it is barren of wildlife.
Valkyrie Profile - triAce nailed their formula with this, Motoi was just about to hit his stride, and it was a more focused jrpg that could only have been released before the PS2 made jrpgs become cinematic experiences, whereas VP feels like an arcade-take on the jrpg.
Split/Second - because they donāt make them like this anymore.
EDF5 - because it is the current EDF game.
Ikaruga - still rocks today, black or white, thereās no middleground.
Sonic and Allstars Transformed - SEGA condensed and killed Mariokart forever.
REZ - now in high-rezā¦ sorryā¦
Donkey Kong Country - 1h speedrunning long before we knew what speedrunning even was or meant. Genius who put that into the credits and made us try beating it.
Ace Combat Zero: Right time, right game, right mindset. A bit like VP, feels more focussed than other, more epic titles. Which i also love!
R-TYPE FINAL - letās see how 2 does, but 1 is good enough for now. A slow ride into sunset for a franchise that was just about dead anyway, brimming with love of fans and lore of the series/company.
Nier Automata - evokes the joy of moving around the environment even if you donāt have a goal in mind.
F-Zero GX - fast, faster, GX.
Chrono Cross - getting sentimental when thinking back to playing it.
Warriors Orochi 3 - dynasty trash x fanservice, but it is oh-so-entertaining
Baten Kaitos - not perfect, but had some great ideas when lots of jrpgs were converging to more of the same.
Forza Horizon 4 - less focused than the mainline Forza Motorsports-installments, and better for it. Those skies, sunrises and sunsets are a work of art.
Project Cars 2 - tracks, cars, got the balance spot on, hardly anything to hate. More cars would be great, but OK, most fields nowadays cannot sustain more than 30 competitiors anywayā¦
shortlist of games that didnāt make it/may make it in the future:
FFCC - soundtrack still bangs, letās see if the game can hold up decades later.
Remember me - would have to play it if it still is as fluent as i remember it being, or if someones remixed my memories (ho-ho-ho)
ENTHUSIA PROFESSIONAL RACING - clunky controls? time has moved on quite a lot.
Star Ocean 3,4,5 - cinematic and engaging as they are, are they best-material? idkā¦
Ace Combat 4,5,6,7 - zero just pips each of them.
Armored Core For Answer - remembering the epic stuff alone does not mean the whole game still rocks, and there were quite a few missions that were pretty mediocreā¦ would have to replay first
Alice: Madness Returns - this stands out as one of the few games that i think more fondly of the more time passes. Far from perfect, but an interesting take on platforming with pretty setpieces. Gotta replay before advancing on to the A-list.
Silent Hill 2
Yume Nikki
Mario 64
Deus Ex
Steambot Chronicles
Anodyne 2
Dynamite Headdy
Mischief Makers
Thief: The Dark Project/Thief Gold
Kentucky Route Zero
Umihara Kawase
Knytt Underground
Environmental Station Alpha
Stephenās Sausage Roll
Jumping Flash
Doom 1/Ultimate Doom
Resident Evil 4
Zelda: Majoraās Mask
Donkey Kong 94 (gameboy)
Pathologic
LSD: The Dream Emulator
Baba Is You
Cart Life
Riven
Tomba!
Incredible Crisis
UmJammer Lammy
Ribbit King
Iggyās Reckinā Balls
edit: i saw someone else mention Elevator Action Returns and Cameltry so iāll add those two here too
Lip - Clock Town expanded into a full game. Explicitly anti-capitalist.
