In an article about Death Cells on Kotaku:
I actually meant to make this topic a couple of weeks ago. What’s the video game-est video game?
My vote is on Super Hexagon for being pure vidgam and also a loud chaotic mess that’s both unintelligible and immediately, viscerally comprehensible.
But I’m curious how you would interpret the same question.
godhand or tower of druaga
everything I’ve heard about the yakuza series makes it sound like that. all those extra side missions that dive into other genres, and the fully included retro sega titles make it a four cheese pizza of a videogame
my kneejerk cynicism immediately makes me want to say assassin’s creed but in reality I just call those games metroidvanias for their glut of marketable #content.
The one with the most dumb bullshit that’s just about graceful enough with it
Pac-Man
Alternatively, SMB
this is a second vote for yakuza
hmm my first thoughts were
cave story
sonic, for blue skies
clickers, if you’re an asshole
breath of the wild for being all the things i thought i wanted from videogames as a kid
tetris, for being Perfect and Universal, this is basically the same answer as super hexagon but also maybe not
you could probably make an argument for earthbound
pong
dwarf fortress
luftrausers
that kotaku things sounds like they meant a game just having a bunch of things that are popular in 2017, like souls combat or crafting or whatever. not tetris like pure expressions of videogamery or whatnot.
probably shenmue
jumping flash
God Hand was the first thing that came to my mind.
In order to be video game-est do you need to be incredibly self aware or blissfully unaware of your video game-ness?
[quote=“Ayanami77Ivy, post:14, topic:4576, full:true”]In order to be video game-est do you need to be incredibly self aware or blissfully unaware of your video game-ness?
[/quote]
Then i’d nominate katamari (which incidentally also ticks other boxes mentioned here, e.g. the chaotic mess aspect), since it is very aware of its gaming-roots, also because of how it treats the collectibles/cousins/story-aspct typically found in games and, last but not least, how it manages to be japanese-quirky and yet so inviting for players that never played wakky-japanese-title-X before.
And it is fun btw…
So it seems like people have a few ways of defining this:
Expansively videogame-esque, i.e. Yakuza, Breath of the Wild
Perfectly mechanical, i.e. Super Hexagon, Tetris, Pac-Man, Pong, Luftrausers, Clickers
Quirky in a way that only video games can be, i.e. Jumping Flash, Katamari Damacy, God Hand, Shenmue, Earthbound, Cave Story
Something about optimistic platformers, i.e. Mario, Sonic.
Also there’s Mechanically Obscure, i.e. , Dwarf Fortress or Tower of Druaga
I think this categorization is interesting because some of these are in conflict, like Expansiveness and Perfectly Mechanical. Also, it’s notable that no RPGs have been mentioned so far! And indeed, all of these are real time, nothing turn-based here.
Anyway I don’t know what the point of this was but uh keep telling me the video game-est video game please
Wario Ware
Ultimately I feel like the actual winner of this prize can’t actually be a good videogame
It must be ashamed of itself
Anything strategy-esque is too close to board/tabletop to be Essentially Videogame.
no discussion like this is complete without asking ourselves if we would ask ourselves what is the bookest book, filmest film or paintingest painting and why/why not