when you fall in love with a genre (it takes time?)

King of Posters
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Has that happened to you? It happened to me! It usually happens when I give a game/series/genre of games another try. Like I was totally not impressed by my first few forages into video game card games, specifically TCGs (CCGs?). Like playing Yu-Gi-Oh on a GBA emulator in 200X or the Pokemon Trading Card Game on a PSP in 201X. But last year I for some reason decided to play Elemental Monster Online Card Game (the reason actually being that it’s a Japanese-developed PS3 exclusive online-only game by friggin Hudson (I thought they were dead but seems like they are only as dead as Konami) that costs 1(as in one)$ and is sure to be delisted/lost forever when they finally turn off that one server they forgot to turn off in the basement (that’s actually were I assume most servers are running)).

And it fruggin wowed me like… wow! And maybe it’s not the most representative title in the genre, like it isn’t based on real cards (probably) and that’s why they could make it look so good, like there’s not a wall of tiny text and pixelated scanned images so the cards don’t look like shit on a screen like all those Yu-Gi-Oh cards did on my GBA(-emulator).

And then I played the Pokemon tradcardgame again and I did the tutorial this time around and it clicked. I love it now! What? I should’ve fallen in love with this games category decades ago, I love Simulation RPGs and board games (in video games) (and that reminds me to play more Culdcept and Itadaki Street).

And now I wanna check the Digimon TCG too. And there’s a Monster Rancher one! Suikoden? Capcom vs SNK!!!

Also, oh boy did I fall hard for Everybody’s Golf on the PS4. (I kinda like video golf but getting destroyed by a school friend borrowing my original GameBoy with (not-Mario, even though you pretty much play as a Mario) Golf stuck in it for a week may have scared me. Also maybe playing GBA (real-deal) Mario Golf with a non-functioning L-trigger may have frustrated me.)

Anyways I never did love the earlier Hot Shots games I tried, always found the representation of the green to be lacking and the characters either ugly (botchered US release) or bland (Japanese original) but I guess I never made it to the versus challengers and this time I persevered. Even though I wanted to give up after realizing that a PSFour game released in twothousandeighteen doesn’t even use the analog nubs! What an ineffective button layout I mumbled, what a bumbling fool I was though. Because it’s so good! Like if you switch the x button with the o button (another botching up that happens to this day during localization) it all makes sense. Camera up down / forward back mirrored on pad and face buttons, and then some digital precision timing with forward/backward spin more/less power all mapped intuitively.

And this game has loads of charm below the somewhat stuck-up first impression too. Those character bios reminded me of playing Tokyo Xtreme Racer / Shutokou Battle and those are the best memories. Thanks ClapHanz for making the first golf game I’ve seen the credits roll in.

Sure thing I promptly installed all the previous entries onto my PS3/PSP and will not be seen for a couple weeks probably.

So you know what happened to me. Has that happened to you maybe recently?

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I am so sorry, I forgot that I saw the credits roll in another golf game beforehand it was We Love Golf! on the Wii by Camelot (published by Capcom (you can play as Arthur and that attorney from Ace Attorney)). And that had a green display that even showed you the ball trajectory after landing (!) and oh my god did that spoil me. It also made the game way to easy despite motion controls, but I still enjoyed myself a lot so yeah maybe I always was secretly in love with videogame golf.

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i downloaded the PSVR demo of Everybody’s Golf a couple weeks ago. I got my camera set up to be able to see me swinging around like a fool. After looking at the front desk lady for a while, it lets you hit as many balls as you want out on the driving range. Then it lets you out on the course wow nature you slide up to the tee ready to launch it out over the horizon as your young and healthy caddie looks on encouragingly. As soon as you go to hit the ball it’s like “pay up dipshit” and you gotta respect that.

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I am like, always always on the lookout for a game that contains within it a world where everyone really likes a card game and plays it all the time and you are a character that does the same

the pokemon tcg videogame was the closest thing for me and I haven’t found anything as fun since

I bought a copy of millenium blades that I haven’t played with anyone yet because it is this but a board game

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For TCG type games, Culdcept on Xbox 360 was the only one to kind of snag me. An ex girlfriend introduced me to that game and I really enjoyed playing it with her. I did also eventually play Magic for a short while, with a different ex-girlfriend. And was kind of really into it. But it was mostly because she was into it. So, it was fun to do something like that, together.

As far as entire genres which have really caught me:

When I was a little boy, I loved beat-em ups. for NES and SNES, beat-em ups were the majority type of game which I would rent. Sort of interesting is that I didn’t really own any beat-em ups.

On Playstation, JRPGs really grabbed me. All because of Final Fantasy 7. I had played some of the older Final Fantasy games. But 7 is what got me and I wanted everything in the genre, after that. I played a lot of them and completed most which I played.

Jagged Alliance 2 on PC, got me into strategy RPGs. Its quite a bit different from the Japanese style of Ogre Battle and FF Tactics. But, I love those, too. And I still really like tactical RPGs, even though my general interest in regular JRPGs has diminished.

Gran Tuismo really got me into realistic racing games, for a long time. Rally, too. It was pretty interesting watching the industry respond to GT. And the games which tried to be as good in certain ways, and eventually, better. Like the first Forza was coming out right around the time of the second ever Penny Aracade Expo. Which I went to. So, having a sort of real connection to momentum like that, that’s probably a unique one in my life. Halo 2 was coming out, as well. and you could play it there (if you payed $10). But I was more interested in how Forza was gonna turn out.

I wish there were 1,000 games like Morrowind. Its strange because there are a fair amount of open world RPGs now, but most of them don’t make me feel like Morrowind. However, Breath of The Wild has a lot of Morrowind vibes. And Dragon’s Dogma has got some of it, too.

I think i’m on the verge of a Fighting Game period in my life. Recently, fighters are kind of what I’m thinking about the most.

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pretty similar to my situation

I think a lot of it was just wanting what I didn’t have? my cousins who lived in chicago always had the TMNT belt scrollers and then streets of rage and stuff and I never picked those up because i didn’t have an NES or a genesis

and then it took me a long time to get a PS2 so when I first played dynasty warriors 2 i was blown away

now it’s harder for me to get into whole genres because I tend to bounce off any game that doesn’t give me what I believe the platonic ideal of its genre to be. which is admittedly a very high standard and thus I don’t like many games anymore

I think my favorite genre love though was madness games played on custom SC and WC3 maps. the ones where units automatically spawned at your base and you would just have them all run out toward other bases and try to kill them in huge swarming battles

the best one of these was footmen frenzy because it actually had like, tactics

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performing my first 6-chain in Puyo felt better than nutting

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agreeing that hot shots giving up on the westernization gave it tremendous aesthetic appeal

the games that won me over to specific genres aren’t very interesting for having done so, but the experiences tied to them might be. I played Uncharted because the series was currently The Hot Thing and I had just got a PS3, but also I had never played a controller-based gunning game. It was weird as hell learning to aim, but I gradually became obsessed with my process of learning how to play a shooter even in the late stages of the game. When the scary monsters show up later on and you have to run and gun, I went from maybe knowing what I was doing to having to know what I was doing, and I think that was when I decided I liked it. I’m kind of veering into a different subject there, but that feeling of “oh I know what I’m doing now” was when the hooks dug into me.

I was an '89 kid so Pokemon existed at the perfect time to get me into JRPGs. I played Red, and Gold, and Ruby, and Ruby felt so oddly easy to me that I completely bounced off of JRPGs for years. It guess I had just figured out that number fights felt different than action games and that revelation made it all feel false. Eventually, Diamond came out and due to 1) the huge audio upgrade between GBA and DS, and 2) I guess the odd chance of my team build being just the right degree of viability that I oscillated between advantaged and disadvantaged in a way that felt like a very compelling narrative of its own, it managed to get me back into JRPGs in a very strong way. The champion fight had me get through by the skin of my teeth and as a result I now demand all JRPGs make me bleed.

fallout 3 is what gave me the opportunity to learn how FPSes work at all, after mostly being a meat target in counter strike for high school friends, but that’s not especially interesting for multiple reasons

I’m always hoping I’ll find the game that gets me into grand strategy/4x/etc, or fighting games, or STGs, or survival horror. Different genres elicit such different feelings in my brain that I’m obsessed with the idea that I’m waiting to unlock another part of me.

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Pre-PSX era I was all over every platformer and belt-scroller going, and despite owning Alone in the Dark 2 I never quite ‘got’ what is was to play this blend of puzzle-adventure until 1996 and Survival Horror became the mission statement for Resident Evil (and later, Silent Hill).

I was never much good at Street Fighter 2 in a competitive sense but the first Alpha (like ST) had a combo counter that gave actual, visual feedback for executing wicked sick combination attacks, all with that signature anime flair. It was not until SF4 where I took an active interest in professional players and the concepts surrounding high-level play…but perhaps not enough to ever attain the same level of expertise myself.

Obviously FFVII gave Europe a proper taste of what the fuss was over jRPGs that were previously only pictured in gaming magazines as things that would never be translated or, as I later learned, not released to the PAL market until many years later (again owing mostly to the S-E’s blockbuster hit). It was only until I encountered I-C and here that the notion of grinding and numbers-go-up began to sit poorly with me, and it was not until some years later of not completing FFXII and rejecting FFXIII that I would finally experience Shiren and the joys of constant, seemingly random failure and the occasional success. That these elements would bleed into things like Spelunky and Darkest Dungeon is probably why I continue to play videogames to this day.

And GOD HAND

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oh lord I’m so sorry

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I thought Total Annihilation was going to do this for me for RTS games but ultimately I’ve bounced off of every single one I’ve tried to play since.

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Total Annihilation did something right. Because, I hate RTS. But, I definitely played some Total Annihilation.

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