I think I am stuck in a time warp. Don't make fun, but to this day, my favorite video games are Chrono Trigger, Super Mario world, Donkey Kong, Secret of Mana and the early FF games. In fact, the last FF game I played was 9, which I thought was way better than 8.
Want to talk time warp? When I want to have some mindless fun, I fire up Lode Runner. Here was the original that I wasted HOURS on in high school, on the green-screen Apple ][e. Then there was the return: Still one of my all time favourites.
Please tell me someone else plays Dwarf Fortress. This game, if you get far enough, will change your mind about how complex video games can be. And it's the only ASCII game I've ever played that can actually lock up your computer due to all the processing going on in the background. Things to pique your interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress So yeah, I kinda like this game. Highly recommended.
You're not in a time warp. Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger rank in my top 3 all time games (with Metal Gear Solid rounding out the top 3). In fact, I purchased a Nintendo DS Lite just so I could have Final Fantasy VI advance and Chrono Trigger DS. If I were to go system by system, this is how my favorite games would look: NES: Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, Mario Bros. 3 SNES: Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid N64: Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, Star Fox 64 PSone: Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, Parasite Eve PS2: Final Fantasy X, Devil May Cry 3, Kingdom Hearts Nintendo DS: Chrono Trigger DS, Final Fantasy IV DS, Puzzle Quest Wii: Super Mario Galaxy, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Mario Kart Wii PS3 (still pending, but as of now): inFamous, Metal Gear Solid 4 (Demon's Souls is up there, but I've yet to complete it, so I will reserve judgment) If you haven't figured it out, I am an RPG junkie, but I do appreciate a great action game when I get to play one (see: inFamous). Also note the HUGE lack of FPS games, as I get motion sick if I play them for more than 15 minutes at a time, so I am never able to play them. I have a feeling that I would love games like BioShock, Call of Duty, and Halo (or, going back to Nintendo days, GoldenEye or Metroid Prime). But I am drunk and rambling, as I could do about video games for hours on end.
RPGs are generally worthless crap. No strategy or difficulty, lots of repetitive, mechanical grinding, and the hilariously stupid contradiction of a "game" (interactive) judged mostly on the basis of its "story" (passive, non-interactive). My two favorite games are Demon's Crest on the SNES and Guardian Heroes on the Sega Saturn. Those games were way, way ahead of their time. Focus- Any interesting strategy/puzzle games come out recently on any of the systems? I was loosely thinking of getting "Knights in the Nightmare" on the DS, but its JRPG elements scared me away.
What, no Dreamcast? Did anyone else here even have one? I remember my freshman year of high school, waiting for 9/9/99 so I could FINALLY play Sonic Adventure. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that the Dreamcast sucked. Crazy Taxi was fun for a few hours, as was Ready 2 Rumble. The first NFL 2K games that came out for Dreamcast weren't bad, Shenmue might be a classic, and there's definitely a fan base for Virtua Fighter games. Otherwise, the Dreamcast was $200 right down the shitter.
So the Xbox Live assholes playing Brutal Legend have figured out that disconnecting from a match doesn't affect your rank, and I've now had three people in a row disconnect just as I'm beating their stage into pulp. It's gotten bad enough that I think I'm going to set the multiplayer aside for a while until either the idiots have moved on to some new game or Double Fine makes disconnecting give you a loss. Really a shame. This is why we can't have nice things.
Isn't the "disconnect doesn't count as a loss" standard on a lot of games? It's definitely true for SF4, and was true for UFC 2009 before the patch. It's a difficult choice for the designer; giving players something they can abuse, or providing them protection in case of a malfunction. Oddly enough, the former seems to create fewer problems.
We've implemented a "3rd-strike-and-you're-out" system for our game whereby we give you 3 "freebies", but if you show you have a habit of disconnecting, we'll start treating it as an intentional disconnect.
It wouldn't be as bad if it didn't screw over the player who's winning. If an opposing disconnect didn't count as a loss, but still rewarded a win to the other player, I'd see no problem with it. Then if a player wants to abuse the system specifically to give himself fewer losses, fine. He's a jerkass, but whatever, at least the other player would get their win.
Well, in the meantime you can play FFT 1.3. The guy who made it is an asshole. Battle too hard? Well, you can't powerlevel, because the enemies all get good equipment and kill your ass even faster. It's so hard it's frustrating, but it's not frustrating because it's cheap; it's frustrating because it takes skill to beat it. Unfortunately, it takes a bit of trial and error to figure out how much leveling you can get away with. Another guy on that same forum created a patch that gets rid of all the Engrish in the game. I'm waiting for both of them to come together, but I don't know if that will ever happen. I would definitely second creating FFT 2, and not that pussy-ass shit they had for the GBA. Someone else mentioned Dwarf Fortress; I haven't played that, but I do like roguelikes. I've been playing NetHack for about two years, and I've beaten it exactly three times. 170 games, three wins. It's a really freaking hard game, and I haven't even tried SLASH 'EM yet. As someone posted on the Google Roguelikes newsgroup, "Normal games want you to win. Nethack doesn't care if you win or lose. Slash 'em wants you DEAD." Aside from FFT and NetHack, I think I'm going to go get Tropico 3, just to see if I can run my very own Caribbean socialist dictatorship.
On the topic of old-school hard games, has anyone played I Wanna Be The Guy? http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/ This game is supposed to be fucking impossible. Maybe the hardest game ever. I've never played it as it only runs on Windows, but I might give emulation a shot.
Caaaareful... Dreamcast bestowed us with Powerstone, Soul Calibur, Marvel Vs. Capcom 1 and 2, and most of the House of the Dead series. Yeah, it's only 4 titles but they've gone on to make millions even after Dreamcast rolled over the died. I always wondered why that system got beat so badly.
Because you could download all of the games, burn them, and play them with zero modification to the system, it was so easy... and awesome.
I've played it; it's actually pretty funny. It's one of those "cheap-frustrating" games, though. I do believe it runs well on Wine, if you're interested in playing it.
I'm currently in the middle of some time off and I thought I'd check out this Fallout 3 game everyone has been fellating for so long. I went to Gamestop and managed to find a used GOTY copy. I don't know why but I feel compelled to keep playing. Hours go by and I don't even know it. I don't think I've ever felt like I sucked so much at something until I started playing it. I've gotten killed no less than 50 times in the past 3 days. I'm in the middle of the Point Lookout stuff, and I think its a bit beyond my abilities at the moment because everything is kicking my ass. As long as we're on fav RPGs, I'll go with FF3 for SNES. It was the first I could remember with choose your own party in addition to a sweet storyline, and a killer soundtrack.
Since we're talking old school RPG's I'm noticing a distinct Nintendo slant, so I'm gonna have to go Sega for my favorite RPG's and bust out the the Phantasy Star series, easily some of the best 8 & 16-bit RPG goodness, if you've never had occasion to play them, grab an emulator and enjoy. Having 3-d dungeons in the 8-bit era was way ahead of it's time.
I'm gonna list old games too, in case you can find an emulator. Genesis: Shining Force 1 and 2-First team tactical game I played. Pretty simple and straightforward, but still awesome. Use 12 characters at a time, but each game had something like 30 characters in it, all different classes, etc. Super NES: Original Ogre Battle- not exactly the same, but between fights you created your units (each class had a set attack) and then moved them on a map to try to maneuver or brute force run through the computer Saturn: Shining Force 3 Mystara: Realms of Lore (called something else after a IP lawsuit from D+D) PS2: Suikoden 3. 3 Storylines, 103 characters. At one point you get your own town to build up. Front Mission 3- Mech based game Ring of Red- another mech based game. Not many current ones I can think of that were memorable.
The game is actually pretty easy if you play it on Medium or Hard mode, since there are save points every screen or two. I beat it in a couple of days. It's not particularly difficult unless you play it on Very Hard mode. Impossible Mode, which is more of a joke than anything, has no save points, and is indeed unbeatable. Also, how do people talk about Genesis, and miss out on Alien Soldier and Gunstar Heroes, probably the main two reasons to buy the console aside from Sonic? I also really liked Street Fighter 2 Super Turbo, Super Puzzle Fighter 2, and Killer Instinct, probably the only three games I played in all of high school. Really addictive, and hundreds of hours of fun thanks to being competitive multiplayer games, with both strategy and dexterity elements. Also, I'm a bit curious; what's the appeal of RPGs? I liked Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario when I was a kid, but I always though that the only market for all the rest of the titles (like FF whatever) were 13 year old Asian kids who found long, repetitive chores fun by their upbringing. What am I missing?