Final Fantasy Tactics is the best videogame ever made. I’ve played through five times and I’m itching to start it up again in preparation for the GBA sequel.
And I want to second the earlier mention of Harvest Moon, although I’ve only played the PSX version and not the SNES one. I wouldn’t have expected this game to be fun at all, but I can remember few other games that grabbed me so much. I had to force myself to stop playing it, it was just eating up so much time. I wasn’t that impressed with the PS2 version of the game that came out recently; it just lost “something” that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But I am looking forward to the upcoming GBA version. It looks like they’re going back to the PSX one and making changes/additions.
The You Don’t Know Jack series should have revolutionized the industry; not only did it raise the bar for the quality of writing in videogames, but it had such a deceptively clever presentation – it broke out of the Established Rules of Computer Game Design and just asked, “How do we best present this experience to the player?”
Gitaroo-Man is my favorite of the rhythm games, and is everything Parappa the Rapper 2 should’ve been. Great music, appropriately wacky character designs, and a really interesting gameplay mechanic.
And I still don’t know why the Suikoden series hasn’t gotten as much attention as Final Fantasy, unless everybody in the US is just a big graphics whore. Suikoden 2 is my favorite computer RPG, and never loses sight of the fact that games can be serious, but should always be fun.
The Flipper ruled! It was so cool to finally have a game with swearing that totally fit the character. That said, it did have some problems. Some of the puzzles were weird as hell and I had to use a walkthrough to get through em. My girlfriend’s about to start playing it and I have warned her. I very nearly quit out of frustration when April went under the sea and there was that puzzle with the triangle-things and the ring-things, ye gods was it difficult. And I think you’re right about the charges, but it’s been a while since I played it.
That said, it’s still my favorite game ever and I’ll force it on anyone.
Grand Prix Legends, a racing sim of the 1967 Formula 1 season. That was back when the cars were still cars, not low-flying airplanes, and you had to drive them with a little finesse and whole lot of guts. It’s a great game, and still the best physics model anyone’s ever done. Plus it has the full north loop of the Nurburgring and the old course at Spa, the Lotus 49 with the first-year Cosworth DFV, along with all the other classic cars and tracks.
It’s spectacularly hard to play at first, you’re lucky to finish a lap without crashing. But once you get the hand of it, it’s amazing. You can just feel when you’re not fast enough, or if you push a little too hard and the car starts to get away from you, sometimes you can catch it. Certain corners at certain tracks feel great when you finally get them right.
Crystalis was among the best. My NES and SNES still work in great condition; I need to get my hands on Crystalis. I still am in love with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Battletoads, Captain Skyhawk, all for NES, and Galaga for Arcade. Now, all of these came out before my memory started logging stuff, but to my recollection most of them (except perhaps Galaga) got very little exposure, TMNT especially being little more than part of the TMNT sensation.
Star Raiders, dammit! People used to buy brand-new computers just to play that game! But any time there’s a list or discussion of classic games, it will always get ignored… :mad:
Honorary prize: Crush, Crumble, and Chomp!, the movie monster game. Fortunately I can play it via emulation and enjoy the cheesy goofiness…
Darth: Only if you need to do iffy things to make the emulation work. For example, many first-generation microcomputers (the Commodore-64, for example) need ROMs to provide the OS and BIOS. If those ROMs are still under copyright, you cannot legally download them unless you already own the machines to which they pertain. The same applies to more modern software OSes, like Windows 95.
However, not everything is still under lock and key. CP/M, for example, has been released into the public domain. You can download CP/M binaries for all the machines CP/M was ported to in addition to what remains of the sources (written in the near-dead language PL/M, unfortunately). If you have a hardware emulation of the target machine, or even a real computer of the correct type, you can download and boot the correct CP/M version and use it to run classic software.
Of course, you then have to check the copyright status of all the software you intend to run under emulation.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night from Konami
Megaman 3 and BN1 from Capcom.
Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and the Oracles games from Nintendo
And I second any mentions of Final Fantasy Tactics. In fact I can still remember my favorite custom generic character:
Vang
Level 72
Master Summoner, Black Mage, and Time Mage
Skills: Summoning, Black Magic, 1/2 casting time or 1/2 cost, depending
Mace of Zeus, Golden Hairpin, Robe of Lords
He may be slow, he may be weak, and he may be lopsided, but with 18-22 MA and a Knight/Time Mage upon which to target a few Zodiacs, he was simply a blast to play.
Undying was a stunningly beautiful game. Best graphics and art on a game to date when it came out. The guns fired a bit too slow for me :(. I also liked Outcast and Sanitarium. I still don’t think any of the Rainbow Six games get as much attention as they deserve but I suppose they aren’t for everyone.
LucasArts came out with a PC first person shooter called Outlaws that, if there was any justice in the world, would have introduced tight storytelling and engrossing atmosphere years before Half-Life.
It was a western. At the highest difficulty, you could take two shots max before you pushed up daisies. You had to manually reload your six-shooter (click “reload” for each of the six chambers) and other weapons (no cartridges back then). It had what I believe to be the first implementation of a rifle scope. And the soundtrack – my God, the soundtrack evoked every spaghetti western you’ve ever seen. It was magnificent.
There was a level in a box canyon, where you progress along the canyon floor. Baddies are hidden up in the cliffs, so far away that you can barely see them. You have to pick them off with your long rifle. That level just made you feel just like Clint Eastwood. Amazing stuff.
And yet it didn’t sell well. It went quickly to the bargain bin. Tragic, really.
A more recent example: Freedom Force, the first game to break the “superhero jinx,” was a heck of a lot of fun (if a bit short). But it went to the bargain bin in record time. You can still nab it on cheap – highly recommended.
I understand that Thief 1 and 2 sold reasonably well, but not well enough to rescue Looking Glass Studios from unrelated financial dire straits. RIP Looking Glass, we hardly knew ye.
Heh, the first thing I thought of was Earthbound, but since it’s already been mentioned (several times), how about…
Final Fantasy V!!! This is the one that never came out in the U.S., until recently when it was bundled with FFIV for Playstation. Although graphically similar to FFIV/VI, it had a completely unique “job” system where you could make any of your characters a fighter, mage, thief, geomancer, chemist, etc…similar to FF Tactics, so they tell me. It also had a cool story and GREAT music (Gilgamesh’s Theme rox!!!) Easily the best of the early FF games, IMO.
Oh, and there’s this little obscure game called The Sims…heh.
Nobody ever believes me that this one is fun, and then they play it. Eventually I have to kick them out and send them home.
Freespace 2 is my favorite game ever. I replay it every six months or so. I want more space combat sims, dammit. I would do terrible things to get an updated version of Tie Fighter that used the latest in PC graphics.
For my entry, I wasted way too much time playing Lunatic Fringe, which was actually a playable After Dark screensaver. That was a great game.
Exactly. It is such a great game, plus the graphics were astounding for the time. Then there’s the multiple paths for each course and the excellent Beetle Battle. Love that game.
I’d say the various incarnations of Angband, now known as TOME - Troubles of Middle Earth. It’s the game me and my housemate (a pro-Q3 player) played the most in the past 2 years. It’s a graphics based RPG and is a game that requires a lot of thought to play, not just quick reactions/good aim. Also, it’s one of the rare games whereif your character dies, it’s dead. No reload just before the difficult bit. You’re dead, start again.
Availible as a free download
