What game did you HAVE to have?

The Game Room
1

What the title says- what video/computer game made you salivate the most before it was launched?

Did it live up to your expectations?

For me, it was Killer Instinct. I was really, really into everything Nintendo back then, and I’d been reading/hearing a lot about the upcoming next-gen system codenamed “Project Reality” (which turned out to be the N64), and its graphical capabilities and hyper-advanced controller and so on. One of the first titles announced was KI, which was supposed to be teh awesomest fighting game ever. I didn’t even like fighting games, but after seeing screenshots of the game suddenly I had a hankering to like one.

Then one day a KI arcade machine appeared in the local bowling alley. I begged my mother for money to play it. I was prepared to beg strangers for money to play it.

Of course, I didn’t have the slightest idea how to pull off any of the moves. Didn’t matter. I had already determined that Spinal was my character (skinny and mindless, just like me - also, dressed like a pirate!), and by the end of my session I knew how to do his “shield buster” move, and I could even string together short combos.

When I ran out of money I just stood in front of the game and watched. I loved everything about it- even the cheesy synth-rock theme music (which is one of my cellphone ring tones).

Then the home version finally came out - on the SNES! I bought it the day it came out- the first time I’d stood in front of a shop waiting for it to open. I couldn’t wait to get home. The cartridge was black - how cool! And it came with a soundtrack CD, Killer Cuts!

It was the best day ever. It didn’t really bother me that much when it turned out that a) the graphics weren’t nearly as good as the arcade version, and b) the game wasn’t any deeper than *Street Fighter II * or Mortal Kombat. Between the presentation and my own hyping of the game, I was convinced for years that it was the Greatest Game Ever.

2

Pool of Radiance: Return to Myth Drannor

You have to understand that computer RPG-lovers only get maybe 4 games a year, and odds are one will be a hideous unfinished mess and one will just plain suck. So, every release is a very, very much beloved and anticipated. And frankly, JRPG’s just don’t cut it. They are thinly disguised picture books filled with girls pretending to be men (Sephiroth, Squall, Vaan, etc.) and usually have atrocious gameplay.

And this particular game had gotten some really friendly previews. Oh, how I learned that the game magazines are basically filthy, filthy liars.

…

The game was an abomination unto man.

…

In short: it was slow, buggy, had terrible graphics, blatantly cheated, fixed the rules in its favor, didn’t reward the player properly, and oh yeah… there was one more thing…

It had a nasty habit of deleting your harddrive when you uninstalled it. Frankly, every uidiot who made this shoudl have been slowly tortured to death as a warning to all other men.

3

Street Fighter II Turbo for the SNES is the last game I remember being so hyped for that I had to have it on the first day it came out. Definitely lived up to expectations!

For the most part, I don’t buy games when they’re brand new. I like to wait a few months/years until I can get the game new for like $20. I go through games very slowly so it’s not like I need a new one every week to keep me occupied. In fact I still have several GameCube and PS2 games still in the shrinkwrap that I just haven’t gotten around to yet.

However, lately I’m feeling the hype for Final Fantasy XIII in a major way. Depending on whether a sufficiently attractive PS3 SKU has been released by that time, it’s looking like a possible first-day buy and system seller for me.

4

Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

I played Sonic 1 and 2 to death. They were, and remain, two of my favorite video games ever. When Sonic 3 was announced, I became obsessed. I had an issue of Electronic Games with a big Sonic 3 feature, and I must have read that thing a million times.

When the game came out (February 2nd, a mere two days after my birthday), I was frantic to get home from school, since my mom had been wonderful enough to pick the game up that afternoon with my birthday money.

And it was glorious. I ultimately wound up disappoitned, since Sonic 3 is incredibly easy and quite a short game, though it has amazing graphics and music. I still poured hours upon hours into the thing. And, of course, Sonic & Knuckles was when everything finally made sense.

A close runner-up would be Mortal Kombat 2. Back when gaming magazines were the only real way of learning about upcoming releases, I gathered every single scrap of info about MK2 that I could. The first time I saw it in an arcade, I was utterly mesmerized. The presence that game had, with its booming sound in an already-noisy arcade, is something that can’t be replicated today. I became equally obsessed with the home version of the game.

5

“Black & White”

I read all the reviews, it sounded SO COOL. But my computer at the time would not run it. It was pretty old, had a crappy video card, etc. I actually bought a new computer, justifying that I absolutely had to have a new computer because mine was old. In reality, it ran everything just fine, except Black & White.

So I ordered the new computer, but it was going to take a while to ship. I was in “I neeeeeeed a game” mode pretty bad, so I stopped by the local GameStop to see what they had. Hmmm… “Everquest”, $10. Runs fine on my old computer. OK, I’ll try that.

I think I maybe played Black & White for an hour, once I got my new computer. Everquest, on the other hand…

6

Really showing my age here:
Pac-man for the Atari, and No.

7

I bought a PS1 specifically for Final Fantasy VII and it was worth every penny.

8

Earthbound. I remember buying it the day it came out, even though it was like $80. It came complete with the strategy guide with the scratch & sniff boss monster cards. Definitely lived up to my expectations.

9

“Supreme Commander” for the PC. I bought a new PC largely to play it.

I got an Xbox pretty much just for “SSX Tricky.”

10

The World of Warcraft expansion was the only game I went to a midnight release for.

11

oh noooooooooo…

Biggest disappointment of all time. Wasn’t that the version where they didnt have the processing power to draw more than one ghost at a time?

12

Ones that were as good as I’d hoped:

Warcraft III (Have yet to finish, but mostly because of computer issues.)
Every Final Fantasy from IX forward (I was willing to, and in fact, had to, wait for VII & VIII, and I discovered/played I, IV/II and VI/III all at the same time. I’m going to have to wait for XIII, too. whimper)
Soul Calibur III.
We <3 Katamari

Ones that weren’t:

Robotech: Battlecry - I do like the game a lot, but it gets frustratingly hard at a disgustingly early level. (Option of two missions, neither of which I can beat. sigh) I wish I could find a cheat to let me skip them, but all the cheats I can find are for unlockables.
Super Mario Brothers III - Not a bad time waster, but…not really anything more than that.

13

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

… Yes, yes, a thousand times YES.

14

This is going back awhile, but “Lunar: Eternal Blue.” I absolutely loved the original Lunar (The Silver Star) on the Sega CD, and when I heard there was a sequel, I preordered it months in advance (to ensure that I would get the Ghaleon “punching-nun” style puppet that was given away as a premium with preorders).

It totally lived up to my expectations, too. I still have a soft spot for the first one, but L: EB was in some ways even better (the translations were better and funnier, and Ghaleon had a bigger role to play).

More recently, the World of Warcraft Burning Crusade expansion was high on my “must have immediately!” list (as is the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King).

15

Spore.

I’ll check back later this year (I hope!) on whether it’s any good or not.

16

I didn’t like the second game as much as the first, but that punching puppet cannot be beat.

17

I’m another one who’ll be showing his age. And then his lifelong love with the genre. I’ve actually salivated over the launches of consoles and arcade games.

Pre-programmable console: Video Pinball. I’d played Pong. And Pong Doubles. And Quadrapong. And Foozpong. And “Table Tennis” and “Squash” and “Hockey” and “Soccer” and every other name one could think of for Pong… and this (as well as the Coleco Telstar Arcade, Telstar Combat and Atari Stunt Cycle) seemed like so much more. I have them now and they were quite worth it. Went beyond expectations.

Atari 2600: Snoopy and the Red Baron, Swordquest: Airworld. The first got released-- melding my fascinations with Snoopy and video games, though being a wee bit dull to actually meet my expectations-- but the second was never released despite having its three prequels hit store shelves. I’m still waiting.

Atari 7800: Xevious. Lived up to expectations. Today, I play Xevious and think “meh,” but it held my fancy for quite a while… I think it was the novelty of having a mysterious landscape.

Computers in general: Infocom games. I didn’t get all of them at introduction, but I was close. It’ll sound bad, but most barely met expectations-- many disappointed-- but that was because the games were generally of such high quality, with sumptuous packaging, great writing, and intelligent parsers. In other words, i expected much more out of an Infocom game than I did most others… so one that didn’t meet expectations was often still more fun than competitors. I probably salivated most over the Adams games-- HGTTG and Bureaucracy-- and a couple of others, like Nord and Bert, Leather Goddesses, and Trinity. Those quite satisfied. (Similarly, Epyx “Games” series, and Lucasfilm SCUMM games. Those were so good, that one that merely met expectations would be above others in the same categories.) Scott Adams’ Adventure International releases of the Marvel Questprobe series were major disappointments. I wanted to feel like I was Spider-Man or whomever, but the games were way too linear.

Commodore 64/128: Oddly enough, my first-day “must haves” were the First Star release of Superman, Accolade/Avantage’s Deceptor, and Epyx’s Fast Load Cartridge. Met, exceeded, met expectations, respectively. Fast Load was later shoved aside by the wonderful Cinemaware Warp Speed, which worked with the 128 mode.

NES: Super Mario Bros. Completely met expectations-- I was a big fan of the Vs. Unisystem arcade version of SMB, so having a pretty much equivalent version at home was wonderful. (OTOH, Duck Hunt was a disappointment, since you couldn’t shoot the dog like you could in the arcade.) Later must-haves: Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode (met), Cobra Command (disappointed-- I only knew the laserdisc arcade game, and somehow expected that instead of the lame side-scroller). Ikari Warriors (exceeded, once I got the continue cheat).

SMS: Zillion (originally disappointed, then met): there was a bit of depth to Zillion I didn’t appreciate at first. Double Dragon (met): I got this simply because my NES-only friend wanted to play 2-player, which could not be done on the NES version. Turned out to be pretty good.

TG-16: Ys Books I & II: (exceeded) overhead action RPG, more strategic than Zelda, with absolutely gorgeous music and cinemas. Valis II (disappointed) I kind of expected something fun with Dirty Pair-like cinemas… and I got still-screen anime drawings and a crappy platformer.

GameBoy: Tetris (met). Yeah, it came packed with the system, but the combination of portability + Tetris appealed to me, so I got this on release day.

SNES: StarFox (exceeded). 3D realtime graphics had been a fascination since the early 80s, playing with games like FS-1 on the Apple, FS2 on the C64, Cholo, Elite, and Arctic Fox on various systems… so this was right up my alley. Shame that 3D polygons would become cliche…

Saturn: Sega Ages (disappointed). Lackluster Working Designs presentation, frills-free presentations of just 3 Sega arcade games… at a time when other classic collections were offering 6-30 games apiece.

PS1: Working Designs collections-- Lunar series, Arc the Lad. Exceeded… on packaging alone. The Lunar games play just dandy, Arc the Lad is a little dated… but the packaging of these games is so luxe and gadget-filled. Beautiful stuff.

Dreamcast: Seaman (disappointed): the vaunted voice recognition was really hit or miss, and it felt like I was playing a more demanding version of a Tamagotchi… though I was freaked out (and very impressed) when my Seaman said he liked the Broad Ripple area when he found out I lived in Indianapolis…

18

At least YOUR Robotech showed up. I waited six years for Crystal Dreams to come out, until eventually I read that Gametek had gone belly-up.

The game only survives as a pretty much unplayable ROM, AFAIK.

19

I’ve been waiting sooooo long for GTA:IV. I don’t normally get excited about games, but Grand Theft Auto is an exception.

Just seven weeks and a day to go!

20

Sid Meier’s Pirates. Hell, they could have just made the original, bad graphics and all, playable on WinXP and I would have been ecstatic.