NOW YOU'RE POLLING WITH POWER. SUPER POWER. Console Poll, vol. 2 - 4th Generation RESULTS

i definitely remember being amazed by how the mortal kombat characters looked just like real life. now i feel somewhat less amazed.

besides a couple of others that will certainly show up micro machines (well, the second one) was my favourite racing game of this era, and maybe the most fun multiplayer of all of them.

i want to say mortal kombat never ever spoke to me as much as street fighter - it was just uglier, and SO much stiffer in terms of control and animation.

although i said upthread that MKII deserved to place better tahn it did, this is otm. MKII is all about the fatalities, basically. the fighting itself was noticeably worse than SFII even when it was first released, and time has not treated it well. all the characters have the exact same speed, same jumping height and distance, everything. you're playing different versions of the same character, with different special moves and fatalities. SFII, of course, had a completely different feel depending on who you were playing as, not even taking special moves into account. still, MKII was such an important part of that era, and it deserves to place a little higher than it did.

not sure i ever played mk2 and i voted for 3, is 3 considered inferior?

3 had a weird lack of focus, MKII had that nice "Big Trouble in Little China" feeling to the aesthetic whereas 3 added cyborgs and Paul Blart mall cop.

MKII was a big one for me. i liked the first game enough to get the SNES version but MKII i remember knowing the release date and asking walmart to hold it for me. maybe the fighting game mechanics were sub-SF2 but to me it was a rich, deep game with a million secrets and little tricks. that they actually included "Friendship" and "Babality" options was kind of amazing at the time -- it was like a playground rumor come true.

TMNTIV is really something else. there's not much to the game, and you are sort of fighting one type of bad guy (foot clan soldier) throughout the entire game. and yet the presentation holds it all together. the music, the graphics, that neat mechanic where you fling your opponent forwards into the screen. i rented this game and beat it several times before bringing it back and then buying it anyways the next week. it was a hell of a lot of fun!

Tetris Attack, they need to remake that for phones

o wait i didn't vote for any mortal kombat. sorry mk, needed to make sure that sparkster gets the top 3 placing it deserves

many xps but EVO was the best
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv6FHOYf-Sk

wistful feeling of having missed out following these results. i guess i was just playing sensi soccer and football manager constantly on the amiga at this point, probably civ games. looking at the box art is terrific tho, totally transports me back to having to wait months to get a game, going into the shop every week and looking at the back of the box, expectations spiralling out of control. sort of similar now in a way, many of these i think i want to grab on an emulator but inevitably will disappoint.

Gonna post a little different today, since I have a lot to do not at the computer I'm going to to a little "sprint" every hour or so of like 8 things in rapid successiun.

http://i.imgur.com/LMzTg6y.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/RmUZu1a.jpg
47 - Shining Force 2 - 64 points / 2 Votes

oh man slow down on these if you're under any pressure at all! i for one won't even have a chance to respond to anything more til the end of the day so less of a deluge works fine on the reader's end too. just sayin'! i know i post something like this on every poll and i'm probably in the minority.

http://i.imgur.com/ueYupJN.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/1arJ6ac.jpg
46 - Harvest Moon - 64 points / 5 Votes

nah it's just that later today I'll need to run some errands so it'll get a little clustery

^also this game is for "city kids of all ages" lol

http://i.imgur.com/g4OLo2h.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/30KgQZq.jpg
45 - Revenge of Shinobi - 66 points / 2 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/OrWXEGb.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/FC0q8CB.jpg
42 - Super Street Fighter II + Turbo - 67 points / 3 Votes

i didn't play Harvest Moon til emu days. which, given its VERY late release on the SNES (1997 in north america!), isn't actually such a long gap - maybe two or three years! anyway, i gave it a vote as i remember sinking a surprising amount of time into what was really a fairly pointless time-waster. the aesthetic is very soothing, and as many, many facebook-era games have discovered, there is a really addictive satisfaction in watching your little farm gradually grow more, and more, and more productive.

in that sense it's really descended from, idk, simcity or something like that. few pre-digital experiences scratch exactly this same itch. maybe like collecting baseball cards or something. when i began, this binder was all empty plastic sleeves, but now, look! and tomorrow, more! more! model train sets and things like that also involve boundless imagination of what will soon be filling out the landscape, though there you're engaged much more creatively in what will happen. anyway it's an important genre, for better or worse, and at least this one makes it all kind of cute and sweet. glancing at wikipedia it seems there was a lot of the game i never really saw - "after an earthquake or lightning strike, for example, the player can meet the "Harvest Sprites" who live in tunnels under the farm." wow!

http://i.imgur.com/7W87jHO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/DIgvIfm.jpg
42 - Flashback - 67 points / 3 Votes

for harvest moon fans, stardew valley just got a new update this week.

played super street fighter ii a bit in the arcades - basically just enough to check out the new characters, really. it was a full two years past the first game's release and while it was a classic the whole thing was wearing a little thin for me. never played any of the later ones more than once, though i was glad they kept the cartoon 2D style alive. had there been one of that style on the N64 i would have been super interested (and frankly i bet it would have helped that system a lot but that's hindsight).

tried to play flashback during the voting for this poll and could barely get past the first screen. maybe i was missing something but the control scheme seemed REALLY sluggish and non-intuitive.

ah the memories brought back by that shinobi box art make me wish i'd voted for it. i don't think i ever got very far though - was it very difficult or was i just very bad?

and v nice re flashback though again i don't think i ever got past that 'death tower' stage. i am probably just very bad

like c'mon guys prince of persia already solved the basic mechanics of this genre years ago, just do that. it felt like all the bad no-name platformers for the NES where you're like, man, couldn't they just reverse-engineer the control/movement from super mario bros.?

http://i.imgur.com/76VtIY6.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/N3roL6P.jpg
42 - Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium - 67 points / 3 Votes

iirc yes flashback's controls are quite rough, a lot of emphasis on being pixel perfect for things that seem like they should be simple

http://i.imgur.com/LtcSRRZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Dt1GXon.jpg
41 - Breath of Fire - 69 points / 3 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/3iwBPOS.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/53JRc0g.jpg
40 - Streets of Rage II - 70 points / 3 Votes

NOW YOU'RE PLAYING WITH FIRE. SUPER FIRE.

damn that blurb is violent

love the back of the BoF box. one dinky screenshot, set inside what was already by then a fairly old-fashioned-looking TV, then a semi-liefeldian drawing of like a lion man. amazing it sold any copies at all.

as for SoR2 yeah wow, what a blurb. also i don't remember fighting baseball bat guys with DON'T WALK signs for heads, but that would have certainly made for a fun game.

http://i.imgur.com/1r0g39r.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KmuZ17i.jpg
38 - SimCity - 70 points / 4 Votes

Amazing game. I think people are still trying to find a foolproof no-cheat way to get to 999,999 population.

http://i.imgur.com/ryvPHFr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/31zlIoV.jpg
38 - Gunstar Heroes - 70 points / 4 Votes

i guess i never read the sim city box because i remember being amazed and horrified when bowser turned up to destroy my precious city

http://i.imgur.com/y2gY8qM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/dYnCwuo.jpg
37 - NBA Jam Tournament Edition - 77 points / 5 Votes

ah the memories brought back by that shinobi box art make me wish i'd voted for it. i don't think i ever got very far though - was it very difficult or was i just very bad?

it's tough, definitely requires some memorization. there is an infinite shirukens cheat that is a big help. you go to the menu, dial down the number to 00, and wait 10-15 seconds until it changes to an infinity symbol. this is extra helpful bc of the spinning attack you can do if you attack after double jumping, you throw a half dozen in a semi-circle, which is a really good strategy particularly for bosses.

Revenge of Shinobi really is something else. the music of course is insanely cool. the levels are really crazy. i have a soft spot for the sort of impossible techno-fortresses these games specialize in from time to time. there is a great and very challenging level where you are running alongside a highway and have to jump on and off of it (only red cars hit you). while you are doing this there are nuns that walk into frame, throw off their habits to reveal they are ninjas, and attack you. so so cool.

last but not least are the many IP-infringing bosses in this game, from Spider-Man to The Terminator. this game is schoolyard rumors come to life. at one point you face off against Godzilla.

Phantasy Star IV was really well done imo and i prefer it to any other 16-bit RPG outside of FFVI. really love the more anime style of it all, robot with cat ears and all.

Gunstar Heroes is just non-stop WTF but it can get extremely challenging. i remember getting stuck on the dice rolling level and just feeling like i was in hell. great two-player game! reason enough to check out anything else Treasure ever made.

Gonna post a couple more and then go out to take care of errands, the second half will be like an hour or two later

http://i.imgur.com/M2pIg3g.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/DfqowIn.jpg
36 - Super Mario All-Stars - 78 points / 3 Votes

^obviously unimaginably classic but it didn't feel right to be voting for a compilation of previous generation games (nicely touched up tho they may be)

http://i.imgur.com/XB3DHJX.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/DLxOoQg.jpg
35 - Rock n Roll Racing - 79 points / 4 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/9rxMPL2.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/GWdkqJ7.jpg
34 - Crusader of Centy (aka Soleil) - 80 points / 2 First-place votes / 2 Votes

^Had to double-check this one... two first-place votes, zero other votes. some people love this! and some people like me had never heard of it!

http://i.imgur.com/pyqxm3X.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/pyqxm3X.jpg
33 - Langrisser II - 81 points / 3 Votes

hmm

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/langrisser/langrisser2-md.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/rU4qDwG.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/iyjOfsK.jpg
32 - Earthworm Jim - 86 points / 6 Votes

Ok break time! To be continued in a couple of hours.

i'm sorry i didn't vote in this! my few attempts at a ballot were pretty pathetic and i didn't wanna do what i did in the NES poll and vote for a bunch of PC games whose ports i hadn't played. kept telling myself i'd brush up via emus but never did :(

just wanna say contra 3 is a great co-op experience and has a surprising variety of levels, some of which (crawling around in zelda-style single-plane movement clinging to the superstructure of a skyscraper?) i almost feel like i must have made up

def wanna hear from the crusader of centy crew

thought at first that was orig street fighter 2 at 42 and was like wtf even i know that's wrong

harvest moon
- only played this in the emulator days. i think i remember considering renting it but the idea of a farming simulator just seemed awful. turns out the game is very, very addicting, and it made my top 10. it still holds up, too! the ps4 release of stardew valley is the most anticipated release of the season for me, i can't wait.

super street fighter II
- which new character was your favorite: dee jay, cammy, t. hawk, or fei-long?? i'm guessing none of them were, which is why this was a somewhat disappointing release for me at the time despite it refining what were already excellent mechanics. i guess a lot of people consider SSFIITurbo to be the definitive street fighter of the era (like people who are really into competitive fighting games and can pull off enormous combos at will, i mean) because of that, but i was more of a Top 20 Player on my Block kind of kid, so i was happy just sticking with regular ol' turbo.

flashback
- the controls were awful, but at the time i remember thinking they were really realistic, both in terms of animation and the feeling of real weight and momentum. mario had a great feeling of weight/momentum as well, but it was much more videogamey and floaty (and AWESOME). flashback felt like you were put in the shoes of a dude with below-average athleticism, thrown into a bizarre situation. despite renting it a few times, i never got very far at all. i suck at adventure puzzle games in general though so ymmv.

breath of fire
- i really need to play this. or was it a sequel that everyone loves? i'll wait til the final rundown to make a decision, but i've never played any of them.

simcity2000
- so classic. and surprisingly playable for a console port! bonus contemporaneous PC gamer review scan: http://dl.pcgamer.com/pcgarchive/SimCity2000.jpg

NBA Jam T.E.
- i feel like i spent many, many hours with this game, but it didn't really leave any lasting effect on me other than knowing all the announcer slogans by heart. it was fun! was it a dream?

super mario allstars
- like merseydeux said, this is obviously an amazing collection, and they did add important useful things (like being able to save), but i didn't feel right voting for NES-era games. i really need to go back and beat all the lost levels, i'm not sure i ever did!

rock n roll racing
- i haven't played this! it's definitely on my list. paranoid! highway star! born to be wild (my first ever memory as a human being)! bad to the bone...god i fucking hate that song. i'll give it a shot!

earthworm jim
- this game (and the sequel) was immensely enjoyable when it was released, but like battletoads, i just suck way too bad it these days. i miss my young adult motor skills, they were great there for a while.

actionbutton review really making secret of evermore sound like some sort of grail

what the hell is Crusader of Centy

Rock'n'Roll Racing is THE shit. Let the carnage begin!