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

TOO LOW

i mean, i didn't vote for it either i guess, lol, but come on.

i vividly remember my dad calling me into the living room for a very awkward chat about how the game i wanted for xmas was rated Mature and i was 10

I only played this game for maybe ten minutes of my life for the first year it was out, but that doesn't mean it wasn't one of the most important games in my young life. i owned at least 3 magazines that dedicated their cover stories to MKII, a game I was not allowed to play. One of the mags, Tips & Tricks, even had frame-by-frame recreations of the finishers for every character (this was like a 22-page article!) with the codes to do them. I read and looked at tihs obsessively. Some kids had porn. I had game rags.

xp lol basically same!

if i was honest i probably shd've found a spot for MK but i don't really know which ones i've played on what system and i've never been able to pull off finishes without cheats enabled because i'm Not That Kind of Gamer so i left it off in the end. i really appreciate the whole series's gonzo-ness tho

(i've gone through half of the images for the rest of the thread and haven't found another fuckup, so i think the final fantasy III/final fight snafu is an isolated incident (spoiler alert: FFIII places in this poll))

fond memories printing out movelists on our loud dot matrix printer.

i loved how many secrets and bonus things they put into MKII. ofc "Toasty!" was a huge middle school in-joke at the time.

http://i.imgur.com/fbmNA8h.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/22E1Yj4.jpg
74 - On the Ball (a.k.a. Cameltry) - 40 points / 1 First-place vote / 1 Vote

(same game, two regions covers since we could not find a back cover for on the ball!)

left field

http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/9/8/9/50989_back.jpg

admittedly not a v. revealing back cover

well then

xpost On the Ball

this was my vote. i think this game sold somewhere between 30-45 copies. it is not the #1 game of the era, but it belongs in the top 100 so i threw it as many points as possible.

the ball is the center of the screen, and you rotate the screen around it as gravity constantly pulls it toward the bottom of the screen (sort of like a labyrinth-style wood and metal ball maze in real life, held sideways). the music is intense, the timer for each level set to promote maximum anxiety, and it makes people some people physically nauseous even to watch (although, similar to a crazy driver, if you're in the driver's seat it's not as nauseating).

it's actually a really fucking cool game. i wish more people would try it.

oh sweet, thanks for finding the back cover NV - i couldn't find it after 5 minutes of searching and had to move on

it sounds way more intense than the low quality screenshots are able to convey, will try and emulate it at some point

http://i.imgur.com/rUmxgF7.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/rO25EQe.jpg
72 - Final Fantasy IV (a.k.a. Final Fantasy II) - 42 points / 2 Votes

my top 5 were all RPGs of some stripe and i didn't vote for a single FF game in the end. that was probably a mistake but i didn't play any of them at the time iirc. VII was my introduction and also what put me off the franchise for ages, i've played quite a few of the 4th gen games on emulation in the last few years but never fallen deep in love with any of them. somehow they're too samey or too vanilla for me.

i should probably have voted for final fight but i can't quite disentangle my memories of it from those streets of rage 2 so i decided not to, sorry big guy

http://i.imgur.com/mKu4ZQ7.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/fM861yB.jpg
72 - Nobunaga's Ambition - 42 points / 2 Votes

xp. would've voted final fight but i primarily played the arcade version (inveruglas caravan park, loch lomond).

http://i.imgur.com/339uB4l.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wsdDMYW.jpg
69 - Castlevania: Bloodlines (a.k.a. Castlevania: The New Generation) - 43 points / 2 Votes

just realised i was an actual adult before any of these games were released, explains a lot about my foibles and omissions i guess, synapses already hardening

i have no clue how the top 20 will go. i kind of assumed FFII would be in there. maybe others were like me and thought one FF game (III) on the ballot was enough, but FFII is an excellent game as well

http://i.imgur.com/bbVLG4O.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/tZjHN80.jpg
69 - Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen - 43 points / 2 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/8DunJXl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vEabLKb.jpg
69 - Wonder Boy V: Monster World III (a.k.a. Wonder Boy in Monster World) - 43 points / 2 Votes

i still have to play ogre battle. i've played gba tactics ogre, and the psp remake of the snes tactics ogre, but never the progenitor.

http://i.imgur.com/l9W7ahl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/zEtHfKh.jpg
68 - Cannon Fodder - 43 points / 3 Votes

Wow MKII is very much too mow! This game is a classic. Played the shit out of it at home and in bars.

Cannon Fodder is a great game but I had it on PC, didn't vote for this version.

http://i.imgur.com/E6u9Y8p.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/yoa74yl.jpg
66 - ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkatron - 44 points / 2 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/877qymn.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/EPykmcm.jpg
66 - UN Squadron - 44 points / 2 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/tm2tYSU.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/RnthEUj.jpg
65 - Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins - 44 points / 1 First-place vote / 2 Votes

Lots of games I've never played so far.

don't think i've heard of un squadron, looks fun. wonder what went wrong with the first three evil projects

UN Squadron is my fave shmup of the generation and one of my faves of all time. I actually bought it on eBay when I started collecting my "dream collection" of snes games.

and 6 golden coins is amazing! such a great soundtrack (SML and SML2 both kill it) and introduces a hat made of bunny ears, which is fantastic.

in my mind super mario land 2 is the superior game to the first one (and one of the best in the series overall) but somehow just doesn't quite attain the aura of classicness that the first has

Yeah never heard of UN Squadron either, same for Rings of Power.

Voted for Toe Jam & Earl 2, pretty cool mash-up of genres including little rhythm game interludes, music is slap bass heaven. love Cannon Fodder and Wonder Boy but mostly on different machines i guess. threw Cannon Fodder a vote anyway because it's sooooo good but surely designed to be played with a mouse for maximum efficiency.

WOW. I was just looknig through the SML2 soundtrack for a specific song, but I found a different song... that gets stuck in my head ALL THE TIME... and I had no idea where it was from!

How in the world was Castlevania Bloodlines rated GA while Panic on Funkotron got a T? Pervasive Rap Content?

don't understand the rating system but seem to remember there may have been edgy fart-related humour in PoF?

http://i.imgur.com/otuKXj1.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/tjKsdvi.jpg
64 - E.V.O. The Search for Eden - 45 points / 2 Votes

love the cover of final fight. mayor mike haggar is a sensitive man. i'd vote for him.

Antoher stone-cold classic but unfortunately impossible to find cheap on ebay. Love to have that one in my collection. xp

Panic on Funkotron, rated T for Teen due to Strong Rap Content and Pervasive Farts

Have never played Rings of Power but I looooove Baldur's Gate so much, will have to check that out

Never played On the Ball either, gonna have to warm up my old timey kindle fire with the emulators on it tonite

http://i.imgur.com/nRVrhNE.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/NW0z7SJ.jpg
63 - Road Rash II - 46 points / 2 Votes

TOO LOW

E.V.O. is the first SNES title on the list that i'm completely unfamiliar with. just guessing from the title and description, do you gradually evolve depending on what kind of stuff you eat?

i didn't play road rash til PSX era but it was an absolute classic

oh god yes, ZZT. my best friend and I poured hours into that game, making worlds and soundtracks that I think we were the only ones to play

totes digging fgti's Epic memories.

re: cut-offs and dates - not that i think it helps particularly, but i'd definitely say that "early CD-ROM" ends in 1993. that year saw myst, 7th guest, rebel assault, and return to zork. maybe all still 'early' in a meaningful sense, not necessarily a medium that's found its footing by any means... but i guess i think 'early' is like 90, 91, 92 - The Manhole, all the Sierra games upgraded with speech (shoutout to the very odd, awkward but kinda addictive Jones in the Fast Lane), Sherlock Holmes... i dunno, fine distinction i guess. i just remember fucking around forever in the early 90s with this wretched compilation CD of dozens of C-list games. one of those things where maybe the CD-ROM drive itself came with five CDs of shovelware, and only one was games (and thus only one was interesting to me). so many miscellaneous CGA and EGA games of no particular distinction. "life and death," the baffling surgery simulator, was maybe the highest-profile title in there.

i also remember, around this time, sierra pushing the idea that what they made (or might someday be making) was really "interactive films," and telling teachers or whatever that what i wanted to do when i grew up was make interactive films. to my credit i am sure i was NOT thinking of 7th guest type things. i just figured king's quest type games would only grow more popular and more advanced.

anyway, though, i could still dig the later break point around '95 or '96 cause it's not like all at once all games started being "CD-ROMmy" - some of the very very best sprite-based, classically "VGA-looking" games are from 93-94! x-com, serpent isle, star control ii, warcraft, etc. just fun to think about this stuff.

i've been playing On the Ball. love it! maybe not a long-lasting pleasure for me tho.

90s PC Gaming Poll, Episode I: A Question of Vengeance (1990-1994) - NOMINATIONS thread - deadline Nov 15

yessssssssss

sweet!

i know this isn't precisely the right thread but i set up 4 controllers w/ my macbook last night and we played multiplayer nes games for hours last night (esp super off road which continues to be like the best game ever). i would've set up some snes games but one of the controllers was an nes usb controller so it only had the two buttons. i had a replacement xbox controller that would've worked but my brother had borrowed it. anyway - 4-player multiplayer nes emulation works perfectly. i assume snes will work well too. anyone have any experience emulating 4 player N64 games?

i haven't had much luck emulating ANY N64 game. i'm using OpenEmu for mac, which works very well with NES/SNES/Genesis/Gameboy titles, and supports almost any other system as well, but it seems like nearly every N64 rom i download crashes within a few minutes, has numerous crazy emulation problems which renders it unplayable, or won't even start in the first place. it's possible i just had very luck with the first 7-10 games i downloaded but after a while i just gave up and went to the older systems.

it's been almost 4 years since i finished this poll. i always wanted to do all of the generations eventually but i guess i kinda fell off after this one? next up would be 5th gen, n64/psx/saturn/some of the weirdest also-ran consoles in videogame history (3do? cdi? jaguar?).

are there still ppl who would play along for the next one on the board? should i do it? i wanna do it. i have been feeling some ps1 nostalgia recently, even if those games are abssssolutely not as easy to play in retrospect (both from a "slightly harder to emu" standpoint as well as a "oh wow early 3d vg controls sure were rough" one).

WHOS IN. HOME GAME POLL VOL 3

why not

wait the cdi was the snes generation, replace that in my previous comment with... uhh... the apple pippin. even weirder

ok! i'll start it soon

oh hellll yeah

Yeah, years of fairly intuitive control schemes have really spoiled me. Playing PS1 (and even some PS2) games now is often like trying to tie a knot with my mind. Like how did I finish RE3 in a day twenty years ago when nowadays I just keep walking into walls and getting ravaged by hellbeasts?

No, let’s wait another 4 years!

jk I can’t wait!

I had a n64 but I only had two games & they were good & I'll vote for them but then I lent it to my brother who then lent it to his girlfriend's brother but then they broke up & that's my sole exposure to this generation, never even saw a ps1 in person, so my ballot will be those two games but I think one of them will win the whole poll so I don't feel that bad RIP

p stoked to give some love to Blast Corps and Tetrisphere

first thing i thought of with this poll was "i'm going to make room on my ballot for Blast Corps, even though i only got to watch my friend play it for 2 hours that one time". looked amazing (at the time)!

i haven't played Blast Corps since probably 1998 but i remember it being such a jam. there's one vehicle with bad, shitty control, but otherwise it's the best-ever spiritual successor to Rampage: you take all your big toy construction trucks and smash all the buildings!!!!!

Console Game Poll vol. 3 - Nominate the best 5th Generation Console Games (1993–2005; N64, PSX, Saturn and more!)

So now that my kid is old enough to play video games I have downloaded some emulators and I ended up playing Aladdin for the first time in my life, and wow this game is really super cool, gameplay is super fun and the graphics are lovely, I can't believe it only got one vote in this poll!

Genesis version I assume.

Actually no I was playing the SNES version, and I just put the Genesis one to see if there was any difference and indeed it's a completely different game! I'll give this one a shot too but my first impression is I really miss being able to bounce around, swing on posts and rocks, climb on platforms etc. all the stuff you can do on the snes version. The graphics and animation are better on the genesis though, that's for sure.

Just watched a cool short doc about the making of the Genesis version (which I've still never played) SNES version was cool tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOnUITJqRQQ

This "Devs Play" video on Genesis Aladdin and Lion King is quite interesting. Like how they were forced to make one level in Lion King really hard so that kids couldn't see more than a certain percent of the game during a rental period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kILeyo1iv0A

SNES Aladdin has a special place in my memory as I played it at a kiosk at Walt Disney World shortly after the game's release. I didn't play it again until I got a good emulator on my PC.

i tried to get into it recently as part of the big batch of titles i loaded onto my SNES mini.... i had a decent enough time bouncing around the first levels but apart from the beautifully done graphics it didn't grab me. i don't think it's a bad instance of its genre (maybe the controls could be a LITTLE tighter), but it's a genre that just isn't my jam these days: platformer with very large sprites and limited screen real estate, loose level design with a lot of meandering around unnecessary paths to collect stuff you don't strictly need.

but boy is it a great-looking game! such smooth animation in the sprites. back then it really did feel like playing a cartoon!

Imagine being 12 in the early nineties and someone told you you could download a file to your computer in 10 minutes and have access to virtually every Genesis/SNes game ever released? Mindblowing. I'm going through one of these bundles right now looking for hidden gems and while a lot of it is pure crap (Captain Novolin anyone?) there has been some rewarding finds:

Beyond Oasis: this Zelda-link RPG for Genesis lets you incarnate Ali, a young Prince who has found a magic gold armlet that once belonged to a wizard.

Trouble Shooter : a fun shoot-em-up in which you play two teenage girls with jetpacks trying to rescue a prince who was taken hostage. There is a real missed opportunity for a 2-player mode though.

Which brings me to a question: what's a good smu with a co-op mode? Nothing too frantic (i.e. not Gunstar Heroes) because my son is new to video games and still struggles with Mario.

lots of beat-em-ups would do the trick (final fight, streets of rage) but I’m not sure about shooters!

Might be good to find one that has a code (infinite health etc) to keep the little one happy!

yeah beat-em-ups seem easier to come up with, he's a fan of TMNT and Streets of Rage

one for the back pocket is Final Fight, starring Haggar and Cody. Haggar got so famous that he ended appearing in a couple other Capcom games. Cody is Patrick Swayze in Road House, so if you can say some of those catchphrases while fighting, it makes the game better. on top of all that:

Extra Credits
Enter your top 3 high score initials as CAP, COM, GUY (in that order) to start a new game with 5 Credits.

i was taking a quick look at smus for SNES, ran across this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXatiYxLl8g

the rare youtube game reviewer who isn't incredibly annoying! they go through pretty much every SMU on SNES in just a few minutes. Space Megaforce looks amazing! unfortunately you'd still need to figure out which ones are co-op and which are single player only.

hey thanks a lot I'll look into that

generation 6 incoming