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Thread: The greatest games - A Personal list of Neocracker~

  1. #76
    Fei Gone Wrong Polnareff's Avatar
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    I (very vaguely) remember the first time I played SF2. It was at a laundromat back in 1992, so I was about 3 or 4 at the time. I was too short to reach the joystick and buttons normally, so my mom brought a milk crate for me to stand on to play the game. My first character was Guile, and I promptly got whooped by Blanka (damn you and your balls, Blanka! ).

    My parents apparently saw how much I liked the game over the next few visits to the laundromat, so a few months later they bought the game for me on SNES after seeing it on sale. I played that bad boy for days, then weeks, then eventually months. At 6 years old I pulled off my very first special move on my own without mashing, the Sonic Boom. I couldn't explain what drew me to the game. Maybe it was the, well....opinion that it was the first good fighting game to ever come out (the funny part is, my second ever game was the very first Street Fighter game, at about 2 years old. This is what my dad told me, at least). The characters were certainly cool too. Where else would you find a green beast guy who can fry people like an egg, or a stretchy yoga master?

    Later, I ended up getting Special Champion Edition for Genesis, which basically combined aspects from Hyper Fighting and Champion Edition into one game. This is when I learned how much of a cheap prick Vega could be.

    The real fun came from trying to master the characters themselves. When I was about 10 years old, my friend's dad gave me a big stack of magazines, about half of which talked about SF2 and its enhancements in great detail. Characters, special moves, frame data, all in crazy detail. By this point I'd played SF2 for a few years and had also been playing the Alpha games, as well as pretty much any Capcom or SNK fighter I could find. But I'd only been scratching the surface.

    A year later, my parents and I went to a different laundromat, clear on the other side of town. They had a regular SF2 machine there, just like the one at the other laundromat. There were two guys playing it, both were pulling off touch of death combos left and right. I was mad that I couldn't at least have the honor of being whooped by them, because my right arm and left wrist were broken at the time. Before that I hadn't been playing any video games at all for about 4 months. They went at it for a couple hours, with a sizable crowd of about 15 people watching. I don't know what the hell it is with this game and laundromats where I live, but watching this exchange made me want to get better at these games.

    So I practiced long and hard for months on every SF game I could find, and eventually got pretty good at them. I can safely say that playing those games in and out gave me the benefit of having really good hand-eye coordination now (I had some motor skill impairments as a kid due to being born prematurely) and it even helped my arm and wrist get (mostly) back to normal, even though now I can't play fighters on a stick to save my life.

    I guess basically what I'm trying to say is, SF2 had some cool design choices that stood the test of time. It had to if people are still willing to play games like Super SF2 Turbo after 19 years. Even now, 21 years later, I still play most fighters religiously (especially SF, Virtua Fighter, and Fatal Fury). It makes me sad to see anyone dump on the SF series, because without it, who knows where fighting games would be now? Even the character designs inspired other fighters.

    I was kind of a weird kid. Most grew up on Mario and Sonic, but I grew up on Mega Man and Street Fighter. Go figure.
    Xenogears is the tragic story of how your whole life can take a crappy turn, just because you happened to see a lady in a wedding dress before her wedding.

    This boy is crackin' up, this boy has broken down
    This boy is crackin' up, this boy has broke down

  2. #77
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Didn't see FFVII being this low but I honestly agree with everything you said about it, I never liked how Materia made who is in your party irrelevant, and I also feel Shin-Ra overshadowed Sephiroth as a menace for most of the game. I mean you spend all of Disc one chasing after a guy who burned your home village down and while looking for him, discover how Shin-Ra has utterly ruined every habitable place on the planet while searching for him. I definitely feel VII is really bad about explaining your party's priorities cause between the first discs utterly ignoring the more menacing villain to chase after a bad guy only two members of your party have a grudge with and then spending the entirety of Disc Two finally screwing over the Shin-Ra when they are actually trying to do something helpful, it just boggles my mind when people praise this game's story...

    I'm honestly more miffed about Street Fighter 2 being so low on the list but Fighting games are pretty fickle genre for most people.

  3. #78

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    The big disconnect I have with Fighters is they are in their nature a genre designed for you to be competative with other people. For some reason I'm not very competitive when it comes to fighters, so for me a lot of the joy other people have with them is a bit lost on me.

  4. #79
    Fei Gone Wrong Polnareff's Avatar
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    At my former home forum, I was basically the go-to guy for all things Capcom, and Street Fighter especially. Hell, I was even a mod at Capcom-Unity for a time, until real life got in the way. I miss those days, and typing up that last post reminded me of how much fun I've had with SF over the years.

    Annnnnyway, on to FFVII. I like to play through it every once in a while. Never particularly cared about the story, but some of the dialogue is hilarious, especially when you rename your characters (try renaming everyone Sephiroth! ). Materia was a cool idea that seemed to have been like a lighter version of the Espers from VI. But with how the same Materia could be equipped on everyone, it made every character just about the same near the end of the game.

    I enjoyed the hell out of the minigames, such as the one where you're controlling Cloud on a motorcycle, and the snowboarding one. The Playmobil-like character models are cute. VII also has my favorite boss theme in the entire series, so that counts for something too.

    The summons in this game are still my favorites, looks-wise. Ramuh and KotR especially.
    Xenogears is the tragic story of how your whole life can take a crappy turn, just because you happened to see a lady in a wedding dress before her wedding.

    This boy is crackin' up, this boy has broken down
    This boy is crackin' up, this boy has broke down

  5. #80

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    Did you play FF2? It should still be on your list even if you haven't played it. It's just that damn good.

    And I am anxious to see where Xenogears places.

  6. #81
    Bolivar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB View Post
    I don't say this as if it's impossible for it to be this low, but rather because if you put as much thought into the reasoning for it being that low on the list into other games, you'd probably have good reason to drop them, too.
    This sentence is full of so much WIN, I love bringing this up when the anti-bandwagon bandwagon fanboys let their emotion get the best of them and actually spew this nonsense. Then again, I guess I can't root for Neocracker to destroy Xenogears as an icon and then protest him doing so against Final Fantasy VII.

    I'll just say about the interchangeability that your characters do have stat and range differences that do matter, the problem is the party quickly outpaces the monster levels to the point where it seems like they don't matter. I skipped the battles only for the No. 1 reactor and for the rest of the game, it matter greatly who was doing the spellcasting, whose stats I was exploiting with both green and purple materia, and who was getting the yellows to complement their range and limit breaks.

    I'll leave it to the aforementioned anti-bandwagon bandwagon fanboys to desperately grasp for straws and scrape the bottom of the logical barrel to blindly deny this fact.

  7. #82

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB View Post
    I don't say this as if it's impossible for it to be this low, but rather because if you put as much thought into the reasoning for it being that low on the list into other games, you'd probably have good reason to drop them, too.
    This sentence is full of so much WIN, I love bringing this up when the anti-bandwagon bandwagon fanboys let their emotion get the best of them and actually spew this nonsense. Then again, I guess I can't root for Neocracker to destroy Xenogears as an icon and then protest him doing so against Final Fantasy VII.

    I'll just say about the interchangeability that your characters do have stat and range differences that do matter, the problem is the party quickly outpaces the monster levels to the point where it seems like they don't matter. I skipped the battles only for the No. 1 reactor and for the rest of the game, it matter greatly who was doing the spellcasting, whose stats I was exploiting with both green and purple materia, and who was getting the yellows to complement their range and limit breaks.

    I'll leave it to the aforementioned anti-bandwagon bandwagon fanboys to desperately grasp for straws and scrape the bottom of the logical barrel to blindly deny this fact.
    What the smurf is an Anti-Bandwagon Bandwagon fanboy? Fanboys who bandwagon against bandwagoning? The hell does that even mean?

    And you can't say that the Party quickly outpaces the monsters so it feels the stats don't matter, and then claim that they do matter in the same breath. And what do you mean 'Skipped battles only for the No. 1 reactor'. Do you mean up until the scorpion in the beginning? Because that's hardly enough experience and what not to even make a noticable difference.

    I don't even know what straws to grasp at, as I have no Idea what the smurf you are even talking about here.

    Edit: And yes, I have played FF II. There will be a time I get to that and Xenogears. ;P

    Edit2: Okay Bolivar, I think I've decyphered your silly posts meaning.

    Are you saying that, if I payed attention to the the numbers, I would notice a difference between one person with an identical materia set up to another person with the same set up?
    Last edited by NeoCracker; 01-09-2013 at 02:07 AM.

  8. #83

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    Bolivar is talking about how FFVII is nothing more than a badly written mess starring an emo wanker, his racist stereotype terrorist friend, Boobs (Yuffie's nickname for Tifa. It's canon), jailbait, an even bigger emo wanker, a useless dog and robot thing, and mothersmurfing Cid. They're all out to stop this dude with an Oedipus Complex who is a far less interesting villain than Rufus who, despite having a speech dedicated to "I Am Generically Evil", is somehow the far more compelling antagonist.

    Also Aerith's Theme totally ripped off the Opera music in FFVI. They obviously knew their fugly Flower Girl wouldn't be able to evoke sympathy even in death so they had to steal a timeless classic from an infinitely superior game.

    What I'm saying is that FFVII is a load of garbage and the only reason people went gaga over it was because it was their first FF. It couldn't be any other reason than that as every other game in the series is way better.

  9. #84

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    ...Yeah, just for the record, I have no where near the Negative view of Forsaken here.

  10. #85
    Slothstronaut Recognized Member Slothy's Avatar
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    With that level of vitriol and bile we should probably have Forsaken host the next census.

  11. #86
    Bolivar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Forsaken Lover View Post
    What I'm saying is that FFVII is a load of garbage and the only reason people went gaga over it was because it was their first FF.
    2006 called, it wants its Eyes on Final Fantasy forum post back.

  12. #87

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Forsaken Lover View Post
    What I'm saying is that FFVII is a load of garbage and the only reason people went gaga over it was because it was their first FF.
    2006 called, it wants its Eyes on Final Fantasy forum post back.
    I might have made a post exactly like that back then too. I do remember 2007ish or so I was on a huge anti-Sephiroth spree.

    And Neo, I don't hate FFVII anymore. I used to though which is why it was so easy to summon up all that resentment.

    It all comes down to WAH WAH WAH MY FAVORITE FF ISN'T AS POPULAR AS VII WAH WAH WAH

  13. #88
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by NeoCracker View Post

    Edit: And yes, I have played FF II. There will be a time I get to that and Xenogears. ;P
    I'm betting Xenogears is going to show up when you start talking about Xenosaga, considering how that other thread went, I would be surprised if you actually ranked Gears on this list.

    Bolivar - Actually stats don't matter in VII as much as you think because the number they go up is controlled by an RNG and the whole thing is set-up to actually keep everyone fairly balanced. Granted, the characters do have number modifiers attached to their stats to increase the liklihood of certain stats going high and other stats going low, for instance Cloud has a high modifier across the board for all of his stats, whereas Aerith is geared towards magic and Barret is geared towards strength, but most of the parties other stats are more in the middle but their are other mechanics designed to keep the characters from not straying too far from a core baseline, so for instance the maximum stat upgrade you get with a level is 5 even if the calculations say it should be higher, likewise the game compensates for negative stat growth as well so a character always gets something even if the RNG tries to screw them over, ultimately leading to your whole party being fairly average with two characters geared towards melee (Cloud, Barret), three for mage (Aerith, Cait Sith, Vincent) and the rest are largely in Red Mage territory.

    Ultimately you get something like FFV or XII where characters are geared towards certain "roles" in battle certainly, but the stat mechanics keep everyone not too far from each other, so the player can safely make everyone be able to do any role they please with little repercussion. So ultimately the stats themselves keep everyone within the same threshold so unless you are seriously customizing a la FFII/VI style with Sources, chances are your whole party is pretty average in ability to each other. None of this is of course helped by us factoring in equipment which throws this into a new ball game. Honestly, Cloud and Aerith are pretty much the two extreme variables in this case with Cloud pretty much being excellent across the board (except Dexterity) and Aerith being heavily geared towards being a mage, but for say Yuffie and Tifa, its actually quite possible for them to have the same strength stat by endgame if the RNG hates you enough, likewise Yuffie and Barret can have the same magic stat.

    Interesting fact, the numerical difference between the minimum and maximum stats a character can achieve is a difference of seven points. For instance the lowest Clouds Strength can be is 93 and the highest is a 100. More fuel for VII's fascination with the number 7.

  14. #89

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    And now that the character variance has been settled by Wolf Kanno, and yet still no word on "Anti-Bandwagon Bandwagon Fanboys", the next set! Feel free to keep up talk of FF VII though guys. ;P

    Oh Childhood, how I miss you some days.

    128. Lagoon (SNES)
          This is, sadly, one of those games it's a bit hard to recall all the details on, so were I to go back and re-play it, I'm not sure if I'd still rank it here on the list. So for those of you have have played this title, feel free to correct me on anything I say that sounds a bit funky.

          We have here a game with a top down Zelda-esque view, but more RPG elements then were possessed in the Zelda games. By mixing which Crystals and Staffs you had equipped you could create a variety of different spells to cast. There is even a bit where you finally come to fight and kill someone you'd befriended in your journey, and it was kind of sad when you had to cut him down after going through so much.

          It's a game that, if GameFaqs is to be believed, wasn't really very well received by those who have played it. But you know what? smurf Gamefaqs and the people who submit ratings.

    127. Civilization (PC)
          This is a bit of an odd choice, mostly because it's the only game in the Civilization franchise that shows up on my list. And I'll admit that this game is really lacking in comparison to the later installments in the series. I always found it hard to get into this style of game for more then a couple days at a time, and those couple days generally have a year long gap or longer.

          The first civilization always had a certain charm for me though, and I'm not sure what exactly. Perhaps it's the almost absent minded nature which I can play it with, not really putting to much work into it as I span the globe. Breaking treaties mere turns after forming them, causing my foes anguish by sending spies to by off their cities. Mowing down legions of men armed with sticks using my Armor units.

          The music was cheesy, the random number variable was ridiculous, and effectively the only way to win was through destroying the other civilizations, making peace talks rather moot unless you intend to use it to take advantage of someone. Wonderful experience, that it was.

    126.5Mario Kart 64 (N64)
          You may be wondering why there is a .5 here. Well, there were a couple games that didn't end up on my list because I forgot about them, though in hindsight I feel they do belong here. So, rather then re-order my list numbers, I'm just going to insert them like this. Mind you, there are only two other games I'll be putting in this way.

          Anyway, back to Mario Kart, this game was awesome. When you had more then one or two friends over gaming, fighting games could get a bit bothersome since you had to take turns, but with these we could get up to four people sitting down and playing. Everyone got more game time, and the more people trout talking at once the better the experience.

          This is one of the few games I would get competitive with and really enjoy it. My favorite thing to do was Battle Mode. Wario being my driver of choice, there was a lot of fun had in just the silly trout that would happen and the stupid ways one could die in that game. There was a thrill to racing down the different nutty tracks in that game as well.

          We played with some self imposed regulations from time to time. For example, there was the battle map with the four different colored towers and the flat ground beneath them. We would only do two things. Fire down Green Shells, making the bottom zone a death sentence, and place traps. We would not make any active moves to hurt the other drivers directly, and we pretty much made the gentleman's agreement that we wouldn't just sit on one spot, and actually give the map a constant drive. It was quite exhilarating.

  15. #90
    Slothstronaut Recognized Member Slothy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by NeoCracker View Post
    Wario being my driver of choice
    Best driver is Dinosaur driver.

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