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Thread: WK's Top something or other... let's just say "games" and call it good list.

  1. #256
    Trial by Wombat Bubba's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by maybee View Post
    TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLES
    TEENAGE MUTANT TURTLES

    HERO'S IN A HALF SHELL

    TURTLE POWER !!!
    Fixed!



    (SPOILER)IMG_6992.JPG

  2. #257
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    37.One of the last "good, not great, but oh man that nostalgia!" titles on this list for at least a little while. I will fully admit that Castlevania has not aged as well as some of the later titles, and in terms of the Classicvania design, Rondo of Blood is superior in every way. With that said, this is like my third favorite NES game, and the game that kept me coming back to the franchise every so often.Set in 1691, Dracula's infamous castle of chaotic doom rises every hundred years to spread despair and suffering to the world, and every hundred years, a Belmont shows up to defeat him with the family's keepsake holy whip, Vampire Killer. This generation, it's Simon Belmont, but canonically, he's the fourth Belmont in the series since Castlevania did that DQ thing where some of the entries are a stealth prequel. The first game in the franchise, it was only released in Japan and North America, whereas the superior remake, Vampire Killer was released in Japan and Europe and featured a more Metroidvania style that North Americans would only get a taste of in the sequels. Simon has to tackle Dracula's freaky castle and battle it out with some of the most iconic monsters in cinema. In fact, the game is kind of a send-up to Universal Studios monster films, with several of the games bosses being iconic monsters like Frankenstein's Creature, the Mummy, and Dracula himself. Rounding it out is a Vampire Bat, Medusa, and that iconic and universally hated asshole, Death. You can see this influence by the fact that the menu screen has film reels on it and the credits blatantly reference joke versions of iconic actors in these types of films. While the game features only six levels, they are split up into three stages a piece and you're only given three lives to reach the boss to win. The first three stages are surprisingly easy, and then stage four happens which isn't terrible, but the battle against Igor and the Creature is the first real pain in the ass boss fight in the game. Death's stage, as is tradition, is a serious kick in the teeth especially the last hallway before you reach his chamber which is filled with sturdy axe throwing knights who love to back away from your reach and the universally loathed medusa heads. In a fun twist of fate, Death's stage isn't actually the Clock Tower, which became his token level for most of the franchise. Probably the biggest grief I can give the game is the brutal difficulty. Once of the reason why the last half of the game is significantly more difficult is because around that point, the game inexplicably decides that Simon needs to take double damage from everything. Yeah Death is a nightmare boss, but that's likely because it's really difficult to get through that last hallway of his without getting touched at least once, and after that, death only needs to hit you three times to kill you. Not helping any of this is Simon's sluggish controls. It's like the guy moves around with his pant pulled down around his ankles and he has some of the most awkward jumps outside of a N64 Zelda game that you can find for a game that has this much platforming. Still, there is a real sense of catharsis for victory in this game, perhaps the calling card of old school games. In fact, I was originally going to write this entry up yesterday when it dawned on me that I have never actually beaten it. I've always been stuck at death, so I powered through it last night. With a couple of breaks for my nerves, I did finally take down Dracula and beat one of my favorite childhood games. I only regret it took me so long to do so. While I am a huge fan of the original and some of the later installments, I've always been sad that I seem to miss out on the series. I have Simon's Quest, but my copy doesn't work very well. I've never had the pleasure to beat the hardest entry in the classic lineup which is Dracula's Curse, but I really want to check it out especially since it was one of the more popular entries and the one Igarashi references the most in the later Metroidvania titles. I also missed out on the superior remake of this game for the SNES. Yeah, I know, it's sad to say I'm a fan and have missed out on so many iconic entries. Perhaps I'll work to remedy this when I finish writing up this list. Due to being unable to find a decent commercial video for this game, I'm giving you a funny music video with an alternate explanation of the Belmont X Dracula feud. Just be careful, there are some dirty words in the lyrics.


  3. #258
    Trial by Wombat Bubba's Avatar
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    My first Castlevania was Super Castlevania IV which was amazing. I also seem to remember playing through Simon's Quest in one sitting with a friend.

    Oh my word... the music

  4. #259
    Ghost of Christmas' past Recognized Member theundeadhero's Avatar
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    One of the few games that I could beat in my early teenage years, but have far more trouble with now. I last tired about three years ago and Death was the death of me, repeatedly. Still, the early NES "challenging platform" games are some of my favorites. Luckily, I can still beat Ninja Gaiden with only one death. Maybe one day I'll be able to beat the final boss trio without dying to the last guy *shakes fist*
    ...

  5. #260
    Shlup's Retired Pimp Recognized Member Raistlin's Avatar
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    Turtles in Time is the best TMNT game.

  6. #261
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    My Castlevania exploits last night had me pull out Simon's Quest and see if I can get it working, which I did and I'll try to play through it sometime in the future.

    So here's some clues for the rest of the thirty bracket, let's see how many of you can figure them out.

    • One game is about the bulltrout you go through when your friends have a criminal record.
    • One game is about the horrors of oversleeping.
    • One game shows how powerful whistling can be.
    • One game shows why you should get out more and see the theater.
    • One game is a cautionary tale about picking up shiny objects you find.
    • One game is an interesting take on communication abilities.
    • One game is what I feel may be the greatest licensed game of all time.

  7. #262
    Feel the Bern Administrator Del Murder's Avatar
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    Obviously the last one is Superman 64.

    Proud to be the Unofficial Secret Illegal Enforcer of Eyes on Final Fantasy!
    When I grow up, I want to go to Bovine Trump University! - Ralph Wiggum

  8. #263
    Radical Dreamer Fynn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
    My Castlevania exploits last night had me pull out Simon's Quest and see if I can get it working, which I did and I'll try to play through it sometime in the future.

    So here's some clues for the rest of the thirty bracket, let's see how many of you can figure them out.

    • One game is about the bulltrout you go through when your friends have a criminal record.
    • One game is about the horrors of oversleeping.
    • One game shows how powerful whistling can be.
    • One game shows why you should get out more and see the theater.
    • One game is a cautionary tale about picking up shiny objects you find.
    • One game is an interesting take on communication abilities.
    • One game is what I feel may be the greatest licensed game of all time.
    Uhhhhh.... I think I see Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger in there, but I'm not entirely sure

  9. #264
    Recognized Member Scotty_ffgamer's Avatar
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    The only nes castlevania I own is Simons Quest, but I played through the original on an emulator. I've only beat it with save states I'm pretty sure. I was planning on trying to beat without save states, but I can't remember if I ever succeeded. I think symphony of the night is my favorite castlevania though.

  10. #265
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    36.
    You know, for a second attempt at an RPG, by a company that doesn't make RPGs, Breath of Fire 2 is surprisingly good and a huge improvement over their freshmen effort. In music, a band's credibility is usually based on the success of their sophomore outing and I kind of feel that rule applies to video games as well. Released the same year as FFVI in Japan and nearly a year after the U.S. release of the same game. BoFII is a bit like Lufia 2, where it came late to the party and had to compete in the West with some of Square's stronger titles. Thankfully for me, I had caught the RPG bug by this point, and was gobbling up any JRPG I could get my hands on for the SNES. This was another game recommended to me by the same friend who got me into Sly Cooper, and this was my first Breath of Fire game as I had missed the first entry and never had much interest to check it out until a few years later.
    Set several generations after the events of the first game, the warring Dragon Clans have disappeared into myth along with the Goddess Myria. In the small isolated village of Gate, a boy named Ryu lives with his father and little sister in the local church. Shortly after his sister Yua was born, Gate was attacked by demons and Ryu's mother died in the attack. His father fought off the beasts with his magic, but it was the untimely arrival of a massive dragon that saved the village, and the beast eventually perched itself over the mountain that overlooks the village and entered a deep slumber. Yua goes to the dragon and sleeps by it because she has dreams of her mama when she does so, when Ryu tries it, he has a terrible nightmare about a demon instead. When Ryu wakes from the dream, he finds that not only has his father and sister vanished from the village, but everyone in town doesn't know who he is either. He's taken in by the church as an orphan and meets an orphaned Grasslander (Dog people) named Bow, who travels from town to town, getting taken into the churches and then looting the place before disappearing. With no place to go, Ryu and Bow leave the town together and end up in a cave when the weather turns. Inside the cave, Ryu is confronted by the demon in his nightmare and it attacks...
    Ten years later, Bow and Ryu have now become full fledged Rangers, a Guild that specializes in any kind of duty for a price, from house cleaning to monster slaying, they are the people to call for. Their first assignment is to find a local girls pet. After the successful mission, Bow is met in the middle of the night by a local nobleman who want him to break into the richest man in town's manor in order to steal back an item the rich man had stolen from the noble. Bow's attempted robbery fails when another thief beats him to the chase and Bow is left as the fall guy. Now running from the law, Ryu helps Bow escape and embarks on a journey to find the real thief, a girl with bat like wings named Patti. Ryu will meet many people on his journey and slowly comes to discover a nefarious plan by demons who are corrupting evil humans and sowing discord and chaos across the land.
    Though technically a direct sequel to the first game, you can be forgiven for feeling like Capcom pulled an FF and simply kept a few legacy elements while changing around everything else. There are only a few callbacks to the original, and though the second title in the Myria Trilogy, not only does she not show up, but BoFIII doesn't even really bother to make any mention of anything from this entry, though it liberally borrows some thematic elements from it. The plot is pretty unique, though some elements have been overused by future RPGs. One thing that still blows most peoples minds about this game is that it was one of the few non-Western RPGs to make it to the West with a plot concerning a corrupted church. I want you to think about that, Nintendo of America wouldn't let FF use the word Holy because it might offend someone, but they completely let Capcom make a game about a Church secretly trying to resurrect a demon god and using their phony religion to con people into helping them. I'm not even going into all of the game's poorly hidden adult materials like the boy crazy witch being named Nympho, or how you have to fish a ring out of a toilet she's was throwing up in because she was drinking too much over her guy problems. There is also the part where the first shaman meets you and due to her risque dress, she basically propositions you like she was a hooker. Me thinks that Square and a lot of other companies back then could have gotten away with a lot more if they realized that NoA's bark was worse than their bite.
    BoFII's plot also has a bit of a mood whiplash. The opening is pretty chilling and raises a lot of uncomfortable question, but then the game just skips ten years down the road and your first mission is played totally for laughs. On the journey to find the thief, you save one characters life from being murdered in a gladiatorial arena, learn that Nina has been exiled and shunned by her family due to her black wings, and save a town overrun by demons that are literal Aliens style face-huggers of which it's possible to kill their victims instead of saving them. All of that ends up being followed up with a farcical chapter where you have to help Jean prove he's the prince of his own home after an imposter sneaks in and takes his place... except Jean doesn't seem to mind that he's no longer a prince, and the town people know it's an imposter but either don't care who is in charge or some prefer the more competent imposter. I don't even want to go into the Queen of Tunlan who is becoming fat due to being possessed by demons and you have to travel inside her body to exorcise them.
    The game has it's dark moments, especially in the beginning and end points, and whenever you really get to go into certain characters backstories like Nina's exile, Rand running away from home, and Sten's survival guilt for surviving a war without his unit; but the game is also just filled with some serious slapstick comedy. While I appreciate my games not to be too serious, BoFII walks a thin line and often crosses the line with ridiculousness, but if you can look past that, or are simply not bothered by such things, you'll find a really good story with fun characters. The game has three possible endings, and I honestly think the bittersweet normal ending is superior to the happily ever after Best ending.
    After the very vanilla BoF1, it's pretty astounding to see how much of an improvement BoFII is. While the original had some overly simplistic game mechanics and was fairly unbalanced, one of the interesting strengths of the franchise has been the fact that Capcom really didn't know what they were doing back then, and so the game is filled with some really interesting gameplay ideas that seem unheard of for it's era, largely because Capcom didn't really know any better. This usually works really well for the games and helps set them apart from more traditional Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games, as well as the many clones they created.
    Like the first game, you will acquire nine party members with their own strengths and skills. Ryu is an all around brawler with a special skill that allows him to restore a certain percentage of his health if it succeeds. Bow is a combat medic with a risky blow skill that will either do 1hp of damage or critical hit. Katt is a glass cannon fighter with the highest agility and strength in the game with an ability to draw enemy fire towards her. You get the picture. In addition to these special FFIV style skills, most of the party can use some form of magic they learn by leveling up. There are some quirky character building elements within all this much like FFIV such as Katt pulling a Tellah/Naruto by learning all three of the highest level elemental spells in the game at a ridiculously early level, but not having enough AP to cast it. This is something that is brought up in the story due to her being kind of a simple ditz who wants to learn really powerful spells, so it makes sense she would teach herself overpowered moves despite not realizing she is incapable of using the spells. Sten the Highlander (Monkey People) has a play dead move which actually plays into his backstory. There are some really clever nods and tying in of the gameplay and story which I quite appreciate.
    The party members are far better balanced than the original, with most of the cast having clear design purposes and roles to play in combat. Suffice to say, party configuration plays a big role in building a well rounded fighting unit. Yet the game has a few interesting ideas that really shake up what could have been a ho-hum formula with the Shaman System. At a certain point in the game, Ryu will meet a Shaman and her grandmother who deal with Shaman Fusion. There are six shamans in the world, each representing one of the four classical elements plus light and dark, and with them, you can fuse them with party members to confer up benefits like minor stat improvements or even a complete transformation that changes the characters appearances, stats, and skills. With this system, the game technically has 18 unique playable characters as the transformed characters can be radically different from their original. Jean the Frog is a perfect example as he is a slow tanky fighter mage who specializes in debuff magic. His special skill allows him to attack all enemies but with a very weak attack. His Holy Knight Fusion Form is pretty fast, far more melee orientated than his original form and his weak group hitting attack is exchanged for a powerful group hitting sword slice that will either miss or kill everything, making him a mini-Odin. It's a very interesting mechanic that is only hampered by some tedious rules that can make them impractical at times, but it's still super fun to play with.
    Another unique feature of the series is that most of the party members have a unique map skill that can be used to help travel the world or collect items you can use. Bow can hunt wild animals with his Crossbow in special hunting ranges that appear on the map occasionally, Katt can destroy objects with her staff, Sten and Jean gain important skills that help you to reach normally inaccessible parts of the map or dungeon, and Ryu retains his unique skill of fishing, which has been changed from a silly gimmick from the first game into a full fledged mini-game which is surprisingly difficult but incredible rewarding since the fish can be used for a variety of purposes and he can fish up treasure and Manillo merchants as well. Some skills just make traveling easier, but the hunting and fishing mini-games help to break up the monotony of combat and help the player gain valuable healing items so they can free up their Zenny for equipment instead.
    Speaking of mini-games, BoFII may have introduced the concept of town building to a standard RPG. I know DQIII had you help build a town but most of it was plot relevant and beyond naming it, you didn't get much say in it. This game allows you to build a town and search the world for people to live in it, which results in special shops or gifts to help you out. Even the look of the town can be customized based on which carpenter you hire to make the town and each form has a unique feature such as the basic home offering a restaurant where the carpenter's wife can cook items into stat raising ones, or the Mogul/Arabian design let you play the carpenter at a special board game for prizes. Making this even more complicated is the fact that you only have room for six residents, but their are twenty-four to choose from, with sets of four only being able to live in a particular house, so if you let the guy who sells you fish into the town, you can't recruit a character who would open a bank or one that would let you listen to all of the games music. Some residents can even permanently increase stats or teach characters abilities outside of their normal spell repertoire. It's a giant Guide Dang it, but frankly most of the game is in some places. I actually missed Ryu's second set of dragon forms due to them being completely optional and the teacher being squirreled away in an odd place. Yet, I feel it's one of the more interesting things about this game, it's incredible deep despite coming across initially as a pretty by the book adventure and I still discover new things in the game with every playthrough.
    I will also point out that BoFII easily has some of the best sprite work of almost any SNES RPG. I think Chrono Trigger may offer a challenge an even then, I feel BoFII's battlefield models might be some of the best in the business. They are incredibly fluid in their animation and all of the enemy designs and animations help make battles more visually interesting than the static battle systems of other RPGs at the time. The music is also really catchy, and while it lacks some of the quieter pieces I usually prefer in my soundtracks, the rocking battle themes and upbeat catchy music that Capcom is good for still keep this game an audio treat.
    The one major blemish this game suffers from is a terrible localization. The first game was localized and published in the West by Square, which anyone familiar with the FFIV translation will know how great they were back then...So Capcom took the plunge and did it themselves, with some questionable results. It may not be the worst translation I've seen, but like FFII (IV) it can be pretty bad in some places and I would advise checking out a fan translation if you can. It had a port on the GBA, but in addition with poor audio and visuals like many SNES ports for the system, Capcom didn't seem to bother taking this as an opportunity to give it a better translations so they largely just reused the old script with only a few minor changes. The more I think about it, the more I feel like this game really needs a remake. It has several great ideas that are only diminished by questionable balance rules and the devs being pretty new to RPGs in general. A remake could fix the script and potentially refine the gameplay into something pretty cool, but considering how indifferent Capcom seems to be to the franchise, we'll likely never see this happen.



  11. #266

  12. #267
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
    1. One game is about the horrors of oversleeping.
    2. One game shows how powerful whistling can be.
    3. One game shows why you should get out more and see the theater.
    4. One game is a cautionary tale about picking up shiny objects you find.
    5. One game is an interesting take on communication abilities.
    6. One game is what I feel may be the greatest licensed game of all time.
    Alright guys, one down, can you guess the next one?

    Here's another set of hints, each one corresponds with it's identical number:

    1. "You asked me once what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world." ~O'Brian
    2. "In that land, we led a free and hardy life, with horse and rifle. ~ Teddy Roosevelt
    3. "Love me or hate me, both are in my favor... If you love me, I'll always be in your heart, if you hate me, I'll always be in your mind." ~ William Shakespeare
    4. "Unless someone like you cares an awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not." ~ The Lorax
    5. "With some, we're certain our hearts must have been acquainted, long before we ever met them." ~Shakieb Orgunwall
    6. "Work smarter, not harder." ~ Allan F. Mogensen

  13. #268
    Radical Dreamer Fynn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
    One game is an interesting take on communication abilities.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
    "With some, we're certain our hearts must have been acquainted, long before we ever met them." ~Shakieb Orgunwall

  14. #269
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fynn View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
    One game is an interesting take on communication abilities.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
    "With some, we're certain our hearts must have been acquainted, long before we ever met them." ~Shakieb Orgunwall
    Nope, none of these games are Atlus titles. Two Square titles, one Capcom, one Konami, and two published by Sony.

  15. #270

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