jfitzenr

I think it's primarily the juggernaut games honestly, for better or worse. Some of it definitely has to do with modern patches and source ports and whatnot. All the Quakes, Half Life, Doom... Honestly, Unreal Tournament still plays great, but I think any of the games that focused on multiplayer suffer from the "wait, why" question. It's a shame because UT, Quake 3 Arena, etc. still play absolutely fine, but the 'world' has passed them by so they lose a lot of what made them special originally. I think this means the FPS games that really still are worthy of a playthrough are the ones with solid single player campaigns... Half Life, Doom, maybe Duke 3d, Quake 1/2, etc. I actually just meandered my way through the Quake 1 and Quake 2 single player campaigns a few months ago. Still great!

Hell yeah! Both me and my best friend in grade school had a "Handy Boy." That huge monstrosity with stereo speakers, a light, and a magnifier. I vividly remember him walking over to my house and showing off the "new music he found" playing at full blast through the Handy Boy, which turned out to be his way of taunting me because he beat Metroid 2 before I did.

I'm always glad to see the GB get some love! I have very little of my original collection left, but I always thought it was underrated a bit. Most handhelds seem to get that treatment. I've semi-recently gone back and rediscovered a lot of gems from the past. It seems there were basically two sorts of games for the GB and GBC: games that treated the platform as its own platform, and games that just threw something together and said "hey, at least it's portable, that's cool right?" It's somewhat incredible how strong some of the titles are. As a kid, I had to have every iteration of the GB: trade in the brick for the pocket, the pocket for the color, however that whole tree went. I used to treat the GB and GG as basically a little home-console, and would sit around playing them plugged into the wall for hours... at least the hours while they weren't confiscated by teachers. I wish I had all the consoles I had over the years that I lost to trades either to the shops, to my brother, or to my friends. Some of my love is obviously nostalgia driven: (Seriously, WaveRace can't REALLY be as fun as I think it is) but there was such a great selection of stuff through the years. I'd put a few of the GB Megaman Titles up against MM4-6 on NES any day. FFA still holds up with any action rpg, Link's Awakening is probably the best Zelda title, the Donkey Kong Land titles were technical marvels (not to mention the regular ol Donkey Kong. What a frickin' game!) and... well, I'm pretty sure I'd do a lot of things I'm not proud of in exchange for an updated reboot of Sword of Hope.

Those 80s synths are fun but damn are they hard to tinker with. I had a DX7 and a Roland D50 over the years. Funsies. Anyway, this isn't strictly a thrift thing, but when I was in middle school, my elementary school upgraded everything to mac, and literally threw out about 30-40 Apple IIc and IIe's. Should've probably jumped on that.

Hoping I'll get in under the gun! SNES Megaman X - ~180 Minutes Super Mario World - ~45 Minutes Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - ~220 Minutes Street Fighter Alpha 2 - ~75 Minutes Castlevania Dracula X - ~15 Minutes Super Castlevania IV - ~45 Minutes TMNT: Turtles in Time - ~100 Minutes Been revisiting a lot of SNES gems from my past this week, especially as I have just recently discovered Retroachievements, and I'm trying to build up everything on there. Funsies!

Been way too busy with this work sorta stuff but... In honor of the playoffs.. SNES - NBA Jam TE: ~6 Hours I'm going to have to sneak in some old-school Hockey gaming too but I've been stuck on the Jam. I forgot how much I love this game, and how ludicrous the CPU Assistance is in these classic Midway games! The damned Magic snuck by me otherwise I'd be undefeated. Orlando is stacked in this game. I've literally played probably over a thousand games of this damned thing in my lifetime.... good nostalgia going on! And I'm on pace to beat the Warriors' single season record with Tom Googs and Latrell "Sorry I choked ya, coach" Sprewell!"

Ugh to Military Madness.... I absolutely adore that game but by the end it felt more like rolling dice and praying than strategical. Still beat it on the console though, for some reason.

I don't really understand the whole concept tbh. To me, if the game is a single player game, do whatever the f*** you please! It's not 'cheating' if you're not gaining some sort of unfair advantage against another player. (Cheating in multiplayer is an entirely different story and makes the veins in my forehead go throbby) I mean I have since beat the first three episodes of Doom, but as a kid, I spent hours running around in God Mode blowing things up and exploring levels with noclip and it was one of my favorite games, even though I couldn't come close to going anywhere in it 'legit.' I'm not against people using save-states to beat a game that's a bit too challenging or time consuming for them (though I really don't do it myself.) I'm fine with using turbo on emulators to speed up grinding in RPGs, etc. And come on. There's a good number of us that have never beat Contra without the 30 lives code *raises hand* I guess I think we all have what we believe is the 'right' or the 'best' way to beat a game, or we have a certain thing we want to accomplish, and that's completely cool.. which is why the whole concept of 'cheating' in a single player game is weird to me... like I don't really understand how people get legitimately upset, offended, or whatever you'd like to call it. It's just enjoying your toy however you want to enjoy it. I mean I never liked pulling the legs off my GI Joes and I really suck at playing guitar in alternate tunings but ya know, if that's what you like to do, more power to ya. That said, personally, I play games generally 'legit' in most senses. If I'm playing on an emulator, I'll sometimes use save states to make life more convenient, basically like saving a game away from a save point if I have to leave, etc (it's just a fancy pause button but you don't have to worry about your cat chewing through the power cable) but typically I do enjoy experiencing games as they were originally intended.

Hey all, missed ya! Been working way too hard recently with work and school... since I enjoy my job that's a good problem to have but my video gaming time has been pathetic! Got some free time this past week though. Woo. SNES: Legend of Zelda - Link to the Past - ~300 Mins. Street Fighter Alpha 2 : ~45 Mins Super Castlevania IV: ~60 Mins NES: Baseball Stars - ~360 mins Atari 2600: Combat: ~100 Mins Maze Craze: ~30 Mins Space Invaders: ~40 Mins Was a fun one actually. I'm getting hooked on Baseball Stars again, which is easy given the levelling up/power up nature of it. Decided to randomly sit down and beat Link to the Past again, which I seem to do almost yearly. Such a classic. The most fun was that I had to babysit my 6 year old twin nephews, and we spent hours upon hours playing on the ol' Atari Flashback. They could not get enough of Combat! Damn games are timeless.

Heh... no clip was fun with Doom, but yeah... tooling around in Duke3d with NoClipping and Flying was insane. I remember being a kid and trying to design a level or two... that engine was extremely funky and confusing for a 12 year old!

HELPME comes to mind. It didn't make Castlevania 3 super easy, but... super... almost possible. Speaking of Doom how'd you forget IDSPISPOPD? DUH! I can't remember the ammo/weapons code in Wolf3d but I remember having a really rough time getting too far without it. And of course, ABBA! Back when I had the patience, the create, strip, sell, delete tricks for games like Ultima, DQ3, etc. were invaluable to get a good start. Of course in DQ3, this also led to my (and probably everybody's) accidental discovery of the early Hero spell glitch... double whammy!

NES - Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat - ~200 minutes INELIGIBLE - Stardew Mountain - Way too much time

Never done this whole thang before... but I love the heat! Got me a 128 as well: as I'm new to this stuff, is it frowned on to say, post my current 128, and then later post if I beat it? That damn third race tho. I've managed to squeak out a win once or twice but I haven't found an upgrade path that makes that third race not kick my arse. I will perfect this!

NES The Blue Marlin - ~280 Minutes Casino Kid - 15 Minutes SNES Final Fantasy 3 - 256 Minutes Street Fighter 2 - 25 Minutes Street Fighter 2 Turbo - 10 Minutes Gameboy Super Mario Land 2 - 35 Minutes Rocking the ol' Nintendo family this week. One thing I love about this thread and community is that it gives me suggestions, reminders, etc... like my marathon of Sword of Vermillion last year, or now, my marathon of Blue Marlin (NES) This series of Black Bass, Blue Marlin, and Black Bass Lure Fishing were some of my favorites as a youth, and to be fair I never really knew for sure if it's because they're good games, or because I love fishing. Maybe it's both. Either way, last week's action inspired me to fire up Blue Marlin and I simply couldn't stop until I played through it. Still just as fun as I remember, but dammit if it were only a little less cryptic and much longer, it'd be insane! Love it. Now in reality the largest fish I've caught is probably about 10-15 pounds, but... a man can dream!

Most of Ultimarc's sticks come in Bat-top too. (I'm still in the research/pullthedamnedtriggeralready phase of building personally so I can't personally review stuff sadly) Everybody and their mother pretty much tells me that straight japanese style will make my life easier... but I grew up with Happ bats and Concave buttons dammit! I'm pretty sure you can buy (no experience, again) bat tops for Sanwa sticks for pretty cheap too. I'm no soldering expert but as mentioned even if you go the build-it-yourself route, soldering is usually unnecessary. I have heard obviously many mixed to negative reviews of the X-Arcade stuff but the temptation is strong for me to get that sort of functionality (with a trackball!) out of the box. Tracks, spinners, etc. can get the DIY price up pretty quickly it seems! I'll have to dig around too: I know there's a handful of pre-cut cabinet and control-panel options for arcades, but I believe I've seen a few guys that offer pre-cut single joystick/fightstick packs too, that might be a good compromise of being able to still use the parts you ideally want without going straight commercial or hacking up something pre-existing.

I don't think I have ever in my life played a 7800, and for some reason watching these videos makes me really, really want one.

Golden Sun was awesome! Never did play the sequel though... maybe that'll have to happen soon! JRPGs are one of my favs in general, but nothing beats them if you have the luxury of travelling and not being the one driving. I spent a few years on tour and grinded through just about every JRPG released before the ps2 era on my old hacked-up PSP As for fighting games I was a kid during the fighting game glory days, the sorta... I dunno, second-wave of arcades being cool I guess you'd have to call it, and my older brother was really into them, so it just became natural. I've never really gotten particularly great at any though and never even tried to play competitively, that's just a whole different beast. I think the main reason I enjoyed them is because my brother was big in to them too, so whenever a new game or new iteration came out, I always had a constant opponent that had the same level of experience as I did and we'd learn the games and improve together. I haven't really gotten into a new fighting game in probably a decade, hence why I still play SF2 and Tekken 3! However I do miss the 'glory days' of 90s arcade gaming. There was nothing like being a 12 year old and annihilating some of the scary OLDER KIDS to the tune of making them actually lose money... and nothing like waiting in line watching the hometown hero and waiting for your chance to see if you could be the one to finally dethrone him. Was a fun scene... I remember being about 14 and pissing off a grown-ass man so much after beating him about 8 times in a row at 3rd Strike that he tried to put his fist through the side of the cabinet. I'm pretty sure he must've broken his damned hand. And yes, I intentionally lost the next round and hustled my happy ass out of there!

I hope I slide this in before the deadline! SNES: Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior - ~180 Minutes Street Fighter 2 Turbo: ~220 Minutes Super Street Fighter 2: ~60 Minutes Street Figher Alpha 2: ~90 Minutes Final Fantasy 3(6): 97 Minutes Sim City: 45 Minutes Noticing a trend? In honor of SF5 coming out and me having no way to play it I decided to go back and explore the old SF games... I used to play the everloving hell out of them as a kid/teen but I've really fallen away from them recently. It was a lot of fun to actually just flip between versions and updates of them nearly instantly and really pay attention to all the differences in timing, priority, hit boxes, etc... seeing how playstyles and characters evolved, etc. Tons o fun! Arc/Mame: Ms. Pac Man: 30 Minutes Galaga: 40 Minutes Galaga 88: 15 Minutes Frogger: 10 Minutes Tapper: 20 Minutes Had a little sit down with a friend and played up some old arcade goodness.

Just want to give a shoutout to Opry because I used to LOVE the Black Bass/Blue Marlin series in my youth and I might have to give them another shot. I logged silly amounts of hours on all those games as a kid; used to go fishing as much as possible as a kid but when the weather sucked, that was the next best thing right? I won't officially log it yet but I spent the last 2 hours playing the old SF2 games for SNES... played one game through of WW and a few of Super SF2. I forgot how great these games were, but... whoever programmed Sagat's hit boxes and priority on Super needs to take a Tiger Knee to the nether regions. If his recovery were a bit quicker on Tiger Shots I think we may have found the most overpowered fighting game character in history. Jeebus! Managed to 1cc SSF2 on my first try with Ken tho, so I'm glad my skills aren't completely gone! Shotos 4 lief

I'm not a hardcore pins guy but I've always loved the Addams Family pin. Best pinball memories of my youth are probably that one and the 90s Star Wars pin (I don't think I ever went to an arcade that DIDN'T have Addams Family!)

SNES Final Fantasy V: 804 Minutes NES Adventure of Lolo - ~45 minutes Gameboy Ultima Runes of Virtue - ~35 Minutes Ugh. Being sick and not being able to sleep is a great combination for grinding out old games! To be clear, yes this is indeed Final Fantasy V... I'm currently playing a translated rom of it simply out of convenience but it was translated and released on the Playstation in 99 I believe. Double checking... it says the Anthology release wasn't until 2002 so it was never officially released in English until 2002. If that disqualifies it go ahead and take it off the rankings, but I'm playing a translated version of the original from 92. Anyway, if anybody likes grindy RPGs and fun class systems to take advantage of I can't recommend it enough. As I said one of my least favorites overall of the main FF series but the Job system is great. It's not quite Disgaea, but it's a system that really encourages trying to explore/exploit the way the class system works.. that alone makes it a lot of fun. Holds a lot of nostalgia for me too since trying to play Final Fantasy V when it was first translated was probably my first experience as a kid with emulation and blew my mind... a Final Fantasy game that we didn't get... and now I can play it??? Beat the optional bosses too. Great stuff. This week I'm diving back in to thinning out my collection, so that means I have to do some "testing" of older stuff which means... next week will probably be pretty Colecovision heavy! If my expansion module #2 still works, I think I'm going to have to log some time on Pitstop!...

I'll have to check these out... I love my Duo, but I always was disappointed just be knowing the sheer number of Japan exclusive titles I was missing out on.

Yeah, and a new Jet Moto! I thought I heard somewhere that they had no plans to continue with the TM franchise at this point, so, down goes another one.

I simply cannot believe the Action 52 love! SNES - Final Fantasy V - 562 Minutes Colecovision Tapper - ~45 minutes Not that exciting for me this week. I seriously don't think it's physically possible to EVER get tired of Tapper. I pride myself on my ability to thwart that masked-bandit beer-shaking bastard! I'm still not that great overall at the game but damn is it addicting. FFV is... probably one of the weakest overall or at least one of my least favorites of the main Final Fantasy entries, but I have a soft spot for it, and given that I've been feeling under the weather all week, the job-customization and mindless-grinding involved is great for those long nights I can't sleep. I'm just getting back to the point where I'm remembering the huge bottleneck between "decent" job skills and the uber, top-level overpowered stuffs. Trying to grind out the top level job skills is bordering on MMO-style grinding territory. Ugh

Trying not to repeat suggestions... a lot of them are great (I LOVE Sword of Hope!) It's also hard for me to figure what counts as hidden or obscure anymore, but eh. Here goes. Mercenary Force - I logged ludicrous hours on this when I was younger. It's basically just a horizontal shooter, but you hire a squad of mercenaries with different abilities and between that and switching your party formation during the game there's a lot of depth and possibilities. James Bond 007 - Might want to have a walkthrough pulled up because some of the 'puzzles' turn into ludicrous "fetch this to fetch that to fetch this" stuff that's kinda annoying, but I always really enjoyed the overall gameplay style on this one. Heia...hee...Heia.. Heiankyo Alien - Might not be THAT obscure I'm really not totally sure, but it's a really fun adaptation of an old-school arcade classic. Penguin Wars - Yes. Penguin wars. It's... AWESOME. Simple concept, but I lurv it. Madcap crazy awesome multiplayer... I always wish there was a sequel or updated version on SNES or something, because this would've been a ridiculously awesome game to sit around with some buds and some budweisers with. Wave Race - Maybe not 'hidden' but more like 'forgotten,' (nobody seems to remember this series anymore) it's still a lot of fun Kirby's Pinball Land - Probably too obvious for this list but just play it