Gaming Guilty Pleasures

[Ramses]

I'll often play several obscure early 80s arcade games that most would probably consider somewhere between mediocre and terrible like Jump Coaster, Money Money, and Bagman. I don't feel guilty, though maybe I should?

On 10/8/2019 at 6:21 PM, Tempest said:

2600 Tutankham. It's not the best version of the game, but the manual that described all the treasures makes it a lot more fun for some reason.

 

I also tend to like the Apple II versions of most games, even though they're usually inferior to many other versions because those are the ones I grew up playing.

2600 Tutankham was my favorite 2600 game when I was a kid. I agree that the manual definitely helped a lot. I got a sealed copy on ebay several years ago so I could have the manual in mint condition. The game also had FOUR different levels which was a rarity on the system!

[Tempest]

I specifically remember going for some treasures because of their descriptions.  I was a huge Egyptology nut then (still am actually).  I agree, four completely different levels was a rarity on the 2600 back then.

[GameGirl420]

My gaming guilty pleasure is Back to the Future on NES. Really love that game despite the hate it gets. Was just playing it recently and made it pretty far on just one try! The difficulty is perfect enough. Not too easy but beatable.

 

Someone should mod it with different music and a better ending,and then it would be a decent game imo.

 

I actually like Shaq Fu on both Super NES and Genesis also. Not a bad fighting game imo.  Unplayable but I also love putting Dance Fantasy on ColecoVision and just stare at it with disco music playing.

 

 

[Tanooki]

Since the NES came up and I thought I had posted this before but see I didn't, I've got one people irrationally rip on too on various lists.  Silent Service.  The usual complaints about it being too hard, boring, lacking some basics to do, too easy to get sunk and so on.  I don't really go on about it with people as I did years in the past, but one thing I often found was people bought loose carts, didn't get a manual, a typed manual, or even a faq and just thought it was a crap game or a crap port of a good old PC title of the time.

 

The game was in a unique club of few titles like Smash TV where you could play ok on one controller with some gimping involved, but it needs really to be used on 2 controllers to work correctly to get the right experience.  While you can navigate, dive/surface, use the deck gun, fire forward tubes, and spin the boat to look around, that alone is basically a limiting death sentence.  Controller 2 allows you to fire the rear tubes opening up another dozen or so torpedoes, use the binos to look around without turning, and if you were sinking you can blow ballast (once per voyage) to force surface to hopefully save yourself.  When you can get those vital things put into play the game becomes far more fun.

[electricmastro]

Planet Monsters

 

 

[RJ]

On 10/4/2019 at 11:09 PM, bluejay said:

...regularly playing E.T...

Oh, should there be shame in that?

 

 

Also every summer I play a PS2 Summer Heat Beach Volleyball tournament, & have a custom themed soundtrack during.

 

[electricmastro]

20 minutes ago, RJ said:

Oh, should there be shame in that?

 

 

Also every summer I play a PS2 Summer Heat Beach Volleyball tournament, & have a custom themed soundtrack during.

 

The Korean cover for that game is definitely more shameless:

 

[RJ]

15 minutes ago, electricmastro said:

The Korean cover for that game is definitely more shameless:

 

???

[RJ]

Must be this one?

[electricmastro]

Cheap Lemmings clone I know, but I guess I just can't ignore colorfully quirky games.

 

 

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

After a day at the beach settling down with some good indica and racing games to zonk out to.

[+jgkspsx]

On 9/27/2021 at 8:06 PM, electricmastro said:

Cheap Lemmings clone I know, but I guess I just can't ignore colorfully quirky games.

There ain’t nothing cheap or guilty about Sink or Swim (aka SS Lucifer: Man Overboard on the Mega Drive and Game Game).

 

For me, the answer is obvious.

 

 

 

 

And equally

 

 

 

 

And most of the games people hate on the Jaguar - Club Drive, Fight for Life, Kasumi Ninja, and so on. Except “Double Dragon” and Checkered Flag, those are just no fun.

[roots.genoa]

That Duke Nukem looks tedious... Duke's voice has never been so looooooooooooooow. ?

[Keatah]

No guilt whatsoever. Having unadulterated fun making those 80's arcade games be my bitch! With cheat codes in MAME..

[Pixelboy]

I would call games like Bejeweled and Shanghai guilty pleasures, because those are the kinds of "zone out" games that I tend to play while I know I should be doing something "better" with my time.

 

Of course, you can say the same for pretty much all video games, but playing a video game is usually something you set time aside for, while games like Bejeweled and Shanghai can be addictive to the point where you're playing them for extended periods of time and you neglect doing house chores or homework or whatever other tasks you're supposed to do today.

 

[electricmastro]

Tom and Jerry on NES:

 

 

[Tanooki]

Yeah I'm not going to double down with the same images, but I guess if I had a couple it would be in the handheld realm of both TIGER and TIMETOP.

 

I'm sure the first you're aware of, I've got like 4-5 of the old stand alone handhelds from Tiger but I've been into wanting to find the little carts for the R-Zone, I have the XPG handheld, the only model that isn't utter crap.  It's like the Tiger old handheld with a Virtual Boy like red glow to it, yet the processing of what it does audio and all is a step, or half step over the old handheld individual games.  There's some superior audio, better control, yet still the old segmented style visuals.  A few companies put some stunning work into it, Sega being one.  Panzer Dragoon is strangely a good port of the old game oddly enough...360 shooting and high/low too, tunnels, open areas with obstacles, and even the boss fights.  Another being Daytona, drives smoothly if you think about moving smoothly since it is still segmented, gear and line shifting, pit stops, tactical driving all that with 3 difficulty levels too.  They also did Nights and others, a few other makers put some quality releases.

 

 

Now TIMETOP most probably here are like...eh?  Taiwanese handheld, a real weird ass thing too it is.  Timetop is the maker, the handheld is known as the GAMEKING.  I've got the 3 built in titles, but also 4 more 4in1 carts so there's some variety in my cabinet here sharing the state with the R-Zone.

 

Imagine a strange handheld with somewhat similar in size/shape carts to the old Gameboy.  It has 16bit sampled auido which is bizarre because the visuals, chunkier pixels, low resolution, like a Pokemon Mini or a Digimon like thing...seriously.  They sold the units with 3 games built in, they did also stand alone carts, but commonly 4in1 cartridges for it.  The games often are blatant ripoffs of popular console games (Darkwing Duck/Megaman, Lode Runner, Contra, 1942/43, Trojan, Fight Fight clone brawler, Super Mario Bros, Choplifter, Adventure Island, F1 Racing, Street Fighter II, Bomberman.

 

Here's a sampling of some reviews, there are virtually no sites online, but there is this: https://www.obsoleteworlds.com/gameking.html  There were sites in the past, some are still on the web archive.

 

Here's a recent sampling of some games, long videos but broken up per-game

 

[+jgkspsx]

19 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

That Duke Nukem looks tedious... Duke's voice has never been so looooooooooooooow. ?

All I can say is that I unabashedly enjoy the Duke Nukem quasi-FPS and it works a lot better than it looks if you’re playing it. Maybe only if you are me  

 

Also, that emulator is playing the sounds funky.

[Reaperman]

You guys aren't being guilty enough

 

I play the hell out of Deep Space Waifu--a modernized version of that old Sentimental Shooting game you KNOW you all played.

(the above links above aren't especially unsafe for work.)

 

It's the shmup series that I have *BY FAR* the most time with. Not Aero Fighters, not the Galagas, Deep Space Waifu.

The one where the bullets shoot scraps of the lady's clothes off, and I'm pretty sure I have every variation and every DLC item from 'Nekomimi' to 'Flat Justice.'

 

And when I play it, I get out the big ol' gaming PC, and the most tryhard of arcade sticks, because this is serious business, yo.

 

Edited October 3, 2021 by Reaperman

[electricmastro]