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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  Gaming  |  Topic: The Ultimate Battle - Best Game By Year 0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: The Ultimate Battle - Best Game By Year  (Read 57502 times)
Cyrrex
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Reply #35 on: September 11, 2018, 12:43:41 AM

My bias will be towards consoles until we hit the late 90s, because I didn't get into PC gaming until then.  Which might be something to keep in mind...If I were to bet (and I could be totally wrong), I would put money on most of us having the main consoles of that era, with many percent fewer of us owning PCs of any kind. 

Anyway, I have trouble with the dismissal of Zelda, but maybe that is more because of its general influence on what came after than because of the game itself.  I would, for example, rather play Punch Out right now given the choice.

"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
Phildo
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Reply #36 on: September 11, 2018, 06:04:15 AM

All console right up until Civilization.
Rendakor
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Reply #37 on: September 11, 2018, 06:07:28 AM

My bias will be towards consoles until we hit the late 90s, because I didn't get into PC gaming until then.  Which might be something to keep in mind...If I were to bet (and I could be totally wrong), I would put money on most of us having the main consoles of that era, with many percent fewer of us owning PCs of any kind. 

Anyway, I have trouble with the dismissal of Zelda, but maybe that is more because of its general influence on what came after than because of the game itself.  I would, for example, rather play Punch Out right now given the choice.
I'm in the console-only boat early too, but judging by Discord we aren't a clear majority.

Zelda wasn't dismissed; it was in the initial 1987 vote but was not one of the games tied for the top.

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Ironwood
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Reply #38 on: September 11, 2018, 06:32:30 AM

I don't think you fully understand what's happening here. We're not judging years in a vacuum. We have full knowledge of all of gaming. There's no reason to pretend Metroid is the best game looking back when things like Super Metroid and Dead Cells exist.

but I'm glad you like Metroid so much?

So, wait, since I don't think I understood either ;  What you're saying is that if the game in that year then got eclipsed, either in genre or sequel, by a later iteration, it really doesn't deserve the vote for that year ?

That makes things sooooo much harder...

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #39 on: September 11, 2018, 07:10:13 AM

Since the NES never really was a thing in Germany (hard to obtain and expensive) and other more exotic consoles were only available as Japan imports (PC-Engine for example) I can only really contribute C64 and Amiga games until 1992 when I bought a SNES and my first PC.

So expect me to lobby hard for Speedball 2 or Turrican instead
Ironwood
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Reply #40 on: September 11, 2018, 07:19:15 AM

But that at least makes sense, since Speedball 2 is one of the finest games ever made ever.

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Teleku
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Reply #41 on: September 11, 2018, 07:24:01 AM

I don't think you fully understand what's happening here. We're not judging years in a vacuum. We have full knowledge of all of gaming. There's no reason to pretend Metroid is the best game looking back when things like Super Metroid and Dead Cells exist.

but I'm glad you like Metroid so much?

So, wait, since I don't think I understood either ;  What you're saying is that if the game in that year then got eclipsed, either in genre or sequel, by a later iteration, it really doesn't deserve the vote for that year ?

That makes things sooooo much harder...

People can fancy this up all they want, but its literally “vote for what you like best of this year”.  I personally feel no obligation to vote on anything based on its “influence”, and vote on what I loved and played the most as a child.  I mean, I may use influence as a personal tie breaker, but this entire poll thing is a way to show basically “The games that had the greatest influence on the members of F13.”  Not the best actual games.

So like, just vote on whatever you liked best.  Zelda not even making it to the tie breaker round is fucking hilarious in that regard, but I also have to admit I played the ever living fuck out of Punch Out.

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Rendakor
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Reply #42 on: September 11, 2018, 07:30:36 AM

For me, Zelda is a perfect example of a game eclipsed by a later title. I played the original a lot when NES was all I had, but Link to the Past blows it out of the water and I have never even thought about replaying the original ever again once I got LttP.

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Ironwood
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Reply #43 on: September 11, 2018, 07:32:04 AM

I have never ever played a Zelda game.  So there's that.   Heartbreak

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Druzil
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Reply #44 on: September 11, 2018, 07:36:01 AM

Zelda also only missed the finals by 1 vote, so it's not like it was ignored.
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #45 on: September 11, 2018, 07:42:25 AM

If we go by what I played the most during that time it would either be Kick Off 2, Speedball 2, Lotus Esprit Challenge or the Amiga versions of Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master.
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Reply #46 on: September 11, 2018, 12:42:58 PM

If we go by what I played the most during that time it would either be Kick Off 2, Speedball 2, Lotus Esprit Challenge or the Amiga versions of Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master.
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Reply #47 on: September 11, 2018, 12:43:35 PM

People are using all sorts of metrics for this. Mine is a combination of "most fun" + "has it been done a million times better since."
Hoax
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Reply #48 on: September 11, 2018, 03:01:31 PM

Which had more impact then on me? Metroid by far, the atmosphere, the soundtrack, it was just such a cool everything.

Which would I rather play right now? Metroid by far. Punch Out I'd be playing entirely to be like "hah remember this shit? look at that guy, I remember beating that guy" not because I miss anything really about the actual gameplay.

So no I don't get it.

Using "has this been improved upon" as a metric is confusing.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2018, 03:04:40 PM by Hoax »

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HaemishM
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Reply #49 on: September 11, 2018, 03:08:32 PM

"This has been improved on" means to me that it was such a seminal game, other games took its success and built upon it. They were genre/mechanic-defining games.

Velorath
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Reply #50 on: September 11, 2018, 03:49:10 PM

A destinction should be made between genre-defining, and genre-popularizing. Metroid is very arguably the latter and even then only in certain regions as Metroid especially early on wasn't a bit in Japan.

Edit: Also Castlevania had Metroid beat that year on music and atmosphere so Metroid isn't even the best by that metric.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2018, 03:53:47 PM by Velorath »
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Reply #51 on: September 11, 2018, 04:04:41 PM

Also, I don't know why it even matters. The resulting lists I throw up to vote on consist of the best games ever, by any metric. That we vote on one over another doesn't even matter. It doesn't shit in the importance of another game.
Rendakor
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Reply #52 on: September 11, 2018, 04:56:30 PM

A destinction should be made between genre-defining, and genre-popularizing. Metroid is very arguably the latter and even then only in certain regions as Metroid especially early on wasn't a bit in Japan.

Edit: Also Castlevania had Metroid beat that year on music and atmosphere so Metroid isn't even the best by that metric.
Castlevania isn't really a Metroidvania though, it's just a side-scrolling platformer.

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Velorath
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Reply #53 on: September 11, 2018, 05:52:19 PM

A destinction should be made between genre-defining, and genre-popularizing. Metroid is very arguably the latter and even then only in certain regions as Metroid especially early on wasn't a bit in Japan.

Edit: Also Castlevania had Metroid beat that year on music and atmosphere so Metroid isn't even the best by that metric.
Castlevania isn't really a Metroidvania though, it's just a side-scrolling platformer.

I was making two separate points. The edit was referring to Hoax's statement that Metroid had the most impact on him for games from that year due to music and atmosphere.
Phildo
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Reply #54 on: September 11, 2018, 06:25:47 PM

Metroid wasn't a metroidvania either because it didn't have any castles.
Cyrrex
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Reply #55 on: September 11, 2018, 11:14:39 PM

I think it is fine that there are no guidelines given and that everyone has their own view of what's important.  I would just advise that you avoid the potential bias towards PC stuff in the early years.  Only uber nerds and rich kids even had these things back then, and the result of that is you get something genre defining like Zelda possibly losing out to something like Speedball 2, which about 100% of the world's population has never heard of.  Yes, this is an imaginary argument, but hopefully you see my point.

It's because of that kind of thinking that there will probably not ever be a Mario game winning, despite the fact that most of you played early versions until the skin on your thumbs was totally peeled away. 

"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
Ironwood
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Reply #56 on: September 12, 2018, 01:13:46 AM

You can't get away from that.  A lot of these 'consoles' you speak of were unheard by my people.

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Jeff Kelly
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Reply #57 on: September 12, 2018, 03:10:56 AM

Until they changed it for the release of the SNES Nintendo had outsourced the distribution of their products to third party distributors for the PAL region. Nintendo of America was responsible for the US market but in PAL region A (Great Britain, Ireland and Australia) they sold distribution rights to Mattel and in PAL region B (rest of Europe) they had sold distribution rights individually for each country. Usually to smaller outfits that neither had the marketing budget nor the network necessary to really promote it.

Nintendo was also very stingy with their inventory and the console was ridiculously expensive and since they didn't have connections to the big outlets in Europe the NES was pretty much unknown and hard to obtain. That is a crass difference to e.g. the US where NES itself did all of the marketing and distribution deals.
Ironwood
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Reply #58 on: September 12, 2018, 03:21:32 AM

I think the Nintendo 64 was the first console that managed to be 'hey, we're here.'

And I'm aware how late in the day that was, gaming speaking.

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Cyrrex
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Reply #59 on: September 12, 2018, 03:35:23 AM

Good counterpoints.  But if we stick with the Zelda or Mario examples (not that I am specifically lobbying for either) can you not step back see how strange it appears for them to be outshined by things most of the world has never heard of?  I am pretty sure even my 90+ grandmother knows who Mario is.  Super Mario Bros on the NES was basically a "holy fuck, they have finally done it" kind of epiphany for the mass market of video games and consoles.  And there are a few more examples of this that are going to get outvoted by something like Nethack or whatever, something that has had no influence, no lasting appeal and nobody has ever heard of.

"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #60 on: September 12, 2018, 03:50:06 AM

To give you a perspective: In the late eighties vastly more people in my country would have known about the shameless Mario Clone "The Great Gianna Sisters" made by Rainbow Arts than would have been able to tell you about Mario. So much so that people were irritated when some weird japanese toy maker tried to sue them and made it so they could no longer sell the game.

Because everyone had a Commodore 64 (Europe was basically Commodore country until the mid nineties and then switched to PC) while most people didn't even know that Nintendo existed and was a thing. Also we had no Arcades

The original Playstation was probably the first video game console that really changed that for European markets because even the SNES and the Nintendo 64 were niche compared to the vast number of PC and C64/Amiga/Atari ST owners. Nintendo's weird "don't release most of the things in Europe and when you do, do it three years later than in the US and Japan" policy certainly didn't help either.
Ironwood
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Reply #61 on: September 12, 2018, 04:38:29 AM

Also, that gave rise to the view amongst most that Mario was/is shit.

And that's because Mario's shit.

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HaemishM
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Reply #62 on: September 12, 2018, 07:45:58 AM

Mario is and always has been shit. But I'm terrible at platformers, which may color my judgement some. I spent more time on games like Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and Police Quest than I ever have on all Mario games combined.

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Reply #63 on: September 12, 2018, 07:53:44 AM

hot takes in this thread
HaemishM
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Reply #64 on: September 12, 2018, 08:20:02 AM

STEAMING hot takes.  why so serious?

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Reply #65 on: September 12, 2018, 08:23:28 AM

I mean, I can see maybe saying original Mario was shit.  It was a thing we all played endlessly because it was the only damned game we owned, which doesn’t really mean I wanted to be playing it over other options. But pretty much every main title Mario game after that has been legit well crafted fun (and I’m including Mario 2, which is an acid trip).

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Jeff Kelly
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Reply #66 on: September 12, 2018, 09:39:24 AM

hot takes in this thread

Yeah but this is essentially Hot Takes - The Ultimate Battle.
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Reply #67 on: September 12, 2018, 11:25:11 AM

Super Mario Bros. 3 was by far my favorite, and will likely get my vote when it's up. The original was good, but (like Zelda and LttP) I never played it again after SMB3 came out. The oft-maligned SMB2 was also superior to the original, even if it was a completely different game.

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Reply #68 on: September 12, 2018, 11:25:42 AM

hot takes in this thread

Yeah but this is essentially Hot Takes - The Ultimate Battle.
when this list is done it will be absolutely definitive

and yeah, full of hot fucking (correct) takes
Velorath
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Reply #69 on: September 12, 2018, 12:15:19 PM

I don't think you fully understand what's happening here. We're not judging years in a vacuum. We have full knowledge of all of gaming. There's no reason to pretend Metroid is the best game looking back when things like Super Metroid and Dead Cells exist.

but I'm glad you like Metroid so much?

So, wait, since I don't think I understood either ;  What you're saying is that if the game in that year then got eclipsed, either in genre or sequel, by a later iteration, it really doesn't deserve the vote for that year ?

That makes things sooooo much harder...


To me it's just a matter of, if I'm going to call something game of the year, it has to be timeless to some extent. It has to be something that I would still go back and play. Granted I'm fairly into retrogaming. I've built multiple RaspberryPies, I have all the old AD&D PC games on GOG, etc..., so I do actually go back and play a lot of this stuff.

Some games do get completely eclipsed and it makes it harder to go back to them. I can think of a single reason why I would play Metroid instead of Super Metroid for instance, whereas I think the original Punch-Out is a better game than Super Punch-Out or the Wii Punch-Out.

1988 is going to be a bit hard for me because so many of the games I liked from that year were heavily flawed and done much better later on, like Metal Gear, Castlevania II, and Pool of Radiance. Even significant games that I wasn't into at the time like John Madden Football, Phantasy Star, and Wasteland are more notable for what they lead to than for being games that any of us would even think about trying to revisit.

Personally I'll probably go with Pool of Radiance for my '88 pick because that is a game I still replay every few years, and while mechanically the later Gold Box games are better, PoR is actually my favorite "story" of the lot. I know I'll be in a bit of a niche with that pick though.
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