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Author Topic: The Ultimate Battle - Best Game By Year  (Read 57494 times)
HaemishM
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Reply #70 on: September 12, 2018, 01:04:22 PM

See, I'm not into retrogaming too much, so I'm generally basing my pick on how much I played the game and how influential I think it was to later games. I played the ever living hell out of Wasteland and while it might not hold up against its descendants, it was absolutely mind-blowing when I played it then.

Sir T
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Reply #71 on: September 12, 2018, 05:11:23 PM

If its "game I loved and played the shit out of for years over and over" I'd have to say Battlezone.

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Teleku
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Reply #72 on: September 15, 2018, 09:45:00 PM

Poll for 88 is up in discord.  Get in there Wasteland people if want to make your mark (Zelda 2 is currently running away with it).

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schild
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Reply #73 on: September 16, 2018, 09:58:24 PM

Ahem. Zelda II: The Adventures of Link has won 1988. This is obviously the ONLY year this game could have been released and won literally anything. Nonetheless, it was a sound and clean win. Good job, Link, you short-armed little shit.



Onwards, to 1989, wherein things get complex af.
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #74 on: September 17, 2018, 08:12:23 AM

Who put the NES version of Metal Gear on there over the MSX version? You should examine your game choices whoever you are, dear sir.

Also, the arbitrary start year of 1985 excludes M.U.L.E. (1983) from being eligible and this travesty puts the legitimacy of this whole Ultimate Battle into question. I’m shocked, shocked and appalled and I will write a stern letter over this.
Sky
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Reply #75 on: September 17, 2018, 08:44:47 AM

The NES was an abomination that set gaming back 20 years.
Velorath
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Reply #76 on: September 17, 2018, 07:23:20 PM

Yeah, it's a real tragedy that peasants from families that couldn't afford PC's still got to play games.
schild
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Reply #77 on: September 17, 2018, 07:58:34 PM

The NES was an abomination that set gaming back 20 years.

whew, this take is so hot i might split the thread into politics

what's your opinion on the Neo Geo MVS? Naomi?
schild
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Reply #78 on: September 17, 2018, 07:59:49 PM

Who put the NES version of Metal Gear on there over the MSX version? You should examine your game choices whoever you are, dear sir.

Also, the arbitrary start year of 1985 excludes M.U.L.E. (1983) from being eligible and this travesty puts the legitimacy of this whole Ultimate Battle into question. I’m shocked, shocked and appalled and I will write a stern letter over this.

1. metal gear wasn't going to get votes, so who cares. if you want a say, join the discord channel
2. you answered your own question there, it was entirely arbitrary
Count Nerfedalot
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Reply #79 on: September 17, 2018, 09:20:07 PM

It is interesting to see the different takes in different regions of the world. So many contributing factors, from system price and game price vs relative income to varying release dates and cultural preferences. But I think the single biggest factor in the 80's at least was piracy. Stuff that could be pirated, and systems that enabled piracy, were a lot more popular almost everywhere. Commodore 64 reigned supreme in that regard, and likely a lot of the most popular titles from that era (at least by the metric of most played) will be things that were pirated around extensively on the C64. Which means games like the truly genre-creating Dungeon Master and later some of the graphical ground breaking games on the Amiga don't really have a chance. Not because they weren't better than their competition at the time, but because they weren't played by nearly as many people due to being less available for free.

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Velorath
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Reply #80 on: September 17, 2018, 10:39:45 PM

I did a replay of Zelda II over the last couple days. I'm not 100% on board with schild's assessment that Demon's Souls is a Zelda game, but I will say that Zelda II is absolutely a  Souls game in a lot of ways. Even if you're using save states (unless you're using them right in the middle of combat), you are not going to brute force your way through this game and if you aren't patient this game you will get punished for it more often than not. There's leveling, but even if you try to grind xp, you aren't going to overpower your enemies. Due to your small attack range, you need precision, but there's only a few occasions where the game feels unfair.

I breezed through Mega Man 2 and Castlevania 2 in a little over an hour each, but Zelda II was a god damn ordeal and I loved it.
Cyrrex
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Reply #81 on: September 17, 2018, 11:11:38 PM

You loved it?  I remember playing it when it came out, but I would have guessed this Zelda title above all others would not hold up very well.  I am suddenly wondering if and how I should get my hands on a copy.

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Reply #82 on: September 17, 2018, 11:19:21 PM

Yeah, its a game that when I first played as a kid, none of us liked very much.  Then I went back and played through the whole thing when I was a teenager, and really enjoyed it.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants.  He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."
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Velorath
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Reply #83 on: September 18, 2018, 12:16:48 AM

You loved it?  I remember playing it when it came out, but I would have guessed this Zelda title above all others would not hold up very well.  I am suddenly wondering if and how I should get my hands on a copy.

Like Castlevania II, due to some poor writing/translations there are some bits that would be almost impossible to figure out without a guide if you're just coming into the game cold. I know the game well enough that it's not an issue but I have no idea how someone without prior exposure to the game would react to it. Also I did use save states in parts as a time saving measure (not to cheese the game). It's hard, and it's not for everybody. There are some frustrating parts where a lot of shit gets thrown at you at once, and there are enemies that require good reflexes and learning their patterns. There aren't a lot of ways to get health back outside of towns. When you're in a dungeon, you can use maybe one cast of the healing spell you eventually get and then you're out of magic. If you don't know where all the hidden stuff is, you're going to have a hell of a time trying to fill your magic bar back up.

It's a challenging game. Not challenging like the first Castlevania (which is hard because it had a save system in Japan because it was a disk system game). Not challenging like Bionic Commando which is a pain because of the counter-intuitive mechanics where you don't have a jump button. It's challenging because it expects you to put in the time to actually get better at it.

And yes, some stuff is going to fell a bit dated, so I'm certainly not saying everyone needs to go out and play Zelda II if they haven't already. It is one of the games on the NES Classic which is fairly easy to find these days. And hey, Bubble Bobble, Punch-Out, and Mega Man 2 are on there as well, so you've got 3 Game of the Year titles and a likely 4th.
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Reply #84 on: September 18, 2018, 02:19:32 AM

Yeah, its a game that when I first played as a kid, none of us liked very much.  Then I went back and played through the whole thing when I was a teenager, and really enjoyed it.
I finished it as a kid 30 years ago (shit I’m old) without any help and it was a slog. I was also extremely patient to try all sorts of things out to determine the translation meanings (everything does eventually help if you squint right). It was overly difficult but not impossible. When I replayed it recently I remembered all of it and the challenge was only training my reflexes back up to handle the jumping and more difficult monsters. Really the only “hard” part is the last level because of how long it is and you must choose the right paths and conserve resources to stand a chance at the last two bosses.

But really, there’s plenty of games out there that were good that year (some of us have no idea what discord is...)
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Reply #85 on: September 18, 2018, 07:22:09 AM

I also replayed Zelda II a couple days ago and I absolutely still love it. 
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #86 on: September 18, 2018, 07:23:21 AM

Pirating may have been the biggest selling point for a lot of people but even if there hadn't been such a huge library of pirated games and stuff Europe would have leaned towards Commodore and the other home computer systems like Sinclair Spectrum or Amstrad or Atari.

Commodore and Atari had a network of distributors in Europe, they sold through to general stores and had contracts with the big European mail order companies (equivalents to Sears) like Quelle or Neckermann. You could buy a C64 or an Amstrad CPC, add-ons like disk drives or material like floppy disks almost anywhere. I could have walked into the local department store in my hometown of 16,000 in bumfuck nowhere in 1985 (and I did) and buy a C64, a 1541 disk drive and everything else I might need or I could have picked it out of a mail order catalogue and ordered it from our own big mail order companies. (with a 30 day returns policy)

Buying a NES or a Sega Master System or a PC Engine/Turbografx16 would have required that I actually knew those things existed and even if I did I'd probably have needed to buy them from a specialized store as Japan imports that came with a huge premium and additional drawbacks (different video norm, different power requirements, a language I couldn't even read)

It additionally didn't help that the European NES came out on 9/1/1986 or almost three years after the Japanese release and one year after the US release.

It was more an issue of awareness and access not purchasing power. A C64 with a 1541 disk drive was ridiculously expensive. It cost $595 on release which is $1551 in 2018 prices (adjusted for inflation) and the 1541 disc drive was basically the same price with $600/$1560 in 2018 prices. A year later prices dropped to about $300 for the C64 and $300 for the disk drive. The NES by comparison cost $199 or $249 ($412 adjusted for inflation) depending on the SKU.  So you would have spent either $3120 to $1560 in 2018 money on the C64/1541 Combo while the NES would have cost you about the same price as a current gen PS4/XBox One. An Amiga 500 which was the next huge success was even more expensive.

Nintendo basically never corrected that. The European subsidiary Nintendo of Europe was founded in 1990 or ten years after NoA. The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive was more successful than the SNES (SNES EU version launched two years after the Super Famicom and two years after the EU version of the Genesis) and Europe is basically Playstation territory since the original Playstation which had what was basically a global launch with the Japanese version predating the US and EU versions by only six months.

Maybe things would have gone differently if a European subsidiary of Nintendo had existed in 1983 and if people had been able to buy a NES bundle at their favourite department store without being price gouged by importers or local distributers and without an additional 3 year delay between Japanese and EU releases.
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Reply #87 on: September 18, 2018, 08:04:11 AM

look at that

my little exercise in picking the best games ever is provoking some of the most meaningful conversation about gaming this website has ever had

wild

mega man 2 for president of 1989
Ironwood
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Reply #88 on: September 18, 2018, 08:18:06 AM

Populous, Bitchcakes.

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Jeff Kelly
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Reply #89 on: September 18, 2018, 08:45:22 AM

You push me into finally trying to figure this whole discord thing out once and for all. Just to make sure the right game wins and I hate myself a little bit for that.
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Reply #90 on: September 18, 2018, 09:17:33 AM

Shit, quick, erase all the conversation history about Jeff!

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Azazel
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Reply #91 on: September 19, 2018, 11:17:20 PM

It is interesting to see the different takes in different regions of the world. So many contributing factors, from system price and game price vs relative income to varying release dates and cultural preferences. But I think the single biggest factor in the 80's at least was piracy. Stuff that could be pirated, and systems that enabled piracy, were a lot more popular almost everywhere. Commodore 64 reigned supreme in that regard, and likely a lot of the most popular titles from that era (at least by the metric of most played) will be things that were pirated around extensively on the C64. Which means games like the truly genre-creating Dungeon Master and later some of the graphical ground breaking games on the Amiga don't really have a chance. Not because they weren't better than their competition at the time, but because they weren't played by nearly as many people due to being less available for free.

EVERYTHING available on the Amiga was available in pirated form. EVERYTHING.

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Sky
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Reply #92 on: September 20, 2018, 07:17:46 AM

Our black CPUG (in contrast to the white one without pirates) had a few Amiga users. There were more of them in the white group, but I'm pretty sure any of the big titles were available...if you joined the dark side group.
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Reply #93 on: September 24, 2018, 08:43:18 PM

In a nail-biter, Mega Man 2 has taken it as of midnightish est whatever today is:



schild
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Reply #94 on: September 24, 2018, 08:44:17 PM

Props to Gary "Azure Bonds" Johnson, the true spoiler of 1989.
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Reply #95 on: September 25, 2018, 05:53:38 AM

 Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly? Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly? Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

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Reply #96 on: September 27, 2018, 04:08:16 PM

There was a round 2? You suck at making announcements.
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Reply #97 on: September 27, 2018, 05:39:03 PM

no u
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Reply #98 on: September 30, 2018, 10:07:46 PM

shocking exactly nobody who has ever played a game



super mario bros 3 took 1990
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Reply #99 on: October 01, 2018, 05:49:07 PM

1991 poll is up.  Looks like a duel between Street Fighter 2 and Final Fantasy 4.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants.  He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."
-Stephen Colbert
Cyrrex
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Reply #100 on: October 01, 2018, 10:45:34 PM

I guess that must be the arcade version of Street Fighter 2.  Tough one.  Personally, the SNES version (particularly the hyper version) is one of the best games of all time.  And it still holds up today.  We have one of those mini SNES console thingies with SF2 built in.  My smart mouth 13 year old challenged me to a game, and then proceeded to get his ass handed to him utterly, 20 times in a row regardless of character chosen, even with the handicap fully in his favor.  THAT is how you do fighting games.  Pixel perfect controls, ridiculous reflexes.  Mortal Kombat was also great, but it was like fighting in molasses by comparison.

But the arcade version.  Tough call.  While amazing, it was the SNES version that made it a household name.

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Reply #101 on: October 01, 2018, 10:52:49 PM

You either:

1. Didn't live near an arcade.
2. Didn't play SF2 with other humans in an arcade, if you did live near one.
3. Have a spotty memory of SF2 as a phenomenon.

The SNES version was positively massive, but the arcade version was industry and genre altering.
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Reply #102 on: October 01, 2018, 11:04:14 PM

No, you are wrong about all three of those.  I fell in love with it instantly, and played the crap out of it in the arcade.  But then the SNES version came out and we played it 100 times as much and it introduced the game to many more in our circle.

So it's more a case of picking between A) the superior arcade version that started it all, or B) the mass market version that I played until permanent calluses were built up and probably played more than any non MMO ever.  Or C) maybe I don't actually have to pick between them.

If I had to transport myself back to 1991, SF2 wins anyway.  FF4 was not even on my radar.

"...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
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Reply #103 on: October 01, 2018, 11:31:42 PM

No, you are wrong about all three of those.  I fell in love with it instantly, and played the crap out of it in the arcade.  But then the SNES version came out and we played it 100 times as much and it introduced the game to many more in our circle.

do you wonder why you played the SNES version a hundred times as much?

or are you making my point for me?

Quote
So it's more a case of picking between A) the superior arcade version that started it all, or B) the mass market version that I played until permanent calluses were built up and probably played more than any non MMO ever.  Or C) maybe I don't actually have to pick between them.

ah, you're making my point for me

also, the arcade version made it a household name

Quote
The release of the game had an unexpected impact on gaming and was the beginning of a massive phenomenon. Various versions of the game grossed over $10 billion in inflation-adjusted revenue, mostly from arcades,[4] as well as from video game console ports which sold more than 14 million cartridges for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive platforms.[16]

14,000,000*$70.00 isn't even $1bn

of course one could make the argument that you didn't have to plop a quarter or fifty cents into a SNES to play the thing

but one wouldn't make that argument because it would be stupid and also doesn't matter

edit: for the record, I rank SFII as one of the best SNES games to release, ever. But it doesn't even come near to what the arcade version did to gaming. The wheels of the industry were already in full motion before the thing even hit home consoles. It changed things forever. Ironically, so did Final Fantasy IV/II.

edit 2: To wit, I might make a future Ultimate Battle of "Best Franchises," which is a super interesting way of looking at the industry, I think.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2018, 11:39:20 PM by schild »
Cyrrex
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Reply #104 on: October 02, 2018, 12:25:46 AM

I suppose I was mainly just talking myself into it, which I did.  Also, would not have guessed the arcade version actually generated that much of the revenue.  I was in the military at the time, so the kinds of arcades we were exposed to were different, with fewer or no kids.

A point could be made that the arcade version actually wasn't superior.  It was from a graphics point of view surely, but given my choice I would take a SNES gamepad controller over the arcade joystick.  Also, the hyperfighting version (or whatever the exact name is), was even better.  Cranking the speed up to max was the shit.

And as one of the rare people that owned a 3DO, that was probably my all time favorite version.  The controllers for that console fucking sucked, but they sold SNES adaptors.

"...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
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