The US Nintendo eShop currently has sales for Pikmin 1, Pikmin 2, Pikmin 1 + 2 bundle, Pikmin 3 Deluxe, and Pikmin 4.
I've never played a Pikmin game before. Which would y'all recommend if I were to only buy one of these options?
Wow I never thought I'd see the day REmake would be voted in! Particularly because I forgot to vote. Very excited for that, Sonic Adventure 2, and Mother 3.
Happy to host it, but if anyone really else wants to, I'll defer to you.
I think REmake is perfect for CGA. It's an amazing game that I think many people might not try on their own, which is exactly what our group is all about. It's also highly influential, relatively short, has aged remarkably well, and is available on dozens of retro and modern platforms. We also have October coming up, which is the perfect time to play this game.
What makes it strong isn't purely the horror anyway. The fun is in exploring the mansion, learning its layout, managing limited resources (including saves), and solving puzzles to gradually open up more of the map. The pacing is excellent throughout.
It's also very campy and more fun than a "horror game" might suggest on the surface. It has zombies, giant snakes, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, flamethrowers, B-movie dialogue, and more.
Even if you finish it and decide Resident Evil isn't for you, I think it's worth experiencing at least once. I originally went into the game strongly disliking horror and came out of it with an entirely new appreciation for a genre I had categorically written off.
I purchased Golden Sun and Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade on the same day. What luck! Those remain two of my favorite games. I also loved Melee. You have the perfect list to me.
I really enjoyed this game! It was simple in the best ways, and I imagine a lot of the ideas were great in the era. It's really cool to see a game that so many legends at Nintendo touched. The looney tunes battle mechanics were interesting. Probably could have used a bit more depth, but it worked. The music was great, as was the world design. I also enjoyed the platforming between human, frog, and snake forms. Finally, I loved the expressiveness of the game ("WHAAAAT?").
Playing Link's Awakening right after this really made me appreciate The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls. Suddenly there's color, you can and have to manually attack, there are deeper item pick ups that require learning them rather than allowing you to progress by simply holding them. It clearly built off of this game and did it so well. Besides Prince Richard's cameo, you get the switch from top down to side scrolling once again. Link's Awakening is probably my favorite Game Boy game, so it was really fun to visit its roots and see the context of how that game didn't appear out of thin air.
Just finished Link's Awakening DX with the redux rom hack. I'd highly recommend playing it as a follow up if you have an itch for another game. It has clear roots in The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls while improving on it in almost every way. It's really fun to see the evolution of capabilities as well as the references to the former game. Definitely my favorite GBC game I've played. There's also a recent remake for Switch, but that obviously loses out on being a good comparison against this month's game.
REmake is my favorite game in the series. The pre-rendered backgrounds are beautiful, the pacing is perfect, and the camera tricks it does with the fixed angles are stellar. When I first beat it, I instantly bought an OLED PS Vita to play RE2 and RE3 via PS Classics. The remakes of them are really good, but I prefer the originals, which are more in line with REmake. Definitely recommended checking the original versions out! RE7 is also very good, but significantly scarier. It's really worth a playthrough if you can handle it. I did it in VR, and I'm a wimp!
The game was great! I started playing Link's Awakening right afterwards and have already gotten to the reference. Really fun experience.
Thanks for raising this. It was certainly on my mind while voting. I tried to prioritize new games in my votes since they started from zero votes. However, I did choose games I ultimately wanted to play rather than vote strategically, which is why I voted for Castlevania despite its head start.
I think the decay should likely be much more severe. Those games received votes months ago. The people that voted for them may not be as interested now or may not have even participated in this round of voting. I'm in favor of option 2; either going with @villi's suggestion or making the decay ~75%. Further, I am wondering if a game that's in the lead with rollover votes should make it if it doesn't receive any votes this round. I'm leaning towards it still should make it to allow for strategic voting, but it does feel a bit funny if we end up with no one wanting to play it this round. But maybe that would lead to a hidden hit!
I wouldn't feel cheated by rule changes mid-process. I think it's pragmatic and appreciate your proactiveness. I really want Mother 3 to win, and the disparity in current votes vs. votes including rollover does highlight an issue with the current system in my opinion.
To make sure I'm understanding the diary correctly, after writing to it, if I want to return to that spot I should return to the title screen by holding START + SELECT + B + A and then loading the diary save?
You can only read the diary from within the game rather than being able to load from it like you can on the title screen?
No worries, I didn't read the comparison in that way!
Ooh thanks for the game rec and pointing out balooga's suggestion! Haven't heard of any of those besides Dead Space, but they look great! I've actually never played Dead Space myself. That one looks pretty scary. It's on my backlog to get around to once I've caught up on RE and Silent Hill.
That's a great point. Thanks for bringing it up. For what it's worth, I don't really care about Halloween. For me, it's less about the holiday and more the fact that many people around me and online are playing the horror genre during October. The horror games I play seldom mention Halloween or October. Horror is a game genre, whereas Christianity is a theme/topic, so I think there's a subtle difference.
Full transparency, I'm more concerned that most people will write off horror as not for them, and a retro horror game will never win. I've had so many friends who completely write off the genre, eventually play a game at my insistence, and end up absolutely loving it. Nonetheless, I think it's reasonable if people don't vote for horror, then perhaps it shouldn't be included. I'll just have to do some stronger lobbying in the future haha.
I wouldn't complain if this was the winning ballot. Interested in all of these games. And I love the vote for REmake!
Great write up @J-Chiptunator. I appreciate the tips as well. I've been so bad about playing games to completion recently. I've only beaten three games in the past six months. But this post has me excited, and I think a smaller, handheld game will be good for me.
Loading this up on an Analogue Pocket with the display mode set to Original GB DMG. It looks absolutely beautiful!
I wish I had more time to write up a good lobbying post for REMake, but I'll leave some of my highlights for the game.
A perfect ballot!