Colossal Game Adventure: Voting topic
IMPORTANT
We now have a splash screen. (Thanks @Boojum!)
ALSO IMPORTANT
Please read all directions for submitting a proper ballot.
Any improper ballots will NOT be counted, but you will get a polite message from me before the count asking you to fix them. XD
- All ballots must be top-level comments.
- All top-level comments should be ballots ONLY.
I will be using the Collapse Replies button to tally votes, so any ballots not in top-level comments will not be counted.
After you submit your ballot, you can respond to your own post in a new comment to lobby for your choices (which is optional but highly recommended). It's completely fine to have conversations downthread from the ballots, but please make sure that the top-level remains clean.
Submitting Your Ballot
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Each person has 20 votes to distribute among games they see fit.
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Each person can allocate a maximum of 5 points per Single Game/Arcade Special.
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Arcade Specials count as one block (do not vote for each game in them individually).
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Votes should be listed as
NAME (VOTES)-- e.g.Pong (3) -
Voting closes 48 hours from the posting of this topic.
Please ensure your titles match mine exactly (copy/paste highly recommended). I will be using CTRL+F to tally votes u/Spore_Prince has written a program to tally the votes, so any different spellings will not being counted. See examples below, as well as my actual ballot in the topic.
Example Ballot 1 - Valid Ballot
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (5)
Portal 3 (5)
Half-Life 3 (3)
Team Fortress 3 (2)
Night Trap (2)
Xexyz (1)
Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (1)
Left 4 Dead 3 (1)
Uses 20 points total, and no game exceeds 5 points
Example Ballot 2 - Invalid Ballot
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (10)
Protal 3 (7)
Wand of Gamelon (5)
Uses more than 20 points; games exceed 5 points; titles do not match
Voting Outcomes
- The top 6 games/Arcade Specials will become the next 6 months of CGA.
- Of the remaining games, the bottom 50% will be cut from the list.
- The remaining 50% will stay on the list and will enter the next voting round starting at their current point totals instead of 0.
- The next round of nominations will happen in 6 months, and participants will be limited to nominating 1 new game OR 1 new Arcade Special.
Nominees
Arcade Specials
| Arcade Special | Games |
|---|---|
| Back in a Flash | Bloons Tower Defense Line Rider Motherload QWOP Stick RPG |
| Behind the Wheel | Lego Island Rally-X Sega Rally Championship |
| Fixated on Fixed Screen Shooters | Space Invaders Galaxian Phoenix Galaga Satan’s Hollow |
| Hop Skip Jump | Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle Alley Cat Contra Flicky Prince of Persia |
| Mr. Defaxxonobbleoid | Arkanoid Bubble Bobble Defender Mr. Do! Zaxxon |
| PlayStation WHAT? | Incredible Crisis Irritating Stick PaRappa the Rapper 2 Pepsiman Vib-Ribbon |
| Recursive Repertoires | Activision Anthology Midway Arcade Treasures Taito Legends |
| rOGuelikes | Beneath Apple Manor Scarab of RA |
| Scroll Lock-on | Einhander Ikaruga Paradroid Raid on Bungeling Bay Thunder Force IV |
| The Grue That Binds | Border Zone Twisted! Zork |
CGA Announcement: The voting topic is now open (yes, it's going up a little early -- I was too excited to wait!).
PLEASE read the directions for voting in the topic before commenting.
Note that I did make some edits to Arcade Specials and submissions out of necessity.
Also, if I missed a game for the nominations or a person on the notification list, I promise it wasn't on purpose.
If you want to be added/removed from the Notification List, let me know here or by PM.
Notification List
@1338
@Akir
@ali
@AriMaeda
@atomicshoreline
@avirse
@balooga
@BeardyHat
@Boojum
@Bwerf
@CannibalisticApple
@chocobean
@clayh
@datavoid
@dotsforeyes
@Dr_Amazing
@Gummy
@hamstergeddon
@IsildursBane
@J-Chiptunator
@JCPhoenix
@Jerutix
@jmpavlec
@joshbuddy
@kaiomai
@Kawa
@kej
@kfwyre
@kingofsnake
@Lapbunny
@Mendanbar
@mysterylevel
@PancakeCats
@Pavouk106
@PetitPrince
@polle
@preposterous
@rosco
@Rudism
@SloMoMonday
@Sodliddesu
@Soggy
@Spore_Prince
@SpruceWillis
@squidwiz
@talklittle
@Timwi
@trim
@trim
@Trobador
@vili
@Weldawadyathink
@xk3
@zod000
CGA Announcement: Voting closes 24 hours from the time of this comment.
I'm including pings for anyone on the notification list who hasn't yet voted.
Note: voting is totally optional! You do not have to do it if you don't want to.
Also you do not have to be on the notification list to vote: this event is open to all.
Notification List
@1338
@ali
@atomicshoreline
@balooga
@Boojum
@Bwerf
@chocobean
@clayh
@IsildursBane
@jmpavlec
@joshbuddy
@kaiomai
@kej
@Mendanbar
@PetitPrince
@polle
@SloMoMonday
@Sodliddesu
@Soggy
@SpruceWillis
@squidwiz
@talklittle
@Timwi
@trim
CGA Announcement: Last call for votes! I'll be doing the final tally in about an hour.
Announcement: @Spore_Prince has graciously written a program to parse and tally the votes in this topic (which is going to save me a ton of time!).
They posted it to GitHub and said they welcome contributions if anyone wants to add to it.
Racing Lagoon (3)
Behind the Wheel (2)
PlayStation WHAT? (2)
rOGuelikes (2)
ActRaiser (1)
Another World (1)
Descent (1)
Fixated on Fixed Screen Shooters (1)
Hop Skip Jump (1)
Lode Runner (1)
Metroid (1)
Scroll Lock-on (1)
Sid Meier's Covert Action (1)
The Last Express (1)
Threads of Fate (1)
Racing games are my jam, so they headed up my votes. Racing Lagoon in particular looks really cool. I could have voted for Burnout 3 but didn't for two reasons:
Also, I thought Carmageddon was SO cool as a kid -- not because of the violence but because it had a sandbox level you could drive through. That was noteworthy in the 90s! You mean you can just drive WHEREVER you want to?
I tried to replay it as an adult though, and it kind of turned my stomach.
Anyway, there were SO many good choices that I spread the rest of my votes pretty thing across a lot of different titles. I seriously wanted to vote for way more but am trying to respect the limitation that I myself put in place. XD
Haven't had a chance to vote just yet (been busy, gonna get that done today), but maybe I should be ashamed to admit I still absolutely love Carmageddon.
Used to remain installed on my phone when the Android version worked. Honestly, it'll likely be in my top votes...
If you have any questions about CGA or voting, please put them under this comment.
Also let me know if I messed up any links or spellings.
I think this is smart! But maybe divide historical votes by half?
I feel like there does need to be some mechanism for keeping the nomination list tidy but maybe this should be closer to 10%--especially since during the next nomination people can only choose new titles? Maybe let this thought simmer and you'll know more during the next nomination... (if there are fewer nominations than last time, etc)
I'm glad you brought this up, as I've actually been playing with numbers now that the votes are rolling in.
Vote Decay
Like you identified, I think having some sort of "decay" on rollover votes is a good thing for two reasons:
It would be weird for game #7 in this round of voting to start so high that everyone assumes it's a lock and votes for other things instead, making it end up at spot #7 again, for example.
I had originally thought of 30% decay as the sweet spot, but I'm open to 50% if people feel that's a good fit.
If we want to put some numbers on it, using our current data (which is still incomplete but makes for a good rough benchmark):
The top of the carryover list would have 32 points, while the bottom would have 15.
30% decay = 22 and 11 points
50% decay = 16 and 8 points
Thoughts?
Nomination Changes
So, I was originally expecting far fewer nominations. I was optimistically thinking maybe we'd hit 20 but honestly expecting fewer than that. Instead, we hit 60+(!!!) which I shrunk down to a final list of 51 by compiling games into Arcade Specials.
I think a healthier nomination list is smaller than this for a couple of reasons:
I plan on limiting nominations next round to one game OR one arcade special per person.
Culling
With our present numbers, if I cull 50% of the remaining games, that means that 23 will pass through to the next round (22 are getting culled).
If we expect 50% of the group to nominate something next round, that means that we'll be getting 32 nominations, which would result in 55 games to vote for (even more than this round).
I think it's fair to assume, given how popular nominations were this time, that we might get even more. Personally, I would love for our list to be down in the 20s or 30s max.
Potential Culling Options
There are two levers we can pull to get there:
For lever 1, it's hard to restrict below 1 per person in a fair way, so I'm also thinking of this option:
This way, we will have fewer new games entering the nominations (assuming that people are still passionate about the carryover games). Someone can "spend" their nomination on a pre-existing game for the 5 point boost, then also vote for it in the voting round (potentially another 5 points).
The tradeoff here is that they wouldn't be able to nominate something new, but that would effectively help us by keeping our voting list size down. Of course, they could always nominate a new game instead, but then the old one wouldn't be getting the point boost.
For lever 2, we could up the culling up to, say, 70%, which would bring over only 14 titles. Or we could do more (or less).
Re-Nominating Culled Games
For games that do get culled, I want to explicitly allow re-nominating for a couple of reasons:
I don't want to toot my own horn here, but several people have mentioned my writeup for The Last Express as the reason they voted for it. I think this could happen in the future for culled games and they could see a second wind if someone here sells us on them really well.
A "Wildcard" Month?
@psi brought up a really interesting weighted method for picking games. I personally like the idea of choosing the most popular MOST of the time, but I do like the idea of having one month be a "wildcard" month. That is: the top FIVE games would get played, and then ONE of the games that's going to get culled gets chosen randomly to be played.
I think this is a cool way of incorporating more niche games into the club, but I also fear that it could completely kill momentum. After all, if it's getting culled, that means that not a lot of people expressed interest in it in the first place.
I guess it comes down to: how many people are planning to play CGA games because they're there, and how many are planning to play CGA games if they're interested in them. I know I lean toward the former, but I want to respect the interests of people in the latter group as well.
Open Process
Yes, I realize this is a lot, but I'm putting it all out there to:
(Can you tell I'm really feeling numbered lists today? XD)
As such, I'm open to feedback on any of this. These are questions for the entire CGA group:
Note: for THIS round of voting, I plan on moving forward with the top 6 since that was what was promised. I also think that, since the club is just starting, going with the most popular choices is going to be the most likely to generate momentum.
Any changes we make will happen to the next round of voting (e.g. vote decay, wildcards, etc.).
One thought I have to help whittle down the nominations would be to have a "double pack" month for two games that are related or similar (e.g. both Metroid games, the original Super Mario Bros and Sonic games, two games with western settings, a western and a space shooter, etc.). Comparing the games could generate some interesting discussion, even if people only play one.
Alternatively, a double pack month could have two very different games in case people have different tastes. Though not sure how to balance that out.
You'd also suggested the possibility of "side quests", which I think could also be a good way to whittle down the list by using it for games that are shorter, or to balance out games that are more complicated to get running. I'd say Seaman, for example, should be a side quest given the simple gameplay (it's basically a really weird pet simulator) and also the complexity in getting it to run (you need a microphone to talk to it).
Games that involve patches like Kaeru no Tame might also be good options for a side quest month, depending on how easy or complicated it is to patch it. Some games have the patch as a direct part of a single download, but others require tracking down the ROM and then patching it... Bit more work than some people might want to do, so it could be good to have an alternative that could be easily played via the Internet Archive or GOG or Steam.
Yeah, the two per month was something that I was thinking of suggesting too. Not so much for the idea of playing both (that that's certainly an option for those with the time), but for having a bit of a choice. Maybe game A is an a genre that I know doesn't appeal to me and I'd rather play game B. I think we have enough interest in participating that we could afford to split, especially for the top-voted games.
Can also avoid the admittedly unlikely but still possible scenario where somehow all the top nominations are the same genre. Imagine six straight months of shooters or JRPG games...
YES this. Maybe a mix of popular-vote and randomization / careful curatorial intent is the right answer here
My only hesitation on the double packs is people who are interested in completing CGA games. I think a lot of people would love having a choice each month, but I think others would try to do both and might find two games a bit of an imposition (especially if they're longer ones).
I'm thinking we do the first 6 months as a trial run and then see how people feel after that. I can put up a survey topic before the next round of nominations regarding any changes to the format.
100% agree with this line of reasoning. Popular titles are generally popular for a reason and they shouldn't be excluded for getting too many votes or anything like that.
Also, CGA could choose from the top and bottom of the list so the first month we play the most popular and the least popular game under a different thread title or something like that. Or maybe a "Game Pack" similar to Arcade Specials where, during months that there isn't a popular-vote Arcade Special, there are 3-5 culled game titles and you choose one and play it.
I see culling as very necessary for effective voting BUT I also feel a bit sad that additional effort is required to get people playing hidden gems or games that don't work well for the purposes of education and discussion. I think there should be some mechanism to use the effort of nominating and voting on culled games--without detracting from the magic that makes the popular titles popular.
This doesn't have to be solved by CGA directly; maybe I will make my own informal thread every so often where I play one of the culled titles that at least two people voted for or something.
@CannibalisticApple referenced it here, but I've tossed around the idea of having "Sidequests" for CGA. We could easily have the main month topic and a separate "Sidequest" topic for smaller or more niche games.
Heck, to make it easy, we could just choose the top 6 games that are going to get culled and run those in parallel to the main event?
That might work well enough!
It may occur to you as strange but I was surprised the first time you mentioned nominations carrying over at all. I did not in a million years even imagine that was on the table. Instead I had just assumed the winner would be picked and the next round of nominations would be fresh (without disallowing re-nominations for anything that didn't win), and I just figured if something was in a high ranking position without being chosen for play in the round it was nominated, that it would naturally be a matter of time until it does get nominated again and win as other things get removed from above it by way of being chosen and played by CGA.
In a way, I think this is a problem of our own making by choosing to carry over in the first place, and one that's very hard to correct for now that the cat's out of the bag on it.
With that context given, my answers:
I think given your example numbers, the 30% decay seems like the top carried over item becomes highly likely to win next time, while on the other hand with 50% decay the bottom carried over item faces nearly insurmountable odds of making a comeback win at least in the subsequent round (again, given the renomination circumstances you predict, I think it's possible longer-term for these titles to make a comeback after advocacy or emergent excitement about the IP, but I doubt any just-barely-not-culled game ever wins the next voting round.)
I think 1 nomination per participant is sensible. When you express culling up to 70% I'm not sure if you mean culling 70% of carried over games but I'm thinking what if this was a flexible number? A moving cap, based on the number of participants in subsequent nomination threads?
I originally imagined a fixed cap. To do this, carryovers would have to be held for determination after the next round of nominations. Say an average of 25 people nominate and we were to set a fixed 40 game cap which means there would be room for 15 games to get carried over from the previous round. In a more popular round, if 30 people nominate, then only 10 games are carried over. On a round where too many participants are busy, if 15 people nominate, 25 games can carry over. Seemed simple in my head but then I realized the problem with a hard cap is what if 41 or more people nominate? Then our hard cap is already overblown. (It also could be an awkward experience if more titles get carried over than newly nominated if that were to happen during a period of change in the CGA participant pool so that old nominations nominated by people no longer participating are getting carried over...)
So instead we'd need like a formula that produces that effect but with a soft cap. The number of nominations would determine the number of carryovers. It can't just be a percent of nominations determines carryovers, because that makes both numbers grow together, we need it to be inverse: the more new nominations, the fewer carryovers, and the fewer new nominations, the more room for carryovers, but with a total that is always greater than the number of new nominations so that nobody loses their chance to nominate. I'm not great at math so I don't know how to express that as a formula. Does the idea make sense though?
I genuinely don't know if I can even just pick a number out of thin air. The list this time around wasn't too bad for me to look through and decide where I wanted to assign my votes. I could handle a bit bigger of a list, but not a way bigger list. Smaller would be fine too. It's probably close to "just right" how it was this time.
It depends on why we feel the need to do this. I think the very bottom voted game of a cycle is the game that least needs help because logically speaking, very few people are interested. It doesn't serve CGA to make CGA play something they are not interested in, so no need to boost or help that game. It's the middle of the pack games that get some some interest but maybe will never get enough to really see their chance, maybe even through no fault of their own but just getting overshadowed.
I think the best course of action would be to not specifically try to do anything about this in advance, but instead rather wait and see what happens if/when something gets culled that is interesting enough to be a noticed elimination and mourned in the threads. Once CGA participants experience it and really know how they feel about it is the better time to re-ask this question as participants I think will be more firsthand informed about where they stand on this. In other words, people may answer differently between today and after something happens.
Not sure if I wanna say yes or no to this idea. It feels like a potential solution to question 4, to which I would say let's wait and see what happens when games either get stuck in the middle of the pack or get culled with enough interest to be noticed. The 5 point boost you proposed if we do go down this path seems like a viable starting point and there's room for tuning up or down from that number.
Not that I can think of at this time.
EDIT: Do note that I didn't realize the top 6 voted games are the next 6 months of CGA at the time I wrote all of the above, which is why I speak with the framing that we vote month by month. I think my ideas are still valid stretched out over a 6 month voting cycle but nominations wont bloat as quickly as badly as I imagined.
I am amused by the idea of a "wildcard" month, so I thought maybe I should clarify exactly what I'm proposing.
Essentially, for the wildcard month, one would choose a game per a categorical distribution, with the probability of drawing a particular title
Tgiven bywhere
N_Tis the number of votes for titleTandN = sum_T N_Tis the total number of votes cast.However, the simplest implementation might give too much weight to unpopular choices, so one could additionally introduce a reweighting function
fto minimize/eliminate the chance of selecting especially unpopular games. For example, one could consider the reweighting functionwhich eliminates titles that received less than 15 total votes and gives a quadratic preference to more popular choices. In principle, the only restrictions on the reweighting function are that it be (1) non-negative for all inputs and (2) non-zero for at least one input.
To choose a game using a reweighting function, one would again draw per a categorical distribution but with new probabilities
where the normalization constant is
A = sum_T f(p_T, N).Here's a python script that reads "tally.csv" and simulates a random draw per the reweighting function above. (Note that it uses numpy, so you would need to add `numpy` to requirements.txt.)
Chrono Trigger (4)
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (4)
The Secret of Monkey Island (3)
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) (2)
Seaman (2)
Threads of Fate (2)
PlayStation WHAT? (2)
Racing Lagoon (1)
The Colonel’s Bequest (5)
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden - Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa (5)
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) (5)
Racing Lagoon (5)
Fixed the link. Thanks for the heads up. Sorry about that.
(Also Lord Monarch has already gotten a vote!)
I think the tough part of a club like this is balancing niche titles with popular ones. Go too niche and a lot of people won't be interested, and the club loses momentum. Go too popular, and a lot of people (like yourself) who are interested in deep dives also see themselves out, which makes us lose a lot of the interesting texture and conversation that come from having a club like this.
Once we're through this voting round we'll have more data to go off of, but if we're finding that popular titles are steamrolling niche ones, we can tweak the voting to let niche titles shine a bit more.
Also, could you move your additional comments to a separate comment? Someone is making me a program that parses the ballots automatically (rather than having me count them by hand), so I want to keep the top level clean.
Similarly, can you use the full (amazing) titles in your ballot for
so the parser tallies them correctly?
Maybe a tick-tock rule where months alternate between popular and niche? With intentional ambiguity about where to draw the line between them.
Alternatively, rather than pick the most popular title, one could pick a title at random with weights assigned according to the number of votes.
For example, given three titles A, B, C with corresponding votes 10, 5, 15, one would generate a random number r between 1 and 35 (inclusive), then choose a title based on the value of r,
To prevent truly unpopular titles from spoiling the selection, you could either use a nonlinear weighting function (e.g., square the counts then normalize) or require that a title have at least 6 votes to qualify for the selection procedure (meaning that at least two people have voted for it).
I'm actually fine with playing the more popular games in general; this is just really more of my current mood. It just so happens that I just finished a playthrough of Symphony of the Night the other day and my husband is currently playing Aria of Sorrow right now.
But one of the reasons why I'm kind of apprehensive about playing the popular games is that I have no idea what I'd say about it. I generally wouldn't want to post "yeah, it's about the same as it was when I played it last.*
This is why I abstained from the Chrono Trigger vote. What's helpful to say after you've played the game more than 10 times?
Doing your own spin on things is well within the scope of CGA (which doesn't have very many hard and fast rules when it comes to playing games).
You could always replay the game as is, or you could do something like a randomizer or challenge run. You could mod the game or use cheats. You could play it on a different platform than the one you're used to. You could even play a related game rather than the game itself -- maybe you go for Chrono Cross for that month instead?
The point of CGA is to get people playing retro games and having fun discussions about them, and I feel like doing any of those things would make the discussion on Chrono Trigger more interesting.
Now, I should also add that there is NO obligation to play every month either, so if you just want to sit that month out, that's fine too!
Good points and thanks for properly airing them. I hope that others see your comment as well.
That’s very kind of you! I plan on having something akin to this explanation in the Insert Cartridge setup topics.
While I feel that this has been unspokenly obvious, I think it's good that you've said it. I've already got plenty of reasons I might sit some months out (horror game gets picked, hardcore ffxiv raiding obligations eating too much time, etc.) and I already know I'm good to do so but some users might benefit from the peace of mind of reading that CGA isn't necessarily an obligate commitment. I understand a lot of this site's demographic can be time strapped for various reasons.
Whoa, what are the odds? I just finished Aria of Sorrow a few days ago. I'd love to hear your husband's thoughts on the game if you want to pass them along. I personally loved it. Didn't fully finish it though.
Boy, I don't think I'm qualified to relay such messages. When it comes to video games, my husband is basically the little brother I never had because he loves to play them but he is pretty bad at them. Often times if he's playing a skill-based game he will hand me the controller to do the hard parts for him, even if it's a game I have zero experience with. When he plays RPGs, he grinds for the entire game and skims through the dialog, which is the exact opposite of how I play them. He played through the entirety of Symphony with infinite HP and hearts and he is playing through Aria with infinite HP and MP plus max luck. To be fair though, maxing out on luck really helps having to grind for souls, though.
I’m beaming right now. Y’all are so cute!
Also let your husband know that he’s got a kindred spirit because I am also bad at games. It’s legitimately a running joke in my friend group.
I didn’t turn on infinite HP or MP or anything, but I got through the entirety of Aria by grinding a ton and over-leveling myself because there’s no other way I could have beaten the bosses (oh, and I also abused save states MIGHTILY).
I actually went back and asked my husband what his opinion of the game was and his words were, verbatim, “It’s good as long as I can cheat.”
I guess he is kind of cute after all. 😁
Sid Meier’s Pirates (2)
Burnout 3: Takedown (2)
Tetris (2)
Tony Hawk’s Pro-Skater 2 (2)
Back in a Flash (3)
Behind the Wheel (3)
Fixated on Fixed Screen Shooters (3)
I know I have not used all 20 votes and that is intentional
Metroid Prime (5)
Behind the Wheel (4)
Metroid (3)
Resident Evil (4)
Racing Lagoon (2)
Super Castlevania IV (2)
Lot of great nominations which made it difficult to decide where to spend my voting points. I foresee some edits to my votes in the coming 48 hours!
I’ve already edited mine five times (not even kidding).
The Last Express (5)
Another World (5)
Behind the Wheel (3)
rOGuelikes (2)
Resident Evil (5)
Hopefully it's alright to not use all 20 points right away (currently used 15), I want to leave some of my votes open since I'm undecided. So people, rave about your votes and try to sway me and other undecided voters!
I used half the votes on my own nominations. I enjoyed Another World and was impressed at how cinematic it was, the presentation was really impressive. As for The Last Express, kfwyre gave a very passionate recommendation for it a while back, and his description makes it sound like it would be particularly fun to discuss while playing.
Also now I feel like I can't play it unless we all do because I now want to experience it the first time as a group dangitI voted for Behind the Wheel mainly because of Lego Island. You can play it online, so it's really accessible. As for rOGuelikes... Yeah screw it, I mainly voted for it because one of the games has "Apple" in the name and I want to pretend it's about my manor xD
I said it in the other topic, but I am more than happy to give hints and help people get unstuck if The Last Express gets picked. It's genuinely my favorite game of all time. Amazing story. Amazing score.
Another cool detail: your character speaks multiple languages. Being an American, most people simply assume he can't understand French or Russian. This lets you eavesdrop on people who speak those languages if they think you can't understand them (the conversations will be subtitled for you, the player).
On the other hand, there are plenty of other languages on the train that your character doesn't speak. Those will not be subtitled. If you, the player, happen to know them, then you get Bilingual Bonuses which will give you more information about the characters and events. If not, you can only speculate on what's being said based on context.
This is all really a roundabout way of saying that not only is the voice acting in the game really good, but it has voice acting in multiple different languages. The creators really put a lot of time and effort into this game.
I voted for The Last Express because of your comment. It looks really great! Thanks for linking @kfwyre's comment. I'm sold.
So I'll ask that you consider voting for Resident Evil. I've made my case in this comment.
Know what, sure! I'm a coward when it comes to playing horror games, but I like watching them. I can give it a go (doesn't the original have some notoriously cheesy voice acting?) and then look up LPs if I'm too much of a coward to continue.
Awesome, you rock! Yes the voice acting can be hilarious at times, which helps alleviate the tension. It's a fun game. I know I personally went into it thinking I'd be too scared to finish and walked away really loving it and not finding it so bad.
Lode Runner (3)
Fighters Megamix (2)
The Colonel’s Bequest (2)
The Last Express (2)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (3)
Tony Hawk’s Pro-Skater 2 (5)
JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future (3)
Make sure to change Load to Lode so it gets counted!
Great catch!
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (5)
JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future (4)
Racing Lagoon (5)
Resident Evil (1)
Playstation WHAT? (5)
There are some real good suggestions I've been meaning to get around to, wow. Racing Lagoon is at the top of my list and I have an OG Xbox sitting around for Steel Battalion that came with JSRF, so color me interested. Gotta rep Aria, but even that was a hard choice.
Pity vote for RE because I could always happily replay it.
EDIT: Oh, and I've been wanting to play every single one of those PS1 games. Lovely curation.
The Colonel's Bequest (5)
Beneath a Steel Sky (3)
The Last Express (3)
Another World (3)
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (3)
Sam & Max: Hit the Road (1)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (1)
Scroll Lock-on (1)
Hey rubix,
Ikaruga got rolled into the “Scroll Lock-on” Arcade Special.
Also we’re using Another World instead of Out of this World for the title of that game (I get that this is confusing given that MobyGames uses the US title - sorry).
Can you fix those two so the parser counts them correctly?
Thanks for the clarifying that for me. All fixed up!
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (5)
Back in a Flash (5)
I will be back to add more votes!
Threads of Fate (5)
Metroid Prime (3)
Descent (3)
Metroid (2)
PlayStation WHAT? (2)
Mr. Defaxxonobbleoid (2)
Lord Monarch (1)
rOGuelikes (1)
Beneath a Steel Sky (1)
Chrono Trigger (5)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (5)
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) (5)
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (5)
Wind Waker, The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls, and Lufia II were all chosen because I haven't played them. However, I would like to specifically single-out Chrono Trigger.
Chrono Trigger was a generational JRPG that helped popularize the genre in the West. Its influence remains so great that games today are still referenced against it, so much so that for a certain style of game -- JRPGs with pixel graphics -- it is almost impossible to escape the comparison. But amazingly, even after 30 years of progress in game design, Chrono Trigger hardly feels dated, with many of its spiritual successors (e.g. Sea of Stars) feeling hollow against it.
Being one of the greatest games of all time, I'm sure many people here have already played it. But for our inaugural CGA thread, what could be a better fit than one of the all time greats?
Chrono Trigger (5)
The Secret of Monkey Island (5)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (5)
Duke Nukem 3D (5)
I was just thinking the other day, how there were all these games where I played the shareware or the demo over and over again, but never actually played the full game.
Excited to maybe take a crack at what comes next for The Duke.
I remember going to this one discount bookstore like two towns over as a kid and just trawling the shareware game diskettes. I played/demo'd one of the Commander Keen games via shareware and I think one of the Space Quest games as well.
For me it was the disks that came with PC Gamer magazine
Can you make sure your titles exactly match the ones in the tables (e.g. The Secret of Monkey Island?)
Also, can you put your additional comments in a reply to your own comment? I’d like to keep the top level entirely ballots only.
EDIT: Thanks!
Back in a Flash (5)
Sid Meier's Pirates (3)
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (4)
Metroid (4)
Burnout 3: Takedown (4)
Thanks to everyone for the setup and organization! Looking forward to it
Hey mysterylevel,
There's a 5 vote limit per game/Arcade Special. Can you fix your vote for Back in a Flash, which goes over that limit? (Note: this means you will have two votes to spend elsewhere!).
Also, please make sure that your titles match exactly (Burnout 3: Takedown).
Woopsie
StarTropics (5)
Sid Meier’s Pirates (5)
The Grue That Binds (5)
The Secret of Monkey Island (2)
Metroid Prime (2)
Tony Hawk’s Pro-Skater 2 (1)
Hop Skip Jump (1)
PlayStation WHAT? (1)
Back in a Flash (1)
Mr. Defaxxonobbleoid (1)
Behind the Wheel (1)
Populous (5)
Sid Meier's Pirates! (1)
Sid Meier's Covert Action (1)
Uplink (1)
Racing Lagoon (1)
Fighters Megamix (1)
Lord Monarch (1)
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (1)
Crystalis (1)
StarTropics (1)
Tony Hawk’s Pro-Skater 2 (1)
I was tempted to vote:
Seaman (20)
but it will suffice me to watch this longplay instead... this is so bizarrely fascinating. It feels more like art than a game though
The only reason I didn't vote for Seaman is that it's apparently still quite hard to get up and running on emulation. I didn't want us to lock in a game that not very many people could play.
As a Dreamcast forever fan though, I'm hoping devs smooth it out sooner rather than later. I'd love to experience its weirdness first-hand.
Tried to sneak 21 votes in there and think I wouldn't notice, eh? ;)
Please fix when you get a chance!
wh00ps!
fixed
The Secret of Monkey Island (2)
Sid Meier’s Pirates (4)
Behind the Wheel (3)
PlayStation WHAT? (1)
Back in a Flash (2)
Uplink (4)
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (2)
Metroid (2)
Psst, you listed The Secret of Monkey Island twice. Not sure if you want to give it 4 votes or not, but just a heads up!
So that is why my math wasn’t mathing. Thanks!
Metroid Prime (3)
Metroid (2)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (5)
Back in a Flash (5)
Descent (2)
Uplink (3)
Sid Meier's Covert Action (3)
ActRaiser (1)
Descent (1)
Metroid (2)
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (3)
Crystalis (3)
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden (4)
Racing Lagoon (2)
Scroll Lock-on (1)
ActRaiser (2)
Racing Lagoon (5)
Another World (1)
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden - Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa (2)
StarTropics (2)
Crystalis (2)
Descent (1)
The Last Express (1)
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) (2)
Threads of Fate (2)
Mostly voting based on my own curiosities and avoiding games I've already played to completion or satisfaction. (for example, I haven't played most of these but I have played like an hour of ActRaiser, but not enough that I don't want to see more.) I ordinarily wouldn't go so hard on my own nomination but it was a nomination driven by curiosity which of course hasn't gone anywhere, so for this one... it is what it is.
Definitely understand nominating and voting on "I loved this and others should experience it too" feelings so fair play to anyone voting that way! Excited to get started!
Oh, one last thing and it's not like anybody needs to know this, it's my own prerogative but I'm a baby who categorically doesn't play horror games (thinking about RE) and may be rubbed the wrong way by sequels or prequels in franchises I may want to play in release order. The latter wouldn't apply for example to something like Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater 2 (which only didn't get a vote cause I've played the heck out of it) but would affect Lufia II, which is the only current nomination I feel this way about. So it's mostly an issue of continuity, genre, and presentation.
I don't bring that up to shade anyone's nominations, please vote and nominate whatever you want, I'm just mentioning it in case I create an experience for others where I'm very present in planning/nomination/voting threads and then disappear for the month cause frankly it might look bad if I didn't explain myself so it's just a disclaimer getting ahead of the possibility.
I just wrote a comment about Resident Evil for people that don't like horror. It's the game that totally changed my mind on the genre. It's not that scary in my opinion, and playing during the daytime always helps. That being said, I totally understand if it's a game people want to avoid. But I think it's worth giving a chance!
Funny enough, REmake is one of my top five games and I was still having a moment replaying it the other day because I realized I was being a total scaredypants. But I was playing it by myself, while everyone in the house was asleep, on my CRT for the first time, in my basement, after midnight...
For anyone that doesn't handle horror well, I'd very much recommend the original version instead of REmake. (Deadly Silence is a good port!) The gameplay is still fantastic, and even though it's still a tense experience the B-movie cheese cuts a bit through the horror.
That's great it still has the power to do that! The B-movie cheese really makes the game for me. The game constantly switches between spooky and hilarious.
You should have seen me playing RE7 in VR. Now that was a terrifying experience! 10/10 would do again.
Sid Meier’s Pirates (3)
Sid Meier’s Covert Action (3)
The Last Express (3)
The Colonel’s Bequest (3)
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (2)
The Grue That Binds (2)
Fixated on Fixed Screen Shooters (2)
Scroll Lock-on (2)
Just a heads-up to those who mentioned Zork in the suggestions thread and haven't noticed: it seems to have found its way into The Grue That Binds special now. I feel putting three interactive fiction titles into a single pack is a bit ambitious, as I don't think I'll be able to finish one title within a month. :D Those games take their sweet time to puzzle out.
@kfwyre: Just a heads-up that the link for Lord Monarch seems to be pointing to the wrong game. The title of Sid Meier's Pirates! in the voting list also lacks the exclamation mark that's part of the game's official title, but I guess if you CTRL+F without the exclamation mark, you'll get the correct results regardless. Thanks so much for putting all this together!
Also, that splash screen is brilliant, @Boojum!
Yeah, sorry about the changes!
I honestly was expecting a maximum of maybe 20-25 nominations. With SO many more than I was expecting, I figured some Arcade Specials were a good way to narrow down the list a little bit. I also think they're a good way of giving a chance to some games that likely wouldn't get a chance if they stood alone.
My main source of info in combining games was HowLongToBeat, and I tried to put together games that had a Main Story time of under 3 hours (and only if they made sense to combine).
The Grue That Binds is a bit of a gamble, as Zork was the only game in it that actually has times posted to HLTB (2.5 hours for Main Story). The other two are unknown, so this might end up being way too big of a grouping.
One other consideration I had was that Twisted! is an old Mac game that hasn't been released for other platforms, so it might be quite difficult for many people to get up and running. I figured throwing it in with something like Zork, which is so popular you can probably just play it online somewhere, was a way of making sure that people could have options within a given month.
If I whiffed this though, we can fix it for next time. I'm happy to own any mistakes made in this process and work through them as we go.
Also good catch on Pirates! I'm going to leave it as is since other people have already voted. As long as the titles are consistent within the topic, tallying the voting will work. If it does get picked though, I'll make sure to add the exclamation point for when we play it!
I don't think you have anything to be sorry about, you have done an amazing job putting things together!
It's also a learning experience for all of us, and that's surely part of the fun. I would say that HowLongToBeat is not always a very good source for older games. Sure, you can probably play Zork through in 2.5 hours, if you know what you are doing or just follow a walkthrough. But if left to your own devices, it will probably take weeks. And may well be impossible without a hint book.
Note that the website also says that you can beat Super Mario Bros in 2 hours. I challenge anyone to do that going in cold and without using save states! This is one of the major changes in how games function now compared to how they did 30-40 years ago. Nowadays, a game often contains 100 hours of content, of which you play 50. Back in the day, games contained 2 hours of content, of which you also played 50.
In related news, I found my Lost Treasures of Infocom box set yesterday, which I bought sometime in the mid-90s and seem to have deemed important enough to keep all these years. The floppy disks are probably unreadable but I have the official maps and hint books, including for Zork if it happens!
I don't necessarily agree with some of the framing you've used, for example for the purposes of participating in CGA, I'm absolutely willing to research and consider using guide material if a game is just too obtuse or unenjoyable for my modern sensibilities, and save states aren't off the table either, while you kind of speak with the presumption that we wouldn't do that out of respect for an era-appropriate experience. To me, CGA is for casually checking out some retro games, not necessarily a challenge to beat them, and I expect to not finish the CGA game of the month several times. That said, it seems up to our own devices how we approach this as participants, so if someone wants to make this about blind playthrough beating every chosen game, all power to them and I'm not saying that's wrong either.
But the real reason I comment is I just wanted to compliment your wording on "Nowadays, a game often contains 100 hours of content, of which you play 50. Back in the day, games contained 2 hours of content, of which you also played 50."
Beautifully stated. Never seen something so succinctly and accurately describing the difference between modern gaming and like pre 2000s gaming. Of course, there are still some games that play more like 2 hours of content that you play for 50 hours, but they're now a minority, I believe.
Anyway thanks for that insight.
Thanks for the compliment!
And I'm very much going to be using save states and other help as well. Like I mentioned, I'm ready with my Infocom hint books. :)
The point I was just trying to put across was that the HowLongToBeat numbers for older games are often somewhat unrealistic.
There was someone I saw recently, not sure if it was here or elsewhere I've forgotten, who said they like using Internet Archive to find like old Prima guides and era appropriate game guide manuals and use those to help them along in retro games. It's a cool idea. I'm not sure how well the quality of information in those publications compares to how well we've documented old games today, but it could be a cool way to approach CGA as well.
Is that what Infocom books are as well but for even older games?
I was born in 1991 but had a NES, and access to DOS games as well for some time before I first got SNES and N64 despite that they were more contemporary to when I was born so I would say anything pre-NES and pre-DOS games is about where my familiarity and awareness drops off a cliff, thinking maybe that's why I don't know infocom.
For many games of the era, the printed materials that came with games were essential components of the experience. There were fewer tutorials and games didn't explicitly teach you things. Instead, you were kind of expected to read the manual that came with the game. And many of those manuals were works of art themselves. Take for instance the book that came with the C64 version of Sid Meier's Pirates!. It's almost 90 pages long and tells you not only how the game works but also describes the world in which the game takes place.
Then there were the official guide books that you could buy, the phone numbers that you could call, and the addresses where you could send a letter asking for help. Adventure games in particular relied on these and that's one reason why something like Zork can take forever to finish. These days, you kind of expect that a well designed game doesn't present a progress wall, i.e. that you can always do something or progress in some way. With older games, this isn't the case and you accepted that you might be stuck in a game (particularly an adventure game) for days or weeks or even months, until you heard a solution from a friend, bought a hint book or called or wrote to the official helpline.
Not that I have any personal experiences with official helplines. The country I grew up in didn't have them. But I did read game magazines and those often had hint sections as well.
The Infocom boxset that I mentioned is a retrospective collection of 20 games that the company had released and it comes with their official hint books. The way those usually work is that you have a question like "What do I do with the monkey?" and then there are a series of hints under it, each giving you more information to solve the puzzle. Sadly, the boxset I have has just plain old printed hint books, but when the games first came out, those guide books often used a technology that they termed "InvisiClues". Basically, the answers were written in invisible ink and if you wanted to reveal any of them, you used a pen that came with the hint book to do so. I think Sierra, the other major adventure game studio, did something similar with their games.
Games that you bought often also came with other physical contents. Infocom again was particularly known for this. For instance, their game The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (co-designed by Douglas Adams himself) came with a Don't Panic pin, peril sensitive sunglasses, pocket fluff, a microscopic space fleet (really an empty plastic bag), the order for the destruction of Arthur Dent's House, the order for the destruction of Earth, an advert for the guidebook Hitchhiker's Guide for the Galaxy, and no tea whatsoever.
With some games, "feelies" like these were very much part of the game itself and you needed them to progress. Many also used them as a copy protection measure. Sid Meier's Pirates! in fact requires you to have the manual, at least for the C64 version. At the beginning of the game, the game asks you a question that you can only answer by referencing the manual. If you don't know the answer, the game will still allow you to play, but the difficulty level is maxed and you
die(correction: get captured) very easily.Of course, these days you can find all of this online. Well, not the feelies, but the rest.
I think to some degree this still happened even in the 90s, just moreso in the PC space than console, I remember some of my PC games having really extensive manuals while the game had zero tutorialization, so I definitely pick up what you're saying. I know of the DRM code wheels and stuff included as well, and I think I remember using one for a DOS game. There's also the Metal Gear Solid thing* (see below).
There's an argument to be made that scanning these materials is as much a part of the preservation process as enabling ways for the software to run on our modern machines. I'm reminded of this talk which I'm not asking you to watch in full cause its so long by Frank Cifaldi where he points out that MAME (and I'd extend this further to emulators and fpga work) doubles as hardware documentation work by reverse engineering the experience, and that we focus so much sometimes on running the software on a PC that we forget that some arcade cabinets have really weird non-standard controls, or that you literally close the Nintendo DS to have it act like stamping paper in The Phantom Hourlgass and that these details matter too, and likewise for the physical materials from the box.
For all the reasons you mentioned, scanning manuals, taking very high quality photographs of objects packed in the box, and as much documentation of that stuff as can be achieved is worth the effort as well. It's one thing to look up the codes that would've been on a code ring by just grabbing it off a chart or googling what the game asks of you, but scans of the 2 layers of the ring could also enable a crafty gamer to just print a new code ring if they wanted to. The latter option feels more like it would've when the game was new.
*The Metal Gear Solid Thing (Spoilers)
I'm probably going too far by treating this as a spoiler but because it's a bit 4th wall breaky puzzley I'm not going to treat it the same as the other examples, but I'm sure you know of the thing with Meryl's codec frequency being printed on the back of the jewel case. Technically proves you have the case, i.e. not a burned copy. I've heard that there's another way to end up with her frequency in your codec though without entering it so might not fully be DRM. Still, an example where the physical materials mattered even in the mid 90s.
Oh, I'm definitely going to watch that whole video, thank you for sharing!
I hadn't heard of the Metal Gear Solid Thing before. The game came out at a time when I had largely stopped playing video games until I rediscovered them about a decade later. From what I gather, what it's doing is somewhat similar to what Pirates does, although in Pirates the answer differs from one game session to another, and you need to cross reference the manual. Monkey Island also had a particularly fun copy protection thingie, the Dial A Pirate Wheel.
It's wonderful that MAME and related projects have preserved arcade games, but I totally agree with you that cabinets had a physicality to them which emulation often doesn't and cannot reproduce. As a personal anecdote, I was born in the early 80s so wasn't around when Space Invaders was a thing, and it was only a few years ago that I for the first time in my life came across an actual original Space Invaders arcade cabinet. I was quite shocked that the game doesn't look like it does in an emulator but is actually quite beautiful when you see it in a cabinet with a background panel.
The Secret of Monkey Island was one of my first games ever, like borderline learned how to read before preschool because of it and indeed we had that wheel! Thanks for sharing that, I had forgotten what it looks like!
For the space invaders cab, is it like a print insert behind the screen? I also haven't seen that. I could swear I've seen a space invaders cab before but I don't know if it didn't have an image like that or if it did and I regarded it as "outside" the game and forgot.
Yes, it's a backdrop insert. I believe there is some mirror magic happening in there as well to create depth. I don't know if all upright cabinets had this, could be that just some of them did. I guess there were also plenty of pirated cabinets around as the game was so popular.
The quality of the guides was frequently off; a quick search noted the Animal Crossing New Leaf guide had very inaccurate bell prices and whatnot.
Still, they were often extremely well-produced and a joy to read anyway when you were limited to like an hourish of video game time a day as a kid... It was like getting to explore the world away from it. I presume a lot of kids who got into Starcraft late got it from the War Chest, which was bundled with both guide for the original and Brood War, plus a cute reference graphic with the tree of upgrades to obtain each unit. I've also got the Ocarina of Time guide lying around somewhere, which is chock full of blown-up prints of Yusuke Nakano's gorgeous character art - where low-poly fails, key art fills in the blanks for your imagination.
I say it a lot, but there's magic between the scanlines. Sometimes art shouldn't just speak for itself.
Hey, that was me who likes the old guides off Archive!
Prima Guides are definitely known for their wrong information and accuracy, but honestly, I think that's kind of the charm. It's like playing the game with the best resources we actually had then, rather than the datamined, hyper meta, spreadsheet efficiency of guides and information today.
I just like the guides, even if some of the information might be wrong, because I feel like I'm actually playing the game and exploring for myself, rather than being told to do things X, Y, Z. I know that sounds weird, but I feel like the old guides were less definitive in that way and much more general.
I was wondering about Zork. I figured because it was my second recommendation it maybe didn't make the cut (which would've been fine). May have to update my vote. Thanks for calling this out!
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (5)
Descent (4)
Fighters Megamix (3)
Metroid Prime (4)
Racing Lagoon (1)
PlayStation What (1)
Scroll lock on (1)
Sid Meier's Covert Action (1)
Some really excellent stuff here and a bunch of deep cut adventure games that totally pique my interest after a recent play of Gabriel Knight.
Not voting for the classics I've beaten a thousand times and definitely voting up those that I missed! Maybe the best game(s) win!
Another World (4)
Descent (4)
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) (4)
The Secret of Monkey Island (4)
PlayStation WHAT? (4)
My picks are games that I've wanted to play but need the kick in the ass to sit down and do! Honestly, I'm just excited for whatever oddball stuff makes it in the top 6.
Carmageddon (5)
Tony Hawk’s Pro-Skater 2 (5)
Duke Nukem 3D (3)
Descent (3)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (2)
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (2)
I picked Carmageddon as I currently play Carmageddon Max Damage (modern one) and would like to play original game again. I think a bit of mayhem here and there can bring people some fun. And I want it to stay on the list even if it won't make it this time.
THPS2 is something I wasn't good at (unlike my brother) and maybe if I jumped back in it and made it main game for a month, I could get better. It truly is a classic for me in this genre.
Duke Nukem 3D and Descent are games I know about but never actually played them heavily. Would give them both a try.
Zelda is there simply because I have played some of the games in the past (finished Minish Cap and BotW) and since I own a Gameboy, I would play on the actual hardware. Also they won't be that long of a game and I will be able to play them on the go (since I have Steam Deck, I could play all the games on the go if I make them run on it, but if we are speaking hardware, then the Gameboy is the only portable period hardware I have).
Though it wasn't an option, I personally think Carmageddon 2 is the best of the series. There was a beta release that came out years before the actual final game and was in some of those PC gaming magazines that came with a CD. it even supported multiple player. My friends and I played it so much. Latency was decent even on dial-up.
Actually, I wouldn't mind Carmageddon 2 as well, but since we are talking retro, why not start at the beginning :-)
Well even the second game is older than several on our nomination list. I was more just wanting people to know that IMO the second game is the one to play if you had to choose a single entry in the series.
I understand.
I think I may even have the Carmageddon 2 original CD somewhere. Or maybe it's TDR 2000. I don't remember after all those years.
I should note that much like TDR 2000, only the PC version was actually good. The console/handheld ports were quite terrible.
JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future (5)
PlayStation WHAT? (3)
Metroid Prime (3)
Scroll Lock-on (3)
Back in a Flash (2)
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (1)
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden - Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa (1)
Beneath a Steel Sky (1)
Another World (1)
This is a great selection we've got! A lot of these are either games I've been meaning to play or games I've seen from afar and found interesting without going as far as considering trying them before. This is my chance. I'm a little worried my picks are games most people on here have already played, but that's how things go ; whatever wins, I'll give a try.
Lode Runner (5)
Mr. Defaxxonobbleoid (5)
May or may not come back with my other 10 votes. I just don’t want stuff to drop off forever!
Scroll Lock-on (5)
Seaman (5)
Actraiser (5)
Crystalis (5)
Mr. Defaxxonobbleoid (5)
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (5)
Chrono Trigger (5)
Sid Meier's Pirates (5)
This is a good excuse to play new games! Don't know how much time I'll have though 😅
Sid Meier's Covert Action (1)
Sid Meier's Pirates (1)
The Last Express (1)
The Colonel's Bequest (1)
Lord Monarch (1)
JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future (1)
Sam & Max: Hit the Road (1)
StarTropics (1)
Another World (1)
ActRaiser (1)
Beneath a Steel Sky (1)
Seaman (1)
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (1)
Racing Lagoon (1)
PlayStation WHAT? (2)
Scroll Lock-on (2)
Chrono Trigger (1)
Threads of Fate (1)
StarTropics (4)
Crystalis (4)
Metroid (4)
Chrono Trigger (4)
The Secret of Monkey Island (4)
Another World (5)
Beneath a Steel Sky (5)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (5)
The Secret of Monkey Island (5)
Two I hadn't played before and two I would love to replay. If I hadn't played Chrono Trigger again so recently I would certainly have thrown a few votes that way, a bonafide GOAT contender for sure.
The Last Express (5)
The Colonel’s Bequest (5)
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (3)
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) (2)
Metroid Prime (2)
Lord Monarch (2)
Populous (1)
The Last Express has been on my "To Play" list since like 1996 or whenever I first saw the demo on the PC Gamer disk, so it's coming in top for me right now.
I feel a little funny voting for my own nomination with The Colonel's Bequest, but it's definitely a game I've been made aware of only recently and it just sounds damn interesting. The rest of the games, I'm largely unfamiliar with, but looked and sounded interesting enough to throw down.
I played that same PC Gamer demo disc as a kid, then promptly called every store that sold games in my area to find one that had The Last Express in stock.
I also ended up calling bookstores in the area to find the strategy guide. Prior to that I had printed entire guides for it from GameFAQs, but I wanted something bound and with pictures.
I would sometimes read the strategy guide from cover to cover without playing the game. That’s how into it I was. 😂
Duke Nukem 3D (2)
Descent (3)
Carmageddon (3)
The Secret of Monkey Island (5)
The Last Express (5)
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (2)
The Grue That Binds (3)
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) (2)
Populous (2)
Crystalis (2)
Tetris (4)
Seaman (3)
Threads of Fate (1)
Uplink (1)
Fighters Megamix (2)
For me personally, I liked a nice spread of gameplay styles and genre. Tetris is a personal favorite of mine and a landmark in the medium, and I would be delighted to engage in thoughtful discussion about it. Seaman is such an odd experience that could really only happen in video games. I think it is certainly worth analyzing and was a great pull, thanks to whoever nominated that.
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (5)
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (5)
Beneath a Steel Sky (5)
Sam & Max: Hit the Road (3)
StarTropics (2)
Chrono Trigger (4)
JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future (4)
Sam & Max: Hit the Road (4)
The Secret of Monkey Island (4)
PlayStation WHAT? (4)
Tetris (5)
PlayStation WHAT? (5)
Burnout 3: Takedown (4)
Descent (3)
Racing Lagoon (2)
Scroll Lock-on (1)
Racing Lagoon (4)
The Last Express (4)
Back in a Flash (4)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (4)
Chrono Trigger (4)
I've kinda gone with the flow, and mostly voted games I've yet to play and would think would make for a fun experience/discussion. With the exception of Line Rider (part of Back in a Flash), and Wind Waker.
So let's start there. For me, Line Rider was always about exploring other people's art. IMO it's less a game and more an artist medium. I think there's plenty of preexisting works to discuss as well as exploring what other Tilde's members make in it.
Wind Waker - "Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, miracles.." I've played parts (shared a save file with a sibling 22?! years ago) and it's up there with Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past for me. The art style is polarizing, but I think it aged really well; the cartoony cel shaded style is more an artistic choice than platform/industry limitation and Link is probably his most expressive here than any other LoZ title. IMO it has mostly stellar level design/world building, unique bosses, and plenty of puzzles.
Chrono Trigger - I haven't played it, but I had a friend in high school that spoke highly of it, and I came to respect their perspective on a lot of things. So it's longtime overdue for me.
The Last Express - this was on my radar for the same reason CannibalisticApple gave, kfwyre's comment in the dying in tutorials thread a while back.
Racing Lagoon - just a lark
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) (5)
Lode Runner (3)
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (1)
Mr. Defaxxonobbleoid (1)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (5)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (5)
Way too many good ones to choose from! I think I initially had something like 31 that I'd have been happy to throw some votes to. I had to iteratively whittle down my list. With a few exceptions, I voted for new-to-me things, though I'll happily replay some old favorites on here if they get voted.
Sid Meier’s Covert Action (5)
The Grue That Binds (5)
Sid Meier’s Pirates (5)
The Last Express (5)
Border Zone got rolled into the arcade special "The Grue That Binds." Can you change over that vote so the parser tallies it correctly?
Oh yeah, sure. I misunderstood how those were split out.
The Secret of Monkey Island (5)
Chrono Trigger (5)
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (5)
rOGuelikes(5)
Resident Evil (5)
The Last Express (5)
The Secret of Monkey Island (4)
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden - Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa (3)
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) (2)
Sid Meier’s Pirates (1)
I primarily voted for games I haven't played before, but Resident Evil takes the full 5 points for me.
Resident Evil changed my life for the better. I used to despise horror and was too terrified to touch it. I didn't understand why people enjoyed it. Then one day I picked up Resident Evil REmake while dealing with a difficult breakup, and I was consumed. The genius of limiting saves behind consumable items blew me away. Add to that limited ammo! This game makes you think through all of your actions and understands how to execute on fun gameplay. The overall sense of dread it invokes is amazing. The cinematic moments throughout the game as new enemies are introduced are also impressive. Something clicked while I was playing the game that made me realize I love horror. I would have never known! By the time I finished the game, it got me out of the funk from my breakup.
It would be a shame not to play it during October. REmake is one of the greatest remakes ever, and the game itself deserves recognition in the discussion of greatest games of all time. I think anyone who is weary of horror should give it a chance. There's a reason that Resident Evil has become such a major franchise despite belonging to a genre many refuse to touch. Once you fall in love with this game, there's an entire world of more Resident Evil games as well as other amazing horror games to explore. I hope it invokes a similar love for the horror genre in others as it did for me!
Really happy to hear this as the one to have nominated the game. I've always been a big baby when it comes to playing horror games, but being a recent enjoyer of horror films, I feel obligated to give their video game counterparts a chance. I also agree that this would be a great pick for October!
Behind the Wheel (5)
Hop Skip Jump (5)
Back in a Flash (5)
Lode Runner (5)
Tetris (-100000)
I laughed! And then I immediately checked @Spore_Prince's parser to see how it would handle this. XD
I regret to inform you that the negative caused an integer rollover and Tetris now has 67,233 points. As such, we will play only Tetris for the next 6 months.
(Kidding! The parser simply ignored the vote)
Sounds like a feature request that needs to be added to the parser XD
In properly accounting for the -100,000 votes, the parser has determined that u/1338 has 99,980 votes remaining before hitting the 20 vote maximum. ;)
Just 4999 easy payments of
19.9920 vote comments. I think the vote tally tool currently allows this.I see we are following the same logic as Uglymug Epicfighter.
Tetris is by far one of my most played games. I play the game boy color version regularly alongside pokemon pinball. I consider it the perfect game. However, it does seem like a pretty odd choice for an entire month, and I don't see much depth to a discussion around playing it besides strategy and variations of the game.
Chrono Trigger (5)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (5)
Threads of Fate (5)
Metroid Prime (5)
ActRaiser (5)
Chrono Trigger (5)
Fighters Megamix (3)
Kaeru no tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls) (5)
Scroll Lock-on (2)
ActRaiser would be a replay for me, but I haven't tried the remake (remaster? Rerelease? I dunno, I just remember it coming out).
Chrono Trigger I never got around to playing, somehow... Despite having played FF games from its time.
Fighters Megamix -- I don't really like 3d fighting games that much, but exploring one casually in the context of this event sounds pretty fun. Would love to see something like a Samurai Shodown game show up in a future poll -- those games in particular don't demand execution, so I think they're pretty nice for something like CGA.
Kaeru no tame ni Kane wa Naru sounds cute; I like its premise!
Scroll Lock-On I voted for just because it's where Ikaruga lives.
Tetris (5)
Carmageddon (1)
Star Wars TIE Fighter (1)
Castlevania: Arika of Sorrow (1)
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden - Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa (1)
Scroll Lock-on (1)
Can you fix Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow in your ballot?Nevermind! @Spore_Prince had the foresight to include "aliases" in his program, so I can specify different spellings/typos for specific games and still have them count towards the totals. I tested them with your post and they worked perfectly!This is going to mean a lot less ballot nagging from me in the future, which is better for everyone. :D
Also you still have 10 more votes if you want to use them!
Another World (2)
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistral (3)
Sam & Max: Hit the Road (3)
Racing Lagoon (2)
Tetris (3)
The Grue That Binds (2)
The Secret of Monkey Island (2)
PlayStation WHAT? (3)
Another World (4)
Beneath a Steel Sky (4)
StarTropics (2)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2)
Crystalis (4)
Chrono Trigger (4)
Wind Waker would be a 3rd or 4th replay for me, but it's digital comfort food!
The rest I've either only started and never finished, or just heard about and never made time to play.
Recursive Repertoires (4)
StarTropics (5)
Tony Hawk’s Pro-Skater 2 (4)
Threads of Fate (4)
PlayStation WHAT? (3)
Didn't want to vote for all my own recommendations but also wanted to give them a fighting chance - I'm actually already playing THPS2 on my Miyoo Mini Plus (after 100%ing THPS1 first) so it'd be fun to force y'all to join me.
Never actually played Threads, looks interesting, and the PlayStation WHAT was too good to pass up.
Lufia II - 5
The Way - 5
Chrono Trigger - 4
Castlevania Aria of Sorrow - 3
Secret of Monkey Island - 2
Beneath a Steel Sky - 1
Can you reformat your ballot?
In order for the parser to count your votes, the titles should match what's in the main topic text and the votes should be in parentheses afterwards:
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (5)
I don't think your ballot will be counted by the script. The vote numbers need be in parenthesis to register. Try:
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (5)
The Way (5)
Chrono Trigger (4)
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (3)
The Secret of Monkey Island (2)
Beneath a Steel Sky (1)