Reality

Replayed Lufia 2 and Front Mission 1 Lufia 2 - I enjoyed the main story, puzzles were better than I remembered, but the main story's low difficulty was more noticiable than before. Toyed around to do the Ancient Cave with no Blue Chest / Exit gate support. It's pretty easy to say that if it were a standalone game it would be just about anybody's the top 10 rouges - It's a lot harder than the main story, but it does give you a lot of options for how you want to play it, since if you only want to beat it at all you can gradually acculamte the blue chest items and start out with far better resrouces. Overall, Lufia 2 has aged very well for me. Front Mission 1 - The game has 30 missions, but it's only realy a medium-hard game for the first 15 of them. For the first half of the game, it's pretty aggresive about keeping enemies a tech level ahead of you, and you can't match them stat wise until the next city, when they'll go up yet another one.. It applies this to not just bosses, but about 2/3 of the regular grunts, with the Hell's Wall Frost mission being the most infamous. The game also has an economy, but compared to (Ogre Battle SNES) it's pretty trivial, you always have more money than you need, even without farming, and the enemy balance encourages fully upgrading 5-7 core squad members at all times, despite really having enough to do so for 13~ of the 17 charathers. The second half of the game, the difficulty just tanks. I feel like it's a combination of your charathers finally learning abilities, and the % difference between equipment tiers no longer being all that high that it can save the computers from their AI. I will say that it does a better job than expected (Front Mission 3's deployment slot based priority comes to mind), but there really isn't much hassle in seperating enemy groups into chunks and fighting them on your own terms. I would say that among its contemporary SRPGs.. I definitely prefer it to Fire Emblem 4, about 60/40 of its gameplay and map design to Shining Force, but the second half of my playthrough did feel like a bit of a let down.

Television Series

Steambot Chronicles 2 - Irem basically liquidated it's video game division after losing a lot of its infrastructure in an earthquake.. a real shame because, combining the PS2 game and the PSP game's strengths (Freedom/Sidequests from PS2) and (not lagging constantly and decent combat from PSP) could have made for a really great and unique game. It's especially hurtful because the game seemed to have been really close to release as well. I guess I should mention several of Mike Hommel's canceled games, although I wasn't quite as devastated as most. The Hellgate: Longdon parody of course would have been the largest of them, but in hindsight he had started development with a very archaic engine, so maybe it's for the best that he moved on. Creatures 4 - Creatures 1 is one of the best games that people have started to forget about - I think I once saw the series on a list of games with over 10million in lifetime sales, which is kind of shocking considering how obscure it is now. Basically, Creatures was about artificial life, but on a much more ambitious scale than what came before and since. (eg object>verb brain chemistry and body physiolgy encompassing about 14 chemicals). It is true that C2 and C3 need patches to be fully enjoyed today (being too lethal and not lethal enough compared to C1) However. C4 never materilaized, and currently the actual creatures rights are basically dead, while the original developer has moved on to A-life simulations that are... a little too much simulation.. The real power of creatures 1-3 came from a very happy coincednce in its timing - Steve Grands A-life simulation, community input from people with surprisingly coding knowhow, and the happy accident of the "life as computer file / injector as kit window" sub-themeing - it allowed creatures to change in ways that a thing seen as a "real setting" would have resisted and I think it kept the game from becoming too much of an academic simulation by making use of some "pet game" genre conventions.

I think that making a list in terms of influence is interesting (both period influence and overall) You seem to be spot on for the most part, I just have a few thoughts Syphon Filter - I vaguely remember gaming mags at the time claiming that they suspected that Syphon Filter was an attempt to pre-empt Metal Gear Solid, but ultimately Eidos's shaky business practices caused it to be released only after MGS. Most people liked the unique direction it ended up taking and it did sell well. Definitely more of a period influence than overall since other than than ham factor of the Taser, it's kind of unpolished compared to the the later PS1 Syphon Filter. Wipeout - This isn't a game I even like, but it was hugely influential -= even beyond its status as a best seller and the sequels it generated, I think it can't be overstated how important it was for being a pioneer in Sony's advertisements and marketing abilities. Many people explicitly connect this game with Sony ad's related to the magic "17" age group and club scenes and in a lot of ways it these things help overcome limited age-group appeal ideas that consoles were still experiencing at the start of that generation. Crash Team Racing - This is without doubt a great game, but given it's late release close to the end of PS2, and the mixed status of the multitap (for all that it's track design and drift mechanics beat M64/DKR) I cannot really acclaim it as an essential game. I think it's legacy is a result more of it's much higher investment single player and fondness for being the last "Naughty Dog Crash" than it's performance in 1999-2000. Ridge Racer - I think putting Gran Turismo as the sole represtantive of racing games understates their importance to the playstation - yes GT did sell the best, but it was indicative of the standing support for racing games on the system, and checkpoint arcade racers were the original basis for that support before rally-type racers and sims took over (and their majority wouldn't truly be set in stone until the next console generation). It was also a pretty big send up while the Saturn was still a relevant competitor, as despite how accurate the Saturn usually ports arcade games, it kind of failed with Daytona, which is unusually bare bones on Saturn.... and naturally keeping the other hottest game off of Saturn and going on develop a parallel tradition for Ridge Racer away from the arcade games as opposed to relying solely on the arcade conversion was a huge thing to pull off- R4. International Super Soccer - A lot of people don't care too much about the history of sports games, but this was temporally the best, and in its way, a harbringer of what would follow - the Konami's PES and EA's Fifa rivalry - A lot of people think that the sixth console generation is the only battlefield that truly matters - Sega's last hurrah with 2K, the EA lockdown on football and basketball etc, but Konami's Fifth generation output was important in it's own right - not merely because it heralded the future explosive legal battles, but because it was here that the actual feel of the games and core physics were really established (as 4th gen soccer models had little to carry over).. The evolution between 3rd>4th is still larger than 4th>8th. I do agree with using multiple games from a series to form a list of essentials, especially within the context of 1994-2000.

I kinda feel guilty but.... Victory for the puzzle game master race minus xi jumbo/devil dice s Of the things that did get in, I feel that "precendece" > quality is a real issue, especially with Twisted Metal and Syphon Filter over some of their PS1 sequels. I also kind of associate Oddworld and especially Rainbow Six much more with the PC than the PS1 I have mixed opinions on some of the games - Rayman 1 and Grand Theft Auto - I never really liked them as games that much.. Rayman 1 has great presentation and art design, but feels untested in its level design, and the invisible spawn trigggers for the cages are awful... and I'm generally fine with the secret design of Euro Platformers... GTA 1-2 never felt like they have much point and the entertaiment value isn't quite visceral enough to let you just forget the main mission and do your own thing as normal for sandboxs. I easily prefer Rayman 2 over Rayman 1 even though it's a stripped down backport... of course it would be inapproiate due to not being culturally associated with the PS1 the same way it is with n64/dreamcast but I think it's miles more playable. I think game length is really weird in this collection - The puzzle games, jumping flash, and GTA are much shorter than everything else, even ignoring the rpgs. While the NES and SNES classic ended up leaving off a lot of the best games... they definately did a better job of covring the essentials than this does... I think FF7+puzzle games +Tekken3+Metal Gear Solid + RRT4+medium quality filler as a package would be a recommended from me up to the 49.99~ price range although that could be a lot of waiting when looking at the release pricing...

I mean the archetypal example hasn't come up yet: Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts... Really as a physics sandbox or like a "lego racers" idea that actually has gameplay to back up the customization, it's obviously a wonderful game that can appeal to people who've played lots of arcade racing games, and so on... The music is good, and the writing... although it is maybe a lttle too in-your-face during the prologue, starts to find a comforttable stride and is pretty funny... But of course it's not a good Banjo Kazooie game, even though it's a good game by itself... Now granted it isn't attempting to be one, BUT I think it's valid that the presentation and being part of the franchise lead so many people to expect N&Bs to have been a series Banjo Kazooie game.. So I can see things as valid fo people complaining about Paper Mario, BoTW, or Fallout.. I don't think that not being a good game in its own series stops most of these games not good or anything, but Even though they are fun when you give them a chance, even I find them to give me a kind of nagging out-of-game disconnect that simply wouldn't be there if they were their own new IPs or at least altered slightly to more naturally transition from their original series's gamplay to their new approach.

Link to The Past has my favorite over world. its just the most fun to explore and traverse for me. I also have reasonable fondness for GBC Zelda, but Seasons/Awakenings habit of putting "mini-dungeons and puzzles" in between the actual dungeons on the overworld is taken a little too far in Ages, which is needlessly obtuse. I kind of feel like Ages reflects back onto the other games and helps see the dangers of their design. You start to notice it makes them a lot less conductive to revisits for heart containers / secret shells , etc, since they mostly feel like linear sections designed for the previous dungeon item. I think Majora's Mask is probably the most successful with using "overworld as mini-dungeon" to connect the real dungeons, since it does so without losing the flavor of an over world or preventing you from wanting to backtrack on it for exploration.

Won't you be my neighbor and It's such a good feeling - Mister Roger's Neighborhood is something I love really intensely and pretty much my go to when it comes to guilty pleasures... but I will not stop marathoning it every few years. Mr Bean's choral in C Major - Mr. Bean started a major BBC obsession with me that in all honesty, still hasn't ended. Having an Average Weekend by Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet - I mostly know the instrumental version because of its use as the Kids in The Hall theme song. Show was very important in my high school-college years and helped me bond with my sister... also most of my close friends still draw 90% of injokes from KITH sketches to this day. Jack Sheldon's rendition of Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me - It's obscure, and as far as most people are concerned, JS is more important for being a trumpet player, but it's my favorite performance in my favorite genre of music, ever. The Impossible Dream from the Man of La Mancha Musical- The movie I watch with my mother might be accused of sentimentality and fail to capture much from the novel but it's still a beautiful thing in its own right. - USMC Gomer Pyle is a close second The Goldfinger title song - One of the first songs I ever memorized the lyrics and stress too and sung in public. The Touch by Stan Bush - Yea, even though Transformers has more mature and deep stuff in things like TFA, BW, Prime, various of its old comic runs... the 1986 movie is still the be-all end-all Transformers experience in my mind. Night Fever by the Bee Gees - I associate this with the miniseries The Tenth Kingdom, which my family practically re-watches in full every year. Teacher Forever by Yusuke Honma - I first watched Great Teacher Onizuka in my first year at a Jesuit College... and the freshman reading was Gregory Boyle's Tattoos on the Heart. For me this show...besides being enormously enjoyale, was an immediate parallel to Tattoos on the Heart and instantly rocketed it my favorite anime of all time. Poison by Takashi Sorimachi - I watched the entire of the animated GTO and read the entirety of the mangas before ever looking into the live action, and at first I was disappointing that Teacher Forever wasn't used, among some other things~ the animated series also uses its big song much more sparingly - usually an alterative "victory" song such as Onizuka Impossible would be used for the climax of normal episodes allowing Teacher Forever to benefit from only appearing at the most emotionally satisfying times. But in the end, the 1998 Onizuka showed me that it really was just as powerful (and better structured) and I fell in love with the frranchise all over again. For me the GTO music is a bit more important than just fondly remembering the shows... but it's kind of like my private ideal of how most people think of the Christopher Reeve's Superman music - I associate Heroism itself with these songs. Cavern Level and PUMPKIN from the video game Dr. Lunatic - really all music (even the public domain stuff) music featured in Mike Hommel's games.. but these more than any other since they were imo the most featured in the demo Spooky Castle that was my first exposure to him especially as for a very long time I never bothered to look further than that wonderful demo.

Thracia has rescue as well as capture... there are entire levels built around the mechanic with Chapter 19 probably being the most fleshed out. Using Rescue is also a massive quality of life improvement in casual play since you only have to mash through half of the "I'm leaving ahead of you, Prince Leaf" texts due to taking 2 units at a time instead of 1 in the many escape levels. That said it's not really a mechanic I consider core to the series... If anything I feel like it's pseduo-AI abuse in the context of the GBA games and Telius.. I think people notice it more in Shadow Dragon because of Marth having to interact with maps a lot more than other Lords, and much more focus on impassble/water terrain through the entire game instead of just a few one-off maps while doing some minor countries arc. That said I prefer it to the ubiquitous "if I can get a horse/flier there" that area is 100% done" mentality. I don't feel like rescue drops and other stripped out mechanics hurt Shadow Dragon because it makes it feel like more of a strategy game and less an RPG at least relative to the other games in the series. Things like skip-enemy turn more than make up for any elements that would make it's pace "slow" especially considering the notoriously slow pace of certain Fire Emblem games.