Lurker > CherryCokes

WiggumFan267 posted...

Oh another good clue here is my next game will be the 3rd game in a row that involves hexagons.

Civ 6 obv

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The Thighmaster

Kenri posted...

I felt like Winged Pikmin really trivialized the game, but maybe it was just easy to begin with. Rest of the colors felt pretty balanced.

I feel like the game design mitigates this a lot through a couple of things: spiderwebs and forcing you to pair the pinks with the blues a lot

There's only a couple of fruits or enemies that are totally busted by the Pinks (Snagret and Mireclops, mostly, since in Deluxe they fixed the Scornet Maestro glitch)

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The Thighmaster

I feel like I played Golden Tee before Mario Golf but not extensively or all that much earlier

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The Thighmaster

65. Audiosurf (PC, 2008)

The late 2000s really saw rhythm games expanding in all directions, trying to find the next Guitar Hero. Shy of Rock Band, which literally and metaphorically was the next Guitar Hero, Audiosurf is maybe the game that got the closest. The concept is pretty simple: you take equal parts Klax and F-Zero, and code it so the game can generate a course based on any song the player chooses from their library of MP3s. The result is an undulating, fast-paced, sometimes hypnotic rhythm game with an unlimited library of songs and infinite replayability. As DRM, and then later streaming services, became the predominant powers in the digital music space, Audiosurf was one of the casualties; a sequel was released in 2013 to almost no fanfare or reception.

But for those years in the late 00s and early 10s, Audiosurf was a reliably fun way to pass a lot of time listening to music in a way none of us had really thought could exist.

64. Pikmin (Gamecube, 2001)

Pikmin is a series that immediately captivated me. It took two things I love - real-time strategy and action-adventure - and put them together in a way that was as delightful as it was unexpected as it was nerve-wracking. You don't anticipate when you boot up a Pikmin game for the first time that you will form an emotional attachment to these hundreds of little weird creatures, but the more you get into the game, the more you do. When they die in battle, or god forbid if you don't get them back to the onions in time, you feel bad. They trusted you! And you let them die! So you push yourself harder to do better, to keep them safe, even though death is lurking for both the Pikmin and Olimar at every turn. There's almost an element of survival horror to it, except you're keeping 101 creatures alive instead of one or two. It's brilliant and affecting and I adore it.

That being said, Pikmin is the worst of the three main Pikmin games. It suffers a bit from the technical limitations of being an early GameCube game where Pikmin 2 and 3 exist at the upper reaches of their original system's technical capabilities. The remastered versions of 1 and 2 for Wii fix some of this, but it doesn't do enough to elevate Pikmin over Pikmin 2. Truthfully, I'd love to see the first two games re-ported to Switch, because the series as a whole is under-played, in large part due to the fact that the GCN and Wii games were relatively hard to find copies of.

63. WarioWare: Smooth Moves! (Wii, 2007)

For my money, this is the peak (for now, at least) of the WarioWare series. As a Wii launch title, it showed us, more than any other early game, just what this seemingly insane control scheme was capable of. It took the bizarre insanity of the WarioWare games, which had largely been a portable affair (let's just pretend Mega Party Games doesn't exist) and turned it into a frenzied, shared experience we were all having in our living rooms with our friends and family.

And like the Wario Land 4, the less said about the attempts to follow this game the better. Nintendo: get it together with the two Wario series already. Yeesh.

62. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS, 2005)

Growing up not owning NES, SNES or PlayStation, and having not played Castlevania 64, I never really got into Metroidvanias until Dawn of Sorrow. I still really haven't! But Dawn of Sorrow hit me at the right time and I loved it. Soma Cruz and his soul-stealing make for a compelling, highly variable playable character (who would have been much more interesting as a Smash DLC fighter than the Belmonts, IMO). I don't have a lot to say about this one, especially since you guys all know both it and the genre better than I do!

61. NBA Street Vol. 2 (Gamecube, 2003)

It's not news to anyone from #sports that my favorite sport is basketball. I will watch any good basketball that is available regardless of whether not I have a rooting interest. Despite my adoration of basketball - or perhaps because of it - I have rarely loved basketball video games.

NBA Street Vol. 2 is one of those rare exceptions.

The series started in 2001 as EA's attempt to cash in on the immensely popular And1 mixtape phenomenon, which featured street ball legends playing the most over the top, flashy, incredible basketball in parks, mostly around New York. And1, of course, was the result of increasing availability of portable video cameras and early cellphones meeting a half-century-long history of stylistically heightened ball that been played in places like the Rucker dating back to the 50s. The Rucker was in some ways to the NBA what the Negro Leagues were to the MLB: freer, looser, Blacker and more fun than their stodgier relatives.

NBA Street Vol. 2 captured all of that perfectly. They brought in perhaps the most authentic voice possible to do the color commentary: Bobbito Garcia aka Kool Bob Love aka DJ Cucumber Slice, a former streetballer turned DJ, radio host, and record label owner. As a DJ and radio show host, he and his partner Stretch Armstrong helped break some of the most enormous rap artists of all time: Nas, Jay-Z, the Wu-Tang Clan, the Fugees, Big L, the Notorious B.I.G., among many many others. As the founder of Fondle 'Em Records, he launched the career of the recently departed MF Doom and served as the precursor to El-P's Def Jux label. Bobbito was the secret sauce that married the solid gameplay of NBA Street, the hip-hop culture surrounding street ball, the soundtrack of the game, and the newly-added NBA legends - many of whom had history at the Rucker themselves - and turned it into the best basketball video game that has yet been created.

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The Thighmaster

oh shit, i remember zombies ate my neighbors

it was on the SNES at the boys and girls club when I was an adolescent

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The Thighmaster

Gorillaz - Fire Coming Out of a Monkey's Head
Neko Case - This Tornado Loves You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ubXQvxDp8

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The Thighmaster

Eddv posted...

67) Snowboard Kids 2 (N64, 1999)
this game was the peak

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The Thighmaster

I just realized if I'd picked MK2 that I'd have only 2s and 4s for sequels on my list to this point

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The Thighmaster

UltimaterializerX posted...

Why do that glitch only once? Couldn't he just do it 3 times and set a record of like 25 seconds?

you need the mushrooms and you only get 3 in time trial mode

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The Thighmaster

i could have lived my whole life without seeing sora's nipples

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The Thighmaster

the plot was trash but the gameplay was largely fine

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The Thighmaster

TomNook posted...

Pikmin was first thought, but i don't really agree. I love the first one. Didnt like the 2nd. Never played the 3rd. Now it's a dead series.

they just released Pikmin 3 Deluxe 3 months ago

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The Thighmaster

the seattle mariners

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The Thighmaster

Oh hey

Claw is abandonware

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/claw-a39

PLAY IT.

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The Thighmaster

70. Donkey Kong 64 (N64 ,1999)


The inclusion of this game is something I expect will spark some discussion, because it's not a game most of you like. It is, however, a game that is near and dear to me, because it's the first console game I ever owned. I got the jungle green N64 for Christmas in 1999. Up until that point, all I'd owned were GameBoy and PC games. I'd played Genesis and SNES and N64 and PS games with friends, but my parents were reluctant in getting me a console until it was nearly the new millennium. Imagine the first time you turn your own video game system on and the first thing you experience is the DK Rap. How could this game not be on the list?

Also, a note for Nintendo, who is obviously reading this: BRING BACK LANKY AND CHUNKY YOU COWARDS

69. Wario Land 4 (GBA, 2001)

Now Imagine you get a GBA a couple of years later, after having played GameBoy and GameBoy Color games for the past 6 or so years, and this is among the first games you play. People often talk about how vibrant the Mario games are, and how artfully designed they are, but Wario Land 4 takes the familiar bright palette of his archrival and marries it with the off-kilter and somewhat gruesome aesthetic for which Wario is known, and it does it masterfully. I'm not sure Nintendo made a better looking 2D platformer. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Wario Land effectively ended here. The first WW game came out two years later, and aside from a half-baked attempt at a Wii game, Wario Land has remained a dormant series for the last 20 years, which is a shame, because it's an absolute treasure trove, and one that you should raid with Wario if you haven't already.

68. Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (GBA, 2003)

67. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (DS, 2008)


These games are really radically different in tone and style, despite being part of the same series and having similar gameplay. In part because of that, I couldn't in good conscience combine them into one series entry (for as much as I like AW1 and DS, these two are much better games, for two). These are the two most challenging and balanced of the AW games, but as you can see, the tone of each is evident even in still shots. Where the GBA games and Dual Strike had a bright, colorful take and a consistent and comical cast of characters, Days of Ruin chucked it all for a darker, grittier look and feel (it was 2008, after all - darker and gritter was in). The end results are two supremely different but almost equally satisfying games in a series that seems to have been effectively shut down by the success of Fire Emblem, which like Wario Land, is a damn shame.

I guess you could say the theme of these last four games is "stuff I love that Nintendo forgot about doing more with"

66. Claw (PC, 1997)


Claw is a game that climbed this list the more I thought about it. I think it could charitably be called a cult classic at this point, but the gist of it is this: You play as Captain Nathaniel J. Claw, a pirate cat, imprisoned by the Cocker Spaniards after the sinking of his ship (presumably by the Spaniard Armada). He escapes his prison - and his execution - and sets off in pursuit of the Amulet of Nine Lives, and the gems that give it its power.

The gameplay is a fairly challenging 2D platformer, littered with secrets and jokes that you might miss the first time through. You have a cutlass for taking out enemies up close, a pistol (with limited ammo) for ranged attacks, and occasionally, a magic spell and bundles of dynamite for trickier situations and/or bosses. The game itself is really beautifully designed. Even against today's fare, as a 2D platformer, it can hold its own pretty well. The attention to detail is really something, and the sound design is as good as you'll find in a game, especially of its era - the characters are fully voiced, in the seaside levels you can hear distant waves crashing and occasional gulls cawing, doors ka-chunk and clatter when you open and close them. It's really immersive in a way that games by and large weren't then.

Bottom line: find a way to give this a play. It's worth it.

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The Thighmaster

I have BTTF on Steam but I've never played it. Maybe I'll do that soon!

(Probably not)

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The Thighmaster

Breathe of the Wild, my favorite Leggend of Zelda game

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The Thighmaster

I somehow never played TimeSplitters 2

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The Thighmaster

75. Portal (PC, 2007)

I mean, not putting it in here somewhere would be an act of malfeasance.

74. Sonic Adventure 2: Battle (Gamecube, 2002)

Sonic Adventure 2: Battle didn't fix everything that was wrong with Sonic Adventure or Sonic Adventure 2, but it did improve upon those games significantly. I don't really have a lot to say about SA2:B, other than it is probably the Sonic game I've put the most time into, and that is why it's here. I never owned a Sega console, so I missed out on a lot of those until way later, and never developed a particular fondness for them. But SA2:B was fun, varied in its gameplay, and charming. And the music, of course, remains its lasting legacy.

73. Trauma Center: Under the Knife / Second Opinion (DS/Wii, 2005/2006)

A game so nice, they made it twice. Under the Knife was a sort of unexpected hit for the DS in 2005. The gist of it is that it's equal parts visual novel and WarioWare-esque surgical simulation. The game's story is told through static animation scenes a la every visual novel ever, and the gameplay is you, as surgeon Derek Stiles, using your stylus, switching between tools and performing various surgical maneuvers to beat the clock. The faster and more accurate you go, the better your score. It's extraordinarily nerve-wracking and extraordinarily satisfying.

Second Opinion is essentially the same game, but overhauled for the Wii launch. It's graphically more engaging, and the Wiimote controls offer a different take on the surgeries that is still as rewarding as it is tense. I sort of fell off the series after these two, but I know subsequent games are just as beloved in some corners as these two.

72. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64, 2000)


Kirby 64, maybe the last great game of the N64's lifespan, proved that Kirby, like Mario and Zelda before it, could make the leap from 2D to 3D with ease and with creativity. Like those two series, Kirby's ability to reinvent himself (and for the series to reinvent itself) while remaining familiar has been crucial to his long-term appeal, while other series' inability to do that has left them by the wayside. This might be the bleakest entry in the Kirby series, which has historically melded vibrant and charming visuals with dark, weird undertones, and this game came out just as I was hitting an age where I could really appreciate that contrast. It's not a particularly difficult game, but it is one of the most memorable and appealing.

71. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (PS2, 2002)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHw18akJtgs&list=PLgZLkKtuVCo2dLyKyto47aEz3WSwKEHGC&index=2
THPS4 is, as has been mentioned, the most expansive, bizarre and at times surreal of the original Tony Hawk games. The shift from the timed career mode to the untimed open world concept shifted the game from an arcade-esque style to a more platformer-esque one, and the series was all the more interesting and exciting (and at times frustrating) for it.

But what truly makes this the best Tony Hawk game is that its soundtrack absolutely (skates and) destroys the rest of the series. NWA, Aesop Rock, De La Soul, Gang Starr, Public Enemy, Eyedea & Abilities, RUN DMC, AC/DC, The Distillers, Iron Maiden, Agent Orange, Flogging Molly, Goldfinger, The Cult. It's jam after jam after jam. The whole package still holds up.

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The Thighmaster

those are the kinds of quick, decisive answers i look for

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The Thighmaster

I'm already sitting here thinking "Did I underrate Thomas Was Alone and Meteos"

But what's done is done

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The Thighmaster

80. Perfect Dark (N64, 2000)

Perfect Dark is the spiritual successor to Goldeneye, and it is an improvement in almost every technical aspect. It's a more visually impressive game, the level and mission designs are better, the plot is better, the multiplayer is deeper. It's probably the most impressive RARE game on the N64. Maybe the most impressive RARE game ever, relative to each game's ceiling at the time of its release.

It's just... not as fun. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it was so late in the N64's life cycle. Maybe it's that our N64 controllers were wobbly by 2000. I don't know. It just never had that spark that Goldeneye had. It was missing something, and I'll probably never know what it was.

79. Mario Kart 64 (N64, 1996)


A thing no one will tell you: Mario Kart 64 might have the worst selection of courses in the Mario Kart series. You've got Toad's Turnpike, Wario Stadium, and Royal Raceway. The rest kiiiiinda suck. But Mario Kart 64 is the game that truly launched Mario Kart into the stratosphere, because it was the first to allow for four players. Everything else is almost secondary. You can still play MK64 to this day and enjoy it. Grab some beers and do the only fun and socially acceptable form of drunk driving.

78. Meteos (DS, 2005)


When you combine the producer of Rez and Space Channel 5 and the game design of one Masahiro Sakurai, this is what you get: A brilliantly crafted one-off puzzler for DS where you match 3 or more tiles to shoot them off into space, toward your opponent's planet. Every block above the match gets lifted on the match's rockets, but the more blocks above the match, the heavier they are, and the harder they are to get off the screen. But you can make more matches to continue to propel them skyward, or, if you're lucky, use a power-up to give them a boost. Fill your opponents' screens before they fill yours to win is generally the goal. The clever conceit is that each planet in the game has different frequencies of blocks and different gravities, so you have to adapt your strategies accordingly. It's a wonderful game, and I have no idea why they never made another one.

77. Thomas Was Alone (PC, 2012)


This beautifully executed platformer-puzzler is short but wondrous. You play as Thomas, an AI who's come to something approaching life, and later, his compatriots, each of whom have different shapes, personalities, and skills, as you progress through the game, attempting to escape the mainframe into which they were all 'born.' I don't want to say much more than that, because the experience is the best part, but it's a really elegant, simple game that deserves everyone's time.

76. The Legend of Zelda (NES, 1986)
There's nothing I can possibly say about the original Legend of Zelda that others won't say better. It is a game without which this very board may not exist, at least not in the way we came to know it. While not my favorite entry, it's the beginning of the series that features heavily in my list and in my life; everyone on Discord is intimately familiar, but the rest of you might not be - my dog, age 2, is named Zelda.



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The Thighmaster

Surprisingly, I've never played a NMH game.

Might rectify that.

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The Thighmaster

Self-checkout is an excuse for major corporations to not hire workers and to understaff

always use a cashier imo

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The Thighmaster

That is much lower than anticipated

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The Thighmaster

Every team the wizards played last week had an outbreak later in the week.

What's the overall league look like in terms of teams' current roster sizes

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The Thighmaster

League is heading for a shutdown

No two ways about it imo


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The Thighmaster

MZero posted...

Disagree, Bias did it to himself. Sad, of course, but he made a bad decision and faced the consequences.

Fultz, Oden, and Reggie Lewis did nothing wrong but just got unlucky, which is sadder imo

drug addiction is a disease, you absolute buffoon

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The Thighmaster

85. StarCraft II (PC, 2010-2015)


StarCraft II is another game, like Twilight Princess, that suffered under the weight of expectations. Unlike Twilight Princess, it also had the burden of being made by Blizzard. Despite this, the game, especially once the expansion packs were released, is pretty enjoyable. The plot is entirely over the top, but the missions are largely satisfying and the game's presentation is characteristically strong. The new units for each race are by and large interesting and contribute well to gameplay without throwing competitiveness off. The multiplayer is more or less StarCraft as you know it, just bigger and flashier than ever. I may never play this again - Blizzard's response to pro-democracy activism in Hong Kong was especially distasteful - but the StarCraft II experience was satisfying for more than long enough to earn a spot on this list.

84. Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (Gamecube, 2004)

The debate over whether the PlayStation original or the Gamecube overhaul of Metal Gear Solid is better presumably rages on in some quarters. I had tried the original at a friend's place in '99, and it didn't do anything for me, but when we learned of The Twin Snakes, I found myself intrigued, in part because the game's graphical upgrade was so significant, but also because I'd played Metal Gear Solid 2 in the interim and rather enjoyed it (spoilers for the future of this list). That TTS controlled similarly to the game I had enjoyed undoubtedly increased my enjoyment of it. Ultimately, though, what does it is that the MGS series is an inherently cinematic experience, and I think the Twin Snakes so far exceeds the original in that way.

83. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade, 1989)


This might be a surprising choice, because it notably is not Turtles in Time. Truthfully, I've never even seen a Turtles in Time arcade machine, nor played it on SNES. This game was Konami's first TMNT effort, and it was later (less successfully) ported to NES. But as an arcade cabinet, it was and remains an absolute joy to play. Shredder kidnaps April, the turtles pursue. You pick your favorite turtle, or maybe the most useful (Leo and Don have better reach), and mow down the Foot, Bebop, Rocksteady, Krang, Baxter, and other various bosses across a number of vibrant, pizza-filled levels. It presents a moderate challenge, but doesn't eat your whole cup of quarters. It's just a classic, well-made beat-em up.

82. Guitar Hero II (PS2, 2006/XBOX 360 2007)


Guitar Hero I was a revelation, but Guitar Hero II was the peak of the series. It has a much better soundtrack, by far, featuring the series' first main setlist master recordings, courtesy of Primus and Jane's Addiction, and ridiculous bonus tracks like "Trogdor" and "Jordan." The plastic guitars were as finely tuned as they ever got, to the extent that the 360 Explorer controller remained the go-to instrument for competitive GH/RB players for years afterward. The mechanics and visuals of the games were refined to near perfection, especially by the time the 360 version came out. For me, it was the game that took my love of music and turned it into an at times fanatical and obsessive amount of gaming, and it was something that reliably brought me joy when other things didn't, a trend which continued with Harmonix's next several games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGDw2t9bI6U

81. Mario Party 2 (N64, 2000)


Much in the same way that I think of Civ IV when I think of Civ, when I think of Mario Party, I think of Mario Party 2. It is, I think, the most memorable and iconic of the series, with each character having a specific matching costume for each board's theme, and a collection of mini-games that reverberates through the entire rest of the series to date. Gone are the palm-blisterers from the first game, replaced with some of the series' most notable and favorite mini-games. There's only six playable characters, but you don't really need more than that, even if you're playing with four players (which you absolutely should be). I don't think the Mario Party series has come close to its platonic ideal yet, but if Nintendo wants to make a game that approaches the perfect Mario Party, this is the game they should crib from the most.

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I for one would like more talk

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The Thighmaster

Naye745 posted...

what is..."wii u"?

a miserable pile of secrets

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The Thighmaster

OB64 is a game I always wanted to play but never got around to

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The Thighmaster

90. Super Mario 3D World (Wii U, 2013)

It could reasonably be argued that New Super Mario Bros U the first disappointing mainline Mario game since Sunshine. Not because it's a bad game, but because it came after Galaxy, NSMB, and Galaxy 2. All we had to wait was a year for the Mario team to get hot again, this time with a sequel of sorts to Super Mario 3D Land (which I'm told was good; I never had a 3DS). The mix of 2D and 3D platforming is crisp, the level design is generally top notch, and the multiplayer is actually really fun, albeit chaotic. The game is undeniably the most madcap Mario game, even when played single player. I know it was among the best selling Wii U games, but I have to imagine that a lot of people missed it because it was on Nintendo's least successful console. Fortunately, like virtually all great Wii U games, this will be out on Switch soon, and you really owe it to yourselves to play it if you haven't already.

89. Raiden II (Arcade, 1994)

In the grand lineage of scrolling shoot 'em ups, Raiden II isn't necessarily the best in any particular way. It's not supremely difficult, it's not particularly beautiful, its music is good but not memorable. But it does do all of those things well. It's a well rounded game, and as arcade games go, generally not a quarter eater. I spent a lot of time and not a lot of money at this machine in my youth, and it was always a good time.

88. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii, 2006)

Twilight Princess is, perhaps more than almost any game, a victim of its own hype. It's a good game. It has some incredible moments sprinkled throughout. It's one of the more visually engaging Zeldas. But I think we were all expecting it to be the next Ocarina of Time and it just... was never going to be that. The wolf sections lose their novelty almost immediately; on replay, wolf Link is downright tedious. It's only by the grace of Midna that any enjoyment is derived from the opening portion. Still, once you're clear of it, it's a pretty majestic experience, bigger in scope than any Zelda before it (if not in scale - Wind Waker takes that particular cake), with some of the series' best dungeons. I could go on, but we've all played it. You get it.

87. Blast Corps (N64, 1997)

Blast Corps is the second N64 game made by RARE, after Killer Instinct Gold, but it's the first legitimately great one they created for the system, and it kicked off a run of games that most developers would kill for - Blast Corps, Goldeneye, Diddy Kong Racing, all in 97, Banjo-Kazooie in 98, the aforementioned Jet Force Gemini in 99. If you're a fan of DK64 (I am), that streak continues through that game, Perfect Dark, Mickey's Speedway USA (deeply underrated), and Banjo-Tooie. That's an incredible run by any measure, and it all started here, with Blast Corps, probably RARE's hardest game. Your goal is to use a collection of vehicles to clear the path for a nuclear missile carrier. Each vehicle operates in different (and sometimes frustrating) ways (looking at you, Backlash). If the carrier hits anything, game over. It is a genuinely challenging game. It's also a game that feels impossible to go back to now, owing to the graphics and controls of the day. Maybe make a sequel or a full scale remake? Someone?

86. Civilization IV (PC, 2005)
[you don't need a photo, you know what Civ IV looks like]
I can't say with absolute certainty that this is the best Civ. I didn't play 3 or 5 a ton. Haven't tried 6. Truthfully, for as much as I like 4X games and strategy games in general, I just don't have the time for Civ like I used to. And that's probably a good thing. Who among us has not decided to play a game of Civ IV at a seemingly reasonable hour, only to find themselves embroiled in international incident after international incident until sunrise? I know I have, and I can't do that shit anymore. But man, when I could, was it fun.

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The Thighmaster

SeabassDebeste posted...

how can this not be an intentional pun

i wrote it, realized what i did, then left it

it's Good

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The Thighmaster

TheRock1525 posted...

I mean... Len Bias will always be the saddest.

followed closely by Reggie Lewis

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The Thighmaster

also congratulations!

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The Thighmaster

go to The Porter Beer Bar in Little Five Points and get the fries

thank me later

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The Thighmaster

92. Snowboard Kids 2 (N64, 1999)


Somehow, nearly 22 years on, I'm not sure that there's been a more fun snowboarding game. It's Mario Kart on the slopes, in essence, but for whatever reason, it never got the traction it deserved. It's got a solid story mode with bosses, courses in non-wintry environments like a castle and in space, and a battle mode for multiplayer. You can get power-ups to try to improve your standing in the race, and you can perform tricks to block your opponent's attacks. It's not a life-changing game; it won't alter your perception of gaming or sports or sports games or anything. It's just a real solid, enjoyable game from top to bottom that doesn't really have any glaring flaws.

91. Simpsons Arcade (Arcade, 1991)


Maggie accidentally gets her pacifier swapped out for a priceless gem, and Smithers - in an uncommonly villainous turn - kidnaps her on behalf of Mr Burns. Chaos ensues. It's a bizarre setup, when you think about it, even for the Simpsons, but across the 8 increasingly bizarre levels, including one that exists in the collective dream world of the Simpsons and ruled by a tentacled version of Homer's bowling ball, the game pretty much works throughout. You play as one of the four remaining Simpsons, who attack in a specific way: Homer with his fists, Bart with his skateboard, Lisa with her jumprope, and Marge with her vacuum. That is also the order of least to most useful. Homer has no range. Bart has a bit more. Lisa gets tangled in her rope sometimes, and Marge fucks shit up. When two or more players are playing together, they can do tag team attacks based on the pairing, and they're all very fun and very useful.

When you contrast this with Castle Crashers, it's easy to see, I think, why I ranked this higher. It may not have as many bells and whistles, but you can also cruise through it pretty quickly, before anything gets stale, and the level, enemy, and boss designs are all very visually engaging. I can beat this game on three quarters, maybe two on a good day, and have each of the last 10 years before 2020. It felt weird not doing it in my local arcade in 2020, but such is life these days.

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The Thighmaster

95. Rock Band Blitz (Xbox 360, 2012)
Rock Band Blitz is a peculiar entry, in some ways, but it also encapsulates the entirety of the work that Harmonix did up until its release. The studio that created Amplitude, Frequency, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band was, at this point in 2012, entirely focused on Rock Band, and rightfully so. The series was still going strong, Rock Band 3 was successful, DLC sales were strong.

Blitz took all the elements of their previous games - the enormous library of the Rock Band franchise, the color coded lanes and multiple instruments - and applied the fundamental ideas of Frequency and Amplitude - the rapid lane switching to hit notes, traditional controller setup, power-ups, and made a compelling arcade style rhythm game that requires you not to be perfect, because that's impossible, but to find the most effective path to score the most points. Unfortunately, due to the complicated licensing rights, it will forever remain stuck on the PS3/360s to which it was downloaded.

Watch this clip and enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGzCi2VQRpw

94. Top Skater (Arcade, 1997)
Top Skater is not a game that should exist. There's absolutely no reason for it to exist. It came out two years before the first Tony Hawk game, just as the X Games were becoming A Thing, as perhaps the single most ridiculous piece of arcade hardware to ever exist. Look at this thing:



You stand on that board - traditional or goofy stance, thank god for this left-dominant gamer - and the game propels you through a course of your choosing, based on difficulty. You steer by turning the board on that rear axis, using your bodyweight, and when you hit a ramp, or come near a rail, you kick either the front or the back of the board to initiate a trick. Your goal is to score as many points and complete the course in the allotted time; better tricks help you get through the course faster. You pick a skater depending on your style and preferences; they have modest variations in skillsets that don't really seem to affect the outcome too much. It is a quarter eater and it is incredibly fun, and I'm so glad it existed, despite all logic suggesting it should not.

93. Castle Crashers (Xbox 360, 2008)


Castle Crashers is irreverent and fun, especially with four players. There's enough variation between the many characters to make it enjoyable to play through with various friends more than once over time. Its art style is charming and the game is well-designed. The only thing keeping it from being several spots higher on the list is that is that it's actually too long for a beat 'em up. Beat 'em ups are inherently repetitious. There's few types of levels. Left to right, right to left, top to bottom, bottom to top, autoscrolling or not. If you don't get enough variation in there, it starts to drag, and that happens a little too often with Castle Crashers. Still fun, though.

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The Thighmaster

UltimaterializerX posted...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1346954970910707712?s=21

What a fucking moron. I cannot believe I ever supported this goof.

Board 8, you were right. I was wrong. Can we still be friends here, or is that time long gone?

As one of the few remaining people who don't have you blocked for the things you've posted over the past several years, I've been asked to relay some messages

lmao
Its long gone
Long since passed for me
lol
Ahahaha
lmfao
Long gone
(Apology not even remotely accepted)
lmfao i'd consider unblocking to tell him long gone but it's so long gone
fucking amazing post by ulti


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The Thighmaster

Nee has the best list so far imo

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The Thighmaster

100. Battle of Polytopia (Android, 2016)

I haven't kept full tabs on everyone else's system breakdowns, so I don't know if any other mobile games will be making an appearance, but I felt that I couldn't in good conscience make this list without including the game that has gotten me through so many dull classes, dead shifts, and waiting rooms over the past few years.

The Battle of Polytopia is a deceptively deep 4X turn-based strategy game where you control a tribe - each with a preordained specialty - and attempt to take over villages and cities, be they neutral or opponent controlled. You know the formula. Start at your small home, expand outward and upward, trying to maximize your research and army to control as much land and score as many points as you can. Polytopia does this beautifully and simply in a way that works remarkably well on your phone or tablet. It's free to play, and you can drop a few bucks for additional tribes, which is honestly (usually) worth it if you are the type who gets easily sucked in by 4X style games, especially if you end up playing with friends, which you can do both in person in a pass-the-device mode, or online.

099. Jet Force Gemini (Nintendo 64, 1999)

This game might have been higher if it had come to me a little earlier in life. I had wanted it when I was young, but we didn't have much money growing up and in the time it took 11- and 12-year old me to scrounge up the money for a new game, JFG (and the N64, for that matter) pretty much disappeared from store shelves. It wasn't until 2006, when I found it on a table at a flea market, that I finally got myself a copy. By then, of course, it was hard to judge fairly, because in the intervening 7 years, the entire gaming landscape had changed.

But this game, a third-person shooter/action adventure hybrid that draws its influences as much from sci-fi films as it does from any particular video game, and developed by the same group at RARE that put together Blast Corps, still excited me, even then. Its controls are not intuitive, but the gameplay is fun and relatively deep. Juno, Vela, and Lupus each present unique ways to tackle puzzles and combat, and the nonlinear design of the levels felt fresh and new in 2006, so I can imagine that it must have felt even more so in 1999. It's also one of the most visually appealing games of its generation, and it remains one of the best sounding games I can think of, from its grand score to its expertly crafted sound effects. It's really a marvel.

098. Mount Your Friends 3D (PC, 2018)

This game has brought a strange collection of B8ers to riotous laughter many a time. The idea is simple: imagine QWOP if QWOP was about flinging yourself up a tower of hypermuscular Sandbag-lookalikes before the clock runs out, all with real dong physics.

The game is perhaps best summed up by one quote:

"Do you remember me slowly lifting my dick into the goat's face?" - Digi

097. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Arcade, 1995)

I know a lot of people love the more recent, full-gore MKs, but my heart is always with the first three or four. Of the first three, I think MK2 is largely the most popular, but for my literal money, I always enjoyed playing Ultimate MK3 at my local arcade, and later, at my favorite laser tag place (which recently closed permanently, RIP Laser Quest). Gimme all the classic characters, a few new faces, and let me bloody everything to a pulp. That's what Mortal Kombat is about, and to my mind, UMK3 is the purest distillation of that.

096. Final Fantasy IV (SNES, 1991)

I am not the world's biggest fan of traditional JRPGs. I think people mostly know that about me. But for whatever reason, I always found Final Fantasy IV both charming and engaging in a way that I rarely did with other games of its ilk. The cast of characters is pretty strong for a 2D FF with no cutscenes or voice acting, and I think it has one of the stronger initial hooks of a Final Fantasy - the Red Wing attack on Mysidia and Cecil's subsequent moral questioning and exile have a way of drawing you in.

Is it the best Final Fantasy? Maybe. Is it my favorite? Yes. Does that make me weird? Almost certainly, at least compared to the rest of Board 8.

But that's the kind of weirdness I bring to this endeavor.

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The Thighmaster

About to get going on my 100

here's a preview of the system breakdown. fractions indicate that a game was played a significant amount on multiple systems

Arcade - 7
GB/C - 3
GBA - 2
Gamecube 19.333
DC - 0.333
DS - 4.5
Mobile - 1
NES - 1
N64 - 18
PC - 16.8333
Playstation - 1
PS2 - 3
SNES - 6
Switch - 4.5
Wii - 3.5
Wii U - 1.5
Xbox 360 - 7.5

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The Thighmaster

it's certainly my favorite xbox game

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The Thighmaster

Bartzyx posted...

Abzu is great! It's gorgeous and I agree, can be moving. I really enjoyed it and I cannot think of any other game that really explores that kind of setting. Really similar in concept to another good game that I will be talking about very soon.

i assume Journey

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The Thighmaster

Honorable Mention - Abzu (PC, 2016)

Abzu's only flaw is that the gameplay gets a little repetitious. You play a silent diver as she navigates the undersea, aided by a series of small robots, as she explores a series of aquatic environments that have been desecrated. You must find a series of wells and temples to bring the region back to life, and make it teeming with sea creatures again. Along the way, you are aided by dolphins, whales, sharks, and turtles, who guide you through a series of increasingly complex and beautiful levels. It is a deeply experiential game, and at times, a surprisingly moving game. It's short, and it's magic.

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"Mighty boobs." - Vlado

Honorable Mention - Super Paper Mario (Wii, 2007)

Super Paper Mario gets a lot of flak around these parts simply because it isn't like the previous entries in the Paper Mario series. While that's to be expected, given how beloved those two games are, SPM has been unfairly maligned, I think, as a result. If this game were judged on its own merits, like say, if it didn't have "Paper Mario" in the title creating unreasonable expectations, it would have a lot better reputation. It's clever, funny, and visually satisfying. The RPG elements are... not perfect, perhaps because they seem shoehorned in as if in anticipation of backlash at it for not being an RPG, but the fact remains: it's a good game. A good Mario game. Mario just happens to be made of Paper. Flipside and Flopside are a great dual-hub worlds, and Luigi, Peach, and Bowser give the game a welcome added... ehrm... dimension. If ever a game was in need of reappraisal, it's this one.

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"Mighty boobs." - Vlado

Honorable Mention - Beat Hazard (PC, 2010)

It's Asteroids, except it's beautiful and the music you choose from your own library determines the difficulty of the game. It's clever, it's simple, it's fun. You can play it for a distressingly long time if you have an extensive music library available. There's really not much more to it than that, but there doesn't need to be. I understand the sequel lets you use music from streaming services.

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"Mighty boobs." - Vlado

Final 3 HMs from me tomorrow

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"Mighty boobs." - Vlado

I suspect it will not be the last time either of those two games shows up. Possibly multiple times.

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"Mighty boobs." - Vlado