Lurker > TheKnightOfNee

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

I can verify that KCF has been sending out a second round of reminder PMs this week.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Glad you found a summary method that's working better for you!

Also augh all these 10 win teams. Guess I'll just have to try and ruin Dallas's seeding next game.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

ChainLTTP posted...

Oh I get it

Congratulations

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Cid H.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Cid H

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Faris

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

oh ya go my lions, aka tag

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Cid H

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Faris

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Galuf
Faris

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

If I didn't realize how bad that S9 first round was right away, I sure came to realize it down the road. I forgot Perry Riley was a first rounder too, yeesh.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

donk oh no

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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"this batch of eliminations will make people mad" para says after eliminating Bubble Man and Chill Man in the previous post.

Granted, Nitro Man far away the top MM10 song to me, so that one's a bummer to see out. But like you said, everything's so good, there are going to be top songs too low all over.

I'm with Naye in that MM4 Wily 2 is actually pretty darn cool. I feel like I've always enjoyed it more than most people. Oh, and Bubble Man would likely be my number 1 for the series, so I was kiiiind of hoping to see that higher. ah well, I look forward to Mega Man Soccer in top ten

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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I'm still catching up (not to the top 100 yet), but I want to weigh in on something.

Mega Man II GB has some absolutely awful sound balance/quality/whatever, but those songs have some very strong melodies. It's interesting to see someone else have a soft spot for that music. Maybe playing this a bunch as a kid gives me the nostalgia for it, but there's some stuff from that game I still enjoy listening too, even with the loud hissing and screeches..

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

tag so I can read and catch up

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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Good job Wigs!

1994 was a good year for #1 games

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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I hope it is

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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It's a Super Metroid kind of day

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

#1. Super Metroid (SNES, 1994)





Here we are, the best game ever. Which also happens to be my favorite game. Because it's the best.

When Super Metroid first came out, it was easily my most anticipated game. Metroid 2 had been kind of fun, but I wasn't a super fan of Metroid or anything. Every magazine preview and review just made Super Metroid look more and more exciting. I'm not even sure why this seemed so much better than everything else, but it did. And somehow, it completely lived up to the experience, even surpassing it.

Super Metroid is a fantastic game for what it opts to not tell you, but show you. Story-wise, you get the initial bits of text, but otherwise, it's a lot of atmospheric visuals and music that lead the story. You see places awaken, like Crateria after you start taking items, or the Wrecked Ship when that path is opened. Ridley's actions are clearly told. And then you get the final scenes, some very impactful story-telling that fits in with the gameplay and plays out events with these weird non-human creatures in very understandable behavior.

As far as the design of the game, and how the game conveys so much to you, even when it doesn't seem so... I don't even know how I can do this justice without going through each and every room. The game leads left and vertically early on, to show that paths go in any direction. The early bombable blocks are clearly different, and lead to new areas, and encourage the exploration. There are barriers presented way before you have a way to break through, often with enticing items on the other side, or marked on your map downloads, to encourage you to loop back later. There are friendly creatures that teach you weird mechanics that you otherwise don't even need to use. The glass tube through Maridia is such an iconic room. The way the map has you dip your toes in some areas, just to get a feel, like Norfair, before sending you back.

I also want to point out the overall map design. This is before warp points were really a big thing in non-linear games. Zebes is a pretty huge world to explore, and it could take a while to get anywhere. As the game goes on, and more paths are opened or accessible, the map is full of a lot of loops you can take. Sure, you could go from Crateria, and through Brinstar, and into Norfair, then the lower Norfair loop, and back up, into Maridia, through the upper part, across the Wrecked Ship, and back into Crateria, and you would hit most of the map. But there is the red Brinstar shaft and the room from Maridia that connects back to the top of it; Maridia has the tubes and sandpits back toward the bottom; Brinstar connects back to the early Crateria areas; Lower Norfair connects back to upper through a hidden path on the top right. It's not perfect in how you get around, but Super Metroid had so much care put into the design that there are all these paths around the planet. You don't have to return to the same boring hub area over and over. Even when not collecting items, there is just exploration to be found all over. I probably get more worked up about how fantastic this is than most people would care to even consider, but it's just so amazing how the layout of this game all came together; how perfectly it all flows.



Super Metroid is also a game with low challenge or high challenge or whatever you want to make of it. You can take your time and search areas, shine the X-Ray Scope around. You can collect everything to have loads of health and hopefully blast away at everything. But it can also be a challenge to find all the secrets. Some people would rather move on with 50% items, and that's okay! And there's the timer. 3 hours seemed like a tough requirement back in the day, and is still a big challenge for some people. But then others, they push some crazy times. Or people fight for low item percentages. Or bosses out of order. Super Metroid has been busted open by players over the years as they find the most ridiculous skips and tricks and challenges... and yet, it all still holds together, with each challenge just being another chapter in the crazy list of ways to enjoy the game. There are so many movement options too, with running and speedboosting and wall-jumping and bomb jumping and horizontal bomb jumping and grapple hooking and morph ball rolling and mock balling and ice beam freezing and shinesparking, it just feels good to move around in this game. Speed runs at GDQ events are always huge for Super Metroid, and they can go with so many variants on what type of run they do. For a game I've played a bunch, it also feels at times like I haven't played Super Metroid enough, because I don't have so much experience with a lot of the challenges.

It seems like I could say a lot more, but it's also hard to continue to put into words the way this game makes me feel. There's no boring stretch to play, there's no boring way to play. I'm just happy and excited inside whenever play Super Metroid, whenever I see it. If I have to point out one flaw, it's maybe that the game offers too many control options for the SNES controller, and some kind of claw grip has to come in to play. But like, that's it. There have been a couple moments where games near the top of my list hit number 1, but it's pretty much always been Super Metroid in the number 1 spot since the mid-'90s. And I don't know what it will take for a game to ever move into that top spot over it. It could just be the best game forever, and you know what? That's great.





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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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Dr. Wily Stage 3:
The vertical fall through the spikes in this stage were my favorite part of Mega Man as a kid. It had just the right amount of thrilling danger, while not being truly that hard. It gave a real sense of victory to drop through unscathed. Also, the water is all brown and dirty, and you get the real foreboding music in this stage. I think this music is super underrated. It doesn't have a crazy fun melody like everything else in the game, but it's real good at letting you know you've hit the real depths of Wily's castle.



Dr. Wily Stage 4:
Okay, you're gonna have to stick with me on this one. When I was younger, I thought the Buebeam Trap (the boss of this stage) was the absolute pinnacle of game design. This was the most interesting thing a game developer had come up with. It's a boss fight, but it's also very much a puzzle. You have to plan an order to move around and fire. Boss fights in the NES days did not require thinking like this, they were usually reaction dodging or pattern memorizing or button mashing. I also thought it was unique that if you day, the barrier walls stay gone, so you could take those out first and need less grinding if there is a death. I know now that people really hate having to grind or game over if they fail this boss, and I understand that now that I'm older. I still think it's a cool concept, and the variety of giant foes & mysterious foes in Wily's castle really makes this game memorable.



Dr. Wily Stage 5:
Dr. Wily Teleport System E=infinity
The background in this room is fantastic.



Dr. Wily Stage 6:
Childhood me had a lot of misconceptions about what was visually happening in this stage. I thought it was inside of a tree. The walls were brown, like a tree, and you fall down the trunk, until you reach the bottom. Then you dodge dripping tree sap, until you fight alien Wily. When you beat Wily, there is a floating apple core. Then Mega Man walks home to his Swiss village home.



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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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Quick Man:
In the early 2000's, webcomics were a pretty big thing online. Bob and George was a Mega Man-themed webcomic that had a fairly strong following, myself included. I took inspiration from here to make my own webcomic in 2002. Maybe too much inspiration, as it was Mega Man themed and the personalities of the main characters matched the Bob and George personalities pretty closely. But the jokes were all original! I ran it for about two years, drawing Mega Man sprite comics that kind of followed the first two games. Quick Man was one of my favorite characters to use, as he spoke in sentences with no punctuation and turned into an annoyance for Dr. Wily. Quick Man also got very ambitious and created new robots for Dr. Wily, which were poorly made and ineffective (like Square Man, a square crudely drawn as a robot in MSPaint). It was fun for a while, until I was in college and lost momentum. Then Geocities went down and the site is gone. I still have the files somewhere, on some old hard drives and/or CDs. I'll have to see if I can dig up some comics to post.



Flash Man:
Flash Man's stage is really neat as an ice stage without being ice themed. The color-changing ground is just really slick, I guess, and is such a neat visual in an NES game of the time. Then there are branching paths. This feels like one of the more straight-forward levels in the game, but at the same time really helps show just how much variety there is among each stage.



Wood Man:
You know when you reach the boss gates, there's a block above the first one with Dr. Wily's logo on it? There's something about those that hits some strong nostalgia for me. It seemed really cool as a kid that each one was colored to match the stage (which of course comes because it's just using the stage's color palette). Wood Man has those darn roadrunners jumping at you before the gate, which slows down my ability to go fast, but lets me stop and check out that Wily box more along my way.



Dr. Wily Stage 1:
This is just such a cool stage. The skull castle appears, and then you enter a stage themed like how it's mapped out. You're outside, vaulting over walls to reach then castle, then you scale the side of the building. That one screen that requires item-1 is so memorable. And then the dragon fight, it gets a little laggy, but it's so great. The music obviously has a reputation, and for good reason. It let's you know that cool things are happening. It's a great kick off for the boss levels, and really sets the tone for the game's back half.



Dr. Wily Stage 2:
I had mentioned in my Super Mario Bros. 3 writeup how influential that game was to inspire me to doodle level maps. Those quickly turned to Mega Man maps. I would draw my own robot masters and make all their levels, and then design Dr. Wily levels. Dr. Wily levels were always full of instant death traps. I would also design transport items, sometimes using Rush, sometimes making new numbered Items like in Mega Man 2. Like the spike pit at the start of Wily stage 2, I would note how Mega Man would have to fly or jump or bounce or whatever over the spikes.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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#2. Mega Man 2 (NES, 1989)

I'm going to try something different for this game. I'm going to write a segment relating to each level, covering the stage, the game, a memory, random thoughts, or whatever. It's why this entry has taken a while to write. I maybe got too ambitious on this writeup, but I've owned this game for over 30 years and it's been a big part of who I am at many stages of life.



Metal Man:
Mega Man 2 is what Mega Man means to me. All my thoughts and opinions on the character, the games, the series, they all stem from this gane. Mega Man 2 is the game in the series with either my favorite or near-favorite music, robot masters, stages, weapons, and memories. The weapons are definitely beaten by Mega Man 9, but they're still good here. Metal Blade has a reputation for being crazy overpowered. It is very strong (especially when used on Metal Man!), but doesn't tear through everything, and it doesn't really allow any major skips or anything. It's just a very strong weapon, which is nice to have. If you want to destroy some stuff fast, you've got metal blade, otherwise, you can still keep a good challenge.



Bubble Man:
Bubble Man is my favorite robot master in the series, and also has my favorite music. The color scheme on his stage is very appealing to me. I'm not sure how much each of these influenced the others, or if it all happened independently. Either way, it doesn't matter, because Bubble Man is cool. I learned to clip through the ceiling of his stage as a teenager and I felt like a god.



Air Man:
For 10+ years, I've been using an image of Air Man as my avatar on social media. A lot of people who know me through the fighting game community have told me that they associate Air Man with me. I've never really felt the need to change it, since it's from one of my favorite games and goes well with my nickname, which is also from this game/series.



Heat Man:
The yoku blocks over the giant pit is a classic. The blocks are a series staple that I'm glad exists. They're dumb, but the most fun kind of dumb. And this level is where they shine the brightest due to being the silliest challenge.



Crash Man:
Mega Man 2 speed runs are an amazing thing to me. There is so much precision required to do well. A lot of jumps with quick timing and very little room for placement errors. There are also all kinds of clips through ceilings and vertical scrolling tricks. I tried doing them for a bit, but there's too many errors that can happen for them to be fun for me. Now, I just enjoy watching people who are good at them. Crash Man's stage has maybe the weirdest screen clips as you go up the ladders at the beginning of the stage. It's like Mega Man ends up in some alternate universe.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

DQV good choice

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Oh shoot, I forgot to post this video too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG5H-c5S4jI

STREET FIYTAH FO

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

#3. Street Fighter IV (Xbox 360, 2009)







Fighting games were pretty cool when I was younger. I got into Street Fighter 2 during that huge boom in the early '90s. I would rent fighting games from Blockbuster, because even if they were actually bad, they would be fun for a couple days (yes Clayfighter, this includes you). Rival Schools was a big time sink for me in the PS1 days. I got into Street Fighter 3 and Marvel vs Capcom 2 when I was going to arcades in my DDR days. Guilty Gear XX was a big hit in college among friends. The King of Fighters games were fun to push buttons in and had a nice sense of style. I played a lot of fighting games over the years. And I was bad at all of them.

I didn't play many fighting games with friends. It was mostly single-player as a kid. When I did play against friends, they were much better than me and I don't know if I ever really improved that much. I just kind of did moves and hoped they would hit.

Street Fighter IV came out at just the right time. Fighting games needed a bit of a revival, and this was a big brand that put a lot of energy back into the genre. But more importantly, the internet was just at the right place for Street Fighter IV to thrive. Youtube had become big enough for people to upload and share game footage, so people could post techniques, match videos, tournament footage, and funny & cool moments. It was also easily the biggest name fighting game to have online play at that point, allowing people chances to find opponents beyond their local arcade or group of friends. I was not great at SFIV when it first came out, but I really leaned in to these new tools.

I originally used Dhalsim as my main character. I wasn't good at the combo system SFIV had, and Dhalsim primarily relied on poke attacks to keep people away. He had some combos, and they were trickier to perform than most characters, but it was okay that I couldn't do them. Playing a lot with Dhalsim against strangers online, I started to get a sense of spacing & patience on defense. I was still losing quite a bit more than winning when Super Street Fighter IV came out. This upgrade had two of my favorites from Street Fighter 2, T Hawk and Dee Jay. I ended up settling on T Hawk as my new main character, partly because his combos were shorter & simpler. I was still playing this a lot in 2011, and decided to buy an arcade stick. The XBox 360 d-pad was not the best, and I saw a lot of top players using arcade sticks, so I got one too. Making a big purchase like this meant I was pretty all-in on SFIV at this point.

In 2012, I heard about an anime con that had some fighting game tournaments, including SFIV. It was maybe an hour drive away. It had been 6 years since I had last entered a DDR tournament, my last game tourney of any kind. I decided I had been playing and improving enough that it was worth seeing how I stacked up. Surprisingly, I won a match at this tournament, so I didn't have the 0-2 performance that many people find at their first game. I also talked to someone at this tournament that headed up weekly events in the Detroit area, and got info so I could start going to those every so often.

Not long after this first tournament, I met up with some friends from college. These were the friends I played DDR with, and went to tournaments with, back in those days. I found out they had been playing Street Fighter IV too, and a couple of them were trying to plan a trip to Evo in 2013. I had only seen them a couple times since college days, and this gave me an unexpected reason to all reunite for a weekend in Vegas. Evo 2013 was also the year I was in the same pool as Marn and Daigo. I prepped as hard as I could, and although I didn't do well enough to even get a match against Daigo, I managed to score an upset win over Marn. I already had a strong desire to get better at SFIV, but this moment gave me the drive to really work at it.

I played a lot of Street Fighter IV. I mean a lot. From when I first got the game, I played it at least once every single week until 2015, when I got married and went on a week-long vacation. I drove 90 minutes to play casual games with a community way too many times. I played some online matches that appeared on Excellent Adventures. I entered tournaments in 4 different states. I got matches against a lot of well-known players, even winning some. It's because of this game that I went to strong on other fighting games, finding new games to love and get good at, finding new friends locally and across the country, and reuniting with old friends.

The competitive scene moved on to Street Fighter V, along with a bunch of other newer fighting games. I play a lot of those other games too, so I don't turn on SFIV nearly as much as I used to, often months between games. But every time I turn it on now, I still have a fantastic time, whether I'm trying to play seriously, or just mess around with whoever. SFIV had a lot of tough mechanics to get the hang of, maybe even some weird choices with combos, but the thing it was best at was being a fun time when playing against other people.

Here, have some videos of matches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_xb5wmI2aI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h59a6MoFHxg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r6Ev7FvwtI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm8pta29C4A

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Just three more to go for me! That daylight savings time change really messed with the free time I could've had for writing yesterday.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

#4. Dragon Quest XI (PS4, 2018)



I have a hard time ranking newer games as high as I do older games. It's not that I feel newer games are inferior or anything, but I've found years of enjoyment, sometimes even decades, in a lot of older games. So when I compare a game that was incredibly fun that I played one time a year ago, against a game that was incredibly fun both 20 years ago and a year ago, it's easier to hold the older game in higher regard. Up until this week, Dragon Quest XI was planned to be at #5 on my list. It's nothing against Lunar that I made the swap I talked at great length about how much I love Lunar. But as I thought more about what Dragon Quest XI meant as I played it and reflected on my feelings both now and how they may hold in the future, I think I had to make this swap. Dragon Quest XI was just that good.

Dragon Quest XI is one of the best looking games I've played. Being a more recent game, sure, it is technically impressive with things like draw distance on scenery and level of detail, but none of that will be a big deal in the long term. Even ignoring that though, The use of color, style, variety in scenery, the trademark Toriyama character designs, clarity of objects, and the camera work to let you me enjoy all these sights and events in the game. There were just so many times where I thought about how pretty the game looked. Some of the more mundane moments of the game did feel as such, in part because of how nice it was to look at things.

The standard Dragon Quest turn-based battle system framework is here. Characters can be customized with ability points to learn different skills or use different weapons better. But at the same time, each character is unique enough that you won't end up with four attackers, four magic users, or whatever. Each still has to play a specific role in battle. And it works out that you can make an assortment of characters, and an assortment of skills set, and it will all be useful. You'll have to change around the strategy used, but it can work. And it made things a lot of fun, swapping out characters, or changing a character from swords to whips because I found a new strong whip, and devising new battle strategies.



The storyline is where DQXI shines the brightest. There is strength in the main plot, there is strength in the characters, and there is strength in the locations and people you meet along the way. The plot follows the main character, who at the start finds out he was adopted and is actually the Luminary who is to save the world. It's a simple premise to begin with, but enough to get you moving as you meet characters and explore the towns. Every character that joins your party is important to the story, some evident quicker than others. They're also as unique in personality as they are in battle. And as you travel across the world, there are charming places to visit, suspiciously weird places, places with interesting people, or some that tie in to the main plot or the backstory of a main character.

Then at some point the game hits with a sharp turn of plot. And it's like, oh cool, we hit the big twist, except it's not that at all. Because it's not a game with just a story into a big reveal, and then down the home stretch. And these characters in your party, you see how the weight of events affect them, help them through things as they learn and discover and do. And through these character stories, you're uncovering big swings in the plot ad important moments. And all these places across the map, and townspeople, you learn more about how they feel and help through events. And there's more to all this, because all of these people and places are vitally important. And you realize all these individual threads of stories and characters, they are so intricately woven together, with everything affecting something else, and it's all so magical.

There are some intensely emotional points in these character stories, in these plot reveals, and in the events you see. DQXI is very very good at hitting home the full gravity of any situation, whether it be despair, love, hope, loss, or regret. All the emotions are there to smack you right in the face each time. If I came up to you and said, Hey, remember in DQXI, that really depressingly sad moment? That scene that felt so relieving? The big plot twist that you did not see coming? The really important moment that laid out the full the weight of the story? and we could think of different answers to all of those. The story just keeps rolling with the hits, consistently making big moments that shine, without feeling overshadowed by previous events or reducing the feeling of future events.

I don't normally care to get all trophies/achievements/whatever in a game unless I am very close, and even then I need to really like the game and find the last trophies not very taxing. But DQXI wasn't even a question, I just kept playing and playing and got all the trophies.





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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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Metal_DK posted...

Yay Lunar! Just wondering what your thoughts on Lunar 2 are. I kinda liked it even more than 1 especially with a nice epilogue.

I had Eternal Blue ranked at #17, so you can find more thoughts in the third topic, whichever page that writeup ended on. I did try to do that writeup in a way that wouldn't make it clear I liked Silver Star Story more, so I was a little vague about some things. EB does have some nice gameplay improvements, like that epilogue (oh god, I always wished SSSC had one too), and sped up battles, but overall, the biggest reason for having the first game higher is that I like the cast of characters more. They're both great games though.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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Working Designs of course gave Lunar: SSSC all its signature touches. The game came in a giant box, with a hardcover manual, a map, a soundtrack, a documentary video CD, and of course the two-disc game. The translation was full of all kinds of goofy humor. NPCs change their dialogue all the time as events happen, sometimes filling in with jokes, sometimes filling in with pop culture references. The pop culture references can be dated, as there are jokes about Austin Powers, the Tootsie Pop owl, the Wheaties cereal box, and Bill Clinton. They're all still references I get, so it's personally not an issue there. But the dialogue can also be serious and interesting. And due conversations constantly updating and changing throughout the game, it offers a lot of room for character development. It was a very well-written translation that had a lot of time put into it, at a time when many games had sloppy translations rushed through the door as quickly as possible.



When I first bought Lunar:SSSC, I didn't own a memory card. I just tried to go as far as I could before dying, or before I had to turn the game off for the night, and that was it. Then a day or two later, I'd try again. This continued for most of that summer vacation. I eventually made it as far as the Blue Dragon Cave in one go, if that means anything to anyone (it's more than halfway through the game). Ir probably played that first leg of the game about 20-30 times before I bought a memory card. Just from that early part, Lunar was living up to everything I hoped it could be. I got obsessed with this game pretty heavily. Lunar 2 ended up being a day one purchase when that came out. A few years later, I bought a Japanese copy of Lunar: SSSC for the PS1. I'm not really sure why, but I have it!

My family moved not too long after I played this game. There were a couple kids at my new school who I talked to that had also played Lunar and I was able to use that common interest to help start friendships. One of those guys is still a friend to my day, and was even in my wedding party when that happened a few years ago, so it was a good friendship to form.

I've often wished over the years that Lunar was a bigger deal. Online 20 years ago, I wanted to find more fansites, more communities to join and discuss it, more fanart. It would also be nice if the franchise continued to make more games like the two wonderful treasures we got. Well, we did get Lunar: Dragon Song, which was uh something else, so maybe we don't need more games if they would turn out like that. I at least always have two fantastic adventures and all the memories with them.



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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

#5. Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (PS1, 1999)





Lunar: SSSC is a game that came along at the right place and right time in my life, and everything about seemed perfect. There is definitely a certain set of memories and emotions attached to the game, along with a legacy of influence it left on me. I'm not saying it wouldn't hold up today or anything, but at the time I played the game, everything worked out in way that I absolutely loved the entire experience.

I touched on this a little in my Lunar: Eternal Blue writeup, but I remember seeing ads in game magazines for Lunar: The Silver Star for Sega CD. I thought it incredibly cool. I had no clue what anime was, but the style of characters and the detail to them just grabbed my attention. I also was not very familiar with RPGs, but I had to play this game. I didn't own a Sega CD though, or really even know anyone who did. Lunar was just that cool game I would play one day, I guess, but I didn't know how.

Fast forward to the Playstation days. I'm still not very experienced with RPGs (I've played Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy Legend 2/3, and Super Mario RPG by this point in time). I'm also minimally more familiar with anime, as Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon were playing on Cartoon Network's Toonami everyday. I saw an ad or a preview or something in a game magazine for Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, and that desire to play this game kicked right back in. I still wasn't certain I would even like this game, but I knew I had to give it a try.



The story in Lunar seems pretty standard from the start. The main character, Alex, wants to set out on an adventure to meet the dragons of the world and become the next Dragonmaster. Alex idolizes the previous Dragonmaster, Dyne, who grew up in the same small town and brought peace to the world as part of the Four Heroes. I don't want to get into any spoilers but there are some big twists as you advance through the game, and the story definitely ramps up as Alex seeks the dragons, meets new companions, encounters the Four Heroes, and learns about their past. But the story is really secondary to the characters. Lunar is really a tale about friendship, about love, about helping each other achieve goals, and working towards goals. The main cast is interesting and is given a lot of time to interact among each other and really work into their relationships. Where other RPGs might have tried to create a grandiose, over-arching story across all the universe, Lunar kept things more focused on the character level and full of more personal levels of charm.

One of the characters in the game is Ghaleon. If you were to ask me my favorite video game character, Mega Man might seem a good choice, since I do use a Mega Man-based name online these days, and there's a chance I could answer with that. But most days, I'd still probably say Ghaleon is my favorite character. That's right, I was the guy trying to get him into the Gamefaqs contests back in the day. Ghaleon can be intriguing and enigmatic, but also very real in his motivations. And given the themes in the story and characters and Alex's journey, he fits in great to really enhance all of it.

Because the game is a remade Sega CD game, it looks very much like a 16-bit era 2D RPG. Battles kind of play out like Grandia's, where characters can move around the battlefield, and there are attacks over certain areas or with certain reach. It's not like a full strategy RPG though, it's still a classic turn-based system, and just has some light elements of movement/positioning/strategy to keep them fresh, but also keep them moving along quick. All the 2D sprites are nice visuals, being on the Playstation. Noriyuki Iwadare made the music (another similarity to Grandia), which works great to convey feelings of adventure, with just the smallest bit of cheesiness to also make the songs fun. There's also a good selection of music that works with the emotions of the story. And you can't forget that there are a couple vocal tracks, which was a big deal at the time!

And going from the vocal tracks, there were the anime cutscenes, another big deal at the time. They seemed crazy detailed for the time. I think, as much as or even more than anything on Toonami, Lunar was what really made me aware of what anime was and gave my desire to seek out any anime I could find in the early 2000's. Working Designs also did a very good job with the dubbing on these, as they typically put a lot of emphasis their presentation of things. That reminds me, do you remember the band O-Town? No? I didn't think so, but they were the boy band created from the TV show Making the Band back in the day. One of the guys that made the band was Ashley Angel. Ashley Angel was a local kid to Working Designs offices, and they opted to cast him in the lead role of Alex for Lunar. It was his first role in anything showbiz, and he went from there to be in a major band, and then have a Broadway career after. This doesn't relate to my enjoyment of the game at all, but I find it interesting that a voice acting role in this game set him down the path to much greater successes in life.





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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

#6. Tetris Attack/Panel de Pon (SNES, 1996)



I've gone back and forth on my #6 and #7 games since I started this list. I finally settled on this. I think it's pretty big change, because Tetris has always been above Tetris Attack. But I think if I really consider how I feel about the two games, this is where I'm at now. And I'm labeling this as Panel de Pon in addition to Tetris Attack, but Tetris Attack is what I first knew it as and the version I'm most often playing.

I first played Tetris Attack at a Blockbuster video. They had those video game displays where you could play a game they had set up to demo. When the N64 came out, that demo setup always had a kid using it, but at that time, the store swapped their SNES demo to this new game, Tetris Attack. I ended up playing it a couple visits when I didn't want to wait for the N64 demo. And I found that the game was pretty fun, and I started wanting to jump on the SNES demo instead of N64 in future visits, even when both were open. And after enough time, I knew I needed to get a copy of this game for myself.

In my Tetris writeup, I talked about getting addicted to it and playing daily for a lengthy stretch. Well, the same thing ended up happening with Tetris Attack. I was getting the hang of bigger combos, and kind of getting the hang of chains, and trying more and more difficult modes. I thought it would be one of the biggest game accomplishments if I could be the Vs. Mode on very hard with no deaths. I didn't get it as a kid, but I know I kept coming close.



Fast forward to college, hanging out with my DDR friends (look, that DDR writeup of mine was a very important lore-building writeup. Please go back and read it if you haven't already. It's been referred to many times now. And spoilers for the list, this also isn't the last time it will be referred to). One of those friends in that group revealed they had played a lot of Tetris Attack as a kid, like I did. We had some very lengthy and intense battles. They were a lot of fun, but also put me on a kick to play this game more again.

When Planet Puzzle League came out for the DS, I found out Tetris Attack wasn't made as some Tetris spinoff with Yoshi characters, but was the start of the Panel de Pon series (which also explained why there were Pokemon versions too). It's a series that truly has not received anywhere near the amount of love it deserves. I wish it could get new versions in some way like Tetris/Puyo Puyo so I could play online, or just get more of this in some manner. It can even be the same as a previous game, I'll buy it again, and more people will hopefully experience it and find out how fun it is.

Because there isn't any new version of Panel de Pon, I almost always just go back to Tetris Attack to play it. I got a renewed interest in this version especially when I saw people speed running the vs. mode. At some point, I picked it up myself to speed run. I'm not nearly as good as the top players in the game, but I've made it through Very Hard Vs. in as fast as 9:57, which is still very good. It can be a very luck-based run, but it also holds the excitement and fun in each run. The little bit I dabbled in speed running before this often got frustrating fast, so that difference in mood I felt is why I'll try Tetris Attack every now and then.

As much as Tetris is that puzzle game I can just pop in a system and play for fun on any day, Tetris Attack is actually that to a higher degree. I definitely opt to play this game more often, I've been watching streams of people playing it more often, and it even has some different modes that are fun to switch up things, keeping the Panel de Pon experience even fresher.





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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

#7. Tetris (Game Boy, 1989)



Tetris got me through a lot of car trips as a kid. I know I ranked the Game Boy classics Donkey Kong '94 and Zelda: Link's Awakening earlier with a similar reason, and those got some decent play. Pokemon Red got a lot of time too. But Tetris was always the game I could pop in and just go for as long as I wanted. It was a five hour drive to see my grandparents, so whenever that trip happened, you can bet there was a decent amount of Tetris being played.

Tetris was always a game I liked decently enough for the NES and Game Boy, but it wasn't among my favorites from the start. Then one summer, when I was like 12 years old, I played a game of Game Boy Tetris and got further than ever before. It felt pretty good, so the next night I played Tetris again, and I got a high score again. I ended up playing a little bit of Tetris like this every single night through the end of summer, which could've been a month, two months, I can't remember exactly. By the end, I could make it to level 18, maybe level 19 on a good day.

The Game Boy and NES Tetris are a little different from each other. The Game Boy version involves quickly tapping directions to move fast to the side, because holding a direction is too slow. The NES goes faster with a held direction, but there's also some start-up time before a piece rapidly slides to the side, so you need to push the direction with good timing. I know the NES version is what the classic Tetris tournaments run now, but I always preferred that Game Boy difference as a kid. Also, the Game Boy version stops speeding up after level 20, so it's just barely manageable enough that you could keep going forever if you play well enough.

Newer versions of Tetris have some changes like piece holding & delayed locking into place at the bottom, and those are nice changes. But also, T-spins and such being such a big thing in Tetris has never fully clicked with me. I just want to put blocks into lines. As such, I think I prefer the classic style of Tetris still. I also considered putting Puyo Puyo Tetris on my list, until I realized the Tetris part is what I really love. The Puyo Puyo part is fun, but I'm not nearly as fond of it or as good at it as I am Tetris. I did once win some money (and a medal!) for playing Puyo Puyo Tetris's swap mode, but that was all because of Tetris, and a nice bit of luck that worked in my favor.

I still find it fun to just turn on Tetris and clear lines as fast as I can or for as long as I can. I've done it so much, that it doesn't really offer anything new these days, but also due to the nature of Tetris, it's always a new experience as I'm adapting my plans and strategy on the fly. The Tetris experience created over 30 years ago was just such a perfect idea that it remains just as fun to this day.



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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

#8. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES, 1990)



Mario games are about some guy in overalls named Mario who is a plumber, which is why he uses pipes to travel, and he tries to rescue the princess, and he jumps on enemies like goomba and koopa troopa and cheep-cheep and

Okay, Mario doesn't need any real explanation now, and he didn't even really need one back when Super Mario Bros 3 came out. Mario was already huge, and the hype for SMB3 was massive. And somehow, this game lived up to every bit of hype surrounding it.

There is something about Mario 3 that screams fun in every single square inch of the game. When I see the title screen, one of the world maps, the black end of level screen, the mushroom house, the airships, the warp zone, and even the box art it all feels me with feelings of joy and adventure. The Koopa Kids are also a very special part of this game. Mario 3 added a ton of power-ups. There is big Mario and fire Mario again, but then there's raccoon, tanooki, hammer suit, frog, and p-wing. Some don't appear as often, but it helps make them feel special and useful when you can have them. There is a massive number of levels in this game. Way more than any Mario game before it, but even more than Super Mario World brought after it. And there's not a level in this game that I don't see and instantly uniquely recall.

At some point as a kid, I borrowed a copy of the Nintendo Power Super Mario Bros 3 Strategy Guide from someone. It was the first kind of strategy guide I had ever seen, and I thought it was so cool. I tried to learn all the secrets it told me, but I also really just poured over all the maps of levels. From then on, whenever I sat down with a piece of paper to draw or color or whatever as a kid, I would just draw Mario levels. Mario 3 had become my creativity outlet.



Another older memory I have of the game, my grandparents were watching me and I was playing Mario 3 for one of the first times. I got into World 2, the Desert Land, and I got stuck. I had cleared every level I could, but I was stuck on the world map with nowhere else to go. I asked my grandpa to help me, but he didn't play games, so he had no clue what I was trying to ask of him. I ended up turning the game off without figuring it out. I probably figured it out the next time I played, but what had happened was I reached the quicksand level (with the angry sun), which is displayed on the world map as a square of quicksand. I made Mario stand on it, and tried to move him through it, but never hit the A button to enter it, because I didn't realize it was a level. Oops.

I still have fun popping this game in every now and than to just see what I remember. Maybe I can pick the frog suit for the right levels with water, maybe I can still find the hidden music blocks to coin heavens, maybe I can get the right number of coins to turn hammer bros. into coin ships, maybe I can clip the subpixels in 7-1, maybe I can get all the right doors in the world 8 fortress, maybe I can match all the cards in one shot, maybe I can beat the fast airship without getting hit as small Mario or as frog Mario. Mario 3 is so packed full of neat secrets and moments from top to bottom. It has always felt like the game with the most pure feeling of "fun" no matter how I play or what I'm trying to do.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

#9. Hollow Knight (2017, PC)



I'm not really sure which direction I want to go with this writeup, so I'm just going to start talking about Hollow Knight and see where that takes me.

When I first heard of Hollow Knight, the idea seemed cool, as I am all about the Metroidvania games, but I wasn't sure about the aesthetic. I had seen a couple images, and it looked kind of dark and full of bugs, and I pushed the game aside for a bit. I heard some friends say they enjoyed it though, so I finally gave it a shot.

Seeing the style of the game in motion, it works a lot better. A lot of the backgrounds were subtly beautiful, there are areas with a fairly wide variety in color and feel, and there are a lot of interesting bug characters to see. I was glad that I was able to improve my opinion on the game there.

Hollow Knight starts off with a very old school feel, as you just venture underground with no idea where you're going or how deep you're going or what true dangers lie ahead. The first real challenge is finding the map, so you have some means of getting your bearings. I could see people finding this part frustrating, but it had a nice old school feel. It reminded me a bit of say, the original Metroid, but not in a massive world full of same-y screens. It was still navigable and even helped tell me that the game wants me to keep track of where I'm moving and searching.



The lack of guidance in the first area was actually very important, because as you set off on the larger journey, you'll enter a new area, but with no map for this new area. You have to kind of poke around and explore until you can get a map for here. And the same thing with each area after. It's often a scary feeling, carefully wandering about in an unknown setting with no map to guide you back to safety. Sometimes I felt like I was in a pool, dipping my toes in the shallow end of the water, knowing that I would find what I needed closer to the deep end. But that early design decision is there to tell you, Hey, you're gonna have to do some exploring, taking a path you may not be entirely sure about, but that's how you'll find things you need.

As you get more comfortable with this idea of just setting in a direction and exploring a little, the game will throw some more branching paths at you. It won't be clear which to take, so you'll just have to pick. Maybe you want to go as deep as you can, maybe one is a cool looking cave with crystals, maybe one just seems less intimidating. Whichever the case, you'll start going... and then hit another branch. You'll try to go towards your original goal by taking one of these paths. Then another branch. You'll make a note to come back to what you don't take, and keep going. And another branch. And another. Then you find a new area, a save bench, a shop, an item, more branching paths, new areas, new items, something mysterious you'll have to come back for, more branches, and maybe a new map. Then you pull up the map, and whoa, you have gone all over the place.

Hollow Knight is not too ordered in where you need to go, so you can just set off in a direction and explore. Everyone's experience will be different. And I really like this. The game encourages moving along and finding what's out there. There are lots of choices, but every path can feel like the right path. And the world is pretty massive too. At one point, I decided to just go as far down into the world as I did. And I finally went as far down as I could go. It was pretty far. Then I went back to the last path branch, and realized, that way goes farther to a new area. Then I hit the bottom of the world. It was a dark area and very deep. I looped back up to the top for a while, then later returned to the bottom to fill out my map. But then, I realized there was another new area, deeper still. And that's how Hollow Knight is, just always more places to go, farther to travel, new sights always ahead.



Fun exploration is just one reason why this game is so fun. Movement and combat are both top notch. Early on, neither might seem that special, but later on, you get a lot of abilities to make it fun to travel anywhere. There's dashes and long flying dashes and wall jumps and slash jumps and whatever more. It all feels very fluid and makes bouncing around through both large areas and small crowded areas feel fun. And then you can equip a limited number of charms that enhance abilities some for movement, some for battle, some just for quality of life upgrades. You can really set up a character that feels good to maneuver. And then for battle, there are some real challenging battles, both among regular enemies and bosses. Nothing feels unfair or impossible though, it's all within reach to learn. It just takes hard work and focus and practice. There's also a colosseum that's stupidly hard, but so much fun to try.

Hollow Knight just ended up a pleasant surprise from top to bottom, and in more ways than I'm covering here. It's a game where you set out to see where it will take you, and enjoy yourself along the way. And as I mentioned at the start of the writeup, I wasn't sure which way to go with the writeup, so I just started writing to see where it took me. I only knew how it was starting and how it was ending. The path there was uncertain, but I knew I'd find my way. It just seemed a fitting way to talk about this game.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

More songs/videos related to IIDX as I stretch this into a third post:

Asletics No Doubt Get Loud (Beatmania IIDX 10th Style)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RinJzzFk8F4

Slake Texture (Beatmania IIDX RED)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MITCgmgda-U

Elektel Moon Race (Beatmania IIDX Happy Sky)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODCrgKvwE_k

Seiya Murai Trigger of Innocence (Beatmania IIDX DJ Troopers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzcVUPzF7-k

People who used to participate in the UCA may recognize this song:
DJ Mass Mad Izm* vs. DJ Yoshitaka Watch Out Pt. 2 (Beatmania IIDX Resort Anthem)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TNMPgOBTlA

Dirty Androids Midnight Lady (Beatmania IIDX Cannon Ballers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHVJrubwwsQ

Finally, (we're at the end of my post!) this guy is very very very good at IIDX and I feel this video should be watched, even if you skipped all the songs above. This song is the dumbest thing to combo or score on, and he just steamrolls through so much of it with crazy accuracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOu08CbC87U

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Anyways, after playing the game with friends a couple times, I decided to take the deep plunge. I imported a Japanese PS2 and a copy of Beatmania IIDX 7th Style, which was the newest game in the series at the time. I started playing it almost daily, or at least a couple times a week. I also ended up getting as many of the home versions as I could. I don't have the most recent couple that came out, but as of today, my set of IIDX games looks like the below picture:



I talked about the extreme difficulty of IIDX earlier. Songs were originally rated on a 1-7 scale (and then a 1-8 scale), with harder songs that were unrated. It eventually became 1-12, with the previously unrated songs now included on that scale too. Over time, I was able to clear 6's, 7's, 8's, but it was over quite a long time. The jump to each level is actually pretty large, so there can be a lot of progress in skill without much to show. It really helped to own all the different games, because I could play through all the 8's in one game, then swap to another game and play those, and so on, to keep from ever feeling stuck or stale. Eventually, I was able to clear some 12's. It wasn't a ton, and there are some that to this day are still way beyond me, but I at least know I could hit that level.

Because I took so long to clear the harder songs, I began to realize that my strength was in timing the game. On easier songs, I could hit the notes very accurately. Once the charts got harder, I fell apart and struggled to read them, but what I could hit was still pretty spot on. There's a big online score tracking site that anyone in the english-speaking IIDX community who is even halfway serious about the game used for home versions. As I put more of my scores on there, I decided to focus on getting high scores on easier songs, since that was my strength, and the nature of the game still means there will always be room for improvement at any difficulty of song. I ended up getting some of the community kind of mad at me because of this. Top players who could pass anything and get top scores on the hard songs were getting beaten by me on the easy songs, when I couldn't even clear the hard songs. It's kind of funny to look now at 3rd Style, the oldest (and easiest) game in the series, and see the overall rankings on the right side of the below picture. dj DAN is me, and I haven't even touched this version of the game in years. I really did put so much work into the easy songs lol



My top achievement in IIDX involved the song GAMBOL.

Gambol is a super special song, in that the chart is kind of easy, and should be no problem at all. It was one of the earliest songs made for IIDX though, and somehow, due to weird programming mistakes, Konami made the timing windows for this one song obscenely small, down to 1 frame, with the other timings tightened as well. You can feel like you hit a note spot on, and still come away with a good.

Anyways, I worked on this song for a bit to get the timing down. I know I wasn't the first person in the world to do this, but I was the first person on the site to have a recorded AAA on Gambol, which felt like kind of a big deal to get. Yeah, it was the stupid joke easy song with impossible timing, but that was my main skillset at IIDX, and I pulled it off. I also inspired a handful of other people to put in work and get their own AAAs on it, which was pretty cool to see.

After several years, I really toned down how much I played IIDX. Konami stopped releasing home versions, so the excitement for new ones kind of faded away. I also got into some other games competitively, which took away from my time here. I do still play the arcade version every now and then, like if I go to a Round 1 arcade, or if I go to anime cons/fighting game events that happen to have a IIDX cabinet set up. I've also met a handful of people from the IIDX community playing on these arcade cabinets, which is cool. The arcade versions of IIDX are up to the 28th version by now (Beatmania IIDX BISTROVER; they started giving them all goofy names instead of numbers after a point) so there has been an insane number of songs across all the games to where I can pretty much always play something new in the arcades.

A couple years ago, some musicians who worked on IIDX music came to the US to do shows over 2 days. The show was in Michigan, due to whatever wild circumstances, so I made it out to see them perform. I ended up getting a picture with Kors K, who has made a ton of great IIDX music, and also a picture with Slake, who is my favorite musician from IIDX. Slake is the wonderful musician who created the song Gambol, for the record, so it seemed very fitting to meet him in person. In addition to making music for IIDX games, Slake also served as sound director for IIDX 9th Style and 10th Style, and that weekend I got his autograph on my copies of those two games.

IIDX is a series where I feel like I could play it forever and there will always be room to improvement and discover new things. It's possible I've played IIDX more than any other game? (there are a couple things that come close, we may get into those later) But it still feels just as fun to play IIDX now. If for whatever I hit a point where I don't play IIDX anymore, I think I'm at a point where I can say I got enough out of the game to be completely satisfied with the journey, the results, and the memories.

Here's some good songs that I like!

Slake Gambol (Beatmania IIDX)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYbFNBeHHcM

DJ Setup Nemesis (Beatmania IIDX 6th Style)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-t6v7TDB_M

Sampling Masters AYA one or eight (Beatmania IIDX 9th Style)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFmbml3ACLg

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

#10. Beatmania IIDX (series) (Arcade, 1999)





This writeup pretty much needs to pick up at the end of my Dance Dance Revolution writeup. DDR was so influential for me, both as a competitive game, and in leading me to a group of new friends. As I also mentioned before, I would get together with that group of friends to play a whole bunch of other video games beyond DDR. One of these friends owned a game called Beatmania IIDX 6th Style. It was one of those oh we've heard of this game but never seen it things. One evening of trying the game, and I was hooked.

Beatmania IIDX is another music game series from Konami. It's supposed to be a DJ simulation game, with 7 keys arranged with slightly inconvenient positioning and a turntable. It simulates DJing as much any other music game simulates its instrument, but you get the idea. Each note is keysounded, meaning pushing the buttons plays the song.

IIDX is a notoriously difficult game. The buttons are arranged in a way that at least one of them will always be awkward for your fingers to hit, and the turntable needs to be scratched both up and down, meaning there is a whole learning curve just to get used to the controller. The timing window for the most accurate judgment on a note is just 2 frames, I believe, in a 60 fps game. Easy songs will still have hundreds of notes, hard songs can get up around 1,500 to 2,000 notes in a 2 minute period. You can get goods with a much more generous window, but it won't count towards your score for your grade, just merely keep you alive for passing. The game designers recognized how narrow the timing window was, because you can get a AAA, the highest grade, with just 88.89% of the max score (8/9ths). And yet still, it is very common for people to be getting C's and D's on songs when they first start (4/9ths and 3/9ths of the max score, respectively). As for clearing songs, there is a bar that fills as you hit notes and depletes as you miss, and it needs to be 80% full at the end of the song. It definitely fills up slower than it clears out, and a handful of missed notes in the final stretch of a song can lead to a failure. Hitting extra buttons can also be penalized, depleting your bar more, meaning mashing in a panic can go terribly wrong. Konami has a good laugh sometimes, as they often fill songs with the most dense bullshit at the very end of songs. It's common for high level players to earn a AAA, but still fail a song. It sounds like IIDX can be a very masochistic game, and it kind of is at times, but it can also be very rewarding when things go well. Hitting a long string of notes gives a big rush of adrenaline.

There is a fair amount of crossover between IIDX music and DDR. A lot of popular Konami songs in DDR actually originated in IIDX, mostly instrumental/electronic stuff. Songs like Holic, V, Sync, Absolute, Burning Heat, Spin the Disc, A, Sakura, and a lot more all originated in IIDX. When I first saw these songs in IIDX, I was really excited, because many of them were among my favorites in DDR. There is a bunch of original music too, and the more I heard, the more I loved IIDX's soundtracks.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

Hi everyone! Here is my list so far!

100. Ninja Gaiden
99. Dragon Ball FighterZ
98. Outland
97. Out of the Park Baseball 21
96. The Binding of Isaac
95. Kirby's Dream Land 3
94. RollerCoaster Tycoon
93. Shadows of the Damned
92. The King of Fighters XIII
91. Strider (2014)
90. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
89. Kamui
88. Gain Ground
87. Resident Evil (2002 REmake)
86. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
85. Solstice
84. Raiden (series)
83. Ori and the Blind Forest
82. Ogre Battle 64
81. Mega Man Legends

80. Rez
79. Punch-Out!!
78. G-Darius
77. Pop'n Music (series)
76. Shovel Knight
75. Thunder Force V
74. Final Fantasy Tactics
73. Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late
72. VA-11 Hall-A
71. Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
70. Spelunky 2
69. The Legend of Zelda
68. Brave Fencer Musashi
67. Lumines
66. Final Fantasy VII
65. Metroid Fusion
64. The Witness
63. Street Fighter V
62. Hotline Miami
61. Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse

60. F-Zero GX
59. Undertale
58. Everybody's Golf
57. Tecmo Super Bowl
56. Donkey Kong (1994)
55. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
54. Mega Man X
53. Super Smash Bros. Melee
52. The World Ends With You
51. Metroid Prime
50. Windjammers
49. VVVVVV
48. Samurai Shodown (2019)
47. Groove Coaster
46. Space Invaders Extreme
45. Shinobi 3
44. Mega Man 3
43. Mega Man X4
42. Street Fighter 2
41. Deadly Premonition

40. Cave Story
39. Bioshock
38. We Love Katamari
37. Chrono Trigger
36. Street Fighter 3: Third Strike
35. Silent Hill 2
34. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
33. Steins;Gate
32. Wild Arms 3
31. Dragon Quest V
30. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
29. Sleeping Dogs
28. Dance Dance Revolution (series)
27. Cuphead
26. Ys 1
25. La-Mulana
24. Final Fantasy V
23. Guilty Gear Xrd
22. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
21. Elevator Action Returns

20. Silent Hill
19. Eastside Hockey Manager
18. Super Castlevania IV
17. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue
16. Mega Man 9
15. Persona 4 Arena
14. La-Mulana 2
13. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
12. Mother 3
11. Super Mario RPG

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
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