games that'd be fun to start pretending to like

fine, it's the axe đŸȘ“
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@Danimal This is why I posted about Star Ocean! This sounds cool and I'm going to kick the tires.

Under the assumption that I'm going to be emulating it either way, I'm guessing that I should just dive into Second Evolution?

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@donrumata i refuse to believe anybody ever played haze.

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@rootfifthoctave I played it! I bought it used a few years ago for a few bucks. Maybe played an hour or two. It’s quite bad.

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@antillese I would honestly recommend the original Second Story over Second Evolution. Not all of the “improvements” they made with the remaster were actually improvements. They did some funky stuff with the backgrounds to make the game fit a 16:9 aspect ratio, changed the characters voice clips, and made one change to the combat that most people don’t like. They did add an additional character, but you won’t miss anything without her
 she’s a recurring character in the series which I learned to hate due to her horrible voice acting (she sounds like nails on a chalkboard). The game has enough characters that are better than her anyway. The only real positive to Second Evolution is that they added more cutscenes that also included voice acting, but I don’t think that the other trade-offs are worth it personally.

The remake/remaster is still good, but most people who have played the original on PS1 preferred that version.

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@rootfifthoctave regrettably, I did play it at a friends house in high school
 it’s only value today is as a meme. It’s complete trash and I’m sure that the devs would like us all to forget it ever happened.

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@Danimal Actionable information! Thanks!

Tangentially in researching this, I found that Internet Archive has a bunch of Game Guides scanned so now I know what to point my kids at.

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OK, so this is a Good Thread.

I'm two-hours-ish into _Star Ocean: Second Story_ and have really been enjoying it so thanks for the emphatic suggestion. I haven't played many non-FF RPGs of the 32-bit era so this seems simultaneously familiar and foreign to me.

Cool things:

  • - Sprite work and environmental texture work and design is very Xenogears. Both in style and quality. That's a big compliment.

  • - When you get a new item, the Equipment Wizard informs you that you equipped it. Which is great!
  • - I haven't figured out the combat yet. I feel like I should be able to dodge attacks more, but that may not be true. I also think that I should be able to change characters (I now have two in my party), but I either can't yet or haven't figured it out yet. However, I think the combat is neat in that its very different. I do wish there was some way to determine the monster names. Those are always fun.
  • - The music is ... OK. It's extremely generic.
  • - Oh, I **love** the default teal color for the dialog windows. It's such a great color. I wish more RPGs went with bold choices like that instead of "R0, G0, B255".
  • - Voices are fun (though the samples are very low quality for space).
  • - The menus have tons of great little things in them. All the items have both flavor text and description of effects. And the character menus have a ton of "Wife Worried: 50%" energy. I think my character is good at interior design. Like by default. It's hard coded.

    • So thanks again for the suggestion. I dunno if I'll play though it, but I'm really glad that the game is cool and kicks the reputation of ... well, all the reputation I though that _Star Ocean_ games had.

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    @antillese the game menu colors can be adjusted in the settings too
 you can make it real funky if you want.

    You can definitely change characters in battle, and pretty quickly too! If I’m not mistaken, you just press O (B if you are emulating with Xbox controller) during battle and it pauses the action and you press left or right to select the player you want to control and then press O (B) again to resume action as that character.

    29

    I am installing babylon‘s fall as I type this - we could all get really into babylon’s fall before it shuts down

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    30

    I think it would be fun to pretend I think Mario Bros. was perfect and that Super Mario Bros. ruined a perfectly good arcade game. “I wish Mario would go back to his roots, man!”

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    @rootfifthoctave Weirdly enough, I have a friend that actually likes the Pinobee games.

    As for me, Gubble for PS1. It's such a just... why?!?!

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    @TracyDMcGrath you'll be excited to hear about the remastered version (now with scoring pencil!)

    less relevant is Brendan Keogh's Putting Challenge, which is actually quite good, which disqualifies it from this list.

    33

    So there was this tweet today from the VGHF:

    https://twitter.com/GameHistoryOrg/status/1583201389571805185?s=20&t=KnDKOg3mU90uQq1bu3l7DA

    And it reminds me how I always wanted to, but never ever did, play _Magic Carpet_, but I think I would have really enjoyed it.

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    @antillese computer gaming world was clearly talking about the Saturn version.

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    A few months later, and I have an actual example: Planet Harriers. I only learned about it a few days ago: it‘s an arcade-only sequel to Space Harrier that does its best to translate the latter’s abstraction into 3D, only with an angrier tone. And being developed only for Sega Hikaru hardware (think a significantly beefed up Dreamcast), it's almost impossible to emulate - the perfect game to pretend to like.

    36

    i wonder if tim “big boy baby boy” rogers has been doing this for years now with the assassin's creed games.

    i want to be into zachtronics games. people always tell me i need to play them, that i'd love them. [size=8]people also tell me i'm just like sheldon from _big bang theory_, and i hate them.[/size]

    i think it would be very funny to be a superfan of the rabbids.

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    Imagine excitedly describing to someone an obscure SEGA game from 1990 that almost no one in the public got to play. It was distributed only to arcade machine operators who were its sole audience, always secretly swapping it out for another before putting a machine on the public floor. Most copies of this game simply do not exist anymore, and it contained such interesting features as player controlled color swapping.

    And if anyone ever calls you on your bluff and discovers the game you're talking about you can have a laugh:

    38

    Just imagining a universe where instead of begging for a Silent Hill remake, people were begging for a Double Switch remake with Corey Feldman in Corey Haim's role.

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    @Tradegood Grainy Haim

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    @TheFragranceOfDarkCoffee I could swear dottori kun got a re-release recently? I thought it was on a sega mini or astro city mini, or something like that, but now I can't find evidence of this. HMMM.