Rule #1: It can’t be a game that I’ve played at all in any way.
In some cases, especially looking at older arcade games, I wasn’t 100% sure if I had played it, or just seen it somewhere but if I wasn’t sure I didn’t put it on the list. I was pretty strict about this, but if anyone else wants to play along feel free to stretch this one (I’m already planning a round 2 when I finish this one that will include games I own on Steam but have played less than an hour of or games I remember playing a bit at friends’ houses but didn’t own myself).
Rule #2: I will play the game for at least an hour. At the one hour mark I’ll decide if I want to keep playing.
I generally tried to go by North American release dates since that’s where I live but there were a few times I fudged this for my own convenience (Sweet Home, for instance, I used the original Japanese release year rather than whatever year the fan translation came out).
I’ll go ahead and post my thoughts on the games as I play them and if anyone else wants to partake I’m pretty excited for this excuse to try a bunch of stuff I might never have gotten around to.
This was not my first choice. Based on recs here I wanted to try:
Mappy - Once I started playing I realized I’d played it before
Advanced D&D: Treasure of Tarmin - This was my first time using emulators in forever and I couldn’t get the ROM to work
Sinistar - Ditto
Xevious - I played this, but part of this project is also related to a dumb YouTube show I make and I fucked up the recording and didn’t want to play the game again pretending I’d never played it before. Integrity! I liked Xevious all right (definitely better than Congo Bongo) though it does have some of the most annoying sound design I’ve ever heard.
So I ended up on Congo Bongo. Sort of an isometric rip-off of Donkey Kong where instead of a plumber you play a colonialist explorer with an extremely sunburned nose (I think that’s the joke?). The opening is very funny where the giant gorilla sets your tent on fire leading to a thirst for revenge.
After that it’s pretty rough. I never made it past the fourth level and my Must Play For One Hour rule really weighed on me immediately. I wanted to stop after maybe 25 minutes. There’s no option to continue and my average credit lasted 2-3 minutes so I played through the first level 30-ish times. The isometric view makes some of the jumps awkward and the third level is full of charging rhinos that can violate the isometric grid leading to a lot of unfair-feeling deaths.
Originally I was going to play Deus Ex Machina cause it seemed like a really strange idea for a “game.” But the anniversary edition on Steam has no pause button or way to stop the game or continue from where you left off (the game has no fail state due to the sound originally being played on a tape cassette) and I had to get up from the computer about 30 minutes in and didn’t want to play through that whole 30 minutes again to get back to where I was. Also it’s really more of a glorified semi-interactive screensaver since any actions you perform have no effect on the game progression at all.
So I decided to try Pac-Land. Compared to Congo Bongo this was totally fine. The graphics have a hideous uncanny quality to them, like a children’s cartoon drawn in MS Paint. I had to Google how to use the springboards after a dozen failed attempts to figure it out myself (turns out after jumping you mash the right directional key to float instead of the jump key which seems way more intuitive).
Some decent design choices like being able to control how fast Pac-Man goes by double and triple-tapping the directional key (or joystick I assume in the original cabinet).
Do people hate this game? My impression was that people hate this and I’m a little curious why, besides just not being as good as Pac-Man.
Sort of a fake 3D shooter where you play some kind of 30s tough guy shooting criminals and also maybe dirty cops. Inspired by The Untouchables maybe?
This has the option to continue (and your score does not reset to 0 when you continue, which is very funny and rude since back in the day someone with enough money could essentially buy the high score if they wanted to). By far my least favorite of the three though. I reached one point in the 3rd or 4th level that I spent maybe 25 minutes of my one hour of game time on. I just couldn’t figure out how to survive it and when I finally did it felt like blind luck. If I’d been playing in real-life I probably would have spent $50 worth of quarters in that hour, as many of my credits in the tougher parts lasted 15-20 seconds.
The shooting is very awkward as it’s essentially 5 directions (left, up-left, up, up-right, right) and shooting up-left or up-right are the defaults depending on when which direction you last pressed, so to shoot left or right you have to push down-left or down-right on the keys. Maybe a bit more intuitive on a joystick. Also there’s sharpshooters that appear in windows and are tough to spot before they shoot. Seems designed as a ruthless quarter-muncher.
I love this idea and might join you! Seems like a fun way to try some stuff I otherwise wouldn’t. Also something to distract me at work on a Friday
Is there an actual way to play Everquest in 2023? I vividly remember this box art and thinking, wow that game must have everything! I need to know just how bad its held up.
This is why I didn’t like the game. I couldn’t figure out the springboards either and the controls all felt really wrong to me. But then again I was playing it in a browser-based emulator so I’m sure it it would feel better to play on an actual cabinet.
I really love this game although I can see how it would come across pretty strangely because of the weird control scheme. Also kinda think of it as a very distant ancestor to endless runners even if it’s not a direct line between the two. But I played the crap out of it on Turbographx before I ever got to try the arcade version (pretty sure it was on PS1 in one of the Namco Museum collections). I am a complete sucker for bright colours and somewhat unappealing visuals though!
I made a big dumb list. I think its a good mix of funny games, things I think I’ll like, and popular games I probably wouldn’t otherwise play. I also want to limit games that require big time investments and figure I’ll probably put it down and never come back to it. BUT some years are difficult!!! Any suggestions for 2013 or 2014?
I think it’s just reg Titanfall that was 2014. which afaik is basically dead since it’s MP only. titanfall 2 is on my list for round 2 of this project tho it seems very much my shit tho i bought it on steam and only played like 30 mins three years ago.
these were my alts for 2013/2014 but obv cannot vouch for any of them:
2013 - Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Mark of the Ninja, Beyond: Two Souls, Warframe, Outlast, Guacamelee!, Battlefield 4
2014 - Wolfenstein: The New Order, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, This War of Mine, The Long Dark
