Messages

1

General / Re: Fighting Game Collectors, what do you recommend?

« on: May 16, 2024, 07:53:46 pm »

I don't have the time to go through your entire collection, but pretty much KOF, Street Fighter, Tekken, and MK is what I play 90% of the time when I'm playing a fighting game. I've played a lot of the more obscure fighting games and game series, but nothing compares to most of the entries in those four franchise, at least imo. Some honorable mentions outside those for franchises are, Virtua Fighter, Dead or Alive, Fatal Fury, and Samurai Shodown.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: May 04, 2024, 10:59:58 pm »

29. Raiden V: Director's Cut (PS4)

I played Raiden V years ago around the time it first came out, and while I remember not liking it, I almost regret replaying it because I like it even less than I did. Raiden V may be one of the worst SHMUPs I've ever played. From a presentation standpoint it looks worse than the two games that proceeded it. On top of that, some of the levels make it hard to see the projectiles flying at you, creating an unfair situation that is squarly the game's fault. The OST is decent, however the chatter of various characters that accompany you throughout the game never shut up and create this constant chatter that drowns out what is otherwise a decent OST. I cannot stress how annoying these NPC character's chatter is as they are talking for 95% of the time you are playing. It would be one thing if they were actually saying anything interesting, but they're not and it just sounds like they're mumbling half the time. Other than that, the gameplay is okay, but often comes across as sloppy and poorly planned out. There is an additional fire mode called the Cheer system, but it amounts to little more than an alternative bomb attack that you can only use under certain circumstances. Raiden V is absolutely a stain on this franchise and I game I will remember never to return to. (5/4/24) [20/50]

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: May 04, 2024, 01:38:36 pm »

28. Raiden III (Switch)

I've mentioned this often when discussing my history with the SHMUP genre, but the Raiden series is was initially got me interested in the genre way back in the 90s. Since then, I've played and beat every Raiden game, including the spinoffs, except for what many consider to be one of the best games in the series, Raiden III. I will say, me not beating Raiden 3 until today was not due to lack of trying, but rather bad luck. I've owned Raiden III on the PS2 for probably 15 years, however I found out years ago my copy did not work. I then bought another copy, didn't play it for years, and then when I tried to play it, it didn't work either! Finally, i ended up picking up the Switch release and finally got to jump into this cool SHMUP.


Raiden III has surprisingly balanced, and well designed gameplay. My only major gripe is the movement speed of your ship which feels way to slow given what the game typiically throws at you. Still, with enough planning and good reflexes you can dodge most of what this game has to throw at you. Visually, Raiden III is pretty good looking and even has a somewhat cinematic quality to it at times. However, given that it's in full 3D, it did make me lament how amazing the 2D sprites looked in the older titles. Still, for a 3D SHMUP, this game looks great; the stages are interesting and cool, the bosses look epic and unique, and everything else is also visually pleasing for the most part. The audio is probably Raiden III's greatest asset, as there was almost not a single bad or forgettable track in the entire game. It certainly holds the distinction of having one of the best OST's in the series, that's for sure. I'm glad I finally got around to playing Raiden III and seeing what all the fuss was about with it. (5/4/24) [34/50]

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: May 02, 2024, 11:18:01 pm »

27. Mega Man X2 (PS4)

I've decided to branch out beyond the Mega Man X games I grew up with and played around the time they first came out. Aside from X on the SNES, I never played X2 or X3; I returned to the series for X4, but was so underwhelmed by X5 that I would drop the series once again. I need to replay X4 and X5 since it's been probably around 2 decades since i last played them, but for now X is my baseline for all the sequels that would follow.


X2 is a pretty good game for the most part, however I found it inferior to the original X in neraly every way. Mostly everything is slightly worse, but that's not to say X2 isn't a good time, because it is...mostly. The level design, the boss design and mechanics, as well as the power ups you receive by beating them just feel under developed and at times even poorly designed. I also found Mega Man's upgrades like the heart and health containers to be a lot more obscure and difficult to obtain for the most part. I thought the inclusion of the X Hunters was pretty cool, but I still prefer how you obtain Mega Man's suit upgrades more in X. The audio in X2 is pretty awesome, and while I disagree that it's as good as X's, it's still pretty rockin and one of the better ones I've heard on the SNES, which is saying quite a bit. While I certainly don't like X2 as much as X, it was still worthwhile to finally play it, and I'm curious to see how it stacks up against the later titles in the X series, especially X3 which seems to be the game that fights for X2 for second place when it comes to the best Mega Man X game on the SNES lol. (5/2/24) [33/50]

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: April 29, 2024, 11:31:53 pm »

26. Breakers Revenge (PS4)

I played the first Breakers game on the Dreamcast after finding out it was a port of a pretty obscure Neo Geo fighting game from the mid 90s. I did find some redeemable qualities while playing Breakers, overall though, it left a very bland taste in my mouth overall and mostly felt like another forgettable off brand 90s tournament fighter that was trying to be Street Fighter 2 or King of Fighters so badly, but fell short. Unfortunately, the same can be said about its sequel, Breakers Revenge. What surprised me most is that Breakers Revenge came out in 1998 despite looking like a game from the early 90s. In fact, I'd say overall it looks worse than the CPS1 version of Street Fighter 2. With that said, the sprites and character animations are still pretty good, however most of the stages are bland, generic, and forgettable. Speaking of bland and generic, these same adjectives can be applied to Breaker's pretty small cast of playable characters too. The audio, while someone pleasing, isn't really that memorable either. Gameplay is decent overall, however some annoying balancing issues and fairly shallow mechanics make this just as generic as the rest of the game. I really was hoping Breakers Revenge would somehow surprise me as a hidden gem on the Neo Geo, but unofortunately it ended up being about what I expected; a justifiably forgotten obscurity from the 1990s tournament fighter craze that most people forgot, and even more people never realized existed at all. (4/29/24) [29/50]

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: April 27, 2024, 09:50:05 pm »

25. Red Dead Redemption (PS3)

I completely slept on RDR1 when it first came out, mostly because of its wild west theme which is something I'm generally not too interested in. It wasn't until my wife bought RDR2 that I jumped into the series, and despite my lack of interest in westerns, RDR2 ended up being not only one of the best games I've ever played, but also a game that changed my perspectives on various things. It was one of the few games that had a lasting impact on my personal life, which is something I can say about very few games I've ever played. So of course this reignited my interest in RDR1 despite it being over a decade old by the time I played RDR2. Playing RDR1 kept on getting bumped back over and over again, until recently I was watching several unrelated youtube videos and two different channels made the bold statement that they thought RDR1 was the superior game in many ways. This immediately caught my interest and inspired my enough to finally pick up RDR1 and see if it actually was better than the sequel, or at least just as good.


While RDR1 is a pretty good game, it in no way compared to RDR2 in almost any way. While definitely impressive for a game released in 2010, RDR1 falls short in every possible category you can judge a game by. Visually, the game looks pretty good most of the time, however I wished that the game made better use of its vast open world map and filled it with more interesting events, places, missions, and various other things that turned something like the untamed west into something way more intriguing and engaging.Character models were a mixed back, but mostly good, as were locations like towns and natural land marks. Audio was also a mixed, but mostly good bag; some of the voice acting is top notch, while other characters almost sound like they paid a Rockstar intern to record the lines. Sound effects were great, and the music felt mostly appropriate and certainly helped enhance the experience of whatever it was you're doing. The gameplay was probably the weakest part of RDR1. While it wasn't awful or anything like that, it certainly reminded me more of a PS2 era GTA game, then something closer to GTA5, or hell, even GTA4 which was released before RDR1. It just felt very clunky and lacked a lot of variety and depth I was hoping for; there were way too many missions that were beyond tedious and mundane, or just felt like rehashed versions of missions i'd already completed 2 or 3 times already. Still, with all my gripes, the gameplay certainly worked for the most part creating a pretty good experience overall. The story left a lot to be desired too, especially comparted to how insanely good it was in RDR2. The characters; motives, interactions, and dialogue was pretty good for the most part, but wasn't as fleshed out as it maybe could have been. Again, GTA4 is a great example of how this could have been accomplished, but it just wasn't there like I was hoping. By no means was the story or writing not great, because it was, it just could have been better. I really enjoyed RDR1 overall, but sadly, playing RDR2 first almost ruined this game for me, and that's not even because it's a way older game at this point. I'd still recommend playing it, if for nothing else than a good supplement to the events of RDR2. (4/27/24) [35/50]

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General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: April 14, 2024, 03:48:09 pm »

I'm picking up about one game a month on average, and it's typically a new release of some kind. Video game collecting has all but lost its appeal to me, and it's been that way for at least a few years now. I've owned nearly every game I ever wanted to and the idea of paying a ton of money for the ones I still would like to have sounds very unappealing. If game prices were to crash hard tomorrow and you could go to a thrift store or a flea market and pay Contra for $5 again, or Earthbound for $15, I don't even know if that would get me excited about collecting again.


My journey as a collector was one of the most fun, exciting, and rewarding periods of my life, and like all good things I wish it could have lasted forever. I've put a lot of thought into why I'm no longer into collecting, and while I could list half a dozen reasons or more why I stopped caring about it, I think it can be summed up by saying people and their interests and priorities naturally change over time. It happens to everyone, and aside from game collecting it has happened to me easily 10 times in my life so far. While video game collecting was certainly the most involved I ever got in one of my interests, at the end of the day it was still just a hobby. I tired for years to find new avenues to stay excited about game collecting, but every time I did this I was faced with greater and greater diminished returns on my overall enjoyment of the hobby.


Regrettably, I have yet to find a hobby to replace game collecting in terms of how passionate I was for it. I have focused on other interests, but nothing yet has kept me up until 3am researching interesting retro games I'd never hear of, getting up at the crack of dawn to beat an army of other resellers and collectors to the flea market, or spending all my disposable income (and then some) on games I wanted. I miss that feeling and I hope I discover something else that can ignite passion in me the way collecting used to. I still love playing video games, probably more than ever, but I just wish I was as into it as I was when i was paying all these games that I'm not actually clearing from my backlog.

You might wanna look into vinyl or even CD collecting, if you're a fan of music. It's something you can take at a more casual pace than game collecting, because it doesn't feel like there's millions of people competing and scalping a finite thing, like with physical games. It does go on, but to a much lesser extent.

I'm not gonna say that I'm not interested in games or collecting anymore, because I am. There's just many factors now which work against actually doing it, it became stressful for me at a certain point. I felt like I was trying to rush to complete goals before they became even more cost-prohibitive, and then my goals would get reworked and become even broader, and that would add to the stress. I have a clear path to competition as far as retro. It's just hard to jump back into it now.

I feel like a lot of the regulars here are very down on not just collecting, but also modern games. That's one area where I disagree totally with the sentiment. I'm still pretty motivated, and excited for collecting modern releases. I absolutely don't care about Limited Run, or any such similar company. I think they're all borderline fraudulent. I'm just talking about like standard publisher / retail level games. For me, there's been plenty of games in the past several months to come out, and I still enjoy the pursuit in staying on top of those releases. I've picked up Alone in the Dark reboot, Rise of the Ronin, South Park Snow Day, AC Mirage got discounted down to $30 recently. I've picked up Princess Peach Showtime, and there's plenty of others I've had to pass up on, that I want to go back and pick up. I've got Stellar Blade pre-ordered. I wanna pick up Dragon's Dogma II, Pacific Drive looks really cool... and so on.

To me, modern collecting is almost as fun as it's ever been. I know there are concerns about the long-term sustainability of modern game discs, but there's resources like "DoesItPlay?" that are quite useful. A surprising amount of releases are functional without updates. If you're into collecting DLC, there's external HDDs and all of that jazz with which to store all of your update revisions and data on. I'm personally not worried about any of that, and I feel like it's all kind of beside the point of collecting, anyway. Ultimately, we all recognize the best and easiest route to playing any legacy platform or game is just flash media and emulation, and yet so many of us choose to keep buying old cartridges and discs that we don't necessarily need, why not buy modern discs that we won't necessarily need down the road, as well? It's all for the love of the collection, which is something that hasn't yet become totally lost on me. I'm still having fun with buying new games.

I never really collected music, but several years before I got into video game collecting I was a regular at various used CD shops and record stores in my area. I mostly went out looking for CDs of bands I knew I loved, or ones I'd recently discovered on YouTube or Pandora. It was a ton of fun and it was something my future wife and I bonded over when we were still just friends and early on when we began dating. I still get on music kicks, however my desire to go out like I used to and look for CDs is something I don't have the same drive to do. Unfortunately I never caught the vinyl bug and it's a format that doesn't appeal to me that often. I know it's digitally compressed, but I'm fine with CDs or streaming audio services.


I partially agree about modern gaming, but it's increasingly becoming harder and harder for me to justify it based off some of the things you mentioned. I don't like the idea of paying full price for something that might end up being a paperweight in a decade, or the idea of needing to pay an extra $50+ more for DLC that more or less completes the game. And then of course there's the likelihood that everything goes digital only in the next 10-15 years at which point I'll only be buying games when they've been significantly discounted and only when i plan on playing them right then and there. With all that said, there are still some very high quality titles coming out and some of my favorite games I've ever played have come out in the past 5 or 6 years. It's just a shame we're getting nickel and dimed, and being deprived actual ownership by an industry that has become increasing more greedy.

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General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: April 14, 2024, 12:16:24 pm »

I'm picking up about one game a month on average, and it's typically a new release of some kind. Video game collecting has all but lost its appeal to me, and it's been that way for at least a few years now. I've owned nearly every game I ever wanted to and the idea of paying a ton of money for the ones I still would like to have sounds very unappealing. If game prices were to crash hard tomorrow and you could go to a thrift store or a flea market and pay Contra for $5 again, or Earthbound for $15, I don't even know if that would get me excited about collecting again.


My journey as a collector was one of the most fun, exciting, and rewarding periods of my life, and like all good things I wish it could have lasted forever. I've put a lot of thought into why I'm no longer into collecting, and while I could list half a dozen reasons or more why I stopped caring about it, I think it can be summed up by saying people and their interests and priorities naturally change over time. It happens to everyone, and aside from game collecting it has happened to me easily 10 times in my life so far. While video game collecting was certainly the most involved I ever got in one of my interests, at the end of the day it was still just a hobby. I tired for years to find new avenues to stay excited about game collecting, but every time I did this I was faced with greater and greater diminished returns on my overall enjoyment of the hobby.


Regrettably, I have yet to find a hobby to replace game collecting in terms of how passionate I was for it. I have focused on other interests, but nothing yet has kept me up until 3am researching interesting retro games I'd never hear of, getting up at the crack of dawn to beat an army of other resellers and collectors to the flea market, or spending all my disposable income (and then some) on games I wanted. I miss that feeling and I hope I discover something else that can ignite passion in me the way collecting used to. I still love playing video games, probably more than ever, but I just wish I was as into it as I was when i was paying all these games that I'm not actually clearing from my backlog.

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Modern Video Games / Re: SEGA declares this is the Year of Shadow

« on: April 12, 2024, 03:20:10 pm »

I feel like Shadow is a bigger deal for kids that were either too young or born after Sonic's golden era on the Genesis. It seems like everyone who is really into to Shadow is in their late 20s at the oldest. Being in my late 30s, Shadow never really did that much for me. Knuckles on the other hand though!

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General / Re: Rank the Mario games in terms of difficulty. Your humble opinion.

« on: April 02, 2024, 12:02:03 am »

Of the ones I've beat and in order of hardest to least


1. Super Mario Bros 2
2. New Super Mario Bros 2
3. Super Mario Bros
4. Super Mario Galaxy
5. Super Mario 3
6. Super Mario World
7. Super Mario 64
8. Super Mario Odyssey
9. Super Mario Bros U
10. Super Mario 3D World

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: March 28, 2024, 03:14:38 am »

24. Return to Castle Wolfenstein (PC)

I got the itch to play a late 90s/early 2000s FPS game, so I decided to finally beat Return to Castle Wolfenstein, a game I have not played since around the time it first came out. A friend of mine was a diehard PC gamer back in high school, and we decided to rent the PS2 port while he spent the weekend at my house. Bar far, he was more into it than I was, but I still enjoyed it for the most part, and to this day the game has an pretty strong air of nostalgia around it for me.


I finally beat Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and while I don't adore this game like many others, I can still appreciate it as a really fun, and somewhat iconic early 2000s PC game. The gameplay has its issues when it comes to certain enemies and bosses being incredibly annoying and even poorly designed, and some weapons having few practical uses, but this doesn't distract too much from what is an otherwise enjoyable game. The visuals are also pretty good, although I feel like by 2001 there were certainly better looking games, FPS and otherwise. Audio is mostly good too, although I found the OST somewhat uninspired and a bit repetitive throughout the game. I also found the bad German accents to be funny and also have that early 2000s video game cheese that I usually really like. Still, I feel like in the grand scheme of things, it was more of a blemish on the audio and doesn't help this game age as well as it otherwise could. I would definitely say that Return to Castle wolfenstein is worth playing, but for me it's a game I likely won't be returning to, at least for a very, very long time. For what it's worth, I did enjoy it for various reasons, especially how much it brought me back to my life back around 2001/2002. (3/28/24) [35/50]

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General / Re: Games with great stories.

« on: March 23, 2024, 01:38:41 pm »

Red Dead Redemption 2: I'm not even into westerns, but this game literally changed my life as well as my perspective on a lot of things. As far as stories in video games go, this game impacted me more than any other. The game itself is fun as hell too.


Resident Evil 1-3 + Code Veronica: I love the story and lore of RE before RE's plot went a bit off the rails starting with RE4. The characters are all memorable and cool, the settings are all awesome, the enemies are really imaginative and interesting, and just overall I can't get enough of those first four mainline games.


Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order + Jedi Survivor: Your mileage will vary depending on how much of a Star Wars fan you are, but these two games, especially Fallen Order, are the best Star Wars stories we've had since the prequels. If not for this series, I'd have lost all hope in modern Star Wars given how terrible the rest of it is.

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General / Re: Games you must play before you die.

« on: March 19, 2024, 10:59:50 pm »

Pretty much if it's a game you've heard most people heavily praise and it was conventionally considered to be an excellent game, I'd say it's a must play. After gaming nearly my entire life and being a collector for nearly half of it, these well known and well loved games are often the ones that stand out above the rest. Very rarely do I play a game that sold poorly or that is fairly obscure that even comes close to competing. In fact, most "hidden gem" games I've played are fairly mediocre at best, or just plain bad. I think a lot of collectors want to pretend these hidden gem games are just as good as their better known, more successful counterparts in order to justify their often exorbitant prices, but the truth truth is they'll never compete. Link's Awakening will always be vastly better than Alundra. Every mainline Pokemon game blows every Digimon RPG out of the water. The Mariokart games will always be better then nearly all other kart racing games ever released.


I actually own that book you mentioned, and I think 95% of the games that made it in deserve to be in there. Likewise, most games that received over 1 90 on Metacritic would also be contenders as must play games.

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General / Re: If you could be the speedrun WR holder for any game what would it be?

« on: March 09, 2024, 10:50:59 am »

I never understood the appeal of speedrunning a game or why some people go to obsessive lengths to figure out how to beat a game faster than its ever been beat before. I'm all for people enjoying games however they want, but it seems like the antithesis of enjoying a game if all you're doing is trying to get it over with as fast as possible. Not to mention, many of these speedruns just exploit glitches in the game's programming and design to bypass the majority of the game, making it possible to beat a game that would normally take 15-hours to beat, in an hour or whatever. It all comes across as a bit neurotic and also just a weird way to flex online.

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General / Re: March 2024 - Recently Added to Collection/Recently Purchased New

« on: March 01, 2024, 09:07:44 pm »

I guess technically I received it yesterday (2/29), but my FF7 Rebirth Collectors Edition arrived in the mail. Sepheroth statue is huge, but awesome!