Grand and Good Ol' Games

I'm playing some Donkey Kong 64, and I think to myself "man, it's been so long since I played this, I wonder how many other peoples liked this game from back in the day", and so I start a topic here:

What're some good and/or grand old games you all like, and why? If you want to explain why.

I'll start with DK64, since I'm playing it at the mo.

I find it rather fun and sorta relaxing, finding all the Golden Bananas, hunting for regular bananas, and collecting all the junk in general really. I love all the references to old stuff, like the old Donkey Kong arcade machine in the third (or fourth, if you play differently) level. As a kid, I could barely get anywhere in that game, but as I'm more experienced in the art of gaming, I like it for the nostalgia and the minor challenge.
Sadly, not many games of this sort is made anymore, as its popularity kinda died off mid to late PS2 era.
You know, the "here's a level, and here's the golden *insert object here* you can collect" kind of games. More examples can be Mario 64 (I think what really started the popularity of this sort of game), Banjo-Kazooie, and Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom. I'd like to see these sort of games make a comeback, and a good one at that. I've always liked them. At least, when executed correctly.

I'm not expecting depth into why you guys like your games, but go ahead if you feel like nerding out. I tend to about some games.

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Besides the classics, Super Mario World comes to mind. I remember slowly progressing through the cave levels (They were the first real challenge), and then getting better and better until Wendy's Castle kicked my butt a few times. Truly an awesome game all around- great levels, cool idea with the switches, and AWESOME yoshis (Blue Yoshis, anyone?!).

I dunno if this counts as old, but I feel like the Golden Sun series deserves some serious recognition. I remember feeling like there just weren't any epic, awesome basic RPGs out there anymore, for a while. Well, until my brother turned me on to the Dragon Quests, but that's another story. Golden Sun, to me, stacks up easily with FF3, Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire 2 (which was also a freaking awesome game). I loved the Djinn System. It was one of the cooler "class change" systems that also didn't really cater to any classes... they were all usable pretty readily, but yet different. Also, the difficulty felt just right. Fighting Saturos for the first time in Mercury Lighthouse gave me the same feeling of OMGAWESOME as fighting magus did in Chrono Trigger. Both dudes get hyped the slime up, and really deliver. The Lost Age was also just as awesome, and there are oh-so-many collectibles. Dark Dawn was way too easy, but seeing Alex again kind of made it worth it!

No need to explain Chrono Trigger, BoF2, standard FFs or Zeldas, I don't think, but DQ8 for the PS2 deserves a special spot in my heart too. It's really, really hard for me to break down all the games I've played and pick a single favorite one, but this game might have to seal the deal. Everything was right about it, and nothing wrong. The World Map is both beautiful and engaging, in a way no other game that I've seen has been able to pull off (With the exception of MMORPGs like WoW, I guess). It was 3d, but unlike most crappy games (Final Fantasy 7, I'm looking at you), it was actually huge. There were very few places you could see that you couldn't go to (places that looked like they were accessible, were I mean) and there were treasures/monsters to collect everywhere. Enemies were awesome, as was the pacing. It starts at tough, like any other Dragon Warrior for a while, then it gets a little lighter, then BAM Dhoulmagus kicks your ass. All of a sudden, the game takes its kiddie gloves off, and it's challenging, but not so much that it's frustrating from there on forth. (PS: Anyone who has played this game, has ANYBODY actually beaten this guy on their first playthrough? Aside from weird people who just level grind to 99 at the start.) Anyways, the story is pretty sweet- nothing special, but it's neither overdone nor underwhelming. The characters always have something funny to say, and the Alchemy System was awesome. I don't know whether I liked 8, or 9's Alchemy better, but they were both cool for different reasons. Also, the Monster Collecting was pretty cool, too. It was fun trying to find as many Monster Combos as you could, and the cameo from DQ4 was rewarding enough to make the battle arena worth it.

Anyways, tl;dr, or whatever. But I couldn't let myself underhype these awesome games. I'll try and think of more as they come to me, but that's it for me.

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The Ultima games. I started out with Ultima VIII (Yeah, I know, not the best one out there...) but that led me to buy the Ultima Collection that had Ultima 0 to Ultima VIIb, and man did I play the crap out of those games. My favorites would have to be IV, VI, and VIIa, and I still consider the Black Gate to be the gold standard to which I compare all other RPGs that I play. I have yet to play any game that had the same rich culture and backstory that the Ultima games had.

Final Fantasy for example, is up to what, XII? XIII? But there was no single narrative history threading the games together like the Ultima games. Sure, you could play any Ultima in the series and have a good time, but it's the history and the story that maintains throughout the game that really made everything special. And incidentally, it was ignoring and screwing over all that history that killed Ultima IX...

Back in the day, I was such a fan of the game that I actually went and joined up with the Ultima Dragons, though I was never really active with them. I can still name off the top of my head the cities and the virtues associated with them, along with pretty much all of the Avatar's companions and their Virtues.

And I'm babbling like a stupid fanboy, and I shall now stop, hehehe...

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

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Don't forget Ultima Underworld! Fantastic games.

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I think Donkey Kong 64 is one of the better 3D platformers, probably the best one I can remember playing. A couple of the minigames gave me a huge load of trouble to try to complete, but otherwise I found the controls and pacing to be just fine. The heroes don't talk too much, the colors aren't too washed out for me to tell what things are, and the maps aren't too big to find where I'm supposed to go.


Apparently being an RPG fan who isn't familiar with Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and the SNES Final Fantasies makes me a bit of an oddball. I started this genre on the Game Boy Color, and for me the remakes of the second and third Dragon Warrior games for that handheld will always be the most nostalgic. Personally, I adore the standard gameplay of the genre (go to town, kill random enemies on the overworld, go to dungeon, kill random enemies and maybe a boss, rinse and repeat until closing cutscene). I have a hard time finding stories in general and for this genre in particular that aren't mind-gratingly dumb, but I don't play games for the story anyway (most Square games have great presentation for their stories, but that's not the same as having stories that are any good beneath the glitter). I agree that Golden Sun is a good game; can't opine on the Lost Age yet as I haven't beaten it.


I'll give a basic rundown of what I think of the classic Mega Man games (as that's one of my favorite series):
1 - Awkward first steps, but the great potential of the series is blatantly evident here.
2 - Took what worked from 1 and built on it in a competent manner.
3 - The most nostalgic for me, since I started with 2 but had the most experience with this. I think it's better than 2 in the same way that 2 is better than 1, though I would concede that the general difficulty has gone down in each installment at this point.
4 - The most balanced game in the series; every weapon is roughly as useful as the others if you know what you're doing. Dive Man is the hardest Robot Master I can think of; harder than Elec Man, Quick Man, or even Shadow Man. The difficulty has jumped up a bit, equal to or greater than 2 now. It did introduce the idea of each Robot Master only having one "correct" weakness instead of multiple possibilities, so I'll have to dock it some points for that (this sadly stuck for the rest of the series).
5 - The stages are well built. The bosses are easy. The weapons are worthless, except maybe Gyro Blade and sometimes Crystal Eye.
6 - Why use any of these weapons when you can use Rush Power? This game's Rush adapters obsolete the series' weapon chain system. Many of the weapons are barely different from each other or the M-Buster.
7 - Sprites are big and ugly. Everything takes up too much of the screen, leaving barely any room to maneuver. Wily's capsule in this game is the worst boss before or after. Mega Man, I don't blame you for trying to kill Wily at the end.
8 - At least this one is easy. Oh wait, no, too bad this one's so easy. I feel like the fun has been bled out of the series at this point.
Mega Man & Bass - Ugly as 8 and difficult in the wrong ways. Beating it does bring some satisfaction. The levels are clearly designed for Bass's double-jump, but the bosses are meant for Mega Man's charged shots. Pick your poison.
9 - Only feels harder than the other classic games at first because people had years to practice those before this one came out. It's actually a little easier than 3, I would say, but harder than 5 and 6. The story is presented in such a tongue-in-cheek manner that I can't help being amused. Six of the eight weapons would be complete game-breakers elsewhere in the series, but here they're competing with each other to make you feel awesome; even so, neither Plug Ball nor Magma Bazooka are shoddy weapons by any stretch.

If I were to rank them by how good I think they are, it would go:
3, 9, 2, 4, 1, 5, & Bass, 8, 6.
I know there's a 10, too, I just haven't played it to assess it yet.

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Rockman 7 FC should be right up your alley then. A creative team "ported" Megaman 7 to the "Famicom", and overall it feels and plays very smoothly. I had a lot of fun with it, and the NES remixes of SNES music sounded really good. The basic game is exactly the same, but you might consider it easier due to the resized sprites and better view of the levels.

Hang on, I just found this page. Sounds like they finished making Rockman 8 FC! I'm going to play it before the end of tonight, I'm super curious to see what they did with it.

Oh, and by the way, everything's in Japanese. Shouldn't be a problem unless you've never played the original games before.

EDIT: Jeez, I must be really rusty, I can't win any stages at all in Rockman 8 FC. Part of it might just be that the "quit" button is un-re-mappable, does not give a warning prompt, and is located inconveniently near my other weapon-changing keys. I guess I'll try again tomorrow with a joypad.