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Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2018 11:56:24 GMT -5
Amagon was one of the many games I owned as a kid thanks to rental stores selling off their NES stock for next to nothing. Even as a kid I kind of knew the game was whack but I enjoyed hulking out and punching the crap out of things. The controls were really weird, it felt like the gravity was turned up too high or something. Transforming into Amagon felt great though and I'm surprised more games didn't use a similar mechanic.
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Post by anayo on Feb 7, 2018 16:08:59 GMT -5
I just remembered some more. Mega Bomberman (Sega Genesis)I really enjoyed this. One time my parents hired a babysitter while I had rented this game. The babysitter enjoyed it so much she wouldn't give me a turn. I also remember Mega Bomberman used a password system to save your progress. One day I just started brute-force attacking the password screen. By sheer chance it took me to a stage I had never reached before. But I didn't write down the successful password, so I could never reach that stage again. Diddy Kong Racing (N64)My most interesting memory is just how dang impressive I thought this was as a kid. I liked how it starred Diddy Kong, cause Donkey Kong Country was still fresh in my mind as a recent hit. I liked how the roster included Banjo, since Banjo Kazooie was still a really big deal to me back then (he was the main reason I asked my parents for a Nintendo 64 in 1998). I liked the "still humming along to it 20 years later" soundtrack, especially that one stage with the voice sample that sounds like a guy beatboxing in Hindi ( this part). The different vehicles (cart, hovercraft, airplane) all appealed to me. It was colorful and bright and the 3D graphics looked great. Aaannd... this game bores me to tears today. I'm usually so passionate about retro gaming and nostalgia and so on, but I think this is a case of genuinely moving on and outgrowing something I used to love. They made a Nintendo DS port sometime in the mid 2000's, but even by then I knew I was in no mood to replay this. I found the N64 version at Goodwill, and it's in my collection, but I know deep down inside I have zero intention of ever playing it again. I just hold onto it, kind of like a dead butterfly in a jar. Donkey Kong 64 (N64)At the time it felt like a big deal that Donkey Kong was back. 1994's Donkey Kong Country was such a hit that we were all kind of scratching our heads wondering where he went. Kids at school used to talk about this game. The "Donkey Kong Rap" intro video seemed so incredible to me cause N64 cartridges usually lacked an abundance of digitized speech (the talkative referee in Pokemon Stadium impressed me for the same reason). Although innocent 10 year old me was scandalized that the DK rap had the word "hell" in it. The gameplay is basically Banjo Kazooie to the 4th power. There's just way too much crap to collect. It doesn't suffice to just collect all the crap in one stage, you have to comb through each stage 4 times as 4 different characters to get 100% of the crap. 10 year old me was absolutely enthralled. Some N64 games "survived" and I still like them (Mario 64, the Zeldas, 007 Goldeneye). Not this. It's so weird to contrast being utterly absorbed by something and then just as bored by it almost two decades later.
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Post by Ex on Feb 7, 2018 23:08:28 GMT -5
I tried to get into Diddy Kong Racing and Donkey Kong 64 when they released, but your arguments are exactly why I couldn't. Perhaps if I'd been eight years old when I played them, things would have been different. For an eight year old, a game where you spend a ton of time collecting crap is actually fun. Not so much as an adult. Well, for me it's not. I absolutely LOATHE having to collect a bunch of hidden things in levels to proceed. This is a bad habit of modern Nintendo in quite a few of their games. But, too new to complain about here.
I still love Mario Kart 64 though. I have legions of good memories playing it with others. I was living with some roommates in 1997, and we had a communal N64 in the living room. This worked out great because there were so many multiplayer games on the N64. Of all of them, we got the most mileage out of Mario Kart 64. I can't even begin to think how many hours I spent balloon battling one particular roommate at the Block Fort. Halcyon times man.
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Post by Sarge on Feb 7, 2018 23:35:16 GMT -5
I embarrassingly put thirty hours into DK64. Thirty. Hours. I guess I enjoyed it, but man that game was a lot of work to get at the fun.
I thought Diddy Kong Racing was super cool when I played it at a demo unit. The planes were just so slick. But upon revisiting it now, I just can't get into it. I think MK64 is better for sure; not entirely sure what makes it so much superior, but it certainly is.
Strangely, I don't really consider myself a Mario Kart fan, but I've dumped massive amounts of time into Super Circuit, Mario Kart DS, and Double Dash.
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Post by anayo on Feb 9, 2018 10:42:27 GMT -5
I tried to get into Diddy Kong Racing and Donkey Kong 64 when they released, but your arguments are exactly why I couldn't. Perhaps if I'd been eight years old when I played them, things would have been different. For an eight year old, a game where you spend a ton of time collecting crap is actually fun. Not so much as an adult. Well, for me it's not. I absolutely LOATHE having to collect a bunch of hidden things in levels to proceed. This is a bad habit of modern Nintendo in quite a few of their games. But, too new to complain about here. I think 3D graphics were still so new and exciting that it made people overlook tedious gameplay. Right around the mid-90's CG special effects seemed so rare to me. There were only two films I knew of that used the technology (Jurassic Park and Toy Story). Now we're drowning in CGI-saturated films year round. But that CGI-starved setting made the likes of Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct seem so futuristic and attractive. So when Nintendo 64 came out, it seemed dizzyingly cool to me. It would be like walking into the electronics store and seeing a demo for a hologram projector that could make Mario run around your house, jumping off shelves and climbing up furniture. Being a single-digit age when that evolution occurred certainly added to the magical feeling as well. For instance when I played Pokemon Blue Version or Zelda: Ocarina of Time I naively imagined I had actually been chosen to embark on a quest to save the world or something. I imagine getting into them as an adult would be underwhelming. (Like Harry Potter, which I missed out on as a 10 year old, watched as a 25 year old, and thought it was exasperatingly lame.) For a while I was more into the handheld Mario Karts (GBA and NDS), but my brother insisted I play Double Dash. Now it's pretty much my favorite Gamecube game ever.
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Post by Sarge on Feb 9, 2018 10:54:03 GMT -5
Completely off-topic, but the Harry Potter books are much better. I started reading them when the third book came out (obviously bought the rest), and was hooked. The movies have been extremely hit-or-miss.
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Post by anayo on Feb 9, 2018 13:31:14 GMT -5
Completely off-topic, but the Harry Potter books are much better. I started reading them when the third book came out (obviously bought the rest), and was hooked. The movies have been extremely hit-or-miss. A former high school classmate told me the series gets better if I stick with it. I later watched the next 3 films. They never rose above the noise floor for me. As for the book, I started reading it as a 10 year old then my parents thought it was unchristian so I stopped. At that age I thought my parents knew best so I was OK with them prohibiting it. About a decade later Chibby read it and wrote a review for it. His impressions seemed to line up with how I felt about the movie. When I finally watched it 3 years ago the witchcraft didn't bother me. After all I watched Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Howl's Moving Castle as a teenager and I turned out OK. It just bugged me that Harry Potter never has to struggle or experience failure. He's just automatically awesome at everything. The scene that best characterized this for me was the first broomstick flying lesson. The instructor is being really austere and barking at everyone to follow her commands. Then Harry Potter just cuts loose. But he doesn't crash or get hurt, instead he flies like a pro. The whole point of the scene seemed to be that the instructor was out of touch and didn't know what she was talking about. At least in Star Wars Luke Skywalker got chastised by Yoda for sucking at the force before he graduates to successful Jedi-dom. In the Karate Kid, Daniel has to "wax on wax off" until he realizes all those menial exercises made him awesome at karate. Harry Potter's just automatically awesome at magic without any real setbacks or struggle. He just shows up and people practically worship the ground he walks on. Even if the story dictates he must be a magic savant, I feel he'd need some other shortcoming to make him more interesting and human as a character, like learning how to reign in his pride or show compassion to other people (not just his school subjects). I could get behind that. The religious "Harry Potter" scare seems absurd to me now. I'm not really paranoid about kids getting corrupted by PG-rated entertainment anyway. But I might be mildly concerned it would subconsciously plant the idea in kids' heads that showing up is all it takes to succeed. However it's nice to be familiar with the lore and characters. So many people my age make Harry Potter jokes, like a Facebook friend who finished his Army contract and posted a picture of a sock with the caption, "Doby is free!" Even if I'm not crazy about the story I appreciate being in on a joke.
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Post by Sarge on Feb 9, 2018 15:05:06 GMT -5
I can understand the religious angle if one had young kids. I'm not sure I'd want my kids getting into "witchcraft and wizardry" either, at least not before they could tell fantasy from reality. But as you say, there's also stuff like The Lord of the Rings, which was actually written by a devout Christian author. So... yeah, just be age-appropriate.
If I remember right, there were "reasons" that Harry seemed to be so darn good at everything, and it all has to do with good ol' Voldemort. (Although I think he also starts suffering some failures and tribulations as well, too. Been a while since I read 'em.)
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Post by toei on Feb 9, 2018 15:16:33 GMT -5
I can understand the religious angle if one had young kids. I'm not sure I'd want my kids getting into "witchcraft and wizardry" either, at least not before they could tell fantasy from reality. I don't want to get into religion or anything, but what does it matter? Witchcraft isn't real. Even if your kids think they can cast spells at each other for a while, they can't. By the time they're 6 or 7, they'll understand that on some level, even if they love playing with the idea and pretending. The worst that can happen is that they get a little imaginative. Which, of course, is not actually a bad thing. Not that I have any interest in Harry Potter, though.
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Post by Sarge on Feb 9, 2018 15:26:04 GMT -5
I know we're diverging mightily at this point! I think most "witchcraft and wizardry" isn't real, but I think some of it is. As a Christian, I have no choice but to believe so, given that stories of it in the Bible abound, and there are warnings against it. Of course, that type is quite different from the popularized versions we see in books, movies, and films. The "real" version is astoundingly occult in nature. Like I said, as long as they know fantasy from reality, I don't think it hurts. My parents limited our exposure to "magic" when we were really, really young, but let up later. I was reading LotR in my teenage years, and they had no issue with it. Indeed, my Dad had already read them, too. (We also read HP, and everyone basically competed for who got the book first!) Interestingly, I do think that factored in to some of the rentals of my youth. I knew they weren't going to put up with anything super-violent, so my brother and I did a good job of self-policing. I refused to touch anything M-rated, and detested Mortal Kombat. I was worried when a friend of mine gave me an M-rated game ( Syphon Filter 2), but by that point they were cool with it. It also kept me from getting a copy of Castlevania III (Dracula, don't ya know) in the pawn shop, but that's okay, I've got like four copies now. For the record, the first M-rated game I bought was Metal Gear Solid.
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