Best posts made by Chocobop

@axel As the sole person to put Perfect Dark as their number 1, I feel the need to extol its virtues. Or maybe instead of proselytizing the game, I feel I should at least take the biggest initiative with regards to providing warmth and comfort for everyone who has posted comments of appreciation for Perfect Dark. For those who don't understand the situation, it is like this: Goldeneye has so overwhelmingly overshadowed Perfect Dark in both popularity and remembrance that fans of PD are somewhat of a minority subgroup who often feel a kinship and a need to band together. (Calling out @E_Zed_Eh_Intern @Oscillator @NeoCweeny @Hidz @Inustar @Bigdude1 @Ringedwithtile @DIPSET and anyone else!) Luckily, someone else on the internet has already created a 44 minute loving thesis for Perfect Dark, which I will present below and hope other fans find to be suiting tribute:

Giving Perfect Dark the Recognition it Deserves
Youtube Video

I've watched this video 3 or so times now, so... consider checking it out even if it is just the first 16 minutes!

Finally, I don't know if @Brandon Jones checks in on the forums that often, but I can at least tag him now and hope one day it might rise to his attention.

I watched a good chunk of the presentation. I'm immensely skeptical about the potential of playing games via streaming a video feed. The shine of the presentation did however do a good job of reminding me that there is an under-served market for this. Obviously, that market has all these caveats carved into it, but because I'm so negative about this stuff I found it noteworthy that I had positive visions associated with the concept.

OK -- all that said I'm still skeptical about this specifically because there was no talk about what it will cost the consumer.

If streaming your games isn't cheap, there is no market for it.

It's not that people "don't have access" to the non-streaming local hardware option, it's that they don't want to buy it. Or they have the hardware but don't want to buy every little game just to sample everything.

If you have the dough, you can play whatever games you want. Money obviates the need for buying a worse substitute. And if Stadia is too expensive for what you get, there would be no reason someone would pick it. The service would obviate itself. I know there was talk about doing big server side calculations with more GPUs than presumably a regular console would not match, but I'm saying that is/will be a small part of the selling point.

If Google wants the public and those GDC developers to think this will be successful (obv. the two are related), they should have given cost information even if they don't have the final price per month or whatever.

Assuming we had the cost information (and the "what you get" information, like the ownership question and what games are available), the next level of skepticism is whether this business can thrive. @Axel, you said you doubt Google expects it to blow up, but I'm still concerned about where that line is. I don't really know, but I feel there must be a point where not having enough users makes the business unprofitable. Cost per user might be too high, getting licensees onboard might be too hard, etc. if the company doesn't have enough scale or, in the case of things like servers, customer density.

I know Netflix works and is successful, but I think it is a mistake to use this as the fount of optimism. Ironically, the fact that games have such a high ratio of "hours of entertainment per dollar" means that substituting the local hardware model with "hey, we'll send you each hour of entertainment using servers and bandwidth" is inherently that much more expensive than movies.

How are the developers being compensated is another tier of skepticism. I've been seeing this tweet linked around:

Ran across a short but interesting news story: The creator of Downwell, Ojiro Fumoto, joins Nintendo.

No, the story isn't that he is bringing Downwell to Switch, Ojiro is working for Nintendo now.

‘I’ll do my best,’ he says

Here's the news article, but no further details are known:
https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/23/16922898/downwell-ojiro-fumoto-nintendo

@brannox said in The EZA Community Top 25 Best of 2000!:

@chocobop Until that magician can will it into existence like he's done with Shenmue, RE 2 Remake, Onimusha, and a host of others, I still don't see it.

I'm talking about the forest, you are talking about the trees. The response to this I would like to make --- the philosophy I'm trying to get across --- is simple: just find a way --- any way -- to keep believing. It us, the fans, obligation to keep the candles lit. As long as we do so we can always light more candles when others burn out. But if the last candle is extinguished, it is all over.

I'm going to digress on this topic because it feels dear to me.

It feels like every other EZA podcast one of the allies will express a long shot desire for a game, but then almost immediately they pause and there's that visible and audible regret when that low probability actually kicks into their mind. What usually happens next? Another ally will jump in to say something along the lines of "It's always okay to dream." or "It's never wrong to believe it can happen".

Recall or rewatch EZA's coverage of E3 2018 and you can easily see a microcosm of this philosophy playing out even more prominently and frequently. Remember how many times during E3 an ally on stream had a wish, and even if it was crazy they'd get unanimous support from the others that, yes, you can have that wish. You have that permission! "It's E3 baby!", "Make it happen ___", or "It's going to happen, let's go!".

Below are a couple Huber videos that may help people refresh this philosophy that I like to describe as keeping the candles lit:

Youtube Video

Youtube Video

That second video (pre-E3 2017 community wishes) is really worth rewatching in full. Timesplitters. Onimusha remake. Streets of Rage 4. New Metroid hopes constantly throughout the video --- WHEN THERE WAS NO HINT, NO RUMROR. NO NEWS OF MORE METROID.

If you have a dream, keep believing! If it's too hard to believe with all your might, then find another way -- any way. Find that small rock of hope and cling to it with as much hope as you can spare.

What are the best/iconic/your most favorite opening lines from video games?

Name 'em!
Optionally discuss what makes them special, or how they capture what's great about that game!
.
This was inspired by the recent game on the EZA podcast.

What counts as an "opening line"? We are going to be very liberal. An "opening line" can be:

• the starting line of a pre-title screen cinematic/attract mode scene
• the starting line of an intro cinematic or any special "opening scene" after hitting new game
• the first words spoken after those opening scenes and the regular game begins with your main character

(In the podcast segment, they had strict rules mostly for the purpose making sure each game had an unambiguous "first line". We're doing away with that because this isn't a game, it's just for fun).

"Character introductions" that occur after the game has started are not "opening lines" though. There may very well be iconic lines that are the first lines spoken by that character, but those lines don't start the game. That's the difference. (Perhaps that can be a future thread!)

~

With that out of the way, I'll start us off.

The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace…

--Super Metroid

.
.
.
Also a tip:

You can use the markup > ##
at the start of each line to make your quotes stand out

I ran across this IGN article that gives a good rundown of what is new in the remake: Secret of Mana PS4 Remake: 8 Big Changes Not Found in the SNES Original

One change that I'm looking forward to the most is the newly arranged soundtrack. It's hard to find youtube footage though where the previewer has the new music arrangements turned on but isn't loudly talking over it with things every Mana player knows already. What little I heard of the new music sounded nice but maybe not an amazing leap above the original.

~

~

~

You know what is an amazing leap above though? This Orchestral Medley of Secret of Mana by Rebecca Tripp and 20+ Guest Musicians (!)

Youtube Video

It is perhaps the most stirring presentation of Mana's music I've ever listened to, which is saying a lot given the albums out there. Even if that's just my dumb opinions talking, you'll probably enjoy it at minimum anyway!

You may recall that Famitsu recently conducted a survey asking gamers worldwide what they like about Japanese games:

Do you like recent Japanese games? What do you like about Japanese games over all? Answer our questionnaire! We'd love to hear from you!
Your answers may end up being posted in Weekly Famitsu!

Famitsu published the results of the survey and some people have translated and scanned the relevant pages for us English speaking folk.

In addition to presenting the poll numbers/data/etc, the magazine pages feature a mix of 'thoughtful' and 'funny' quotes pulled from the survey responses. The only thing missing from the imgur album above is the translation for the "top 20 rankings", which I will paste below:

Here are the top-20 games (also include series), voted by 6,678 fans:

.

Persona 5 – 1,276 votes
NieR: Automata – 1,132 votes
Dark Souls series – 502 votes
Monster Hunter: World – 494 votes
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 474 votes
Monster Hunter series – 458 votes
Bloodborne – 452 votes
Yakuza 0 – 375 votes
Persona 4 – 318 votes
Final Fantasy VII – 308 votes
Chrono Trigger – 247 votes
Metal Gear Solid 2 – 227 votes
Persona 3 – 203 votes
Metal Gear Solid 3 – 198 votes
Super Mario Odyssey – 197 votes
Metal Gear Solid – 191 votes
Final Fantasy series – 190 votes
Nioh – 168 votes
Okami – 164 votes
Pokémon series – 162 votes

[top 20 list translation found via siliconera]

Hype!

I would like to formally thank iD for naming this "Doom Eternal" and not "Doom 2: Hell on Earth". With a non-recycled name, no confusion will be created when reading future discussions and doing google/youtube searches, and the original Doom 2 gets to retain the full respect and dignity it deserves.

@brannox

By keeping everything equally spaced, the list can easily be maintained.

Don't you have to recalculate everything though regardless? When someone updates their list, all the points from that person have to be recalculated regardless of what points formula is used, which I presume is being done by a program or spreadsheet.

On a separate matter, in your example with Cyperpunk you took the total number of points across all lists, 492, and divided by the number of lists, 27. Division by 27 doesn't change which game has more or less points, and thus doesn't change the ranking of where a game will end up. But rounding to the tenth decimal creates ties that didn't exist before, and you resolve those ties (whether they be natural ties or newly created ties) using a second method ("which game has more highest desires"). This does change the rankings. I feel that this is strange and potentially controversial. Resolving natural ties using whatever method of your choosing is fine, but I don't see why a game with 491 points should sometimes be ranked above a game with 492 points, just because they both round to 18.2.

Return of the Obra Dinn came out yesterday. It is a new detective-style adventure game by Lucas Pope, the creator of "Papers, Please". I've been hotly anticipating this one ever since the first screenshot some 4 years ago! It is a fully 3D point and click adventure game, yet uses a monochrome, pixely art style inspired by classic Macintonsh/Apple computers.

To describe the game in short, a 19th century merchant ship has drifted into port with its 60 passengers and crew all long dead. The player plays the role of the investigator, and the object of the game is to determine a) the identities of each dead person, and b) the circumstances of how each person died. Most were murdered. The player must use logic, deduction, and even guesswork to determine -- in each case -- who killed who, who else was present, and what was the cause of death/murder weapon. (Sort of like a 60-fold, interconnected version of "Clue", I take it.)

Here's a video of the first 15 minutes:
Youtube Video

Obra Dinn's unique game mechanic is a magical pocket watch which lets you view a "3D freeze frame scene" from the past, and it is from these scenes you can piece together not just how each person died but also the actual sequence of events that went down and motives at play (it will make more sense in the video). Presumably, the grander mystery of "what happened?" unfolds as you play and is fully revealed by the completion of the game.

Description from the Steam Store:

In 1802, the merchant ship Obra Dinn set out from London for the Orient with over 200 tons of trade goods. Six months later it hadn't met its rendezvous point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea.

Early this morning of October 14th, 1807, the Obra Dinn drifted into port at Falmouth with damaged sails and no visible crew. As insurance investigator for the East India Company's London Office, dispatch immediately to Falmouth, find means to board the ship, and prepare an assessment of damages.

Here's a video I thought was worth sharing. There was a cool segment in the most recent episode of the Game Informer podcast where they switched gears from talking about Super Smash Bros. and launched into a 30 minute segment about just Sakurai himself, and not the game. It was a freewheeling discussion, if you will, about Masahiro Sakurai's public image, his legacy, his work style and so on. If you fancy a longform discussion about Sakurai that segment is linked below. I think it's worth a listen:

Youtube Video

This was fun, thanks for running this! I like the fact that this voting game/community participation game doesn't encourage people to make spite moves, and just play sincerely. About halfway through I was predicting the final round would be Portal 2 vs Mario Galaxy, and I felt really smart until I wasn't :P

For years, the highlight of my week has been when I would download the Game Informer podcast along with the EZA podcast on the same day and listen to them over the weekend. I hope those staff members have felt their work was fulfilling and highly valued.

A thread for examining the new games of October! Share your personal picks, interesting curios, and not quite there possibles...

.

Did you discover some small game that not everyone knows about?
Share that and let us know what it is about!

Already know a thing or two that interests you?
Make a list (or a swanky desire index) of your interests and/or possibles!

Don't know what's so great about an upcoming game you keep hearing about?
Ask here!

Don't follow gaming news that closely and just want to passively see what BigGames™ people care about?
This is the place!

~

Thread concept:

The basic idea is to list new games that you are interested in, as well as games you are potentially curious about or want to give wider attention to. You can briefly describe them or ask other people to help fill you in. The hope is that regular threads like these can act as a collective filter/discovery mechanism to help people decide what is worth checking out.

"New games" means any new title that is being released or ported this month in any capacity (not "backlogs/what you are playing this month"). The angle here is sharing your anticipation and promoting game discovery (as opposed to sharing comments about a first playthrough in progress - that belongs elsewhere).

.

• If you want a handy list that covers most of the major upcoming games of the month, here's a couple text lists of upcoming games:
  • Giant Bomb
  • Game Informer

Feel free to post other lists or list videos of upcoming releases that you find useful.

• Final request: If you are the first person to mention a game please provide (at minimum) a short sentence description. (If it is a very big AAA release though, then don't worry about it.) This is a good convention that makes the thread more useful as a discovery mechanism, and especially helps out anyone who doesn't follow the news as closely as you.

Final Fantasy --> Crystal Chronicles

It fits!

A thread for examining the new games of December! Share your personal picks, interesting curios, and not quite there possibles...

.

Did you discover some small game that not everyone knows about?
Share that and let us know what it is about!

Already know a thing or two that interests you?
Make a list (or a swanky desire index) of your interests and/or possibles!

Don't know what's so great about an upcoming game you keep hearing about?
Ask here!

Don't follow gaming news that closely and just want to passively see what BigGames™ people care about?
This is the place!

~

Thread concept:

The basic idea is to list new games that you are interested in, as well as games you are potentially curious about or want to give wider attention to. You can briefly describe them or ask other people to help fill you in. The hope is that regular threads like these can act as a collective filter/discovery mechanism to help people decide what is worth checking out.

"New games" means any new title that is being released or ported this month in any capacity (not "backlogs/what you are playing this month"). The angle here is sharing your anticipation and promoting game discovery (as opposed to sharing comments about a first playthrough in progress - that belongs elsewhere).

.

• If you want a handy list that covers most of the major upcoming games of the month, here's a couple text lists of upcoming games:
  • Giant Bomb
  • Game Informer

Feel free to post other lists or list videos of upcoming releases that you find useful.

• Final request: If you are the first person to mention a game please provide (at minimum) a short sentence description. (If it is a very big AAA release though, then don't worry about it.) This is a good convention that makes the thread more useful as a discovery mechanism, and especially helps out anyone who doesn't follow the news as closely as you.

Cave Story

Maybe this isn't a complete 180, but during the freeware days I did not particularly care for the game. I think I stopped playing after about 15 minutes not being very impressed. It was probably the game's reputation that led to me come back a few weeks later and complete it, and I just thought it was okay but not great. It wasn't until many years later that I would replay it via Cave Story+ and have my feelings turned around. Now I love the game.

I think the difference was one of perception. Those first times I played it, I was mechanically focused since that was the part of the game that seemed most important at the time... Cave Story was being compared to Metroid, and this was a time when "metroidvania" was appearing on many lips and conversations were had about 2D games dying out.

It was only years later in the Cave Story+ playthrough that I got more engaged with the characters and the story. It made the game a million times more fun, and I do find the gameplay good on its own as well now.

Shadowgate (2014)! I played it for the first time in 2017, and it's probably my new favorite adventure game. I was familiar enough with the original Shadowgate on the NES that I could tell they changed a lot of the rooms/puzzles, but I had never played it myself before. The presentation quality (especially the music) was a real treat. I found it challenging and more than once I was completely stuck for days. It'd be one long series of trying one flash of inspiration after another until I cracked it. Those days where I was stuck were my favorite days with Shadowgate.

If a fantasy themed point and click adventure game sounds like it has promise to you, then I highly recommend it.

Lost Vikings is a game I always think is underrated when I see top 20/top 100 lists. I feel it's an easy top 15 contender for best SNES games, and compared to my other favorites I don't even think of my appreciation as particularly out of the ordinary.

Here are the results of the survey after a good 4 days of voting:

total head-to-head wins:
Nintendo/Square/Capcom/Konami: 25
other developers: 5 (those lines are marked with a ">")

total votes:
Nintendo/Square/Capcom/Konami: 139
other developers: 71

The match up results

Soul Blazer               -vs-   The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past          votes:  4-3
Shin Megami Tensei If...  -vs-   Chrono Trigger                                   votes:  2-5
Super R-Type              -vs-   Super Metroid                                    votes:  6-1
Mortal Kombat 2           -vs-   Final Fantasy VI                                 votes:  0-7
Brawl Brothers            -vs-   Super Mario World                                votes:  6-1
> Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals -vs-   Super Street Fighter II Turbo              votes:  5-2
Dragon Quest V            -vs-   Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island              votes:  5-2
> ActRaiser                 -vs-   Super Mario Kart                                 votes:  5-2
> Harvest Moon              -vs-   Star Fox                                         votes:  3-4
Blackthorne               -vs-   Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars       votes:  2-5
NBA Jam                   -vs-   Secret of Mana                                   votes:  5-2
Terranigma                -vs-   Mega Man X                                       votes:  3-4
Shadowrun                 -vs-   EarthBound                                       votes:  5-2
Super Star Wars           -vs-   Final Fantasy IV                                 votes:  0-7
Earthworm Jim 2           -vs-   Tetris Attack                                    votes:  6-1
Gemfire                   -vs-   Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong's Quest        votes:  2-5
The Lost Vikings          -vs-   Super Punch-Out!!                                votes:  4-3
Doom Troopers             -vs-   F-Zero                                           votes:  2-5
Umihara Kawase            -vs-   Super Castlevania IV                             votes:  5-2
> Pocky & Rocky             -vs-   Mario Paint                                      votes:  5-2
Flashback                 -vs-   Contra III: The Alien Wars                       votes:  6-1
Shin Megami Tensei        -vs-   Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time votes:  2-5
EVO: The Search For Eden  -vs-   Donkey Kong Country                              votes:  4-3
Joe & Mac                 -vs-   Mega Man X2                                      votes:  2-5
Tales of Phantasia        -vs-   The Legend of the Mystical Ninja                 votes:  4-3
Skyblazer                 -vs-   Sim City                                         votes:  3-4
Actraiser 2               -vs-   UN Squadron                                      votes:  4-3
Bugs Bunny Rabbit Rampage -vs-   Kirby Super Star                                 votes:  0-7
> Illusion of Gaia          -vs-   Zombies Ate My Neighbors                         votes:  2-5
The 7th Saga              -vs-   Super Ghouls n' Ghosts                           votes:  2-5

Personally, my preferred picks won 22 out of 30 of these matchups. The 0-7 sweeps weren't too surprising. As always in top SNES lists, i feel that The Lost Vikings doesn't get its proper due. But Pocky & Rocky broke through at least!