Console Game Poll vol. 1 - Vote for the best 3rd Generation Console Games (NES, Sega Master, Atari 7800) here! (Poll Deadline: October 13th)

I have played an actual NES somewhere from zero to two times because I am young but I am currently reading I AM ERROR by Nathan Altice, a multidisciplinary technical and cultural study of the NES, and it's fascinating and this

What strikes me is the NES has a very high level of quality control. Nintendo's draconian publishing policies are what saved the home game industry at least in the US, and that seal of approval has and still means a quality product. Feels like there are less attempts to fool consumers with extra large sprites, etc. more consideration for the system's strengths and shortcomings and how to make a holistic experience.

is the sort of thing touched on in the book.

ballot's in. thank goodness for the hybrid option.

i cannot figure out how to rank these mario bros games

it is impossible

they're boring obvious picks that are sure to place so i'm putting them downballot, but even there, in the least prestigious work-in-progress spreadsheet in the entire universe, they wage epic battle against each other

hybrid option, hybrid option, hybrid option

no, i have decided that bros. 3 should receive 2 more points than bros. 2, and 4 more points than bros. 1

i am sorry, bros. 1. you changed my life and now i can't even throw you a few more points

by the way if marble madness doesn't go top ten there will be hell to pay

I may be misjudging based on the version in the PS3 Midway collection, but Marble Madness is hard as eff to play without a trackball. I remember enjoying the NES-era version, though, so the gameplay mechanics may have been different.

loved it in the arcade but not at home

At a time when game soundtracks tended to be in line with ice cream truck music or weird electro minimalism, OSTs to Mega Man 2 and Ninja Gaiden were some of the fastest music ever widely released imo. Most Japanese 8-bit composers had eclectic tastes (prog rock, Deep Purple, YMO, surf/garage Group Sounds, etc.) but I wonder what the influence of early metal was over there.

otm. The NES Mega Man soundtracks are all on Spotify, and re-listening to Mega Man 2 I was struck by how proggy certain sections were.

NES quality control - I get what this is referring to, but mannnn... they did let some shit hit the streets. Very very few games were just abjectly unplayable but there was an awful lot out there that really looks like a scam given what cartridges cost. Licensed titles especially... just wildly inconsistent. I mean you look at the Back to the Future game, or Ghostbusters, and then you flip back to Batman or Duck Tales and it's hard to believe they're even for the same system.

here's a poll thread for everyone to talk about balitos shit because nobody else cares

i have 4 ballots so far, i'd like to get... more than 4

2 MORE WEEKS, ILX

just didn't play enough games on these machines :/

but still interested to watch, honest

you don't have ot pick 20... if you only played 5 and only liked 3 of them, send in a 3 game ballot

that just feels wrong to me...will maybe throw one in if it's still really quiet with a couple of days to go, but i was holding onto my challops for 4th Gen tbh

I never played much SMS so I loaded up an Emulator and wasn't that impressed honestly. Even games I had heard were good controlled awkwardly and had scrolling issues. Maybe it's my emulator but probably not. Shadow Dancer was kind of a let down cos SMS Shinobi was actually really good and SD the characters were too big and it just wasn't fun to play.

Revisiting my 7800 games though.... hoooo boy.... so many good times. "Desert Falcon" on my ballot for sure. Now I'm wishing I had "Ninja Golf" and "Midnight Mutants" when I was a kid.

i will def vote.

Phantasy Star is the best SMS game. Compare it to, say, Dragon Warrior and it really is remarkable how much better the graphics and story are. I can't imagine how mind-blowing it must've been back in 1988.

surprised to find there was only a year and a half between their japanese release dates

although that is still plenty of time, and the sms still more powerful

anyway i'm annoyed i forgot to nominate dragon crystal, everyone do a write in vote for dragon crystal

I have a handful of NES games I want to try before voting, so my ballot close to the deadline.

let's bump this every day

Yeah, it's the only way I'm ever going to remember to vote.

Deal. I shall attempt to do this.

We got a couple more ballots so it's looking a LITTLE BIT less like a non-starter but seriously we need more ballots. IF YR READING THIS, MAKE ONE

I have a ballot filled out, will send it before the deadline

just sent mine in, thanks!

voted.

i voted

I look forward to voting in later polls - just no familiarity at all here.

Meant to post this yesterday...
http://i.imgur.com/6NXFstc.png

http://i.imgur.com/1yQ5xqD.png

And another for today!

i like the production values!

is that first one from Where's Waldo?

Yes. I love the google image reverse-search feature in Chrome.

And the second is total recall.

voted

do you want blurbs?

I made a .rar file of all the NES games on the list (link). It's temporary and will delete in 7 days.

I guess you click 'slow download' twice to receive file

I'm gonna give Deja Vu a whirl. I always wanted to play through that game

the apple II version is on steam

http://i.imgur.com/Dz8zT1S.png

so ... blurbs?

My phone died as I was answering that question! Blurbs ate nice but my no means necessary. I'll post them but last I checked I had none.

heh, tarot.

oh shit i gotta get on this

you definitely should get on this but jsyk you only have
http://i.imgur.com/ezr8cd0.png

loving the jpegs btw - great images from shitty games

i ripped them all from hg101's weekly kusoge

i can't remember if the last one is actually from an NES game, but it is probably one of the best screenshots ever

it's from dick tracy (nes). note the door.

looking forward to this, will, and i think we all understand about workloads and stuff!

i say this in every poll (and may have already posted about it in one of these threads) but i always prefer a really slow rollout (like 1-2 entries a day) anyway. gives a chance to have a conversation about the games, less sense that you "missed" the whole conversation about something because you were at work. there may be some dud days where no one has much to say about a canonical game but ymmv.

We have well over 100 entries in this poll, so 1-2 a day would take months (and I am probably doing C&P 2015, so I'd prefer not to cross over)

Was reckoning 20-25 a day, but I could down that? Is your opinion popular or does everyone else prefer the faster speed?

i'm gonna have to dust off the ol' emulator for this rollout

can't wait!

i'd prefer slower as well (maybe on the order of 5 or 10/day) but you should do whatever's easiest for you. you're the pollmaster!

yeah i would always always defer to the pollmaster's wishes - it shouldn't become work or a burden (as we were just discussing on 'order and timing.') didn't realize it was going to be a 100-item countdown! must have been a good spread of votes, that's exciting. THAT SAID, i would always go for fewer per day. five i can manage. if i 'miss' a day, going back to join the conversation about 25 things is pretty hopeless, so i'll at best toss in selected ~hot takes~ on ones that jump out to me as important. but again, it's up to you and i may be in a severe minority anyway!

For selfish reasons, I'm fine with a quick rollout (always eager for the distraction of a hectic ILX thread while at work).

moreso than with almost anything else, my sense of accuracy and righteousness as regards my ironclad assessment of the truly great iconic NES games is unshakeable and likely different than yours.
basically if you are not down with kid icarus, shadowgate and adventures of lolo, gtfo

I watched a YouTube video last night on hidden NES gems. Have you actually played any of these? I'm 0 for 10.

Cowboy Kid
Kickle Cubicle
Rescue: The Embassy Mission
The Legend of Ghost Lion
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom
Monster Party
Nightshade
North and South
Wurm: Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Krion Conquest

i played kickle cubicle, princess tomato, monster party and wurm

I played Rescue a little bit, but it was the Atari ST version which was called Hostage. It came in a four-pack of Infogrames games that my dad got when I was a kid. When my parents saw the content of the game (iirc there was sniping involved) they took it away and I didn't get to play it anymore. I was ok with this though because I thought it was scary & I still had Test Drive, Bubble Ghost and Operation Neptune.

Actually, Bubble Ghost gave me the creeps too. And Space Ace. Computer games scared me, apparently.

Test Drive didn't come in that four-pack... now I need to know what that fourth game was.

it was a remake of asteroids, and once i remembered, i typed the four games into google to see if there were any hits, and there was one: me introducing myself to ILG in a 2008 forks thread for ILG to introduce themselves to each other. weird.

Krion Conquest appears to be a clone of Mega Man, except Mega Man is a witch?

North and South is a pretty fun two player game. It's a quick strategy/action mashup.

Nightshade was quite strange but good looking when I watched a friend play it. It's a point and click game with some fighting elements (remember fighting in Indiana Jones And The Fate of Atlantis?). I like how NES games often combined genres. Usually it turned out for the best. I think the fighting was wonky in Nightshade though.

I read about Princess Tomato when I posted the edited Percy tomato picture upthread. It seems like this game might be a bit like Deja Vu which I finished playing a few days ago. (Good game, not top 20 for me though).

Other games I tested out on our nomination list included Strange Home which seems to be quite awesome. It plays like a top-down adventure/rpg in the style of resident evil. I remember watching a video review for that game and having your whole crew survive might be a bit random (unfortunately). Having just played Clock Tower for the SNES a few months ago, I understand what it's like to play through a game and discovering that I could have saved people if I had done one thing slightly different. Either way, I had save states and it wasn't much of a hassle to get alternate endings. Less-than-perfect endings were still enjoyable but I can't help feeling a bit defeated when I don't get a 100% ending.

i'd prefer slower as well (maybe on the order of 5 or 10/day) but you should do whatever's easiest for you. you're the pollmaster!

― 1998 ball boy (Karl Malone), Monday, October 19, 2015 2:02 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this sounds good to me.

Monster Party is pretty cool, not a ballot-maker but a cool overlooked platformer, kinda like Little Nemo or Astyanax in that sense. Higher production value, more concepts than your average title. Also basically all the dialogue rules:

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/103583-monster-party-nes-screenshot-oooookay.png

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/Monster_Party_3.png

http://bogleech.com/monsterparty/mpbig-alreadydead.gif

Shadowgate IMO is kinda cool but basically irritating, far more irrational "puzzles" than the worst of Sierra.

for a kid with no PC until 2001, they were revelatory

oh man, thanks to archive.org my crappy seanbaby knockoff nintendo review page from 2000 is still viewable online, complete with images.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080905143743/http://www.ummagurau.com/writing/video/nesdisc/sg-mirror1.gif
https://web.archive.org/web/20080905143743/http://www.ummagurau.com/writing/video/nesdisc/sg-mirror2.gif
https://web.archive.org/web/20080905143743/http://www.ummagurau.com/writing/video/nesdisc/sg-mirror3.gif

^^^ pretty awesome i admit. this is what happens if you look at a well:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080905143743/http://www.ummagurau.com/writing/video/nesdisc/sg-well.gif

and what the hell, these are great/disturbing too:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080905143743/http://www.ummagurau.com/writing/video/nesdisc/sg-bluedragon.gif

https://web.archive.org/web/20080905143743/http://www.ummagurau.com/writing/video/nesdisc/sg-fountain.gif

https://web.archive.org/web/20080905143743/http://www.ummagurau.com/writing/video/nesdisc/sg-murder.gif

Here's a screen grab I just made from from Deja Vu.

This is what happens if you click -hit- on the unconscious woman you find in the trunk:

http://s11.postimg.org/40n7iyxwj/Deja_Vu2.png

ugggggggggggggggggh

let alone a larynx!

oi

so yeah i would have a preference for 5-10 a day not 20 a day but that's just me

I would rather quicker - the ability of dudes of a certain age (IE me) to wax nostalgic about video games of their youth is not really the guttering flame of free speech on the Internet.

NB I will totally regret this point of view when we get to the PS2.

Alright. I think my plan now is about 15 a day, which isn't slow or really fast either. Starting tomorrow, ending the end of next week (weekend off). Only exceptions will be last day (top 10) and first day (everything below 100). should be something like

We: 1??-101
Th: 100-86
Fr: 85-71
Mo: 70-56
Tu: 55-41
We: 40-26
Th: 25-11
Fr: 10-1

Numbers aren't precise due to some awkwardly placed ties here and there but that's basically my rollout plan, which i am writing down so i have to commit to it.

also i have no idea why i am committed to the BIG SECRET of how many games are in the first day. meh whatever

What are you hiding

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/zelda/images/9/99/Secret_Moblin.png/revision/latest?cb=20090930144719

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgjAt1VZBVo

i'm not generally one for speedruns, but watching the way that person takes the piranha plants like it's nothing... my ten-year-old self would have passed out, and here in the present day my mouth is hanging open.

he also does some weird stutter step backward jumping that looks borderline glitchy

he does a few glitch exploits. kotaku did a short thing on it yesterday, i think (i'd link but it's banned at work), and their article contained a link to the superior twitch.tv version of the video which features his crazy concentration-face as well as a real-time heartrate monitor

lol at the insane heartrate spike in the waterworld and his micdrop at the end

EVERYTHING IS PIXELATED: The top 127 games from the third generation of home video game consoles (Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System, Atari 7800)