Home Game Poll vol. 2 (c. 1988-1997): Nominate the best 4th Generation (SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis, etc console games ever) - Nom deadline: August 2

and Psycho Pinball!

Genesis:
Beyond Oasis/The Story of Thor
Haunting (Starring Polterguy)
General Chaos

oh man i totally forgot about the haunting! i had so much fun w that game

Dude, I just realized Beyond Oasis is on the PS3 Genesis collection. Looks badass. How have I never played that?

I almost forgot about Haunting too, had to wrack my brain a little to come up with some gems that hadn't already been nominated, wild game though, very interesting mechanics, funny that they thought to add the "Starring Polterguy" to the title, high hopes I guess? In a perfect world Polterguy achieves Sonic-level mascot stardom and the critically acclaimed Haunting series continues to this day

And Beyond Oasis is great! Second best Zelda-ish Genesis title (after Crusader of Centy) for me, really like the "elemental buddies" you get to collect and utilize throughout

Had to throw in General Chaos because the 2P is so good, best I can think of on the Genesis besides Toe Jam & Earl and maybe Zombies Ate My Neighbors

Megadrive:
Sonic The Hedgehog
Flashback
Xenon 2: Megablast

Gameboy:
Tetris

SNES:
Star Fox
Super Bomberman

Neo Geo : Metal Slug!

Snes :
Super Star Wars
Super Puyo Puyo
Cool Spot
Tiny toons adventures
Micro machines
Shadowrun

Mega drive :

Desert strike
Jungle strike
NHL 96

lol i told my brother i was looking for nominations for a poll about snes generation games and he reminded me about the super play 100, best 100 snes games as ranked by a british magazine we used to read as the kids in the 90s. my nominations are almost exclusively on that top 100: http://www.rvgfanatic.com/7464/1450199.html

thats a pretty reasonable list w/ some killer deep cuts. i briefly scanned the list so far and there's lots of obvious stuff missing (most of it on that rvg fanatic list) but id nominate:

SNES:

Aerobiz
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon: Another Story (Angel)
Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool
ClayFighter: Tournament Edition
Final Fantasy V
Fire Emblem: Thracia 776
Harvest Moon
Mario Paint
NHL 96
Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen
Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire
Soul Blazer
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
Yoshi's Safari
Ys III: Wanderers from Ys

Sega:

Dune: The Battle for Arrakis
Langrisser II
Lemmings
Nobunaga's Ambition
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium

not sure if i read super play regularly but nevertheless reading through that list is giving me pangs of nostalgia for that distinctive nerdy '90s gaming writing style

Yeah that's a definite style that existed in various publications. Super play was my brother and i's favourite because of their love for Japanese games and Squaresoft in particular.

the previous resident of my previous apartment had a subscription to game informer that he never had redirected, paged thru a couple of them and it wasn't very much fun! very serious business these newfangled videogames

Playing Chrono Trigger for the first time. Apparently you can drop a giant frog on your enemies? I'm in.

Here's the IGN SNES list fwiw

https://thegamecrisis.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/top-100-snes-games-ign.pdf

Reading each issue front to back... laughing at the silly captions, their infamous sense of humor (hey, where do you think I got the [blah blah -Ed.] stuff from?) [Super Play did it better -Ed.], eating up their blow-out reviews and reveling in their unique presentation top to bottom.

This was a p. common device in late 80s/early 90s UK gaming mags (RIP Your Sinclair) but I guess they got it from Smash Hits who borrowed it from Private Eye and ran with it? Definitely it was a very Smash Hitsy thing even back to the early 80s. This is rather hard to google but I feel sure that if anyone knows it is someone on ILX or in the early-ILX diaspora.

Oh uh games. I was mainly not a console person at this time, although I was v jealous of a friend's Game Gear and did finally get a Megadrive Genesis from a car boot sale many years later and then just played the games on emulators anyway, but this was my gaming era for sure so I'll be watching the results with interest.

EARTHBOUND (Nintendo) 88%
The fact that this is the only game on the SNES to feature a signpost advertising 'DRUGS'

Oh, that reminds me of the list of things Lucasarts had to take out of Maniac Mansion before Nintendo would let them publish it on the NES...
http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/maniac.html

(sorry, really off-topic now and I promise I'm not going to comment on every single entry in the Super Play top 100)

SNES:
Kirby Super Star a.k.a. Kirby's Fun Pack
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
Umihara Kawase

Genesis:
Kid Chameleon

Genesis:

Shinobi
Revenge of Shinobi
Shinobi III
Shadow Dancer
Streets of Rage I/II/III
X-Men
TMNT: Hyperstone Heist
Ghouls N Ghosts
Contra: Hard Corps

SNES:

Super Empire Strikes Back
Super Return of the Jedi
Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures
Legend of the Mystical Ninja
Street Fighter 2
Super Mario All-Stars

These are only ones I didn't spot. Everyone has been picking really good ones. I mean these are classics.

http://www.neo-geo.com/snk/screenshots/2020%20super%20baseball1.gif

Super Baseball 2020 was on SNES, Genesis and Neo Geo, and is still my favorite baseball video game

not negging cos this is a great thread and i am totally gonna vote but there is something odd about doing it this way and excluding Amiga and ST classix, perhaps we need a separate bunch of polls aimed at the computer gens, we totally missed out on Spectrum/BBC/C64 era too - was the computer games scene very Europe based before PCs?

Nah, I played way more C64 in this era than I did any of the consoles. I think there was discussion in the lead-up to the previous poll about including non-console games but it was decided against.

yeah i think i remember why we decided against but i played a lot of Amiga in this era i think and a lot of classic games were never ported

Yeah, there was a lot of discussion about whether to combine PC, console, and arcade... the decision was to separate them but I believe someone has stepped up planning to eventually poll the computer-games stuff, though I can't remember who or how it was going to be divvied up.

Almost everything I would nominate has already made it, which is good! Will think a bit and see if anything's missing. Here's a couple of semi-obscure titles that I'd recommend people give a try to... along with Yoshi's Island, Rock 'n' Roll Racing, Tetris Attack, and Rondo of Blood, already nominated, which are definite top-twenty material for me (Yoshi's Island is top five easily, one of the most enjoyable traditional platformers ever imo).

SNES - Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2)
SNES - Metal Warriors

Metal Warriors is all about the multiplayer; SD3 is a more elaborate SoM with all this crazy stuff going on where the different combinations of characters you choose really affect the story and dialogue, meant to encourage replays. I never finished it once because it just felt too huge but, like Terranigma, it's real candy for 16-bit RPG sensibilities but something a lot of folks probably haven't played.

SNES:

Lufia & the Fortress of Doom
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
Wario's Woods
Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose!

Game Boy:

Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Land
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

is VIRTUAL BOY included in this poll?????

i asked for one of those for xmas, so glad my parents didn't waste their money lol

I still feel guilty about begging for a Genesis, for which I only ever ended up owning three games, including the kinda mediocre X-Men. Lot of Shining Force rentals, though.

(There was probably other stuff I would have enjoyed playing on the Genesis but somehow I never really found it. If only I could have skipped ahead to late-90s Funcoland used prices, the system would have made a lot more sense. And man, today I would kill to have those prices back - retail for 90s titles is just bonkers, even the crap stuff...)

I'm kinda perturbed that my copy of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (along with all of my other physical PS3 games) will be in storage until at least when voting starts and possibly until ballots are due. Bleh.

where does Tetris fit into this poll, since it is largely identical to a game in the third-generation poll?

Just vote for Tetris Attack instead, it rules.

I think there should be some flexibility with stuff like that. There were, for instance, games that were popularized for Genesis or Game Gear that were initially available on the Master System. I never played Tetris before I had a Game Boy so I definitely think of it as 4th gen.

Tetris Attack rules, otm

Very underrated puzzle game

Yeah, Tetris not for Game Boy is insane - it's arguably the Game Boy game.

Actually yeah I agree about Game Boy Tetris - arguably the Game Boy game (except maybe Pokemon?) and arguably the Tetris also. I never had a Game Boy, so my Tetris is Windows 3.x Tetris, but still.

my Tetris is Windows 3.x Tetris

high 5

its strongest feature: being installed in the 'technology' lab at school for play during study hall, or skipped-out-upon pep rallies. basically the only two-player game in that category, too.

Yeah me either :) 8-colour depictions of Russian achievements 4 lyfe.

My Super Mario 1-3 were all snes tbh but don't see a point nomming them

Genesis:
Mutant League Football
Mutant League Hockey

173 nominations and counting... make sure I didn't miss yours!

Also if you see a missing console or a duplicate or misnamed title, let me know.

SNES:
7th Saga
Axelay
Batman Returns
F-Zero
Final Fight
Genghis Khan II
Sim Ant
Uncharted Waters: New Horizons

So tempted to add River City Ransom 2 but for real i have never played
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pN1krUCiXc

Heh, I always wanted to play that too along with Seiken Densetsu 3.
If we're talking long-delayed ROM translations, I'd throw in Gundam Wing: Endless Duel and Front Mission: Gun Hazard, two of the best SFC titles that never made it over.

TurboGrafx 16 stuff (all available in the PSN store!):

Neutopia
New Adventure Island
Bomberman '94
Dungeon Explorer

There are a ton of NeoGeo games in the PSN store, as well. Curious if any of them are worth checking out (most of the games for that system seem pretty distinctly not my thing).

Bomberman '94 for T-16 is my second favorite after the Saturn version

Dang, almost 200 noms in 4 days... did I set the deadline too far?

SNES/Genesis:
Madden NFL '94

Hold a series of radio-button polls to help un-nominate things. (I'm kidding, but I do have a feeling vote-splitting is going to kill some big franchises here, especially Sonic.)

Genesis:
Alien Soldier
Ranger-X

SNES:
Der Langrisser
Fushigi no Dungeon 2: Fūrai no Shiren

Had to check back minutes ago to make sure someone mentioned Road Rash, of course Will knows what's up.

But then what about

Road Rash II (Genesis)

i liked Road Rash II best of the series, definitely get it on there

ah yeah i was a fan of the goof troop game. think i got stuck at some point not very far in though :(

im p sure there were some big-ish titles (street fighter turbo? one of the square rpgs?) missing

good catch on turbo (hyper fighting was mentioned, not turbo). although i'm kind of curious how the vote splitting will work on that one. i only played turbo because i had a SNES, but wasn't it supposed to be slightly better than the sega version? or am i just remembering it that way because that's what i wanted to believe?

I mostly played "plain" SFII on SNES, because that was the one the neighbors had, and it ruled. IIRC some of the later editions had kinda weird-feeling control or just somehow were hard to transition to if you were used to the vanilla version. Was cool to be able to play as the bosses, and the new characters in "Super" were cool just to mix it up but you really don't actually need more than the basics here. I'll vote for Turbo if that's the one in the nominations, but adding more to the mix would be wrong IMHO - too little difference between them for it to do anything besides split the vote.

you didn't borrow, rent, trade, sell, buy-used at all?you didn't borrow, rent, trade, sell, buy-used at all?

Not 4th gen, I don't think. I remember playing a ton of NES at other people's houses but I maybe only knew one guy with an SNES. Played Super ESB for an hour or so. He also had one of the weird CD systems, which is where I first played Another World. Otherwise, yeah...pretty much stuck with the handful of 4th gen games I owned. But I played the shit out of some of them (Super Mario Land 2, Kirby, Sword of Vermilion).

Turbo easily the best out of the SFII ports. Speed was adjustable, more characters and moves, better balance. Super and Alpha 2 were bogged down by the hardware not be able to hack it.

SFII Turbo = Hyper Fighting, I think. Due to the similarity of the titles, I'm going to lump SF2, SF2 CE, and SF2T into one entry, and the other entry will be Super SFII.

I've also added Goof Troop, Road Rash II, and I really want to know what the classic is that we've overlooked, lamp!

I think I'd be inclined to vote for vanilla II.

street fighter i mean

Good call on the lumping-together, it makes sense for this title. Even "Super" I think could basically go in there. I for one am just going to vote vanilla. One of the rare arcade ports that really feels like an essential title for a system.

more snes noms

wild guns
sunset riders
knights of the round
super smash tv

added em. I also added a couple others but I accidentally deleted the list of stuff I added, and sorted, so I forget already. Mostly sequels.

i did love super smash tv
GOOD LUCK
YER GONNA NEED IT

YEEEERRRRRR

i never played wild guns or sunset riders but they were both heavily recommended by a friend of mine, back in the day.

Console Game Poll vol. 2 - Vote for the best 4th Generation Console Games (SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, etc) here! (Ballot Deadline: August 26th)