DieHARD GamePOLL - Console Poll, vol. 3 - 5th Generation RESULTS

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38 - Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver - 194 points / 3 Votes

most of those gameshark/related ads are about what you'd expect from the fin de siècle 13yo-boy-directed marketing of a product whose slogan is "abuse the power", but the condom one doesn't even make sense.

holy shit idk why i didn't look this up before but there are a bunch of high quality scans of pretty much every issue of gamepro just... available for download on the internet. awesome

I definitely binged BLAST CORPS when my brother’s N64 was home for a summer. Such a great and satisfying concept for a game, amazing it’s never been re-done. There were a few hitches in it – one of the vehicles is nigh impossible to reliably control IIRC – but man: “you’ve got to go knock down everything in the path of this runaway truck” is such a great stupid idea.

BUST-A-GROOVE was a one-weekend rental with a buddy when I was staying over at his place, we just rocked it. I’m pretty sure it’s the most basic rhythm game imaginable, you just have to follow the moves at the exact right times, nothing else to it – but the soundtrack was fun enough that I ended up downloading MP3s and burning a CD of it. The hamburger guy’s “very very very very very very good!” song cracked us up at the time.

The other funny thing with the ads is how teeny tiny the screenshots are in so many of them. Like so much space given to some dumb photo shoot, and loud edgy “your parents won’t like THIS” ad copy, and then only the barest hint of what playing the thing would be like.

It’s interesting thinking about the experimental vs. ugly aspects of the period’s aesthetics --- 99% Invisible just did a podcast about Geocities and had people talking about the pink on yellow palettes and all of that, I think there was a willingness to be loud in 90s digital aesthetics which would have been great if the games could only just look a little more polished. Some titles in the next generation pull this off a lot better, like Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi.

most of those gameshark/related ads are about what you'd expect from the fin de siècle 13yo-boy-directed marketing of a product whose slogan is "abuse the power", but the condom one doesn't even make sense.

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, November 12, 2020 4:04 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

what are you talking about?! only a gameshark can prevent STDs (sword-transmitted dismemberment)!

my god if i went back in time and worked for gameshark's marketing department i'd be making hundreds of dollars

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I didn't vote for TOMB RAIDER because I only played it on PC, which I gather is different mainly in terms of the save-point system? The PC one is a really great game; Life and Times of Video Games has a nice 2-part episode about the history and the game-design philosophy, and how the 3D grid, though somewhat clunky, meant you could basically do a fair old-school puzzle game, like Lolo or something - your move set is clear, your options are clear. Some of it has probably aged better than other aspects but I think they really did hit on something in this title, and we have to remember that along with Mario 64 it was basically the first convincing attempt at a 3D platformer and what that might be like.

SOUL REAVER I played the shit out of my freshman year of college. I really liked the exploration/environment aspect of it. Even bad 3D games of this era, like ULTIMA IX, could satisfy me if I got to go wandering around and find a sunken city with a tower rising up out of a grotto into a shadowy canyon, and figure out how to jump and climb up to the top. That kinda thing. I don't remember as many specific encounters/locations/events in Soul Reaver so it ended up not doing quite so hot on my ballot, but it definitely had atmosphere.

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37 - Street Fighter Alpha 3 - 196 points / 4 Votes

best announcer voice in video game history

READY FIGHTERS GO FOR BROKE
STREET FIGHTER ALPHA 3

i have never once played this one in arcade but i definitely spent plenty of time on the ps1 version getting destroyed by my friend who actually owned it

in fact it wasn't until playing SFIII third strike on the PS2 that i actually decided to "main" someone (iirc it was yang and ken)

IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOUR SKILL!

i have never reallllly kept up with the competitive fighting-game scene but am i correct in remembering that this game was kind of not really held up to the same degree as SF2, SF3, SF4 etc.? why was that? was it grossly unbalanced or something? i absolutely remember loving it, maybe more than any other fighter, but that was largely due to the art and animation and the fact that i could beat the computer sometimes

Internet Archive is always a good place for old computer mags
https://archive.org/search.php?query=gamepro

misheard announcer lines: basic strength! hey come on, santa!

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36 - Tekken 3 - 197 points / 4 Votes

TEKKEN 3 was a tough last minute cut from my ballot (especially in favor of stuff like BLAST CORPS which i barely played), but i will always fondly remember my time spent playing that game.

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the combination of a standard issue ripped wrestler man template with the photorealistic head of a surprised jaguar

what is King

i feel like i remember reading the backstory for king and he was just like, a lucha libre dude with a mask, and they made no reference to the fact that it was like literally a jaguar's head that could move

i could be misremembering though!

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35 - Wipeout 3 aka Wip3out - 200 points / 1 First-place vote / 4 Votes

(once again i have opted for the wrong game's ad due to how iconic it was, this ad caused a lot of controversy!!)

apologies if at some point i forget to post for several minutes at a time, i am going down a 90s game mag rabbit hole

I was a high voter for Tekken 3 and SF Alpha, both of which I've been playing a bunch the last few weeks.

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34 - Vib Ribbon - 207 points / 6 Votes

i think this is the first game i ever saw on a chipped PS1. i wonder how much a working chipped ps1 would run me these days!

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33 - Star Control II - 216 points / 1 First-place vote / 3 Votes

TOO LOW

fgti to thread! :)

i am sorry, captain. if i told you more, you would look where you could not look before. and while looking, you can and will be seen. you do not want to be seen. the androsynth went looking, and something saw them.

what a coincidence, captain. i had itchy pods this morning, and now here you are.

i have never reallllly kept up with the competitive fighting-game scene but am i correct in remembering that this game was kind of not really held up to the same degree as SF2, SF3, SF4 etc.? why was that? was it grossly unbalanced or something? i absolutely remember loving it, maybe more than any other fighter, but that was largely due to the art and animation and the fact that i could beat the computer sometimes

IIRC this was correct? One of the newer characters was completely unbeatable in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing but I can't remember who it was (probably Ryu/Ken)

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32 - Resident Evil (incl. Director's Cut) - 218 points / 6 Votes

^voted for this very fucking difficult game

it barely made the end of my list and i have very dim memories of it, but i definitely rented it a couple of times and DEFINITELY didn't beat it for that reason

I never beat it, either. But damn this game is a vibe

too high

never was a fan of the original RE or code veronica

i get that's part of the experience but the fixed camera angles and dodgy aiming really grated

i'm on a straight corridor, i can hear the enemy, i even have enough ammo to kill it but i need to wait until it's actually on screen to shoot it because despite my character being able to see where it is the player can't due to the camera angle of the pre-rendered scenery

i think the furthest i ever actually got in it was the gamecube remake? much stronger memories of my parents going out of town and me inviting several of my nerd friends over to marathon it on my buddy kevin's gamecube all night. i was an extremely cool teen

xp i actually liked these set-camera REs more than i ever liked RE4 and beyond!

wait, is RE supposed to be really difficult? because let me tell you, i suck at playing video games where twitch reflexes or execution skill are important but i beat both re1 and cv and while they weren't easy they didn't feel notably hard either

i didn't mind the camera limitation (especially because it created some really cinematic (for ps1) shots). my problem with it had to do with the very basic and essential mechanic of trying to do headshots. wait until they get within an inch of you, aim high. sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. it was frustrating, but since ammo was so limited, you had to try

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31 - Bushido Blade - 235 points / 5 Votes

for me they were also difficult because i'm terrible at the genre of games where you have to find the mystery key #4 and bring it to the outhouse to get the purple jewel, which lets you rotate the waterwheel in the sewers, opening the

xp

were you playing chris? i played jill because that's easy mode according to the manual, never did chris because i just didn't like the game enough and found it too stressful for the wrong reasons

KM otm re aiming frustration

bushido blade! came in at #40 on my ballot. anyone ever try it with multiplayer? i only played against the AI, and something always seemed a bit off. but i could imagine it being a blast with a friend

xp definitely almost always as jill in RE1 - doesn't she get a free key or knife or something? i forget

my terrible non-secret is that i suck at almost all games. i think it would take me 4 months to beat resident evil 1 without using a guide

that's called value for money

i liked the puzzle and exploration elements, exhumed/powerslave is one of my generation and all time faves

CV was especially annoying because it was a dreamcast game, it used realtime 3d for the levels but still insisted on the fixed camera. infuriating

I can confirm Bushido Blade is fun w/ a friend, the only way I ever played it

most of my bushido blade time was multi at first, until i eventually borrowed one of them (bushido blade 2 iirc, this game was a minor victim of vote-split). i can't remember if it was this one or BB2, but in story mode you had to fight someone with a gun and it was one of the most controller-smashingly cheap battles ever

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29 - Grand Theft Auto - 237 points / 5 Votes

that's called value for money

i still go arcade standards, which is that a quarter gets you maybe 2 minutes with a game. that's $7.50 per hour. so if a $60 game can hold my attention for more than 8 hours, it's already getting into the realm of profitable enjoyment for me