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

For some reason* I bought the art book for FFIX, even though I didn't have a Playstation.

*because that art was real good iirc

wait... holy shit

is this ad the genesis of the adjective "bigly"

I can't imagine DJTs tiny hands holding an N64 controller, tbh

Star Fox is a good time though, don't know what else to say about it

yeah i will never stop having 45 minutes here or there to play thru the entirety of star fox 64. not challenging, but a joy.

(well, "the entirety"-- one of the several paths thru.)

i like that your final score is also your bill, and if it's a high score then after the credits general pepper says "this is one steep bill! *sigh* but it's worth it." and if it's a really high score general pepper says "WHAAAAAAAAAAAT????" these lil touches ykno.

https://i.imgur.com/ZyTaqfL.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/WC8acxQ.jpg
22 - Gran Turismo - 279 points / 1 First-place vote / 5 Votes

(one more today! sorry for running so late)

https://i.imgur.com/nvaEMko.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/n8k6qfD.jpg
21 - Wave Race 64 - 298 points / 1 First-place vote / 5 Votes

DAY 2 RECAP

21 - Wave Race 64 - 298 points / 1 First-place vote / 5 Votes
22 - Gran Turismo - 279 points / 1 First-place vote / 5 Votes
23 - Star Fox 64 - 268 points / 4 Votes
24 - Final Fantasy IX - 260 points / 1 First-place vote / 6 Votes
25 - Gran Turismo 2 - 260 points / 5 Votes
26 - Perfect Dark - 259 points / 6 Votes
27 - Sega Rally - 256 points / 5 Votes
28 - Crash Bandicoot 2 - 238 points / 5 Votes
29 - Grand Theft Auto - 237 points / 5 Votes
29 - Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo - 237 points / 5 Votes
31 - Bushido Blade - 235 points / 5 Votes
32 - Resident Evil (incl. Director's Cut) - 218 points / 6 Votes
33 - Star Control II - 216 points / 1 First-place vote / 3 Votes
34 - Vib Ribbon - 207 points / 6 Votes
35 - Wipeout 3 aka Wip3out - 200 points / 1 First-place vote / 4 Votes
36 - Tekken 3 - 197 points / 4 Votes
37 - Street Fighter Alpha 3 - 196 points / 4 Votes
38 - Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver - 194 points / 3 Votes
39 - Tomb Raider - 193 points / 5 Votes
40 - Bust a Groove - 189 points / 4 Votes
41 - Blast Corps - 187 points / 5 Votes
42 - Xenogears - 184 points / 3 Votes
43 - Grandia - 182 points / 5 Votes
44 - Ape Escape - 181 points / 4 Votes
44 - Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - 181 points / 4 Votes
46 - Shining Force III - 181 points / 3 Votes
47 - Panzer Dragoon Saga - 180 points / 1 First-place vote / 3 Votes
48 - Chrono Cross - 178 points / 4 Votes
49 - Colin MacRae Rally - 174 points / 4 Votes
50 - Um Jammer Lammy - 171 points / 3 Votes

ON THE DOCKET FOR TOMORROW:
a) Games ranked 20-4
b) a silly obvious fakeout for games 1-3
c) the real 1-3
d) a complete list of everything that got a single point with arbitrary "tiers"

GT1 was my number 1. It is just awesome.

notable vote splits:

Gran Turismo could've been #13 if GT2 voters had instead voted for it (and both-voters swapped so that GT1 was their higher pick)
Crash Bandicoot Series could've been #16 with the same help (this counts 1, 2 and Warped which I think is 3?)
Bushido Blade could've been 23rd
Tekken series could've been 25th
Tomb Raider 33rd
And finally, because it came up here and I don't want to lead anyone on -- Darkstalkers could've been 53rd if votes weren't split between Vampire Saviour and Night Warriors
There are a couple of other ones where vote splitting was notable but I don't think they would've cracked the top 77 either way-- i'll post the full list tomorrow of everything that got votes

note: the "new" numbers includes all of the vote splits i calculated at once, so some of them may have moved up even more if they were te *only* game that got the gameshark code for "not splitting their votes"

hey vote splitters: YA FUCKED UP

WTF re: Night Warriors

loving the rollout, Will!

this is why i kindly ask that we do videogame polls every single month, every year

Homework for everyone on this thread is to track down an emulation of that game because it is by FAR the best 2D fighter ever made

just a lil test for tomorrow bc i cant remember the last time i used code markup

Daytona USA                                     |  107 | 0 |  2 | 
Driver                                          |  106 | 0 |  3 | 
Front Mission 3                                 |  103 | 0 |  2 | 

sick ok

siiiick

i'm the vote-splitting vampire saviour voter, DJP, and it gets worse: i originally had night warriors on the ballot but subbed it out thinking vsav was probably better and one of these is enough representation

I also only voted for Vampire Savior. It's the one that tournament players like.

starfox 64 way too low! it is indeed a near-perfect one-sitting challenge - maybe just a little TOO long for a completely casual session but still just a sweet, satisfying, largely fluid experience. my siblings and i also played the shit out of the multiplayer, which isn't a patch on Mario 64 but made a nice alternative if we wanted something more confrontational and it was too late at night to get loud upstairs by playing multiplayer Duke 3D.

i guess top 25 is pretty good tho. i just love that silly game.

NEVER GIVE UP! TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS!

Wip3out: my #1. Best racing franchise ever, it was a toss up between this and 2097 but the clean graphics and the orbital and chem bros tracks just edged it.
Um Jammer Lammy: I lost my dojo, but it still remains in my mind... It even has a casino. Dojo. Casino. It's all in the mind.
Vib Ribbon: my #6, lol. Maybe not the best for replayability but a unique take on rhytham games and great quirky songs - Laugh and Peace - Vib-Ribbon OST
Bust a Groove: Everything is fine with me if I'm with my E-Z mouse
Tekken 3: surely the best of this generation's Tekkens
Gran Turismo: at the time this looked amazing - the reflections on the car, the way it wobbled and bumped when you went off the track. Easy to judge it as pretty ropey by today's standards but TV from back then looks pretty rubbish too but you'd never have thought that at the time. Loved how you could tune the cars suspension to ridiculous levels and have it bounce all over like it was racing on a trampoline.
Perfect Dark: played a lot of this, single and multiplayer, didn't vote for it as it's a pale shadow of Goldeneye. My main memory is of the single player, wandering around lost in a building being followed by that stupid flying laptop saying "Haven't been round here before!" every two minutes.

Tekken 3: surely the best of this generation's Tekkens

May I present my evidence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9rGtt0gmZg

^ just watched those, it all came flooding back. hard lols at gon, mokujin, kuma/panda :((( and heihachi world.

Now I want a WaveRace remake that looks like the art in that ad

that's a really good idea!

Puzzle Fighter was another one where I can't say for sure how great of a puzzle game it was, but I gave it votes for memories of having a blast playing it --- maybe saw it for the first time at Anime Weekend Atlanta in the late 90s, was spellbound by the colors and the animation of it, all the crystal shards smashing everywhere. Later, two of my best college gal pals had a copy, at a spot that was sort of a dinky duplex but also the first off-campus apartment anyone in my circle got, so a key locus of laid-back hangout times, and Puzzle Fighter slotted in really perfectly to that as well. One of those where I'd love to play it again, but would hate to discover it wasn't as special anymore.

“zoness” in starfox kinda pulled off that endless summer vibe for me (aside from yr wingmen deploring the pollution)

(xp)

i can hear the shock in Falco's voice as he proclaims "This is horrible."

lol, it hits cuz his mask of callousness drops! very vividly done broad character strokes for a shmup.

totally!!

Big catchup post energy!

Resident Evil 3 had some solid embedding of level design in the dread - at one point you see Nemesis inside a room, and you run away, but just as you (I) realise from the map that your path takes you alongside the room you saw him in, he bursts through the wall.

(on Grandia) the quintessential "i want to play this, bring it to europe already sega" game. They did - for the Playstation.

It seems like gaming became more conservative in the ps2/xbox era (I could be wrong about this, because that was the start of my basically 10-15 year hiatus from gaming)

An argument for the next poll, but one of those a lot more than the other imho.

Tomb Raider way too low for me - Doctor Casino OTM about how keeping some formalism in the jump (sorry) to 3D was key. It's impossible to 'get' this a second time, but just running around in 3D and banking when you turned, and the jump AND turn AND take out your pistols AND start firing - man!

but also the entire game is pretty much protagonist torture porn which was pretty offputting

otm, though the sequels improve on this.

DC also OTM about Soul Reaver (also pretty blocky) - I also liked the "This is a sequel to Blood Omen in that it takes place 1500 years later".

It's interesting what difference a story can make to a game - obviously story driven ones like RPGs, but I definitely wouldn't have played through the rest of the Kain series (which were frequently pretty ropey) without some attraction to this massively goth backstory and the hints of it that came through in cutscenes (is lore basically just "story that you don't play"?)

Tekken 3 is a great example of that, they only went 20 years forwards but it was enough for a new generation - literally so in the case of Jin, son of Kazuya and Jun from Tekken 2. I think it's striking that they're up to 7 now and have never felt the need for another large jump - they've gone the other direction, and added his great grandpa, Heihachi's father! Bryan Fury, Eddy Gordo, Hwoarang - and my girl Ling Xiaoyu! And as Ledge posted above, a LOT of lore :)

Wipeout (3, but also the rest) and Bushido Blade are definitely the opposite, I'm pretty certain there's no story in Wip3out and if there is any in Bushido Blade then I don't remember it, but the simple joy of hacking at your friends / dropping a rake of mines in front of them never gets old.

FFIX is the one with the 'throwback' characters and the terrible cardgame, yes?

There's still 10 of my ranked games left, of which I think nearly all of them will place (though one is a non-Square PS RPG, on which the odds are surely lengthening). On the list of unranked ones, I've kind of given up hope for Gex, Fear Effect, and Worms Armageddon.

Woah, was Worms Armageddon in this era? I never feel like I've played enough games to vote in polls like this but that would be my #1.

Bushido Blade definitely made a big impression on me, playing it at a friend's house. Eventually I played the single player and don't think I got very far (maybe because of that stupid gun fight), and also had the sense that there was a lot more depth to the combat than I was getting into. Also loved that you could just run away from fights, unless I'm misremembering?

worms armageddon is an all time top five but i’ve only played it on pc.

ughhh that cardgame in FFIX... yes... never had the slightest idea what I was doing or what was happening IIRC. the straw that broke the chocobo''s back for me was getting stuck at some point, checking a walkthrough, and accidentally discovering whole side areas and subplots that were earlier in the game and now *completely inaccessible* because they'd been blown up in the course of plot events. so i'd have to either start over or commit to a replay of this gigantic game that i already felt a little silly about playing... sigh.

but again: those beautiful environments!

good to know if i ever pick it up, to get a spoiler-free walkthrough...

There absolutely was a story in Bushido Blade:

Despite characters, themes and weapons similar to samurai cinema set in Feudal Japan, Bushido Blade takes place during the modern era (this is shown, for example, when the player reaches a helicopter landing pad phase set in a large city).

A fictional 500-year-old dojo known as Meikyokan lies within this region, and teaches the disciplines of the master Narukagami Shinto. A society of assassins known as Kage ("Shadow") also resides within the dojo. Once led by the honorable swordsman Utsusemi, he lost his position to Hanzaki, another skilled member of the dojo, in a fierce battle. Hanzaki gained respect as the Kage leader, until he discovered a cursed sword known as Yugiri. He began to change, disregarding the group's honor and the traditions held by its students.[6]

One day, a Kage member escapes the confines of the dojo with its secrets. Several other members of the society, under penalty of death, are sent to dispatch the defector, only catching up to him (or her) within the ruins of the surrounding Yin and Yang Labyrinth Castle. In single player mode the players take on the role of the escaped assassin (independent of whatever character they choose), fighting their way out by killing their comrades one by one. Elements of the game story differ with each character selected.

Prepping the last leg! Number 20 soon!

https://i.imgur.com/Xyb4jl1.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/9OKHaiG.jpg
20 - Banjo-Kazooie - 305 points / 6 Votes

too high

lol never played it but speak on that

too many collectibles, too much dialogue, too many locked moves. i was frantic for mario64 methadone at the time (i bought “glover”) and this felt so earthbound in comparison (remember that sm64 gives you its entire move set upfront unless you count the caps), so much stricter about letting you careen thru the environments. prob better than glover tho.

https://i.imgur.com/JA4X0rz.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/u7JAGIy.jpg
19 - Vagrant Story - 313 points / 6 Votes

i'd say "too low" but like... wow 19 is pretty damn good for this weird little game. fond but vague memories of this one. it's linked in my head to the square fighting game with cloud, ehrgeiz -- maybe one came with a demo for the other? and also, ehrgeiz had a mode in te game that was vagrant story but dumb?

No such thing as too many collectibles, Banjo-Kazooie was great (if occasionally let down by segments that relied on accuracy with the shitty N64 'Mushroom')

Ah Vagrant Story though, what a great game (and I must try to properly start FFXII at some point)