SHINAN'S PROFILE

I really, really dislike anime. I haven't seen a single anime series that would have kicked proper buttocks., of coures I haven't seen a whole lot either but whenever I see some it just seems so... Japanese...

But:
1. Miyazaki stuff

(It's like Neil Gaiman said, he doesn't really like anime, it never did anything to him but he does like Miyazaki films.)

Star Tropics was a neat game. I never played it that much though, only watched other people play it and I pretty much sucked at it myself. But the Zelda 2 overworld ripoff was great. The actual dungeon gameplay wasn't nearly as exciting.

Rygar was actually one of those games I have a distinct memory of beating. I'm not entirely sure though. I have this memory of me sitting down and actually playing and playing and playing that game. Many hours. Most of which consisted of kicking the same enemies in order to get extra health. And sitting and playing forever and ever. I can't be 100% sure though since I have no recollection of how it would have ended. The last thing I remember was a huge cave with enemies in the ceiling. And I'm fairly certain I played for a long time after that.

It's a pretty fuzzy memory and DAMN that game was hard.

Beaten RPGs:
Final Fantasy IX, I really beat that game, hard. I think one of the discs ceased to work afterwards but damn, it felt so good. Bad joke sorry...

Finished RPGs:
Baldur's Gate
Arcanum
Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines
Deus Ex

JRPG:
Final Fantasy VI (on emulator, the only emulator RPG I've ever finished)
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIII
Golden Sun
Pokemon Red

Tactical:
Mega Man Battle Network
Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Fallout Tactics

Action (I don't think any of these games are RPGs but they were included in other people's lists):
Faxanadu
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Link's Awakening
Battle of Olympus

Other:
Sword of Hope


Notably Unfinished:
Fallout & Fallout 2
I get way into these great games then I have to leave and when I come back I have no idea where to go and just want to restart. Eventually I'll get to the actual end. Eventually.

Planescape Torment
I was far into this during my "summer of completing games" (I completed Arcanum and Baldur's Gate). But then free time went away and like with the Fallouts if I tried to continue I'd have no idea where to go but would just have to start over.


Notably Unplayed:
Knights of the Old Republic (1 or 2)
I didn't have a machine that could run them when they came out and reading up on reviews on them it didn't seem like the awesomeness I had with stuff like Arcanum. I have no great desire to play these games even though people rave about them. However if they make KOTOR3 to finish off KOTOR2 (which apparently had no ending) I'll buy the cheap boxed set with all three. If I ever feel like wasting time on a game longer than Portal again.

Any Elder Scrolls Game
With Oblivion things got out of hand. Morrowind completely passed me by and everything I read about Oblivion said it was worse than Morrowind in every aspect. I have never played Oblivion but I hate it with all my heart and to me it is an example of everything that is wrong with RPGs today.
Oh and the fact that those fuckers over at Bethesda took the Fallout license and will buttrape it.

Ah the NES, so many good memories. I can still remember the day I got my NES. Or rather the day I got hom from some dreadful place in the country I was forced to be at to return to a new and fresh NES that had been bought. (And subsequently was last played by me in the family). This isn't really an all that good list but I'll try to list what I remember and what I've actually played. I'll probably come up with them as I go along so some numbers might have been better switched.

10 Track & Field in Barcelona
This game still gets taken out from time to time, button-mashing at its finest and a wonderful quickie game. Remember back when you turned on a machine and you were one button press away from starting to play? No? Well that's how it used to be. No loading times, no everlasting splash screens just. Game menu, press start to play.

Barcelona did force you to press the button three times though. Once to skip the intro running sequence, once again to pick the amount of players and difficulty level and then once to choose a discipline. But it still took one hundreth of the time it takes to boot up my DS and start playing Tetris DS on it.


9 Star Wars
Perhaps not an overly wonderful game. The controls are wonky at times, the music lacks one channel so one beat gets eaten up when firing a weapon. But still, the graphics are great and the game has space battles. Though it probably took me five years to get that far. I always died in the same place with some kind of arrow elevator shafts. Star Wars is a really darn difficult game, but it has quite a bit of variety in gameplay and did I say the graphics are great?


8 Snake Rattle 'n Roll
This game is insanely difficult. Or let's say it has an insane learning curve. The first couple of levels are great fun for the whole family and playing two is lovely. Though the fact is. You'll probably won't get past level four. Again the graphics are great and the stages that I played were cute and cuddly.


7 Mega Man (&2 and 3, and I think I tried 4 too and a bit of 5 but then it stopped)
I'll just throw all the sequels into one bit. Mega Man is one of those really great series that people probably don't appreciate as much anymore because it has been milked to death. Well once upon a time it wasn't milked to death, instead it was awesome. Mega Man 2 was the first game ever that I rented and I actually beat all but one of the bosses without knowing that you actually STOLE the boss's weapons! The game got radically simpler after that.

Afterwards no-one really believed me but I know I am right.


6 Blades of Steel
Blades of Steel was the ultimate hockey game on NES. It created some misconceptions about the rules in my child mind. That is the rule that when you fight the loser gets a penalty. Well it turned out it wasn't really so. However this game gave us some pretty awesome matches. I remember renting it when we had our NES connected to a black&white TV. It sometimes made it a bit hard to make out which side was which.

Occasionally this game was even difficult on Hard mode. But never so much that games didn't end 25-10.


5 Nintendo World Cup
Okay, so I like sports games. (this won't be the last on the list) The game that was included on the four-controller pad combo thingie and it was quite a bit of fun even though I only got to try it a couple of times with four players. My best memory is changing the playing field to ice and playing through to the World Cup with Mexico one evening a long time ago. Good times, Good times.


4 Metroid
This game was helladifficult. And big. Every now and then I'd go someplace I'd never been before and despair a bit before dying and returning to the restart point not having any clue where I had been previously. Many years after I got it I finally managed to beat the game, though I'm fairly certain I did something wrong because there's at least one or two bosses I never fought. And some areas I skipped completely. This game is just kinda too big for that and for me. I just like shooting things. Needless to say I never got undressed Samus. EXCEPT of course that my used game had a manual with included codes. One of which had Samus starting without the armour. That was pretty cool.


3 Tecmo Cup Soccer
Football + Level progression. How can it go wrong? My first encounter with the Sports-RPG genre. In fact it probably was my first encounter with levels and skillpoints in a game at all and I was pretty fascinated by it. Playing a game and seeing how players leveled up. And looking at people's stats and oh their supershots. This was a lovely game but also a game that was pretty frustrating because honestly there wasn't much you could do yourself to affect what was happening on screen. Either the goalkeeper made the save or he didn't. And once those wolf catches had all been used the Brazilian ubertwins of buggerysupershotgoodness were unstoppable. UNSTOPPABLE I SAY.

A single player game that took a room of excited ten year olds to beat shouting and cheering.


2 The Legend of Zelda (and Adventures of Link)
Zelda is probably one of those NES hallmark series and although my GBA version looks a bit old and outdated my nostalgic shimmer seems to recall the big and pretty adventures from yore. This game also felt like it had a much too big world and loads of things to explore for a little Link like myself. Walking around killing monsters in a big world never got old. Collecting rupees to get ubershields, keys, potions. Anything. Some of those dungeons were a bit difficult though and again it took coordinated efforts by a group of ten year olds and a strategy guide to finally beat the game in question.

But what a day that was.


1 Super Mario Bros (+2 & 3)
Mario, what can one say? The obvious choice for number 1. The games really are as good as they're rumoured to be. Even now the original Super Mario Bros is a lesson in "pick up and play". I said that Barcelona was actually three button presses away. Well Super Mario Bros is one button press away from the classic tune and the start of the game. In our neighbourhood rumours about this game sometimes took mythic proportions. Someone claimed that finishing the game ten times in a row would make Mario make somersaults when jumping (a bit like in SMB3 when having the star). Well I still remember one day when we sat inside a couple of hours playing through the game over and over and over again to see if this was true.

It wasn't. But damn it was epic. The other SMBs are equally great, SMB2's quirkyness is a great favorite of mine but SMB3 is basically the NES game perfected. The game is huge beyond proportions while still being possible to beat in one sitting. By today's standard SMB might be outdated, but SMB3 isn't. There's a reason they put out graphical updates of that game. It's still a pretty brilliant game.


Honrable mention (a.k.a. I can't believe I forget about that game!):
Street Gangs (You'll know this as River City Ransom)
Moneys to buy stuff from shops and beat up people from the Nintendo World Cup game. This game was right on so many levels. (and you could play two)

Probotector (You'll know this as Contra. I think)
I never got past the second level of this game without the Konami code. With the code I finished the game easily. A great play when playing multiplayer, especially the races to the special weapons.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2
Yeah. Another game we usually played with the Konami code. It was just fun to bash our way through the game and not having to restart early when we died on the level with the Baxter-bug thing (I think his name was Baxter)