really nothing comes close to Earthbound

I mean has anybody even attempted something like it? Maybe Artdink but they didn't really know how to turn it into a playable game and that pissed me off

Edit: I'm probably forgetting someone important like not WILL WRIGHT but somebody who makes more cult classics than him

god i thought that url said baby black cribs which would be a much better title than the current one


also i seem to be the only person who couldn't get into earthbound.  i didn't DISLIKE it by any means i just couldn't get into it!

50 cent - blood on the sand

i honestly have no idea. there are only a handful of games i'd regard as actually good as opposed to just FUN and even then i can't think of any i actually really got into, if you know what i mean. most of the ones i really liked playing were basically silly toys with the occasional moment of inspiration or whatever behind them, like Yoshi's Island which was kind of throwaway kids shit but the crayon-based art and character design and just neat secrets crammed in everywhere made me like it. i want to say earthbound but i only played it a few years ago on an emulator so it doesn't have that special place it might've if i'd gotten it as a 12-year-old for the snes or whatever! it's a really good game but you need to appreciate stuff at a certain age for it to really make an impact i think. um. yeah yoshi's island i guess. there are tons of better/more interesting picks (life of d. duck....) but i played that at the right age and loved all the weird little touches and the sense of going through these little worlds and stuff so yeah.

my new favourite game is dwarf fortress! the total war games are great too though

also i seem to be the only person who couldn't get into earthbound.  i didn't DISLIKE it by any means i just couldn't get into it!

naa, didn't really interest me either

50 cent - blood on the sand

i honestly have no idea. there are only a handful of games i'd regard as actually good as opposed to just FUN and even then i can't think of any i actually really got into, if you know what i mean. most of the ones i really liked playing were basically silly toys with the occasional moment of inspiration or whatever behind them, like Yoshi's Island which was kind of throwaway kids shit but the crayon-based art and character design and just neat secrets crammed in everywhere made me like it. i want to say earthbound but i only played it a few years ago on an emulator so it doesn't have that special place it might've if i'd gotten it as a 12-year-old for the snes or whatever! it's a really good game but you need to appreciate stuff at a certain age for it to really make an impact i think. um. yeah yoshi's island i guess. there are tons of better/more interesting picks (life of d. duck....) but i played that at the right age and loved all the weird little touches and the sense of going through these little worlds and stuff so yeah.

this pretty much says it

is there anything like Artdink games but has more of a plot/tries to involve the player like Earthbound instead of feeling like they just threw all these random elements together/didn't know how to program a complete game and sold an unfinished game as 'arty' shit

and did you play Earthbound on emulator or a real cartridge? I didn't like the feel of it on emulator and even though I had beaten it a few times on console I couldn't get very far on an emulator. The graphics feel too clean for one thing. The music holds up surprisingly well though, it had this sort of CREAKY quality to it which even translates pretty well as an SPC where I thought most of it was the TV speakers warping the sound

I agree that Earthbound probably isn't as amazing as it was though. I don't think it's being a kid that makes or breaks the game though, I think it's more that the whole Giygas alien invasion plot is a red herring imo and if you're waiting for that stuff to develop you're missing the point which is all the stuff inbetween, probably the funniest shit is some conversation with an average person that I can't remember, I also think the MR. SATURNS are overmentioned like it's goofy but they could also fit easily into a Mario game and it feels to me like a desperate attempt to encapsulate the weirdness of Earthbound in a single image.

I really think the CREAKY idea is the best way to describe Earthbound, like after you fight the Starman Jr. and you leave your house in Onett and the sun rises with this weird fanfare and the game can barely even do the palette change to look like daybreak and then all of a sudden you can walk around again like wtf was that all about? That to me is what Earthbound is all about not lol aliens Pokey scratch-and-sniff playing cards. Less about the totally awesome storyline that encapsulated everything cool from childhood, and more the whole faux-epicness about it I think was essential to the game

Edit: I pretty much apply this to everything. Like in Star Wars Chewbacca is a memorable character but I would say a lot of people liked the Cantina scene too? Like just this barrage of minor characters/extras in a movie with mostly aliens I think adds a lot to it. Makes the movie more believable or something or maybe I just like when people throw a lot of little ideas at things

and did you play Earthbound on emulator or a real cartridge? I didn't like the feel of it on emulator and even though I had beaten it a few times on console I couldn't get very far on an emulator. The graphics feel too clean for one thing. The music holds up surprisingly well though, it had this sort of CREAKY quality to it which even translates pretty well as an SPC where I thought most of it was the TV speakers warping the sound

i only ever played it on emulator, i remember seeing a review of it as a kid and having my mind blown by just the stupid Nintendo Power writeup of it but could never find it in shops! also yeah i barely ever really play stuff on emulators. it all seems very unreal for some reason, possibly because it's just a little file on a computer as opposed to a tangible object that you have to push through but also because of all those Cheat Save Load etc options that come with emulators and maybe the fact that you can just download thousands more of the things at a time rather than work on just one that you overpaid for. i sound like some awful reactionary gamer dork now but i do think this affects how willing i am to sit through the hard parts of a game!

also uh favorite videogame is always gonna be kind of a weird thing to pinpoint i think because where stuff like music and movies and books usually have some kind of emotional content or whatever to connect to videogames tend to be more a matter of pure light entertainment. it's like asking someone what their favorite pinball machine is usually! or asking their favorite surfrock song. it's such a throwaway thing that saying something is your FAVORITE seems like putting too much weight on just a light diversion. i almost said fucking METAL GEAR SOLID or something before because while they're dumb games there is at least some level of IDEAS there that automatically puts it above whatever silly shit i actually played through. it's like that thing of the whistling dog, where it's not so much how well it can whistle but the fact that it's whistling at all. the key to this analogy is that game designers are like dumb animals and the most we can expect from them is a crude imitation of human intelligence.

i only ever played it on emulator, i remember seeing a review of it as a kid and having my mind blown by just the stupid Nintendo Power writeup of it but could never find it in shops! also yeah i barely ever really play stuff on emulators. it all seems very unreal for some reason, possibly because it's just a little file on a computer as opposed to a tangible object that you have to push through but also because of all those Cheat Save Load etc options that come with emulators and maybe the fact that you can just download thousands more of the things at a time rather than work on just one that you overpaid for. i sound like some awful reactionary gamer dork now but i do think this affects how willing i am to sit through the hard parts of a game!

also uh favorite videogame is always gonna be kind of a weird thing to pinpoint i think because where stuff like music and movies and books usually have some kind of emotional content or whatever to connect to videogames tend to be more a matter of pure light entertainment. it's like asking someone what their favorite pinball machine is usually! or asking their favorite surfrock song. it's such a throwaway thing that saying something is your FAVORITE seems like putting too much weight on just a light diversion. i almost said fucking METAL GEAR SOLID or something before because while they're dumb games there is at least some level of IDEAS there that automatically puts it above whatever silly shit i actually played through. it's like that thing of the whistling dog, where it's not so much how well it can whistle but the fact that it's whistling at all. the key to this analogy is that game designers are like dumb animals and the most we can expect from them is a crude imitation of human intelligence.

I don't even think it's that, I think it's like if you're not comfortable enough to READ on your computer and enjoy the experience of reading that doesn't make books bad, so same idea only with games. I think a lot moreso that Final Fantasy-type games, in EB you could stay in Twoson for a week and really explore Twoson unlike towns in regular rpgs where even the best ones usually feel like a device or keeps you GOAL ORIENTED like buy all the updated stuff in shops find secret treasure on the second floor of somebody's house. Like if you just talk to everyone once and don't try to find the people you can talk to several times with different lines things like that you're missing out on a part of the game. But I think you have to be reasonably relaxed to enjoy it, in a comfy chair etc. I don't see it as the kind of game you can get involved in just by being ENTHRALLED with the experience.

haha basically the whole trajectory of my life has gone 'wow this show is cool such a spooky house but I wish I knew more what they were talking about with the story' ---> 'the story's ok but it really is kind of dumb TV writers are pretty stupid people I wish I was younger so I still thought spooky houses were scary'

but yeah I don't blame fast-forward feature for ruining the game experience, I think computer monitors are less soothing to look at or something and makes something inoffensive like NESS WALKING something you want to skip through) just like people too 'lazy' to read internet topics reading in itself shouldn't be some chore I like ACCIDENTALLY read stuff when it's on a package of food etc. Like wtf I just read the ingredients

Edit: I didn't think of all this stuff in the context of playing vidyagames. More things like the reading part, like sure blogs are kind of fkkdf sometimes but still it had to be about the size of a very small magazine article and a magazine article about virtually anything can hold my attention at the right place and time, why isn't in my room relaxed on computer drinking hot chocolate the right time? Also with making music I'm not drugs guy but I've thought about just about every other minor detail that might alter your mindset in some subtle way. Like with a laptop you really could explore possibilities like make your cave music for game in the basement of your house, go to the beach to make ocean/ship music/etc. Not saying you would but it's entirely feasible and whether it would produce different results interests me

I would almost say that my favorite video game would be FF7. It came out right around the time I started working, so I bought it and a playstation with pretty much my entire first paycheck. I couldn't even afford a memory card, so I ended up leaving it paused on the tv in my room when I went to school/work/or when I was doing stuff around the house.  Counting two power outages, I probably played the first disc up to the fight with Jenova during the boat trip two and a half times before I got through, then I made it all the way to Nibelheim and made the mistake of opening the safe with a somewhat under leveled party. Ouch. I resigned myself to just playing the demos that came with the system until my next check when I could afford a memory card. I have a lot of fond memories of playing the game, like figuring out how to survive beta early so I could add it to my enemy skill collection. The music was perfect, and really delivered in the mood department. FF7 was the game that got me into rpgs.

Looking back, I'd could claim Morrowind as my all time favorite, based on the sheer number of hours my characters spent adventuring back and forth across Vvardenfell, but the end game started to drag a bit and seemed to streamline most characters into the typical warrior/mage/thief hybrid. It felt like you had so many choices, or at least the illusion of having so many choices, all along that it was almost like a bait and switch when the end game cropped up. It felt like the balance was obliterated. Either you had to sneak exceptionally well, or be able to drop three Ordinators at a time. One thing that was really impressive to me was that the game allowed you to break it from within. Soul trapping a Golden Saint and enchanting an object with a constant dispel effect sucked the challenge out like a hoover on amphetamines. I remember picking a fight with Vivec just to see if he would pose a challenge to my properly dispelled warrior-thief-mage. No such luck. The game, when properly abused, conveyed such a sense of being over powered that it was ridiculous. Water walking enchantment, hey, lets jog to Vivec. Levitation enchantment, okay, lets do a flyover of the whole island. I guess it did a really great job of letting the player feel godlike, but somehow it didn't stay as fun as it could have. Maybe it was my fault that the game became less and less fun. I got tired of levitation puzzles or annoying terrain issues, so I worked at magic until I could afford my levitation enchantments. I hate hearing my characters drown in games, so I held out for water breath or water walking enchantments. I got tired of cheap enemies (Ascended Sleepers) killing me with one spell, so I toughed it out for my dispel necklace. I really like that the game offered me near total freedom, but in the end it felt like I was just looking for ways to circumvent what I saw as design flaws rather then really enjoying the experience.

KOTOR was the first "standard" rpg that I literally chain played. As soon as I finished one character, if I had free time from work/school/relationship, I'd start another run through to see what I might have missed the last time. Unlike Morrowind, it didn't have any really annoying parts to it towards the end. The pacing was really solid all the way through, and the characters were (mostly) really well done. I always felt like I was playing the game, instead of fighting against the game.

Having said all that, my true favorite video game would have to be Deus Ex. I've played it so many times over the years that I have lost count, though at one point I discovered my savegame folder had ballooned up to around five gig, if that is any indication. The atmosphere, the music, the gameplay, everything about that game was perfect. I think it is the gold standard that video games should be held up against and I hope the new one lives up to its progenitor, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Symphony of the Night deserves an honorable mention, it is another game that I've come back to several times over the years and I always have a blast with it.

gimme some pokémon right now

also uh favorite videogame is always gonna be kind of a weird thing to pinpoint i think because where stuff like music and movies and books usually have some kind of emotional content or whatever to connect to videogames tend to be more a matter of pure light entertainment. it's like asking someone what their favorite pinball machine is usually! or asking their favorite surfrock song. it's such a throwaway thing that saying something is your FAVORITE seems like putting too much weight on just a light diversion. i almost said fucking METAL GEAR SOLID or something before because while they're dumb games there is at least some level of IDEAS there that automatically puts it above whatever silly shit i actually played through. it's like that thing of the whistling dog, where it's not so much how well it can whistle but the fact that it's whistling at all. the key to this analogy is that game designers are like dumb animals and the most we can expect from them is a crude imitation of human intelligence.

some people have favourite pinball machines to which they have big emotional connections. i'm gonna build a pinball machine that occasionally reviews its taste in high brow literature and punk music and then displays a smug looking face in LEDs up where the score should be.

  if you want to Pull An Eric and complain about elitist poseurs getting above their station and pretending they don't like final fantasy games then you do what you wanna do but really i don't think it's unfair to say that yeah most games are closer to being gaudy toys then they are to any kind of worthwhile creative enterprise. i still make and play them for fun so it's not like i'm scoffing from my distant pedestal here but really i don't think it's out of line to say that when people are praising things like deadly premonition or metal gear solid or whatever because they rip off something other than michael bay or some anime garbage and maybe have some basic level of imagination that should be taken for granted anyway then it doesnt say a whole lot for the industry as a whole.

nah, it's because you said like it's impossible that i take personal offence. stinks of the rhetoric that making a circuit or programming a computer is not a legitimate form of expression. i don't know what deadly premonition is and the games industry as a whole is not really my favourite thing, but there have been games that have made me feel things. this one sticks out in my mind a lot. it really made me rethink a lot of what happened over the last year after i played it for a bit, and i felt like it cast some light on what was going on in my life. i don't care if you don't like this specific game, but the idea that interactive things in general are inherently subordinate to the way the good old boys do their creatives is highly offensive to me. heheh those geeks and their machines. we should send them back to the ROBOT FACTORY to lick stamps with the other electronics.

i mean i was like eleven when a friend's mother told me what there was no point in programming computers because programming was a dull job that required no thought and all the programmers would soon be automated away. you touched my sore spot.

that wasn't my point though. the reason i dislike most videogames is exactly because yeah there is a new and interesting medium here but rather than do anything interesting with that so much time and effort is spent on derivative space marine garbage. i think you need to keep in mind the difference between what games have the potential to be and what the vast majority of them actually are!

i don't think "the vast majority" really comes into play when you're talking about favourites and tbh

i almost said fucking METAL GEAR SOLID or something before because while they're dumb games there is at least some level of IDEAS there that automatically puts it above whatever silly shit i actually played through. it's like that thing of the whistling dog, where it's not so much how well it can whistle but the fact that it's whistling at all. the key to this analogy is that game designers are like dumb animals and the most we can expect from them is a crude imitation of human intelligence.

sounds a lot like a statement of upper bound on the capacity of the computermonkey to manipulate procedures compared to the clever and evolved writer's skill with words. i dislike inane spacemarine bullshit as much as you do, but acting like it is a perpetual state of affairs feels kind of ignorant of the idea that anybody is making interesting or emotionally involving video games in any way other than writing clever words and then forcing them into a bland procedural framework.

that was kind of a joke! my standards for commercial games have pretty much dropped to the point where "not completely dumb" is all it takes to interest me and this is not a healthy state of affairs, i think. it's like the stuff which you'd require as the bare minimum of effort and intelligence in other stuff suddenly seems almost miraculous when it pops up in videogames, like when anything that is not actually straight-up ripped off directly from an action movie or another videogame is seen as surprising and new when we should be able to take this absolutely for granted. i am mostly talking about commercial stuff here and indie shit is much better about this but even then this isn't saying much at all.

that was kind of a joke! my standards for commercial games have pretty much dropped to the point where "not completely dumb" is all it takes to interest me and this is not a healthy state of affairs, i think. it's like the stuff which you'd require as the bare minimum of effort and intelligence in other stuff suddenly seems almost miraculous when it pops up in videogames, like when anything that is not actually straight-up ripped off directly from an action movie or another videogame is seen as surprising and new when we should be able to take this absolutely for granted. i am mostly talking about commercial stuff here and indie shit is much better about this but even then this isn't saying much at all.

i guess so. commercial games aren't really what first comes to mind for me since I haven't bought one in more than a year now. indie stuff definitely has a long way it can go, but i see a huge amount of potential.  suppose i'm just excessively touchy at anything that sounds like the advancement of video-games-for-the-sake-of-video-games is impossible.