Half-Life and its mods defined my high school years. I have core memories of TFC 2fort with Eminem’s “Stan” playing in the background. Of finding a server, adding it to my Favorites, and eventually becoming part of the community.
Valve’s eventual inclusion of voice chat elevated the social aspect to another level.
Coincidentally I just started playing Earthbound (Maternalbound Redux ROM hack) this month. I’m just past the monkey cave. It’s charming, simple, fun. It’s great for my dad brain as right now I’m doing a lot of parenting and my brain isn’t able to handle something more complex.
I have Earthbound on my new Retro DMG but haven’t played it yet. Thanks for referencing the ROM hack, I’ll play that one instead as it seems like a vanilla + experience
Can we take a moment to appreciate how Metroid II really did the groundwork for what Super Metroid perfected? I don’t think SM would have flown to the heights it has had Metroid II not taken the risks it did.
Edit: this wasn’t intended as a reply to a comment and should have been it’s own comment!
Metroid II is my all-time favorite game in the series. It introduces her ship, introduces her iconic look, and is the last game in the series to not include the “break this with this item” blocks. I just love everything about that game.
Metroid 2 turned its technical limitations into claustrophobic feeling. It has aged surprisingly well if you disregard the visuals. I started my Metroids with Prime, but og M2 is the oldest I have actually played through. NEStroid has many outdated features that makes the gaming impractical like starting with 30 health, slow healing, save system, difficulty curve etc. Playing M2 felt closer to Super than NES. The spider ball was also neat. I even liked the experimental soundtrack even though that’s an unpopular opinion.
It really was a masterwork in that regard. I really see a lot of the creative genius of that era revolving around working around hardware limitations. Metroid II really did make me rethink what the Game Boy was really capable of back then. How it managed to play so well when the Castlevania games struggled to resemble their NES counterparts really told a pretty telling story in its own right.
I love Sky and most people there genuinely are so nice. And now on Steam I can finally play it with a decent framerate (the Switch was a big step up from my phone already but that still struggled sometimes)
I haven’t played it yet, but it was on my wishlist for a while, so when I saw it on sale a few days ago, I snapped it up and immediately installed it. I’m really excited to play it as soon as I have some free hours.
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. I loved Abzu, and Journey went on my wishlist because so many people had said how similar they were. I’d have probably played it already if I wasn’t ill - I can barely hear anything right now, and that’s not the best time to play a game where the music is a big part of the experience!
Yeah Abzu was great as well, but something about Journey just resonates with you. I can’t explicitly remember the music, but it would probably be better if you just waited a bit longer until you can hear again!
Tetris Effect and TETR.IO are unironically the best versions of Tetris out right now.
Tetris Effect not only has amazing visuals, it brought a brand new mechanic (Zone) into the formula that made multiplayer matches suspenseful and exciting to watch again.
TETR.IO is not an officially licensed Tetris game, so legally it’s just a block-stacking game. Still, it currently boasts the best multiplayer system out right now, with a consistently high player count to boot.
What a funky new font you got there, pretty hard to read the title. It's like the letters are shuffling around like SIBYL or PLOY or US BIO something.
Anyway, that game doesn't exist. I would know, I played all the arcade games they had in the area when I was a kid. It was pretty fun and harmless until they took it away. Never seen one. The game didn't even start yet.
Tetris Worlds on PC was one of my favorites — A surreal, story-based Tetris with interesting twists on the gameplay, and the first Guideline Tetris game, setting in stone what “official” Tetris would look and act like even now. (Some love that, some hate it, I’m nowhere near a high enough level player to care either way and just like a cool looking Tetris game.)
I don’t remember when I played it first, but it always fascinated me. Just recently I’ve set up Lemuroid on my phone to play the SNES Tetris version from Tetris & Dr. Mario. It’s my favorite version of the game. Sometimes I watch the championships that are broadcasted by Classic Tetris. I find it fascinating that a game this old still has a fanbase this big. Love Tetris.
I’m a big fan of their The Walking Dead games. For a long time I thought the final season would never be finished, but I think it was like a couple years later and it was bought out and finished, and miraculously it was actually good too.
I 100% amazing mirror several times on GBA. Loved that device and many games it had. I want a modern pocket emulator GB device but can’t justify it since I already have a Steam deck. Or a phone. I guess nostalgia doesn’t hold enough monetary value to me to profit off of.
I also have a steam deck, don’t like to play without buttons, so phone is a no go and the steam deck screen is too big for such pixelated games, so I got myself a RG35XX for 50€ from AliExpress and am super happy with it. It plays anything up to the PS1.
Same same. I really really want buttons, but I’ve been playing on touch screen emulators since the… I forget what it was even called, iTouch is a crime, so it was ipod touch? Idk, the first through maybe 3rd gen of those. 2012 hardware. I actually love the bigger screen and some graphic enhancements that the emulators/mods can do. But my steam deck is still a big thing to carry. Unless I know that’s the only thing I’m using when I’m out, I feel like I need a backpack to carry it and other stuff. I’ll have to dive into the rabbit hole of Chinese pocket emulators, I’ve only kept up with the us/euro Kickstarter type ones. Something pocket sized with buttons is really all I want. But again, do I need to consume that when I already have multiple options?
I never had one that could do anything other than wifi and USB. I bought broken ones for <$40 and would put together “fresh” rebuilds with emulators to “donate”. Thinking about it I miss the hax0r more than their use. Replaying Pokémon emerald for hours during off time was just a benefit.
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