The 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Sid Meier's Civilization IV - PC - 2005

Picking up a classic here. Civilization IV was the ultimate version of the series for me personally. I played this so much that it became hard for me to play the sequels, so I don't know if later iterations have improved things beyond the presentation.

The things from this version that stood out to me:

• Diplomacy mechanics were more visible, and religion was added as essentially a viral force that affected relationships in diplomacy and civ happiness and almost nothing else. (The attempt to not make any value statements about any particular religion was in itself a value statement about religion in general).
• Strategic resources (e.g. Oil) were revealed in later eras (after civilizations were mostly already set up.) resulting in shaking up the world's stability

I think lots of the ways Civilization games represent human history that are a bit silly in how abstract they are, but it is interesting to think about them as reflections of the time in which they were made.

Would have been my Number One overall pick, had I participated. I still play this game almost daily.

 

[Turgenev]

Kingdom Rush. Android.



Tower defence game. I'll come back and write something more later.

More:

One of the most innovative games, it changed ... no that's not right.

... I was feeling real vulnerable ... no not that either.

...There's an interesting story behind this game. I woke up and set the toaster to 3 ... no.

This game has a small wingspan and must suck at basketball... nope wrong thread.

There isn't much to this game but I still played it for more hours than what I needed to and was excited by its sequels.

 

[Warhawk]

I haven't ever played the Civ games, but I've been tempted to try them out once or twice. Maybe there's no time like the present...

Same here.

 

[Sluggah]

Title: Team Fortress 2
Format: PC
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Valve

The game closest to my heart, TF2 is a multiplayer first-person shooter and the sequel to a mod of an already picked game (Quake) which was later packaged with another already picked game (Half-Life)…hence some of my pre-draft hand-wringing about the rules.

Building on the team-based gameplay of the original (capture the flag, control point), they added new game modes, an amazing aesthetic, humor, and injected tons of personality into the 9 player classes.

18 years after release, it continues to receive official Valve server support, and I’d still be on them if I wasn’t already sitting at a desk staring at a computer all day.

Pre-twitch and the legitimacy of esports, and for my own nostalgia, here’s some dudes casting a league match where my team rolled another a million years ago:

 

[SLAB]

Pick 7: Diablo III Eternal Collection (PS4)

Yaaaaaa, I’m going with the black sheep of the Diablo franchise. Was its original launch abysmal? Yes. Did it ditch the dark grimy look for a brighter more polished look? Also yes.

But you know what? Once the game got past its rough start (Sup real money Auction House), it flourished, and still has a healthy enough community going to this day there are still active new seasons. It may not be the best Diablo, but I sank so many hours into these characters. I definitely played it way more than I did 4.

The Eternal Collection adds on more story, more bosses, more loot, and more playable characters! A game I can still go back to for my dungeon crawling. I couldn’t imagine being stuck on a desert island without the dopamine rush of a new dropped legendary or set piece! Still pops me today!

ALSO; it’s the only Diablo I’ve ever put in the time and effort to beat in Hardcore mode. That counts for something!

 

[Warhawk]

Unreal Tournament 2004
Developer: Epic Games / Digital Extremes / Psyonix
Year: 2004
Platform: PC

I couldn't let this one fall any farther.

UT2004 is the multiplayer game I played the heck out of (solo). Nobody cares about the thin story. This game is all about constant multiplayer action. While playing a multiplayer game solo sounds weird, its only because this game includes so many game modes (that you can play with pretty good bot enemies!) and a crapton of maps. It NEVER gets old. Especially for those of us that wanted to play deathmatch-type games but really couldn't due to internet connectivity "issues".

UT2004 looked absolutely beautiful for the time, generally eschewing the dark and grimy Quake-type atmosphere (not that there is anything wrong with it!) for a brighter, more vibrant color palette that made it distinctive. The Unreal engine used for gameplay was quick and flexible with large and varied environments, including gravity modification.

All the weapons had distinct alt fire modes that really changed up the way you viewed each one. The flak cannon could also launch flak grenades. The rocket launcher could build up and launch multiple rockets flying in formation. The shock rifle could shoot an instant plasma beam, or a slower plasma ball that does damage (and, if you were good, you could launch the plasma ball and then shoot it with the plasma beam for a massive explosion). Lather, rinse, repeat.

The game also included vehicles for a couple of game modes, including both flying and ground-based vehicles to use in your attacks. Some required a driver and gunner, some were manned by a single player. Zipping across terrain with these was LOADS of fun.

But the main attraction here is the 100+ maps and all the gameplay types! You could play Assault, Onslaught, Bombing Run, Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Invasion, Double Domination, Last Man Standing, and Mutant. The game just never gets old because the variations of gameplay combined with all the map options are just outstanding.

The game received outstanding reviews all the way around for fast gameplay, great visuals, and challenging environments.

Epic also kept providing the goods, including the free Mega Bonus Pack download for the game, which included new maps, etc., previously only contained in the Editor's Choice Edition.



















@Löwenherz - back to you!

 

[Löwenherz]

The last Metroid is in captivity.
The galaxy is at peace …

Super Metroid (SNES) - 1994



I feel so very fortunate adding this to my roster here in the seventh round. Not only was I ready to take it in the fourth round had Hollow Knight not been available (still a round or two late in my opinion), but for several decades, Super Metroid was something of my gaming unicorn.

Despite it being among the most groundbreaking, famous, and popular titles on the Super Nintendo, I could never seem to track it down and play it for myself.

In the spring of 1994, this was Nintendo’s new “Killer App,” potential system seller, and I suppose Game of the Year candidate if that was even a thing back then. The buzz in the gaming community was palpable as giant displays of Samus battling Ridley stood at the doorways of toy stores and game rentals, while magazines and word of mouth thrilled at just how monumentally awesome this game was proving to be.

And I petulantly rejected the hype. I had played the original NES Metroid and its GameBoy sequel and found them clunky and frustrating. How could the third one with a fresh coat of paint on better hardware be that much better?

Super Metroid went on to define and inform an entire genre, its game design mechanics are still studied and utilized by AAA studios and indie creators alike, and it is still played by professional speedrunner streamers and competitively at gaming tournaments often as the main event.

Even the map is used as the template for games of the genre more than 30 years later.



As I saw Dead Space and Alien: Isolation taken in the picks just before this, I couldn’t help but wonder about Super Metroid’s influence on those games as well. Nintendo is of course the family friendly company, but the Metroid series, inspired by Alien with Samus as Ripley (that’s why Samus’ purple pterodactyl nemesis is named Ridley for Ridley Scott) has always been the outlier. A tense, atmospheric space action, borderline horror adventure with an anti-social badass bounty hunter protagonist that opens with a corridor of corpses and ends with a battle against an H.R Giger influenced monstrosity.




I had “retired” from gaming for more than a decade, before coming back to the hobby in the early 2010s when I was a bachelor, living alone, with a 4/12s work schedule on the ambulance that gave me a ton of free time.

One of the first retro titles I tried to track down was Super Metroid, being convinced that having it as a gaming blind spot was the equivalent of a film fan having not seen Casablanca. And I soon discovered it was difficult to track down in retro stores because seemingly people simply didn’t resell it often on the secondary market. If they owned it, they kept it.

I even purchased a cartridge only to discover it had been corrupted, making Samus spawn in a ceiling and immediately cycle through her death animation rendering it unplayable. I returned it in exasperation, and went home empty handed - it being the only Super Metroid cart the store had. See what I mean? Unicorn.

Context is key. By the time I sat down with Super Metroid properly, nearly 2 decades had passed, I rejected it outright as an overhyped fad at release, ignored it completed, and then been constantly thwarted when I finally did decide to give it a try. I could only describe my attitude as “this better be good.”

And was it ever. Samus moves like a dream, with an embarrassment of weapons and techniques in her arsenal, some even secret that you can go through the entire game never even knowing existed. The areas, enemies, and bosses are brilliantly designed and memorable. There’s even a semi-fake mini-boss just to set-up a perfectly executed and earned jump scare a minute later. You thought dogs jumping through windows of a corridor you just ran through was scary? Try Crocomire’s skeleton breaking down a wall to long at you after you watched it boil to death in a pool of lava acid.

What other action game has you explore the opening area, including the first game in the series’ final stage and climatic battle, devoid of enemies in almost complete silence just to build tension?

There’s a reason gamers still shout out “Deer Force” during the end credits. It’s the utmost sign of respect.

Thank you Samus for finally including me on the mission.

 

[whitechocolate]

Fight'N Rage - PS4, 2017

Fight'N Rage is a modern beat 'em up masterpiece. The music is very good and the graphics are incredible. The gameplay uses the fundamentals of the genre to perfection, while turning the combat up to ten. Character move sets and the way different commands can be combined together create a lot of possibilities for the player, and the game challenges the player to be creative and constantly adapt. Enemy and stage design are both interesting and serve the combat well. The game has many difficulty settings, which require a very high skill level near the top, that bring out the potential of its gameplay and rewards mastery. The beat em 'up genre has been around for almost forty years and has produced some all time classics. Sebastián Garcia, the sole developer of Fight'N Rage, is a true guru of the genre and made something as good as any of them.

 

[Padrino]

With the 81st pick in the 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft, I select:

Mass Effect (2007)

Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Game Director: Casey Hudson
Musical Score: Jack Wall, Sam Hulick, Richard Jacques, & David Kates
Genre(s): Action RPG; Third-Person Shooter
Platform: PC

@hrdboild got to Alien: Isolation before I could, and bravo to him for the selection. It stings that I missed out on it, but I've decided to keep my next pick in the science fiction milieu for the sake of variety on my island.

"In the year 2148, explorers on Mars discovered the remains of an ancient spacefaring civilization. In the decades that followed, these mysterious artifacts revealed startling new technologies, enabling travel to the furthest stars. The basis for this incredible technology was a force that controlled the very fabric of space and time. They called it the greatest discovery in human history. The civilzations of the galaxy call it... Mass Effect."

I actually caught up with this series in 2021, when EA packaged Mass Effect with its two sequels in a remastered "Legendary Edition". But draft rules prohibit the selection of bundled games, so while my experience with the Mass Effect games was one long, uninterrupted adventure, I am only drafting the first game in the series, originally released in 2007, and I'm approaching it from a "late to the party" perspective.

Mass Effect is a wonderfully rich sci-fi series, though it is also one that is very heavily influenced. There are elements of big space operas like Star Wars and Dune, landmark sci-fi television series like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, and Farscape, as well as artier science fiction fare like Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact, and Solaris. It pulls at threads from all of these sources to create a detailed, nuanced, and at least somewhat grounded version of the Milky Way galaxy in a future where mankind has not only made contact with alien life, but survived a war with the very alien species with whom they must now cooperate as a new threat emerges.

Fundamentally, Mass Effect is an action RPG and a third-person shooter. You control Commander Shepard and a crew of squadmates as you attempt to discover the truth of the threat posed by the rogue Spectre agent Saren. It's a thrilling story full of fantastic, three-dimensional characters, though the execution of its gameplay is admittedly quite clunky by 2025 standards. In general, there is a lot about BioWare's approach to game design that is rather dated, at this point. The consequentiality of choice in their games was always overstated; it usually amounts to little more than "character X dies as a result of choice A" / "character Y dies as a result of choice B". And the moral compass that dictates how the player shapes their character's choices is boringly binary, for the most part. That said, there are some real virtues in BioWare's signature brand of storytelling.

Much like Geralt in The Witcher 3, my take on Commander Shepard is one of "pragmatic heroism", in that they largely make righteous decisions, but are occasionally driven to morally dubious ground when quick thinking is required or "the greater good" is at stake. To play either character as some sort of strictly evil-coded edgelord just seems... counterintuitive to me, like it's a lever that exists within these games for the express purpose of not being pulled. In any replay, I imagine I would make almost all of the exact same choices, because those are the choices that feel most right to me in the context of the story being told. And I think that's the genius of BioWare's game design; even if you never pull the other lever as a player, the fact that it exists at all gives definition to your understanding of Commander Shepard. You have to be given the option to do evil in order to reject it.

I will steer myself away from commenting on the series' direct sequels. That said, I am well aware of the controversy surrounding the manner in which this series concluded itself. And truth be told... I just don't care. I'm rarely able to summon the energy for outrage over the creative decisions of another. Even had I been timely in my playing of this series, I can't imagine I would have cared. Most consumers of popular culture place far more emphasis on the way something ends than on the road to arrive at that ending, and I'm just not wired that way. All things must end, and they do not always end in a satisfying or conclusive manner. This is something that I am perfectly content to accept, and if other players feel differently, so be it. But I find the Mass Effect series to be an incredibly worthy entry in the larger sci-fi canon, in spite of its flaws and in spite of the unfortunate decline of the studio that developed it.

"We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure..."

 

[Sluggah]

There are still so many beloved high-profile franchises on the board…surprised something like Mass Effect lasted till 81.

 

[Löwenherz]

View attachment 13891

Title: Team Fortress 2
Format: PC
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Valve

The game closest to my heart, TF2 is a multiplayer first-person shooter and the sequel to a mod of an already picked game (Quake) which was later packaged with another already picked game (Half-Life)…hence some of my pre-draft hand-wringing about the rules.

Building on the team-based gameplay of the original (capture the flag, control point), they added new game modes, an amazing aesthetic, humor, and injected tons of personality into the 9 player classes.

18 years after release, it continues to receive official Valve server support, and I’d still be on them if I wasn’t already sitting at a desk staring at a computer all day.

Pre-twitch and the legitimacy of esports, and for my own nostalgia, here’s some dudes casting a league match where my team rolled another a million years ago:

Man that Orange Box sure was legendary.

 

[Löwenherz]

There are still so many beloved high-profile franchises on the board…surprised something like Mass Effect lasted till 81.

Picks started getting “weird” around the 4th round as people moved into picks with a more personal connection, which is fantastic. These things are so much more interesting when people dive into their history with an art and how it shaped them.

 

[hrdboild]

With the 81st pick in the 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft, I select:

Mass Effect (2007)

Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Game Director: Casey Hudson
Musical Score: Jack Wall, Sam Hulick, Richard Jacques, & David Kates
Genre(s): Action RPG; Third-Person Shooter
Platform: PC

@hrdboild got to Alien: Isolation before I could, and bravo to him for the selection. It stings that I missed out on it, but I've decided to keep my next pick in the science fiction milieu for the sake of variety on my island.



I actually caught up with this series in 2021, when EA packaged Mass Effect with its two sequels in a remastered "Legendary Edition". But draft rules prohibit the selection of bundled games, so while my experience with the Mass Effect games was one long, uninterrupted adventure, I am only drafting the first game in the series, originally released in 2007, and I'm approaching it from a "late to the party" perspective.

Mass Effect is a wonderfully rich sci-fi series, though it is also one that is very heavily influenced. There are elements of big space operas like Star Wars and Dune, landmark sci-fi television series like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, and Farscape, as well as artier science fiction fare like Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact, and Solaris. It pulls at threads from all of these sources to create a detailed, nuanced, and at least somewhat grounded version of the Milky Way galaxy in a future where mankind has not only made contact with alien life, but survived a war with the very alien species with whom they must now cooperate as a new threat emerges.

Fundamentally, Mass Effect is an action RPG and a third-person shooter. You control Commander Shepard and a crew of squadmates as you attempt to discover the truth of the threat posed by the rogue Spectre agent Saren. It's a thrilling story full of fantastic, three-dimensional characters, though the execution of its gameplay is admittedly quite clunky by 2025 standards. In general, there is a lot about BioWare's approach to game design that is rather dated, at this point. The consequentiality of choice in their games was always overstated; it usually amounts to little more than "character X dies as a result of choice A" / "character Y dies as a result of choice B". And the moral compass that dictates how the player shapes their character's choices is boringly binary, for the most part. That said, there are some real virtues in BioWare's signature brand of storytelling.

Much like Geralt in The Witcher 3, my take on Commander Shepard is one of "pragmatic heroism", in that they largely make righteous decisions, but are occasionally driven to morally dubious ground when quick thinking is required or "the greater good" is at stake. To play either character as some sort of strictly evil-coded edgelord just seems... counterintuitive to me, like it's a lever that exists within these games for the express purpose of not being pulled. In any replay, I imagine I would make almost all of the exact same choices, because those are the choices that feel most right to me in the context of the story being told. And I think that's the genius of BioWare's game design; even if you never pull the other lever as a player, the fact that it exists at all gives definition to your understanding of Commander Shepard. You have to be given the option to do evil in order to reject it.

I will steer myself away from commenting on the series' direct sequels. That said, I am well aware of the controversy surrounding the manner in which this series concluded itself. And truth be told... I just don't care. I'm rarely able to summon the energy for outrage over the creative decisions of another. Even had I been timely in my playing of this series, I can't imagine I would have cared. Most consumers of popular culture place far more emphasis on the way something ends than on the road to arrive at that ending, and I'm just not wired that way. All things must end, and they do not always end in a satisfying or conclusive manner. This is something that I am perfectly content to accept, and if other players feel differently, so be it. But I find the Mass Effect series to be an incredibly worthy entry in the larger sci-fi canon, in spite of its flaws and in spite of the unfortunate decline of the studio that developed it.

This series is right at the top of my list of games I still want to play. It's been on my radar for awhile, I just haven't found the time. I'm also unsure if I would be better off playing them on PC or PS4 -- is there a lot of shooting involved? I eventually got decent at the 3rd person combat sections in Uncharted and it would probably be more comfortable to play this from a couch instead of a desk chair but I wouldn't want to inadvertently make things harder on myself. I suppose if I can find a cheap used copy for PS4 I could try it both ways.

 

[hrdboild]

World of Warcraft - PC - 2004- ...
View attachment 13875
When WoW it came out it was a huge moment in gaming history, (...a moment that has lasted years) The open world of Azeroth was not only loved by hardcore gamers, but was accessible enough to be some people's first exposure to PC gaming. (And to gaming addiction.) It's so popular, that I hardly feel like I need to describe what's amazing about this game.

It's very surprising to me that WoW made it this far in the draft. I didn't want to pick this game, as I don't love this type of game today. But then, I still have things I want to do in life.

If I didn't, the world of Azeroth offered an easy sense of accomplishment, socialization, and a bit of narrative here and there. For the Desert Island scenario, I feel good about drafting this one

I played a little bit of WoW up to and including Cataclysm. I never got all that interested in doing the group content though and mostly spent my time exploring the environments, fishing, and capturing pet birds. My favorite moment from this game was taking my Tauren hunter all the way to the Night Elves homeland in vanilla WoW so that I could capture a pet owl. A lot of dying and spirit-walking was involved since Horde characters aren't supposed to be in Alliance starting areas. That little side-quest had nothing to do with any of the game's missions and the pet owl wasn't even that useful in combat, but I got to cosplay as a giant bull-man falconer and naturalist in a fantasy land for a number of hours so it was kindof worth it.

I sunk more hours into a different MMO with a major license IP but decided not to draft either of those games because I don't ultimately feel all that great about the experience, looking back on it. The class storylines were fun and I made a few friends there but then it devolved into searching for items on the auction houses, grinding for levels since my characters kept getting pushed backward by endless expansions, and it all just got a lot more real-life than I ever intended it to be.

 

[Spike]

World of Warcraft - PC - 2004- ...
View attachment 13875
When WoW it came out it was a huge moment in gaming history, (...a moment that has lasted years) The open world of Azeroth was not only loved by hardcore gamers, but was accessible enough to be some people's first exposure to PC gaming. (And to gaming addiction.) It's so popular, that I hardly feel like I need to describe what's amazing about this game.

It's very surprising to me that WoW made it this far in the draft. I didn't want to pick this game, as I don't love this type of game today. But then, I still have things I want to do in life.

If I didn't, the world of Azeroth offered an easy sense of accomplishment, socialization, and a bit of narrative here and there. For the Desert Island scenario, I feel good about drafting this one

Dang it. I had a good story about this game. It involved getting [redacted because this is a family board] at my friend's apartment at K State during my 21st birthday and then going off to find a party on my own because everyone was playing WoW, so I found some people walking with a case of beer and they asked if I wanted to join the party. I did, and ended up getting [redacted because this is a family board.]
So, it was going to be a nostalgia pick for all the wrong (right?) reasons.

 

[Spike]

I'll finish up the writeup later, but here's the pick:

Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition (1993)




Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Producer: Yoshiki Okamoto
Lead Designer: Akira Nicrapani
Programmers: Akira Nicrapani, Akira Yasuda
Composer: Yoko Shimomura
Platform(s): Sega Genesis

So, I'm going with the Genesis version, because you can play as the bosses as well, which I guess you can technically do on the arcade as well. I enjoyed spending my youth learning all the special moves for all the characters and beating the game in story mode over and over and over until my thumb blisters had blisters.

A local brewery got the arcade game, and my young child learned that Dad will never let you win - you have to earn it. Still undefeated, 18 years later.

I still get goosebumps thinking about playing.

 

[Sluggah]

I'll finish up the writeup later, but here's the pick:

Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition (1993)

A version of Street Fighter II was going to be my next pick. The differences in some of these editions are pretty minor, IMO, so I can’t in good conscience argue that my version is a separate game. So this stings.

 

[Tetsujin]

Well, at this point in the draft, I’ll take the value picks wherever I can get them (having another pick coming right up thanks to the snake also helps) and so I’m going to double down on Nintendo Switch Zelda games and pick…


The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo Switch/Switch 2)


I’ve already written about this game’s predecessor with my first pick and weird detractors will say that this game is just Breath of the WIld with DLC content but to me Breath of the Wild had to walk so this game could soar (literally).

Tears of the Kingdom is a massive game, far bigger than any game for the at-the-point-of-release aging Nintendo Switch has any right to be. Going to try to keep this write-up spoiler free but when I realized just how big Nintendo had decided to make this game, I actually had to hit pause and take a break. I actually took time off of work and cleared my schedule to make a solid five day block of time for me to beat this game after its release and it still wasn’t enough time to beat the game (whatever that actually means in this day and age).

The new powers and abilities Link has in this game really strain the original Switch’s hardware but as someone who has played around with it on Switch 2, they run marvelously on the new next gen hardware while still being as wildly limitless as they were when this game first came out a few years back. When I say you can make anything in this game, I mean almost anything, ranging from the monstrously epic to the downright weird.

The main critique of Breath of the Wild tended to be centered on the lack of a ‘traditional’ linear story and while that still is sorta the case here, the story of Tears of the Kingdom is simultaneously the most epic and emotional story Nintendo has probably ever put together in its long history. A story that made me cry ugly grown man tears at points with an endgame so wildly cinematic that I don’t imagine the poor bastards in charge of the forthcoming Zelda movie who have to come up with something on that level.

You can do almost anything in this game and there are so many collectibles, that you can spend hundreds of hours lost in whatever without even breaching the actual story but I’d recommend that you do. You won’t regret it.

(Still writing but gonna move the draft along)

 

[Capt. Factorial]

So it looked like it was going to take until the last pick of the seventh round to break the seal on arcade games, but - unless I'm mistaken - Spike appears to have done so two pick before me (hard to be certain as that writeup is not complete). Well, that's not going to stop my pick, which is going to take us all the way back to the golden days of the arcade and the granddaddy of them all...

Pac-Man (1980) - Arcade version

I think we all know how this game goes - clear each level by helping Pac-Man eat all the dots before the ghosts (Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde) eat Pac-Man. You get the benefit of four power pellets that briefly reverse the action upon consumption, allowing Pac-Man to temporarily eat and kill the ghosts (don’t worry, they come back). Every level has a bonus fruit item that comes across the screen. No plot line, no side quests, you just play for the high score. It's simple, but you just can't downplay how much of a force it was both at the arcade and in pop culture.

I wasted a decent number of quarters on this game when I was young - now on my island, every play will be free.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

With my 8th pick I am also going the arcade route…sort of. I was going to go with the arcade version of this game until I coincidentally came across this modern update as a free-to-play PC option through my Netflix account only a few days ago. Now, the controls on a keyboard are clunky, and since it’s available for consoles, I’ll go that route even though I haven’t actually played on a console…yet.

Centipede: Recharged (2021) - PS5

The look of this game is really fun, as it has a minimalist feel but takes (modest) advantage of modern technical console abilities. And of course, it’s formatted for a 16x9 screen instead of the original arcade aspect ratio, which I’m going to guess was 3x4 (definitely taller than wide). But if you want to play the “classic” version, it’s basically the same spirit of game as the original. The “recharged” version has a solid handful of power-ups that you can earn by killing spiders that put a new twist on the old game. (Note that the video above lists the game play as “classic” and then “recharged” but these labels are switched - also note that there are both “recharged” and “classic recharged” options, and I haven’t been able to tell the difference between those two.)

In addition, there is also a set of 30 challenge levels that put a new twist on what is otherwise a pretty basic arcade game.

Obviously, my experience is in the older games, but this “new” one fits right up my alley.

 

[Tetsujin]

And I am back up and with my next pick, I’m choosing

Jak 3 (PlayStation 2)


For people only familiar with Naughty Dog through their ‘realistic’ adult games, the studio actually first came to prominence making goofy platformers for the PlayStation (depending on how this draft goes, I may or may not go into the Crash Bandicoot series and the frustrating controls of the remaster editions).

The Jak and Daxter series marks the transition of the studio in a very visceral way, with the first game being a classic goofy fun platformer made to showcase the then-new Playstation 2 and the second game being a very difficult game where the duo are sent forward in time, tortured, and trapped in a grim city full of guns and hovercars and stuff. In all honesty, I never beat the second game because it was almost too grim and dark for me at the time and also extremely difficult (I haven’t played the game in like 20 years so I may be misremembering things lol).

Jak 3 however sorta splits the difference, giving us a game that both has guns and hovercrafts while also giving us a bunch of fun platforming stuff. Meant to close out the trilogy, the story gets big in a way the second game was afraid to but shows a depth that the first game could only dream of.

I haven’t played this game in well over fifteen years but the nostalgic part of my brain remembers this game being a hell of a lot of fun even if I don’t really remember specifically why or what it is in particular that I loved so much about this game in particular when I fell of part 2.

There was a time where Naughty Dog and Insomniac took turns just sorta took turns making different versions of the same game (first with Crash and Spyro then with Jak and Daxter and Rachet and Clank) and with both studios essentially becoming Sony’s biggest blockbuster builders in the modern era, it’s funny going back and seeing them making a relatively straight forward game about talking animals.

Once again, I haven’t touched this game in fifteen years so it might actually really suck but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Pac-Man (1980) - Arcade version

My bio dad was a self-proclaimed Pac-Man master in his heyday. I don't know about the veracity of that claim, but I did see him get 45 minutes off a single quarter once.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

My bio dad was a self-proclaimed Pac-Man master in his heyday. I don't know about the veracity of that claim, but I did see him get 45 minutes off a single quarter once.

I never came close to that!

 

[Spike]

NBA 2K (1999)



Yes, I had a Dreamcast. Still do. More to say later.