The 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft

[hrdboild]

R13.P1 (#145 Overall)
ASSASSIN's CREED IV: BLACK FLAG
​

Format: PS4
Year of Release: 2013
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Genre: Stealth / Open-World
Why I picked it: Pirates!

Yo ho! Yo ho, a pirate's life for me!

This may be the sixth installment in the very popular free-running / stealthy-stabby Assassin's Creed series but I will only ever refer to it by it's proper title : "THE pirate game". If this is the sixth installment, you may ask, then why is there a 4 in the title? Good question! Ubisoft played fast and loose with their math, giving some releases numbers and others only subtitles or in this case... why not both? To their credit, they seem to have realized their mistake because they just dropped the numbers entirely for every AC game since. The good news is you don't really need to know anything about Assassin's Creed to enjoy what they've cooked up here. Yes there is a plot connecting the main story missions together but it's all pretty silly and the less said about the modern-day framing device the better, if you ask me. Come for the pirates and I guarantee you will have a great time.



Gameplay in AC4: Black Flag is divided between on-land portions of the game where the direct lineage to Assassin's Creed games of the past is more apparent and naval exploration portions of the game where you have free reign to sail your ship, the Jackdaw, throughout a map of the Caribbean and engage in naval combat with other ships you encounter. Stealth missions will see you tailing particular characters and eavesdropping on their conversations, infiltrating enemy compounds to assassinate targets, and in one particularly memorable "naval stealth" sequence, navigating the Jackdaw through a misty marsh at twilight before disembarking and continuing the mission on foot. It's the closest we'll probably ever get to a playable version of the original "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride at Disneyland and it is completely awesome!

When it's time to mix it up in naval combat the level of control you have over the whole encounter is seriously impressive. After you've maneuvered your ship into position to unleash a full broadside, you'll need to brace for incoming cannon fire until you've weakened your opponent's ship enough to begin a boarding operation-- The main attraction! Out come the grappling hooks and your crew of ne'er do wells spill over the side to engage in hand to hand with or without you. Leap into the fray and you've got twin swords and twin pistols with which to finish the job. Or for a more hands-off approach, you have the option to fire the deck guns to take out the opposing crew or snipe at them from the rafters. This could be a whole game onto itself and the best part about the way these naval sequences are handled is that there's no break in the action -- you can run across the rooftops in Havana down to the docks and right onto your ship, set sail for a new destination, fight a sea battle or two on the way, and then disembark to trade in your hard won loot for some upgrades and a tankard of grog all without an immersion breaking load screen.



Assassin's Creed has always been a game series that relishes in verticality and while no single city in this game is all that massive (certainly nothing compares to the likes of Paris and London depicted in the other PS4 games in the series) some of my favorite moments in AC4: Black Flag involve scaling a stone fortress while dangling precariously above the rocky shore or climbing to the top of the rigging while the jackdaw is docked in a cove before leaping off, spread eagle, to swim my way to shore. The Uncharted games do similar sorts of things but the fluidity of movement here is tangibly superior. And speaking of fortresses, not all naval combat is ship to ship. You can also sack forts and claim them as part of your pirate empire. Pretty much anything you can dream up for your own personal pirate adventure story can be accomplished here.

Down below, at deck level, the views from behind the wheel of your ship as you sail around the Caribbean are frequently breathtaking. Call out for full sail and the camera pulls back to a chase view while your crew of loveable scalawags break out into a full-throated sea shanty. Every time this happened I was delighted -- it's got to be my favorite little atmospheric detail in a game full of them. Make the journey at night, sailing under a glistening moon with a sky full of stars to greet you and one of these silly little tunes might even bring a tear to your eye. Not mine though, I'm the cap'n dammit! That's just a man whisker caught in there, get back to your post!



I fought with the idea of whether I should include this game or not. After falling head over heels (cue Assassin's Creed swan dive...) for this "life as a pirate" simulator back in 2020, when time felt like it stretched on forever and wandering through 18th century Nassau and Havana was exactly how I wanted to spend it, I ultimately got bogged down in the endless side missions as the siren's call of the open-world quest for completion cast a shadow over those sunny early months of exploration. To this day I've only gotten about 2/3 through the main storyline but I do have a rocking pirate outfit, the fiercest ship on the seas, and a chateau filled with trinkets and gold doubloons to show for my efforts. I'm less enthusiastic now about indulging in the blend of history and acrobatic swashbuckling action that the other titles in the series promise --as addictive as the power fantasy of sword fighting combat and parkour can be, it can also get same-y after a few dozen hours. But I'm happy to return to this tale of Edward Kenway and the crew of the Jackdaw periodically, to walk the colorful streets of Havana and to scale my ship's mast and look out at that magnificent ocean to dream the dream of unlimited freedom that is in the heart of every pirate.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

Crusader Kings II - PC - 2012​

First grand strategy game of the draft! This is a similar genre to a "4X" game like the Civilization series, but the approach is somewhat more of a simulation than a game, the goals are open-ended and the world is more of a sandbox.

Crusader Kings 2 places you as the head of a Feudal dynasty in Middle Ages Eurasia+Northern Africa. You can take on the role of any feudal landlord on that map.


A feature of feudalism is that the King doesn't have direct control over all the territory in his demesne, so your ability to muster the forces of your realm is dependent on your relationships with the various vassals within. Underneath the map, is a vast social network between your relatives, neighbors, knights and lords. Each character has their own traits and ambitions, and various actions you take in the world will affect their attitudes to each other (i.e. Raid their territory and they'll come to despise you.) But beyond actions, these characters have a random personality which affects who they get along with, based on a set of virtues like kindness, courageousness, and sins like wrathfulness and sloth.

The first and primary objective you are given, is to perpetuate the family dynasty; this game plays out over centuries, and so, unlike Civilization, the leader you start out with shouldn't be the one you end with. So priority one is to marry, (which is such a common task, that the interface requires only 2 button clicks to initiate a proposal.) If you play your cards right, that will succeed, and you hopefully produce an heir. If not, the line of succession will depend on the laws of the realm, (which you can change over time.) The only fail state of the game is a broken line of succession.

Ok you have an heir, and your initial leader passes... so now you have a new leader, with a random new personality, which affects what actions in the game you're likely to accomplish. A succession means that different goals are feasible, and you may need to change your playstyle accordingly.

...Or your heir has a lot of brothers, and immediately on succession, they all declare war on each other, because they all have some claims to some lands

... or you have an heir that's just a complete mess, club-footed, slow-minded, and a lunatic, who has a younger brother that would make a great King... which makes it very tempting to send the older brother out on dangerous missions (to bolster his legitimacy of course!)

Which are just examples of the situations and decisions the game puts you in. In simulating Feudalism, it highlights the absurdity of the system. Despite not having much in the way of explicit jokes, the game is actually pretty funny! There is a DLC for an alternate history where the Aztec empire colonizes Europe from the west... take that!

 

[macadocious]

When I was young, I always had the most recent video game system. We were not wealthy, far from it actually. I also never demanded or really remember requesting these items. My mom just got them for us. We had an Atari when I was little, then we got the first Nintendo shortly after it came out, then a handful of years later my mom surprised my brother and I with a TurbGrafx 16 for Christmas in 1989. The colors! The quality of the images, it was like nothing I had ever even imagined. I had no idea that games could look so good. We doubled our bits people, went from 8 to 16. I had no idea what that mean then, but I knew it was better. Unfortunately, the system didn't have the greatest game selections, but there was one that I got obsessed with. Shocking, another platform style game.

Bonk's Adventure

Format: PTurboGrafx16
Year of Release: 1989
Developer: Red Company
Genre: Platform
Why I picked it: OBVIOUS REASONS!


This little large headed Neanderthal would run to the right trying to save a princes and do jumping spin attacks to kill dinosaurs with his head. Thats it, thats the whole game.

 

[hrdboild]

For my next pick, another with the theme of economics and industrialization, but this time in SPACE!

X4: Foundations -- 2018 -- PC

I'm struggling with how to describe this game. Egosoft, the developers, also seem to have trouble doing so. Their YouTube page has several tries at a "What is X4?" explainer video. I'll give it a shot here.

Visually it's a spaceship shooter, inspired by Star Wars, with various ships and fighter craft flying around, pew-pewing each other with abandon. But The spaceship combat isn't really the point of the game, despite all the assets and artwork that visualize it.

The game world is a set of ~150 space systems interconnected by a set of portals. Each of the systems has a cool skybox, some interesting asteroids and/or gas clouds, and maybe some unique ambient theme music. There is an in-game map, but it starts out completely blank, so exploration is part of the game initially. Visiting all of the universe's systems would take hours, but there is a finite quantity, these are hand-designed, so eventually the player can discover everything. And while it's kind of neat to discover new art, the game isn't really an art gallery.
In (nearly all of) the systems there are stations that you can dock with and walk around on. There are traders on board that you can sell space junk to, and some rudimentary crafting stations. At some stations there are consoles to upgrade your vessels with tricked-out equipment. You can take missions with NPCs; some of which are scripted stories that affect the broader universe and deliver a narrative, and those missions will take you across the X universe. But the production value on these quests is very shoestring. The voice direction is... minimalistic. These scripted missions constitute the cinematic aspect of this game, and the presentation is so half-assed that it's clear this isn't the focus of the game.

The stations produce and consume goods, refining raw ore and gas collected from asteroids and clouds, into refined materials, which are transported by freighters from one station to another. The traffic generated by the freighters transiting goods from one place to another make up the majority of NPCs you make up. The buy and sell prices of the various commodities will dynamically change depending on the current supply at the station, if a station's export warehouse is full, then the station will lower the cost to incentivize external freighters to buy from them. If a station is in short supply of a necessary component of the good it manufactures, it will raise its buy price to attract traders on that end. And *this* is absolutely the heart of the game.
---
Everything in the game depends on the dynamic economy, and if it breaks down, then the AI freighters and the player will compete with each other to fill shortages and fix it. If you have your eyes on a fancy new gun for your ship, and the local economy is scarce of a component of that gun, then you are simply S.O.L. until you or the AI figures out what's wrong with the supply chain and fixes it. Maybe you need a shipment of exotic resources from across the galaxy, maybe it means patrolling a trade corridor from pirates and hostile factions. Perhaps you need to build your own factory to fill the manufacturing demands of a local system.

To make this work, the entire X universe is continuously being simulated. This has profound consequences. If you take an action like interdicting trade yourself, the consequences can chaotically spiral out to affect the entire X Universe; rampaging evil aliens could wipe out a faction and turn them into grey goo because you decided to pirate a freighter of silicon wafers for your own purposes. There are some game systems that try to stabilize the world, but they can be broken. And it's impossible to predict exactly how the universe will develop over time.
Imagine doing the game design for this, trying to tweak the rules of the game so that the player has a good time hanging out in your fundamentally chaotic game world. Anyway, here are some screenshots of space ships.

This looks fantastic! Thanks for going back and updating with the description and pictures. I'm planning to check this one out whenever it eventually goes on sale.

 

[Sluggah]

Title: Ghost of Tsushima
Format: PS4
Year of Release: 2020
Developer: Sucker Punch

The second half of my 1-2 Sucker Punch. A visually stunning, always compelling, samurai adventure. No notes. Sequel coming soon!

 

[SLAB]

Time for me to get a cabinet on my island!

Simpson’s Arcade Game (Arcade Cabinet)

And I’m going with my childhood favorite quarter eater from whenever I ended up in an arcade. Without fail, I’d scope this game out to play. Or to watch. Just enjoy being around it when I was there!

I love this game. It’s so nostalgic for me. Unfortunately I won’t be able to enjoy the multiplayer stranded on the island, but that doesn’t take away from it that much. Old school beat-em-ups just hit right sometimes, and this is my favorite of them all!

 

[Warhawk]

Dungeon Siege
Developer: Gas Powered Games
Year: 2002
Platform: PC

This third-person camera view, high fantasy dungeon crawler-type game is immensely fun for a few reasons:

• It's much simpler than most dungeon crawlers. No picking character classes, etc. - whatever weapons or attacks you use in the game is what your character becomes more skillful doing.
• Killing enemies automatically levels up your character's stats, etc.
• You do get to select weapons, armor, etc., like other games of this kind.
• No levels to worry about - it's one big seamless world to play in.

Ok, you say, so it's just a Diablo-lite kinda thing. Well, yes, but not really. The really cool part of the game is that you control a party of up to 8, not just one player. Part of the joy is in tactics - which skills do you develop in your party? What formation do you have them in? Yes, you get to set player formations for your party and have assigned levels of aggression. Do you want to automatically attack everything? Hold ground and defend? You can do whatever you want, changing it on the fly, and establish formations to do it in. It's a completely different approach to the genre (especially at the time), and it is LOTS of fun - like playing the game from a tactical viewpoint and not from the more granular, dig-into-every-stat approach.

This different gameplay style was widely lauded for bringing a fresh perspective to the genre. The graphics were fantastic for the time and still hold up pretty well given the age of the game. Give it a shot. It's a lot of fun.

It was the first game by GPG - made up of a bunch of folks who made

Spoiler

Total Annihilation

but left to form their own company.

Dungeon Siege on Steam

Dungeon Siege® combines the immersive elements of a role-playing game with over-the-top intensity and non-stop action. Dungeon Siege plunges you into a continuous 3D fantasy world where you face off against an army of evil that has been unleashed.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Löwenherz]

There is always a lighthouse
There is always a man
There is always a city

Bioshock: Infinite (PS3) - 2013



I don’t expect many likes for this one. In fact, I think I’m about to become this game’s apologist. Perhaps ironically given the premise of the central narrative, time has not been kind to the project that followed a legend in the original Bioshock, enraged both the fanbase and the internet, and ultimately submarined Irrational Games.

That all being said, there was a time this was hailed as a Game of the Year candidate; praised for its engrossing story, evocative characters, spectacular world-building, and swashbuckling gameplay; and celebrated as both a welcome departure and return to form for the franchise after the disappointment of the direct sequel to Bioshock.

So what happened? Were gamers and critics in 2013 just overtaken by Ken Levine hype and needed a few years to come to their senses? I’ll try to explore that in a bit, but first, let’s dive into my personal connection to this title and how it utterly sneaked up on me.

As I’ve mentioned, I generally hate first person shooters. Possibly due to my epilepsy, FPSs often make me feel disoriented and dizzy. So when my ambulance partner at the time, for seemingly no reason, insisted I try Infinite, even loaning me his copy (remember the glory days of physical media?) I was skeptical, dismissive, annoyed even. I didn’t like FPSs, I’d heard of the original Bioshock, but had never played it, and I really wasn’t interested in any game from the dominate dudebro genre. But whatever, what’s a few hours to prove this guy wrong?

That meant I came in blind, with no preconceptions or expectations, and fully unprepared to discover Columbia.





Hallelujah

This would come to be pejoratively known as “Racist Disneyland” and that’s not wrong. While Bioshock was a thought experiment on the consequences of Ayn Rand’s philosophies in Atlas Shrugged brought to their most horrifying extremes, Infinite is a thought experiment on the philosophies of American Exceptionalism and White Christian Nationalism brought to their most horrifying extremes.

The difference is Bioshock begins with Rapture having already collapsed into chaos, while Infinite begins with Columbia at the height of its power, illustrating just how seductive such world views can be and why people may be drawn to them.

It certainly hooked me. I explored every boulevard and back alley in the opening “walking simulator” section of Columbia despite it having no actual gameplay to speak of. It echoed my experience discovering the Kingdom of Zeal in Chrono Trigger nearly two decades prior, as I explored the city in the sky, mesmerized by the sounds and aesthetics and wishing to spend as much time as possible among the people of the clouds.

Right up until a crowd of bigots cheered for me to throw a baseball at a bound and gagged interracial couple in a plot point taken straight from The Lottery.

Then it was time to bust some heads.



And guess what, I found the gameplay to be great. I’m clearly no FPS expert, but I could shoot the goons trying to kill me, and it didn’t make me dizzy, which is a total win in my book. In fact, the original Bioshock came packaged along with the Infinite disc, so I played it immediately afterward for comparison. To my FPS laymen mind, they played basically the same. Bioshock’s Plasmid power boosters make more sense to the narrative as the exact corruptive gene splicing technology that led to Rapture's downfall creating a creeping sense of doom every time you inject one into your own arm to get an edge on combat. Infinite’s equivalent of Vigors meanwhile are just kind of there and first given out freely by a literal carnival barker with no sense of consequence of dread, but functionally they serve the same purpose.

The only differences I could really clock are both in Infinite, first with Elizabeth’s support opening tears to alter the field or tossing Booker supplies, but second and far more important, the Sky-Lines that allow for exponentially more freedom of movement. These things made combat absolutely thrilling. Feeling cornered and overwhelmed? Hop on the Sky-Line and swing around the city like Captain Jack Sparrow commandeering a British warship. Sky-Lines allowed me to swash and buckle my way all over Columbia in a manner I never could in the cramped and gloomy halls of Rapture.

When people criticize the gameplay of Infinite, but say they love Bioshock, I have to wonder, isn’t Infinite just Bioshock with zip lines? Which part don’t you like, the zip lines? Because I’m gonna have to sort of disagree with you there Bob.



So the actual mechanics were perfectly functional and fun. It was the story and world-building that, er … enraptured me.

And I don’t mean the pseudo-science quantum physics stuff.

I mean having the first heavy-hitter enemy be a “Fireman” referencing Fahrenheit 451.

That a central plot point revolves around America’s involvement and intervention in the Boxer Rebellion.

That Booker was a Pinkerton and both Booker and Comstock participated in The Battle of Wounded Knee, AKA the Wounded Knee Massacre.

That this ultra-Pro America Sky Theocracy has a not-so-secret cult dedicated to demonizing Lincoln for abolishing slavery and destroying the Confederacy.

That the entire boss fight with Lady Comstock’s “ghost” references the Victorian Era cultural fad and obsession with spiritualism, psychic readings, and the occult.

That the Lutece twins’ coin flip gimmick might be a “no escaping fate” reference to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.



My history and literature nerd brain kept zapping with delight throughout my time with Infinite as these otherwise semi-esoteric references kept popping up like kernels in a Redenbacher microwaveable bag. Sheepishly, it sparked my own imagination to wonder what worlds I could create using esoteric historical art and philosophical movements.

Again, the quantum physics angle is over-the-top and a tad obtrusive, but it does its job. I get that they had to up the ante on “Would You Kindly?” but I’ll admit they may have stretched it too far. For example, I didn’t need to know how Andrew Ryan built a giant city under the ocean. I certainly didn’t need the answer to how Columbia stays in the air to essentially be “A science wizard did it.” It really could have just been giant balloons.

Even in saying that though, the vitriol this gets for “trying to be smart” and being “fake complex and phony deep” is rather overblown and slightly unnerving. The “constants and variables through the multiverse” theme isn’t any different than what’s been explored at length by all the major comic book companies, so everyone take a breath. Otherwise, it has a rather straightforward theme of contemplating determinism and the inevitability of fate versus the chaos of free will. And it follows the rules of its own universe so none of the twists are unearned.



There are a pair of reasons I think this has been retroactively reviled and shunned:

First it was a case of over-promising and under-delivering.

The initial concept of this was an open world FPS with dynamic environmental events influenced by the players actions and more direct control over and involvement of time rifts. Songbird and the creepy Boys of Silence were supposed to constantly and actively stalk Booker and Elizabeth through Columbia making them an omnipresent threat who could confront you anywhere at anytime. That is insanely cool and nowhere near what was delivered.

I think Uber-fans were never able to let that go, but again, I came into this blind and had zero expectations. The finished product, while not being nearly as cool as advertised, was a rather exhilarating experience all the same.

Mostly though, I think the modern backlash stems largely from leader of the rebel resistance Vox Populi, Daisy Fitzroy, turning murderous villain willing to kill an otherwise innocent child of Columbia for the sin of being born to the racist oppressors. Without getting too political in an anonymous video game draft on an NBA team online forum, in a story of a floating city of American Exceptionalism, Victorian Ghosts, Multidimensional Travel, and Pseudo-Quantum Physics - Daisy allowing her pain to twist her to villainy is the most grounded and human aspect of the narrative in my mind.

That’s a lot of consternation and hand-wringing, but bottom line, I had an incredibly fun time with this game; I loved exploring the world of Columbia, and enjoyed both Booker and Elizabeth as characters.

I’m up to the challenge to bring the girl and wipe away the debt

… ad infinitum.

 

[whitechocolate]

Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. - PC, 2025

​

Virtua Fighter 5 was originally released in 2006. Since, it has been reissued a handful of times to newer consoles, and finally PC. I am picking the PC version simply because it has great netcode and no online fees. The reason the game has lasted this long is because the player community is dedicated to it. It's among many great fighting games, whose fans keep playing for decades.

Virtua Fighter 5 is an easy to understand game. There are many mechanics, but they all make sense and work clearly. For a given scenario players on offense and defense have many options available to them. In some ways, the line between offense and defense gets blurred. The result is a game with a ton of depth. Each character can be played many ways, so different players will have their own style. The game is very balanced. In that way there are no excuses when losing. Fights are a test of knowledge, decision making, strategy, and adapting. Players have to make rapid decisions, trying to solve how to beat each other, out think the other, out play the other. The mental battle is tangible in good matches.

Animations are very clean, and focus on real martial arts. Throw escapes are bespoke to each throw. There aren't any special effects, just like there aren't any super moves or power ups to detract from the core gameplay. The brilliant gameplay is why we have been playing the same fighting game for almost 20 years.

 

[Padrino]

With the 143rd pick in the 2025 Desert Island Video Game Draft, I select:

Mortal Kombat II (1993)

Developer: Midway / Sculptured Software
Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment
Game Director(s): Ed Boon & John Tobias
Musical Score: Dan Forden
Genre(s): Fighting
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System

It seems like the right time to add a fighting game to my island. It also seems like pretty great value to snag Mortal Kombat II in the 13th round, almost 150 picks into this draft. Highly influential, hyperviolent, and the subject of considerable pearl clutching in the early 90s, this one was really about pushing the medium into its gonzo age. It's the only game on my list of possible draft selections that I never actually owned due to that aforementioned clutching of pearls. My parents were not interested in a hideously violent video game being played in their home. However, I had an older cousin who possessed fewer guardrails around his gaming, and so I logged many hours in Mortal Kombat II at his folks' place. It represented a minor rebellion, but such was the nature of transgression in the early 90s. It was a time and a place, distinct in its pre-high speed internet tactility, when controversies actually had long-term staying power and didn't get ground up in the content mill.

Mortal Kombat II was so very much of its era. Much like Street Fighter 2, which was @Spike's 7th round pick, Mortal Kombat II represented a perfection of the fighting game formula. It expanded the MK roster to 12 playable characters, took advantage of greater graphical horsepower, fine-tuned its mechanics to better simulate gravity and physics, and leaned further into its delirious brutality. There is a "plot" here involving Shang Tsun begging his master to spare his life so he can host a new Mortal Kombat tournament in Outworld, and there's lore aplenty within the Mortal Kombat universe if you care for such things in your fighting games... but I don't. I'm here for the gloriously over-the-top cartoon violence. Yes, it's regressive in just about every way imaginable, but it's also deeply self-aware, unafraid to poke fun at itself, and more than happy to let the gamer in on the joke.

Of course, the "fatality" was the Mortal Kombat franchise's biggest innovation; finishing moves of such shocking savagery that they prompted moral outrage and inspired congressional hearings on Violence in Video Games. The panic was real. Again, the early 90s were just a different time, and the medium was still quite young. Personally, I was a big fan of Kung Lao, whose razor-edged hat struck me as a bit of video gaming brilliance. During one of his signature fatalities, he uses his hat to slice straight down the center of his opponent, splitting them in two. It's just... absurdity to the nth degree. Elsewhere, you've got Kitana using one of her fans to slice off her opponent's head, Sub-Zero freezing his opponent and then shattering them to bits, Scorpion ripping off his mask to reveal his skull and then launching a fireball at his opponent that burns them to a crisp, Reptile flicking out his tongue and swallowing his opponent's head whole then rubbing his stomach in mock celebration, and Shang Tsun magically transporting into his opponent's body and bursting them apart from the inside.

It's all so... silly, honestly. Violence in media when pushed to such hyperbolic extremes becomes a farcical kind of comedy. This can make many uncomfortable, and that's genuinely a conversation worth having. But for my part, I've found it useful over the years to blow off steam every once in awhile in a game like GoldenEye, one of my previous picks, and Mortal Kombat II certainly served a similar purpose, particularly in the couch competitive setting of a now bygone era of video gaming. It was a vector for the discharge of tension and stress, not for bloody reenactment, but grasping nuance has never been one of our cultural strong suits in the United States of America, so every decade must have its collection of moral panics. Mortal Kombat II bears an interesting legacy as a result.

 

[macadocious]

I think the arcade version of that was the pick, i had considered it, since it was a game people would crowd around to watch. Stuff like that just doesnt exist anymore.

 

[Padrino]

I think the arcade version of that was the pick, i had considered it, since it was a game people would crowd around to watch. Stuff like that just doesnt exist anymore.

I went with that at-home version because that's where the controversy lived. The censorship police didn't really take notice of the Mortal Kombat series until the first two games were released on consoles. This was an era in which parents would let their kids go to the arcade to get them out of the house. They weren't monitoring their kids' gaming activities at the arcade, but as soon as Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II made their way onto the Super Nintendo (thought to be a generally family-friendly machine), the moral panic ensued.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

That game is the reason why my first (pre-GI Bill) attempt at college only lasted one year. Instead of studying, I spent all my time in the rec center, flushing my scholarship down the toilet trying to master Kung Lao.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I went with that at-home version because that's where the controversy lived. The censorship police didn't really take notice of the Mortal Kombat series until the first two games were released on consoles. This was an era in which parents would let their kids go to the arcade to get them out of the house. They weren't monitoring their kids' gaming activities at the arcade, but as soon as Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II made their way onto the Super Nintendo (thought to be a generally family-friendly machine), the moral panic ensued.

I remember getting the first on Genesis because SNES censored the hell out of it and then they let the second mostly be.

It was actually really cool because I had sort of written off my Genesis for the newer/shinier SNES until that happened, and after that I focused on getting the best game for both. I remember there was a usenet flame group called console advocacy where Genesis vs SNES and I guess 3DO vs Jaguar, etc lived. (I did not own a Jaguar, one of only a handful of consoles I didn't until more recent times)

 

[pdxKingsFan]

That game is the reason why my first (pre-GI Bill) attempt at college only lasted one year. Instead of studying, I spent all my time in the rec center, flushing my scholarship down the toilet trying to master Kung Lao.

I spent most of my time shooting pinball but remember some time spent on MK and VirtuaFighter. I was pretty good at Street Fighter back home at the bowling alley and pool hall but the student union competition was too much on the later games.

 

[Padrino]

That game is the reason why my first (pre-GI Bill) attempt at college only lasted one year. Instead of studying, I spent all my time in the rec center, flushing my scholarship down the toilet trying to master Kung Lao.

Ah, a fellow Kung Lao player. I tip my [razor-brimmed] hat to you, good sir.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I remember getting the first on Genesis because SNES censored the hell out of it and then they let the second mostly be.

:: double-checks draft board ::

MK1 was the reason I bought a Genesis. I kept it because I got into Valis and Phantasy Star.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

:: double-checks draft board ::

[REDACTED] was the reason I bought a Genesis. I kept it because I got into [REDACTED] and [REDACTED].

I figured once a series was mentioned I wouldn't need to redact the series name if so I'll pull my post.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I figured once a series was mentioned I wouldn't need to redact the series name if so I'll pull my post.

I'm not running this circus, so I don't know how prescriptive y'all are about these things; figured better safe than sorry.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

I'm not running this circus, so I don't know how prescriptive y'all are about these things; figured better safe than sorry.

I guess these are my monkeys so it's my circus. I think that mentioning a franchise that's already been tapped is probably fine. And PDX's comment was on the order of "yeah, I played the original of that franchise" - once the franchise has come to light, everybody knows there's an original, I think.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Fair enough. Post partially un-redacted.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I guess these are my monkeys so it's my circus. I think that mentioning a franchise that's already been tapped is probably fine. And PDX's comment was on the order of "yeah, I played the original of that franchise" - once the franchise has come to light, everybody knows there's an original, I think.

I wonder if there are any "Leonard Part 6"s in the video game universe?

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I wonder if there are any "Leonard Part 6"s in the video game universe?

Does the Final Fantasy franchise count?

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Does the Final Fantasy franchise count?

I don't know because the Japanese market got all of them in sequence(? - I'm not an expert here) and I do recall there being a small but vibrant import market even in the late 80s.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

True enough but, even with the Japanese numbering, Final Fantasy IV isn't a sequel of Final Fantasy III; they don't even have the same characters, they don't even have descendants of the same characters. They don't even happen on the same planet, hell, not even same shared universe, AFAWK.

At least all of the Assassin's Creed franchise all ostensibly happened on earth, if not at the same points in history.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

True enough but, even with the Japanese numbering, Final Fantasy IV isn't a sequel of Final Fantasy III; they don't even have the same characters, they don't even have descendants of the same characters. They don't even happen on the same planet, hell, not even same shared universe, AFAWK.

Not an expert but wasn't that true at least until they got to the CD-Rom based games?

Either way I'm mostly querying about whether or not a franchise started off as a sequel to a game that never existed. I'm sure there have to be a few but probably not any worthy of being drafted.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Does the Final Fantasy franchise count?

At least they didn't call it "Penultimate Fantasy" or they'd have really boxed themselves in.

 

[whitechocolate]

Trying not to pick two games of the same style, I have no idea what my next two picks will. Quake, SimCity 2000, and Dwarf Fortress would be nice.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Trying not to pick two games of the same style, I have no idea what my next two picks will be. [redacted], [redacted], and [redacted] would be nice.

Now, in re: the immediately preceding discussion, THAT was definitely going out of bounds on the "don't mention games that haven't been picked yet" guideline!

 

[Löwenherz]

Now, in re: the immediately preceding discussion, THAT was definitely going out of bounds on the "don't mention games that haven't been picked yet" guideline!

But, like, all three of the games @whitechocolate mentioned have been picked.