Twennytoo Five Hundo
In future year AD2022 I apparently logged 500 video games (mostly just played, not finished - can you even imagine). Am I proud of it? Of course not, brother, pride is a sin. Here they are in their entirety in order of play:
500 Games
Replay. Same as VSav and COTA. Maybe the most 90s game of all time.
Replay. Isn't it kind of wild that this exists? It's hilarious how massive the Kingpin is in the final boss fight.
Played the Mega Drive version as a kid so I went for the arcade version here. Similarly clunky and not really all that fun, but all the monster transformation stuff is still cool and the voice clips are always funny.
It's pretty cool, isn't it? I noticed the other day that I've finally been knocked off the top of my friends list by a few seconds. Raging. Will have to go back to it!
Doesn't really have any of the energy of the first game, sadly. Just kind of a slog. And it introduces Maki, who I think is chiefly liked by anime boys that you would not want to talk to. Not the fault of the game but it's hard to look past.
Cool little idea. I like games with boats.
Replay. Have never liked this game - I guess you can say the RPG elements were worth trying at the time, but I think the implementation here just goes against what's actually fun about the genre. And obviously it directly led to the Scott Pilgrim game, which is even worse.
I was having fun with this, but my save messed up and I haven't gone back to it yet.
Better than Final Fight 2 for sure, but still pretty lackluster. There isn't even boss music! What the hell!
Not quite as strong a game as some of Capcom's other heavy hitters on this list, but man, I wish they still made games that looked like this.
Replay. One of Capcom's many remakes of Final Fight But in [Setting]. This time it's the grim future of...uh...4 years from now. It's fine, mostly gets points for being a little weird. Mack the Knife rules.
I have no idea what the original cabinet was like for this, but this is a bit of a chore to play on a regular controller. I like the general weirdness of it though, and the invincible Robojacko. However it is unbelievable that it has tons of licensed Jackson music and the zombie level does not have Thriller. What the fuck!
Finally decided to take the plunge and play this. It's guff. Not the absolute worst game ever made, but there's just no reason to ever play this instead of a Mega Man game. Gave up at the Call stealth section, who has the time.
Played the Japanese version. It's very good! They've refined the SoR formula to a fine art. And yet the best was still yet to come...man...
Now we're getting it. Still very playable and has one of the best title themes of all time.
Replay. There can be no justice in the world as long as this is stuck on the Wii of all things. No idea why it was exclusive in the first place.
Replay. Linn Kurosawa is so cool, man. What a good game.
Another PS+ game. I guess I don't mind Minecraft, but I haven't put much time into this because it keeps trying to get me to do story stuff that I don't care about.
Got a couple of levels in before deciding I couldn't be holed at the minute. I'll get back to it at some point.
Another unfinished. A PS4 game that is clearly in reality a PS3 game. A theme song can only carry a game so far. Combat just doesn't have the oomph you want from a mech game and I'll be honest, I don't know how people can play these kinds of dating sim-adjacent things without feeling horribly embarrassed at every moment.
Oh, so the bug princess does nothing but kill bugs? Typical royals. These Cave shmups with tiny hurtboxes are very fun!
A little overlong from what I remember, but otherwise pretty much on par with King of Dragons.
Replay. Absolutely the best Battletoads game, probably better than several Double Dragon games, still not really that great.
This is also awesome.
Can't really remember it. Looks good from screenshots though!
Wanted to like this, but I just found it kind of obnoxious, and I don't think it's a particularly good beatemup. Disappointing.
Relentless game. Cruel!
The current era of KOF just isn't for me. XIV and XV feel like they're trying to carry on the Big Combo Game style of XIII, but combos in these games are just not nearly as cool or interesting. Feels like they want you to go down very specific predefined combo routes. I could watch, say, Marvel 3 footage now and there's a solid chance I'll see something I've never seen before; it doesn't feel like this can happen with current KoF. Also this game is ugly as hell. At least there's always 98!
Also very hard! Such a cool game though.
Replay. Old reliable. I love how the big blue laser looks.
Oh jeez, I played this last week and it's completely left my head already.
Replay. Same story as VSav. Weird game. Love Omega Red's theme.
Genuinely astounding effort for one guy. Awesome combo system, this was walking the Streets of Rage 4 walk before that game existed. Only problems I have with it are the lighting is a bit much at times and the main girl leans way too hard into anime fanservice for my taste. Genuinely really good game.
Another free on PS+ trap. Whilst I was playing this a friend sent me a message asking if I was OK and they were right to do so.
Mainly played this port to hear the music. Sadly not as good as I was hoping, but this version also has a bunch of low-rent cutscenes where the Brothers Lee are Kenshiro clones with turn of the 90s anime hair. Dope.
Is there any earlier example of Just Defend in a game? Capcom beating SNK to the punch by 8 years. It's fine enough I guess, but later efforts are much better.
Looks and sounds great and I love Pulseman's look and concept but it's not much cope otherwise.
Not very good, is it? There's a kind of charm to it though. I think I will go back and finish this at some point.
Replay. Still really impressive even now! I like how much of it feels like an actual investigation rather than you solving a series of video game puzzles. I did not get a good ending.
Splatterhouse but with a time limit mechanic. It's fine!
It's fine!
The start of a run of PC-Engine/CD games I decided to play. Pretty rough and unpolished but it looks cool and the soundtrack is awesome.
Replay. Fun idea, good enough to play about with for 20 minutes. Mega Man charm counts for a lot!
Replay. King shit. Double Dragon II is a good-ass game.
You walk around in eight directions and you shoot stuff. Sometimes that's all you need!
From what I remember this was the sequel to Sorcer Striker? Hasn't really stuck in the mind much for me. Dimahoo is a very fun name to say though. Dimahoo, Dimahoo, Dimahoo!
Genuinely pretty cool, slamming people into the background rules. I didn't really feel like finishing it at the time but want to go back to it. Boss fights are a bit crap though.
Golden Axe II - it's like Golden Axe. I like Golden Axe. I like Golden Axe II!
Replay. This game is very, very boring, and at no point do you ever actually feel like Superman in it. Why am I not punching all these little Igors and weird goatmen into space? Why am I having to combo them?
Replay. I'm still amazed a game like this got made and released on home console at the time!
Replay. It's some more Tower of Doom. It's good!
Peak of the series here, I think. Copen is a great addition and is super fun to play.
Thought 2 was a bit of an easier ride and then 3 decided they'd given me enough leeway. I was happy to finally go through all of these but they were an ordeal and a half.
The two-lane gimmick mostly helps with making the game quicker because you can avoid stuff. I think it being a not-terrible Power Rangers game did a lot of the heavy lifting for me.
It's Panzer Dragoon, it's fine, but it's always a little weird to me to play these remakes with modern graphics but unchanged gameplay. Always just feels slightly off.
The Golden Axers Once Again. It's still much the same, I still enjoy it, and I think the stage on the back of the giant eagle is badass. Good music here.
Not interested at all in Overwatch and its ilk but I gave this a go because it's Gundam. Looking down ironsights? In a Gundam game? You're having a laugh mate. Also if someone picks the suit I want I can't pick it? Seriously? Is this what these games are like? I thought we solved this shit in Champion Edition. Absurd.
It's very funny that From made this. Hyperjank, I guess I'll finish it for lols at some point.
Replay. Thought this game was cool as hell as a kid, and hey, I still like it! The first-person sections are still very fun. Did this have Menacer support?
Really cool just how many combinations of your team are possible. This kicked my ass and then I read the review on here about difficulty scaling with credits. Absolutely fiendish.
Same as Gunbird.
Originally played the SNES version, so here I went for the arcade release, which like the '89 game is trash. Legendary soundtrack but that's it.
Definitely seems like Psikyo games follow a formula. Not my preferred style but this game still has some charm to it.
Very easy Mega Man clone. I'd seen people say that Beck is hard mode, and I guess he is in relative terms, because I replayed this later in the year as Gunvolt and I could probably have done it with my eyes closed.
I'd played the first episode of this before but decided to go through the whole thing from the start before I play Return. Promptly put it to the side after getting distracted by other stuff.
Another cool Cave (kool Kave) game. Not into the look as much as I am ESP Ra.De. but it's fine!
Copen's gameplay is switched up to make him more melee-focused and he loses some of his movement options. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Definitely a step down from the first game, but I like Brigade's design.
Still hard, still cool. Great music in this.
Just a fun arcade game. Some parts of this are absolute nails.
Supremely frustrating game because it looks and sounds absolutely awesome - they are clearly pushing the Neo Geo to its absolute limit - but it plays like complete ass. It takes two full attack strings to break open an item barrel. Every aspect of gameplay is coated in extra thick molasses.
Scott Pilgrim, but now composed exclusively of anime pervert characters. I wish for a world where its kind cannot exist.
Interesting as a weird curiosity - a beatemup spinoff of House of the Dead - but otherwise not much to enjoy here. I do like that they threw in a Yusaku Matsuda-inspired guy for no reason.
Hilariously edgy and kind of janky but it has that same fun quality of a Hotline Miami where positioning, prioritisation and full use of all your tools pays off big. Also very satisfying in its scrambliness when you don't do any of those and are just using everything around you on the fly.
I guess this is okay, but I'd rather play SNES Turtles in Time if I've got to play Turtles in Time.
A cool idea, little puzzle game FPS. You could do worse for a free game.
Replay. The final evolution of Capcom's Final Fight remakes. What a cool game! Really sucks that it's likely lost to the wilderness forever.
It's definitely cool, but these tiny bullets are killing me, man. My eyesight is bad.
Very cool setting but otherwise a slog to play. Might start specifically calling this the SNK Style.
Replay, technically. I've started this a bunch of times, shelved it, forgotten all of it and restarted. Gonna try and not do it this time!
By this point I'd played a lot of shmups and I think this is the first one where I really wondered how anyone could 1CC it. Wild!
Leans more towards Dragon Quest than it does towards musou for my liking. Takes forever as well.
Cool idea that doesn't quite come together. I can't say I've read Mazin Saga; maybe it's the same!
Replay. Actually feels kind of satisfying to play but the enemies and environments are so bland.
Hyper-edgy game. Combat is pretty satisfying but not deep enough to justify the length and large number of samey enemies.
A little too samey throughout but it's cool that they tried it. They managed to make the mechs feel really big and heavy, and of course Blodia is just a cool design. Glad they reused it.
More Gunvolt Burst. It's still easy, still fine to zip through if you have 20 minutes.
Replay. More Splatterhouse. I think this is my preferred one of the trilogy.
Notabe for laying a lot of the groundwork for the genre and as an early Technos effort, but this just isn't particularly fun.
Essential Amemiyacore. Very fun movement and awesome art direction - the Zeiram hat is flying around in here! Watch out!!
Probably a little overlong for what it is, but this is a solid GBA game.
About as good as GT: Final Bout, i.e. not very.
I'm even worse at horizontal shooters, but this is still cool. Tons of personality.
More of the same from Die Hard Arcade, and I'm perfectly fine with that.
Replay. Golf It night with the boys. Get a solid custom map and it's a great laugh.
Impossibly fast. Possibly made to see how much the NES can't handle? If there's anyone out there who has 1CC'd this they should be preserved in a museum.
Saw a free shmup on PS+, got a bit into it and then got the pervert shit dropped on me when I got hit. That was a surprise! Found out afterwards you can turn that stuff off, so that's a mercy.
VERY COOL. This is one that I'm absolutely going to keep coming back to. Just relentless, I love how the proximity gimmick means that against bosses it feels like you're mashing up against each other and trying to force each other down. Great.
Kinda-sorta wearing a management game skin, but really this is a choose your own adventure book. I got the best ending though, so hooray!
Replay. I don't know who it was that convinced the world that the licensed Konami beatemups are really good but they were doing the devil's work. I guess I can see how it would be fun if you had four players on the go and it does look and sound great, but the gameplay absolutely reeks. No impact to a single thing you do.
The first stop on my journey of playing every game listed in the beatemup history book Go Straight. Not great.
4 Comments
Damn this is impressive
Did you complete Ring Fit?!
@Vee this took me days lol
@Dalaamclouds that's not the word I'd use but thank you!
@letshugbro good lord no. new years resolution though!
@Dalaamclouds that's not the word I'd use but thank you!
@letshugbro good lord no. new years resolution though!
Vee
1 year ago
Bayou Billy is one of the most unfun NES games I ever played, goddamn what a slog-filled and mean-spirited game.