sleepovercore
notable local multiplayer games that popped up frequently during sleepovers and hangouts from elementary school through high school. In no particular order except I put the big ones in the top row.
27 Games
Reach came onto the scene in middle school, quickly became our default game, and never let go. Especially once we discovered Forge mode. So many high school afternoons and weekend nights spent running long fiesta matches on the same three forge maps. Reach is a very special game, and thanks to MCC, I'm still playing it regularly today with the same group.
Star Fox Assault dominated our local multiplayer line-up for several years before Reach came along. The game is just so fun to play with its colorful maps and variety of exciting weapons, ranging from missiles you can control to barrels of rainbow grenades. The drip-feed of unlockables kept things fresh for what seemed like (and probably was) years.
Pikmin 2's surprisingly good head-to-head mode is a mainstay for whenever my friends and I get back together. A pretty simple capture the flag set-up is endlessly playable thanks to the myriad potential strategies and mind games you can play with each other
Don't even get me started on Monkey Target. Or Monkey Fight. Or Monkey Soccer. Or the actual main game.
Melee has Poke Floats and the best pre-Ultimate gameplay in the series. My friends and I enjoyed every Smash game that dropped while we were in grade school, but always came back to Melee sooner or later.
As elementary schoolers who had only ever played Melee, we were all so excited to play Brawl. And we did just that for a good year or two before returning to Melee. Yeah, Brawl was slower, and it's rough to go back now with Melee and Ultimate just as available, but we didn't care about that back then. We could make our own stages! The roster felt so big! Subspace! Brawl's biggest crime is being in the same series as Melee and Ultimate. I look back on it fondly all the same.
My friends and I didn't get much time out of Smash Bros. for Wii U before Melee came calling again, but we enjoyed a solid month or two of checking out new roster additions and features like eight-player Smash
Super Monkey Ball held my friends and me over for years until I finally set aside $7 to pick up the sequel from GameStop one middle school summer afternoon. Pretty much everything SMB2 does well, so does SMB1
my friend dominated playing with the soviets and their seemingly full auto shotguns
Diamond is the only Pokemon game I got into at the same time as my friends. We only actually battled each other a few times, but trading stories and rumors about where to find legendary Pokemon was a special experience on its own
I played so much of this with my dad. pretty sure we only got it because Sparty is on the cover. we thought physically whipping the wii remote to throw the ball was the coolest thing ever
NCAA 14's release was a momentous day in my house -- the first time my dad and I would be playing an NCAA game on release day. Since NCAA 14 was the last NCAA game for 11 years, we ended up with NCAA 14 for the long haul, but it held up just fine. My dad is gone now, so it's going to be bittersweet when NCAA 25 drops this year, and I'm honestly not sure I need it when NCAA 14 still scratches the football sim itch (and has one of the last great MSU teams...)
