GOTY slowpoke edition (1992)
Every year the GOTY event comes and goes and I feel really left out because I mostly play older games, and even the newer games I play are 2-3 years old because that's typically when the prices go down enough for my broke self to be comfortable buying. Then I realized that 30 years ago (1992) was when I really got into gaming, getting my first console (Genesis) at around the same time my neighbor got a SNES. So I'm just going to make it a yearly tradition to record my GOTY picks together with everyone else... but 30 years late.
6 Games
Best Gameplay. A triumph of creativity and balancing in video game design. The sheer amount of unique classes and skills, a robust 'ruleset' that allows for interesting interactions between mechanics and allows for strategies that can nearly be termed 'emergent', and a perfect difficulty curve, combine to make this one of the best job system games even today.
Best soundtrack. Street Fighter II has the most iconic soundtrack while Sonic 2 and Alisia Dragoon are excellent too. But Shining Force was one of the inspirations behind me becoming a musician. With the 'crunchier' Genesis sound it somehow crafts a sweeping orchestral score to compete with the best the SNES has to offer, and is the shining (ha!) gold standard of leitmotif in video games, perhaps even to this day.
Best narrative. With Shining Force's English script losing some major details in translation and FFV having a compelling but contrived plot, Lunar: The Silver Star has to get my vote. I know the translation has its detractors, but the plot manages to be epic and intimate, fantastical and human at the same time.
Best art direction. Faced stiff competition from Shining Force's fantastic battle visuals and Lunar's exquisitely-animated anime cutscenes, but I have to give this to Alisia Dragoon in the end. Love the cool enemy and boss designs, and every area of every stage bursts with character and creativity.
Best Multiplayer. Based purely on which game I spent the most time playing with my friends, this wins by a long shot.
Overall GOTY. I've spent too much time singing this game's praises on this site as is. It's my favorite game ever, and with more than 50 playthroughs over the years I don't see that changing anytime soon.
6 Comments
Heya as somebody who has played almost exclusively retro games this year I'I really love seeing these sorts of things. Keep it up man! I need to play Alisia Dragoon but FF5, Lunar, and especially Shining Force are all favourites of mine. The composer of Shining Force is a real cool dude to boot, even has a YT channel where he still uploads his music
@FallenGrace: Love Worthy Rival - it's also really cool that it uses a similar melody to the town music. Speaking of which... the castle battle music uses the same melody as the headquarters theme!
@C_F: Thanks a lot! His name is Masahiko Yoshimura, right? What's his YouTube channel?
@C_F: Thanks a lot! His name is Masahiko Yoshimura, right? What's his YouTube channel?
I'll look when home
Was baffled about alisia dragoon for a moment and then remembered stage 6
I found his channel https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCHPNIBQ5uuOzAeleHCef4Ug
FallenGrace
1 year ago