VideoGame_Discussion

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Credit for this clear, without a doubt, goes to @SupremeSarna. There's no way I would have survived that final fight without knowing Wily could be stunned. Even then, it still took me multiple attempts and more E-cans than I'd care to admit before Wily took pity on me and started spawning low enough to be hit with a Coil/Shock combo.

@Renaissance2K Happy to help!

I beat Mega Man 7

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Meta post time! Let's talk about ways we can do things in 2023.

Nominations & Voting
I like the idea of allowing any number of nominations during a voting month. It reminds me of when the Oscars increased the Best Picture category to ten; in theory, it allows for a broader range of options and lets more people participate.

I can't think of any downside except that - if we stick to the usual at T-minus 7 days - it doesn't leave a lot of time for either nominating or voting. It used to take a few days to reach five nominees which gave us plenty of time for everyone to weigh in who wanted to, but giving threeish days to nominate and threeish days to vote isn't a ton of time, especially if one of those blocks falls on a weekend where people seem to be less active.

Does anybody else have a problem with removing the nominations cap? If we stick with that plan, maybe we can start the process at T-minus 10 days instead of 7?

Annual Franchise Challenge
I started the Annual Franchise Challenge this year as a bit of a side quest, since GOTMs tend to favor shorter titles, which means a lot of retro titles with longer campaigns are going to be overlooked. As a trial run, I picked Lunar because of the franchise's obvious connection to the origins of this thread and the game club, offering up a "permabadge" of sorts as the reward.

As far as I know, I'm the only person that played a Lunar game this year. I don't know if this is because people don't like the concept of the quest, don't like Lunar, or didn't realize this was actually a thing that we were doing. (It's underneath the GOTM details, so it's not difficult to miss.)

Should we try again next year with a franchise that gets voted in, or should we K.I.S.S. and just do monthly games?

O Captain, My Captain
I've been thread "captain" for two years now, and I'm having a lot of fun. I've played through a ton of great games, some of which were on my radar and some of which weren't, and I've especially enjoyed when we pick a game or a franchise that stirs up a lot of clears and discussion.

I'm content with keeping things rolling through 2023, but I wanted to reach out in case someone among you has been quietly wishing you could take the reigns, either because it sounds like fun or because you want to do things differently.

Basically, the "duties" include the following:
- Keeping the OP updated with objectives and results each month
- Running the nomination and voting process
- Producing badges for GOTMs
- Coming up with themes (spooky games, sixth gen games, FPS, etc.) or "executive picks" (Darkstalkers 3, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Castlevania franchise, etc.) for some months
- Stirring up discussion about retro topics (I've been slacking a bit here, especially in the second half of the year when I get busy with RL stuff)

Again, I'm happy to keep things going as is. I just don't want to selfishly keep it all to myself if there are people out there that wanted to take over.

Thanks. Hope everybody's having fun this month.

All I know is that my goal next year is to play the entire Pikmin series (give or take Hey! Pikmin).

@Renaissance2K unless you’re tired of all the duties or are just too busy I’d prefer to see you or @Lunar
Keep running this. Neither one of you seems biased and you both let everyone speak and be heard.
There have been arguments in the past over really dumb and or petty crap and you have never seemed
to engage in any of it. I know I’ve been in plenty of dumb arguments here and plenty of them were because
of my (or someone else) overreacting to things that don’t really matter.

I like the idea of more nominations too. And having more time to nominate and vote might
be cool too. Also why not do the regular GOTM plus one bonus game of your own
choosing so even if one person is really annoyed by a GOTM they have at least one
other game to try to play through instead? It might get more people participating.

I’ve always wanted us to play more rpgs so of course I’m on board with certain games or
series being more spread out over the year where people don’t feel forced into
speedrunning through a giant RPG with tons of different paths in one month.
Most people intentionally vote AGAINST games like that. I’ve personally never played the
Lunar games but the series started when I had less money for games and couldn’t just
buy something whenever I wanted. So I stuck more to games and systems I knew and
had already.

Anyways that’s my thoughts about everything.

I like the idea of removing the nominations cap. However, I don't know that it should be unlimited. Maybe we should have a per-person cap at least, like 3?

I somehow missed the Annual Franchise Challenge and knew nothing about it. I'd say it's fine to keep, but honestly, I'm not very likely to go out of my comfort zone and try a brand new franchise. However, if a franchise I like is selected, I'm very likely to fit in 1 of its games over the course of the year.

You've been doing a great job and I have no interest in taking over running this.

Is it time to nominate already? We are doing a FPS for January, right?

I was going to call for nominations tomorrow, but feel free to post yours if you have some in mind.

I nominate the Catacombs 3D series. It's the first texture mapped FPS as far as I am aware.

Catacomb Abyss is free shareware so you don't even have to buy it. If you like it, the whole series being available on Gog for a pittance.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/catacombs_pack

Hah - it's even on sale for 20% off! The whole series (four 3d games plus the two earlier 2d games) for under $5 total. Easy to play on any pc that uses dosbox. And all of them are short enough to not become a slog.

That game is where my current avatar comes from.

As the end of the year and the holidays approach, let's look at all the badges we've earned in December:

BloodPuppetX image Renaissance2K image SupremeSarna image

Dr. Wily deserves as many smackdowns as we can muster, and there's still time to be a cool kid and finish Mega Man 7 before the ball drops on 2023.

Let's start taking nominations for the January Game of the Month. The theme for January, as suggested by @benstylus, is first-person shooters. Nominate some games or franchises that fit the theme, and we'll play through them as a group in January.

We'll start voting on December 26 and call the winner on January 1.

Ben has already nominated the Catacomb franchise. Since we're not capping nominations anymore, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring and nominate the Unreal franchise, especially considering Epic is about to turn off their servers next month.

Let's hear some nominees!

I will nominate two games

Star Wars: Dark Forces (playstation 1 and pc)

And

Hexen (playstation 1, PC, Saturn and N64)

Both of these games may be available other places and of course I wanted to nominate
Doom or Final Doom or Doom 64 (you get the idea) but I can’t see no one else nominating it
AND the other two games are really cool and not as well known I don’t think.
There’s also insanely cool looking remakes of Dark Forces with graphics that just weren’t possible
when it was released almost 30 years ago. Worth checking out on YouTube just to see what’s different
and new. I’m not sure if there are playable builds of it anywhere but I was mostly just looking
for the original PS1 game. I never played through Hexen and always wanted to, I DID play through
Dark Forces I’m pretty sure and it was just great 😃 both games are still not crazy expensive
on PS1 so I figured they were both worth nominating.

I tried playing through Hexen when it was a new release, but there was so much backtracking I eventually gave up. I don't think I would want to try it again.

Here's another nom:

Powerslave/Exhumed
Got a great Saturn port and a remaster was recently released on Switch (and I'm assuming other current gen consoles).

I think GOG got a release. Not sure about Steam.

Steam has both the DOS version and the re-released Saturn port.

Gog has both as well, and they are currently on sale for $6.99 for the Dos version (regularly 9.99) and $14.99 for the remaster (regularly 19.99).

Can't beat free for Catacomb Abyss though

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates.

Anybody else have any classic FPSs or franchises they want to nominate? We'll start voting on the 26th.

I’ll nominate Doom 64.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Sure I'll nominate any Duke Nukem game (since my PS1 is working again and I have Time to Kill!)

Disruptor

Happy Boxing Day! Let's unbox which of our nominees will be the January 2023 Game of the Month!

Nominees
Catacomb franchise
Unreal franchise
Star Wars: Dark Forces
Hexen: Beyond Heretic
Powerslave / Exhumed
Doom 64
Duke Nukem 3D series
Disruptor

Either publicly in this thread or privately in a PM to me, give each nominee 0-5 points. Omitting a nominee is equivalent to giving it a vote of 0. The game with the highest score by the end of the month will be the January 2023 GOTM.

I'm not going to vote because, honestly, I really want to play nearly every one of the games we nominated, and giving everything a 5 doesn't really change much. Looking forward to seeing the results, so git yer votes in.

Doom 64 - 5
Duke Nukem - 3

|

Is it too late to nominate Perfect Dark Zero?

SupremeSarna wrote:
Yeah, people have already started voting. Nominate it next month!

Doom 64 - 5

This is the only one I actually might play.

I beat Doom 64 last year, so I'm not looking to play that, don't want to crush Scott's vote, so:
Unreal franchise 3
Hexen: Beyond Heretic 2
Powerslave / Exhumed 2
Duke Nukem 3D series 3

Duke Nukem - 5

Dark Forces - 5
Unreal - 5
Hexen - 4
Doom 64 - 4

I really already like all these games, and normally I don’t like giving
Different games the same scores but to me they all deserve to be played.
Hopefully everyone has a fun time with whichever game wins this month.

Last day for votes! I'm really excited to see what we'll be playing next month.

Still playing Mega Man 7 and I’m west coast so I still got 4 more hours to beat the final (?) boss.
This game is kinda annoying tho so who tf knows? But at least I’m trying I guess.

You can still earn a badge after the month is over. We all* will just silently judge you for it.








* nobody, actually

Oh I am feeling the judgement from myself already, I wish I had decided to play this much earlier in the month.
Definitely not the most “fun” entry in the series due to how annoying it is. If I had played earlier I would have
given up already though since I had so much to do in the real.

At 11:17 pm I finished Mega Man 7 and got the achievement too. Now I just need my RTT badge.
They ruined that game by making that boss so stupid cheap. Even though one could technically
Beat the final boss without taking damage I’m pretty sure that is almost impossible.
Happy New Years everyone! I been drinking most of the day but now I can finally enjoy it 😃

Mega Man 7 has returned to the garage to drink lubricant margaritas with Roll and Auto. Here are all the badges we earned this month:

BleedingViolet image BloodPuppetX image Renaissance2K image SupremeSarna image

Many thanks to those of you that averted Dr. Wily's first 16-bit shenanegans. Feel free to post an update later on to get your badge.

These four Mega Man badges are a subset of the 99 badges we earned as a thread this year, playing through 26 different games, 14 of which were Castlevania titles. With 35 badges, @Slickriven took home more than anyone else in the thread, largely thanks to our NBA Jam challenge to play through the game with each available team.

To kick off 2023, here are the results for January's Game of the Month:

1. Doom 64 - 19 votes
2. Duke Nukem 3D series - 16 votes
3. Unreal franchise - 13 votes
3. Star Wars: Dark Forces - 13 votes
5. Hexen: Beyond Heretic - 11 votes
5. Powerslave / Exhumed - 11 votes
7. Catacomb franchise - 10 votes
8. Disruptor - 8 votes

Doom 64 was released as a brand new Doom campaign for the Nintendo 64, set after the events of Final Doom. While not extremely successful or lauded upon its release, the game has become somewhat of a cult classic over the years for its difficulty and atmosphere, in part due to a spooky ambient soundtrack from Aubrey Hodges. The game's sleeper status peaked in recent years when Bethesda dropped a remaster of the game in 2020 for modern platforms at a bargain price.

Beat Doom 64 or its remaster to earn a badge. Badge coming soon...

Whether you're too young to die or death incarnate, feel free to post a #BeatIt screenshot here to celebrate your achievement.

My apologies, as I am sure this is covered somewhere, but are submissions accepted after the month is over? I'm playing a lot of vintage games, but I am pretty particular about the order, so it'll be a miracle if I happen to play something at the right time.

You can any game we've played since 2018 to earn a badge. Its just nice to play them the month thereof because we're all likely discussing it, reviewing it, and urging each other on.

But if you suddenly decide to pick up the original Outrun this month, you can earn the Outrun badge.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Got it. Thank you. I think the only one I can prove so far is Castlevania:

https://steamcommunity.com/id/yossydesune/screensh...

OP has been flipped over for 2023. Check out the 2022 section for a recap of how everyone did this year.

We'll vote on the franchise challenge for 2023 (or decide we don't want to do it) on January 20, alongside the February GOTM vote. In the meantime, start Doom 64'ing!

Oh I already started 😃 it turns out imma need a new series S controller though since the right bumper is
integral to this game. (My RB stopped working) Otherwise I woulda at least gotten past level 2. I still can I just can’t pick up the berserk
item since I can’t switch out of hand to hand back to shotgun or anything else.

Btw if you don’t know Doom 64 is “free” ish on Gamepass. It also looks really good and is smooth af.
This is such a good way to kick off the year 💜

I finally put some time in with Doom 64 last night. I've heard the game is dark, but is it supposed to be this dark? I've never had to turn the in-game brightness up all the way for a game before.

I like that they're doing some cool stuff with scripting and in-game events. The Terraformer had a few of these, like when the eponymous machine finally activates. It already feels pretty brutal, though, beyond the usual "there's way too many demons here" challenge. I can't imagine what it turns into if my palms are already starting to sweat.

This is the point in the month where I'd call out everyone that's earned a badge so far. It doesn't sound like anybody's there yet, though a few of us have started. My January has been pretty crazy and I haven't been doing much cheerleading, so that's on me. Heck, I haven't even made a badge yet. I should probably get around to that...

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There we go. Keep shooting demons, and we'll check back in at the end of the month.

Let's start taking nominations for the February Game of the Month. No themes next month; we're looking for any retro game that y'all want to play.

Also, if you want to nominate a game series for the Annual Franchise Challenge, feel free to do so at the same time. We're looking for classic retro games or series, probably on the longer side, that reward a permanent badge next to your name when completed.

We'll start voting on January 26 and call the winners on February. Let's hear what everyone wants to play!