Game News Ultima Underworld is 99 of all time

[ecliptic]

Joining with the masses -

The standards : Fallout, PS:T, ChronoTrigger, yes I like some console stuff

Wiz. VII continues to impress and frighten me even today
Bionic Commando for NES, best arcade to home conversion ever. Killing Hitler was never more entertaining.
I lived in Ultima VI for about a summer, and I can still read snippets of runic thanks to my headstone translating efforts
Operation Overkill II [a bbs door game] in an age of LORD being registered on every BBS, OOII was largely overlooked due to its unforgiving learning curve and long term effort required, but these were small prices to pay for such rewarding gameplay. Take that hydrite! Take that terminator! Noooo! You can't have my skin.

 

[udarnik]

I suppose IGN's list demonstrates the futility of trying to rank all of electronic gaming, since so many people have fond memories of so many different types of games. Their number one entry, Super Mario Brothers, is probably a nostalgic favorite among the middle-class American twentysomething crowd, but I've never played it. Instead, I spent the mid-eighties playing Hack (a game I still play eighteen years later as NetHack), which would be my choice for number one. I actually dusted off my Playstation and loaded up Final Fantasy VII to see what the fuss was about (3 of the FFs are on their list) and played for a little bit but quickly got bored of watching the endless progression of primitive cutscenes that counts as gameplay in that title. Whatever visual splendor it had when it came out is gone now and I am left to assume either that console gamers are moronic blobs of flesh, or that their opinions are driven by the same sort of warm and fuzzy sentimentalism that makes me say I loved the King's Quest series despite its masochistic gameplay. These incredibly subjective lists are only as good as your opinion of the person who wrote them.

Anyway, my own list would probably include:
Loom
Doom
A Mind Forever Voyaging
NetHack
Fallout
PS:T and IWD
Wizardry Series
Civilization
X-Com
Sundog: Frozen Legacy

But Lemmings, Star Control, Eye of the Beholder, Archon, Dungeon Master, Syndicate, and Privateer which have already been mentioned are all great as well.

Someday I'll have to pick up Dungeon Keeper.

 

[Spazmo]

I think the real lesson here is that making a list of the best games ever is totally futile. Beyond the question of varying opinions, there is the incredible sheer mass of fantastic games out there that everyone remembers and loves. And even if someone does try to make a list, someone else comes along with their own, reminding the first guy of a few games he'd forgotten.

And also, looking on this thread, it has occured to me that quite possibly no other hobby is as prone to blissful nostalgia as gaming. We all remember our favorite cutscene, dialog, quote, character, level, etc. and wish more games were like that.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I think the real lesson here is that making a list of the best games ever is totally futile. Beyond the question of varying opinions, there is the incredible sheer mass of fantastic games out there that everyone remembers and loves.

Right on. It's futile, however, our incomplete list rocks, and brings out sweet memories of the great time we had (which is the main reason to make such a list in the first place) unlike the IGN list.

Elite - Fathered the space trader sim. In fact, I'm pretty sure it fathered the whole space fighter sim genre too. It was open ended before open ended was a keyword feature

Yeah, I remember asking my friend about Elite, he was trying to explain the open endness of it, and I could not "get" it thinking that he was probably too stupid to figure out what was required to finish the game "properly"

 

[Zetor]

Amen on FFVII. I honestly don't see why it's so great... also, FF fanboys scare me.
Though, to be fair, there are a lot of console games I enjoyed -- Tactics Ogre is a pretty damn good game and would probably make it to my top 10. FF3/6 wasn't a bad game for what it was, either.

Today's morsel of wisdom from the IGN boards: ("do you like PC or console RPGs?")

Console RPGs.

My reason is simple:
I hate hack and slash combat,
and I like turn-based combat.

Simple as that.

from here.
(also note the mental acuity with which Alpine-X contributes to any thread... well, those 1900 posts had to come from somewhere )
Scarily enough, it's pretty much the most intelligent thread on the 1st page of that board right now...

-- Z.

 

[Sabotai]

And also, looking on this thread, it has occured to me that quite possibly no other hobby is as prone to blissful nostalgia as gaming. We all remember our favorite cutscene, dialog, quote, character, level, etc. and wish more games were like that.

Quite true. And this nostagia feeling makes comparing games really hard,
especially with a couple of years between them.

In a moment of weakness I was picturing myself as a twelve year old trying out NWN
for the first time, without my current gaming history/experience. Would I have loved
it as much as I did The Faery Tale Adventure 17 years ago? I'm not really sure.
Probably not, I just didn't have fun with NWN. I would have chosen Divine Divinity instead.

And adding a few more titles to the unofficial "RPGCodex top 100 list of ALL TIME EVAR"

-Bubble Bobble
-All Magnetic Scrolls text adventures: The Pawn, The Guild of Thieves, Corruption
-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
-Supremacy
-At least one Cinemaware title, preferrable Rocket Ranger
-Zak McKraken and the Alien Mind Benders
-Flimbo's Quest (Anyone remember this game? The reason I'm including this game is because it's the only game evar where you had a sword which fired bullets)
-Swiv


On a sidenote, all this digging in "mostly Amiga/Atari" gaming history, made me suddenly remember an Amiga game called Lionheart. I'm not a intellectual property rights specialist, but doesn't Interplay need permission/buy the name to use this title for another game? In this regard I hope the IPLY legal department isn't "as up to speed" as when they lost their Baldur's Gate license.

 

[Sabotai]

Today's morsel of wisdom from the IGN boards: ("do you like PC or console RPGs?")

Console RPGs.

My reason is simple:
I hate hack and slash combat,
and I like turn-based combat.

Simple as that.

from here.
(also note the mental acuity with which Alpine-X contributes to any thread... well, those 1900 posts had to come from somewhere )
Scarily enough, it's pretty much the most intelligent thread on the 1st page of that board right now...

-- Z.

What's even scarier is the fact that the "random idiot" (aka "MaximusPowers") you are quoting has made 4,568 posts.

 

[udarnik]

On a sidenote, all this digging in "mostly Amiga/Atari" gaming history, made me suddenly remember an Amiga game called Lionheart. I'm not a intellectual property rights specialist, but doesn't Interplay need permission/buy the name to use this title for another game?

There are a ton of Amiga/Atari games whose names have since been appropriated by PC companies. "Anarchy" by WJS Design, "Arena" published by Psygnosis, "Blockbuster" by Iceland Software, "Diablo" by Extended Software Company, "Hero Quest" published by Gremlin Graphics. There were a lot of little guys and foreigners making games for the Atari, and I don't think they're the sort to mount a legal struggle against the Vivendi/Infogrames juggernauts of the world. But even if they did, at least a name change isn't as big a deal as LOSING THE RIGHTS TO YOUR RULE SET! Ouch.

That IGN thread is a good example of the dangers of mainstream forums. I counted one intelligent and bored adult and two earnest but confused posters forming eddies in the pool of sub-human trash who produce the ambient noise in the forum.
Alpine-X is my favorite.
" LoL all outsider but 1. LoL"

And I have played hours of Bubble Bobble on an arcade machine. It was the only arcade game where I got good enough to get some real game time out of my quarter. And looking over Atari ST games has reminded me of Alternate Reality: The City (I never saw the 8-bit version). Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but that was the hardest crpg I've ever played. I seem to remember the weather changing and you had to find warm clothes. I never had enough money to sleep in an inn, so I'd wander the streets till I was mugged and killed. It was like playing the role of "homeless bum" in a fantasy world whose most deadly enemies were your own fellow citizens. Brutal.