Episode 299: Worst of the Best

I'm another Rebel Assault fan here. Those games are by no means great, but not every Star Wars game then could be TIE Fighter. The first one is kinda like the Super Star Wars games, in that it plays loose with the story to let you play the best stuff involving flying a fighter. The Rebels have a base on Hoth and have to take down AT-ATs there before you go blow up the first Death Star (as NOT Luke) Rebel Assault 2 is the one that includes newly shot footage. It was actually ahead of George Lucas in that I think it was mostly (if not entirely) shot on a blue screen.

DarthObvious

The mention of Might and Magic had me logging into GOG and revisiting my favorite entry, M&M 3...thanks!

I will defend that Star Wars AoE clone by saying that it's at least not as bad as Force Commander that was a early 3D RTS full of jank. And the other one let you play as the Gungans and that's hilarious.

Tentomon4

I've only seen that Street Fighter 1 cabinet one time at Anata no Warehouse and speaking of one time, that was all I played it.

littleterr0r

That was the end all statement on Street Fighter 1. I remember first seeing that cabinet long ago in '87-88. I was as befuddled as I am now as to why they would pick such a design choice, but it's interesting to hear from an owner of the machine. It's nice to replay on any system for the nostalgic factor, but it is indeed crap.

Normallyretro

I don't think there's a way to play Devil May Cry 2 that makes it good. But if you use the cheat code to unlock Trish it's at least less tedious since she starts out fully powered up.

Kevin Mayo

I think the worst issue I have with Wii Music is that it relied a lot on really bland public domain tracks and neither tried to license songs like the big music games of the time nor tapped into Nintendo's legendary soundtrack catalogues like Smash Bros.

Grant Baxter

Saga Frontier was one my favorite PS1 games. I always wondered if it wasn't rushed out the door by square resulting in a comical amount of cut content, would it have been better received? Even saying that, at the time, I never beat any of the scenarios and Im not sure why my early teen self thought so highly of it. I think it must be because every aspect of it seemed unique if not flawed Years later (~2008ish) I revisted it and really enjoyed it despite its several flaws. The mentioned robot and superhero ones are probably the best with Lute's story being the worst because its barely implemented. One of the main issues is a chunk of the content they didn't have time to implement was the "B" that explains why and how you need to go from "A" to "C". Well that and you can easily wander into deadly areas since you can go into other character's story's main dungeons as the other characters without warning. It definitely looks way better in the watercolor concept art than the actual game, though the 2d components I think still look nice. Its the 3d perspective in combat combined with low-res blurry sprites that get zoomed-into that makes everything look like a terrible nightmare.

Micah

I am not surprised to hear Bob talking about Wii Music, but I must admit I was surprised to hear that he considers it to be one of Nintendo's worst games. Still, I understand the criticism. Wii Music was advertised on the promise of extending the ease-of-use and simple input of the Wii and the Wiimote to the field of music--and, in particular, making music. However, it turned out that Wii Music was not really so much interested in players making music itself as letting players become conductors and mixers. The essence of Wii Music is not so much making sounds, but performing a piece of music. This was really interesting to me when I played Wii Music, as I was performing semi-regularly with my own jazz band at around that time, and I was thinking a lot about how to perform music to listeners and how to approach a certain piece of music and put your own spin on it. I spent quite a few hours experimenting with timing and tempos with every song, and I had a lot of fun. Wii Music is in many ways very much alike to Nintendogs: it's all about the performative aspects of the activity, although it's understandable that what worked with Nintendogs doesn't really translate that well to music.

David

Nah, that was the last way-old one—just about everything moving forward will be more recent. I think the one old thing on tap is Etrian Odyssey.

Retronauts

I am one of those folks who does genuinely enjoy Rebel Assault (and Rebel Assault 2 even). I can definitely understand why people don't like it, but there's a level of charm that other, arguably better Star Wars games don't have. Not an excellent game certainly, but compared to some other Star Wars games, hardly among the worst.

Jonathon

This episode reminds me of my friends and I sitting around in the schoolyard or summer vacation BSing about what games we thought were cool or not. I got ragged on for thinking Little Mermaid for NES was a good game and liking Super Mario Bros. 2 more than 3. Good times! This episode brought back a lot of warm fuzzy memories! So is the backlog still impressive or have you whittled it down to size?

Jared Blankenship