Game Scoop! 868: Games of Our Lives, Part 1

19:32Justin Davis:yeah so good yeah i had a friend who introduced me to this game and he i went over to this place for a sleepover and we watched die hard and one of the friday the 13th is like seven six or seven and then we stayed up all night long just playing Castlevania. Sick. I like how in this game there are boss weaknesses like Mega Man. If you are really careful and take the right weapons to each boss, they train you in the beginning by giving you the easy one in front of the bat, in front of Medusa. Well, no, not in front of Medusa. I just think that's really smart.

20:07Sam Claiborn:I was shook when I found out how easy Dracula could be as long as you had the holy water. I had no idea. And someone was like, just use the holy water, dude. It means you have to like no death run the last level though, right? Yeah. Yeah.

20:23Justin Davis:Friendly reminder, we're only two months away from a new Castlevania game. Woo-wee. Yes. All right, Justin, 1987. So I picked, by the way, like I maybe misunderstood the assignment slightly because I didn't pick, I picked the game that at that time in my life was the one that like made the biggest impact on me more than like, you know, like Modern Me would, yeah, modern me would pick planescape torment for like whatever year that came out but like me back in the day probably pick mario party so like this is the first year that that comes into play just to okay but anyway i picked uh mike tyson's punch out that's my pick or just yeah i think it's absolutely a top tier nes game but for me by the way like it's speaking of like you know schoolyard rumors and stuff like that it's like i was so deeply confused because i had punch out and i I fought Mr.

21:11Dream at the end of the game. And then my neighbor across the street had Mike Tyson's punch out. And then he fought Mike Tyson at the end of the game. Like, what is this mean? Like, is it a sequel? I don't know. But then it was all the same people. No, it's so playable. It's so good. Maybe a little bit racist by modern standards. But, you know, like it was the 80s. So, no, like it's still, I don't really have it. Like some games, it's like, well, it was good for the era. it was good for the time it's like no punch out is just dope yeah yeah it absolutely holds up

21:44Justin Davis:some of the biggest and best sprites nintendo ever put on a cartridge yep and it's so fluid also yeah and it's really good to play casually and it's also really good to like learn the patterns and like each fight is also kind of like a puzzle if you really want to take it seriously like man it's so good yeah it's a puzzle game it's a shadow of the colossus is a punch out like yeah i love that was my pick too yeah cool all right then getting into 1988 i would pick super mario brothers 2 yeah i was hoping you'd pick that because that's easily the most important game for me from that year but i picked contra so let's talk about mario 2 because that's what i actually love mario i think mario 2 is actually a little underrated everyone you know oh yeah i i everyone agrees you know everyone loves mario 3 i'm i i don't take anything away from that in In fact, that's on my list too.

22:34Justin Davis:But I think Mario 2, it just gets overlooked, I think, sometimes. Maybe because it's not truly a Mario game. I don't think it matters. Wait, what do you mean? Yeah, well, it's truly a Mario game. How much time do you have? You know, like, the hype for Mario 2, I know there's the classic Mario 3 ad of, like, you know, seeing the world pull out. But, like, this was just as hyped. Like, this game was a huge deal. It was as huge as any movie sequel that you'll remember from the time. It was a big deal. Nintendo Power started to hype it. And I sat around in school with Nintendo Power with 20 other kids talking about Mario for three weeks before we saw the game.

23:13Justin Davis:Plus, I love Mario's sprite. It has so much more personality than Super Mario Bros. 1.

23:19Sam Claiborn:I also love just playing as different characters and it's like they all have their own unique abilities and for some reason they would do the Scholastic Book Fair at my school and they did these adaptations where they adapted video games that didn't really need adaptations until like choose your own adventures and this was a choose your own adventure book that they made and this is how I fell in love with the game like you know visualizing myself playing the game while I read the book is very cute

23:46Justin Davis:it's gotta be one of the smartest this has to be one of the smartest things Nintendo did in the era they had a Super Mario Brothers 2 that would have been a disaster they just smartly like took this completely other game and wrapped it up with Mario and stuff and it worked It was really great. Mario 2 in Japan is just hard mode and annoying. And it's interesting now is like a quirk of history, but this game is really accessible and it has replayability with the four players. Like it's just a much better showcase of what the NES brought people, which is just like months and months of gameplay. And, you know, only PCs had that, right?

24:25Justin Davis:Yeah. But you picked Contra Sam. that's another another great choice yeah because co-op but also because that same amalgamation of 80s qualities right like it had the rambo and the aliens commando like commando it's just the the that was the kind of the coolest you know thing you could appeal to for kids like they made a rambo cartoon for kids and stuff the time it's crazy but it felt like it felt like big kids stuff you know which helps and then it's just it's also like like Mario 2 it's just more it's definitely more accessible than the arcade game you can play through it you know it you can you because you have a 30 life code oh yeah that's the coolest code of all time it's just really really interesting to be like yeah we're gonna play this game if you want an arcade challenge it's fine if you just want to have your friends over get a pizza and play this forever then get 30 lives and figure it out yep everyone knows the konami code because of this game yep it's also in gradius but it's just a different vibe yeah conjure is a lot more popular than gradius i think i remember the uh

25:28Sam Claiborn:the inter like in between levels that faux 3d that they do it pissed me off so much as a kid

25:35Justin Davis:it was so hard cool and then justin how about you for 88 i picked metal gear and i picked it for kind of a similar reason as sam of like it felt like a big like that's the first time i can remember playing a game be like this feels mature and like this feels like yeah you know there's like story twists and turns and it's a cheesy but like modern standards but like back then it's like the espionage story and like it's the first time i can remember although i wouldn't have called it this when i was like five or whatever but like that game has environmental storytelling yeah like you are parachuted into the jungle and then you have to sneak into the base and then you get deeper into the base and you're rescuing people like you know it's telling you a wordless story although there are words in it too by just like where you go and what you explore and like you know that was

26:22Sam Claiborn:it i loved it and the nes game is so hard though it is so hard yeah compared to the msx version but you can smoke cigarettes you can smoke cigarettes and you can fell asleep feel asleep i feel asleep that's the worst type of all time because it means the opposite because it actually meant that he's waking up he's like oh i fell asleep and then that's when

26:45Justin Davis:try to sneak past him but no i feel asleep you think he's about to go to sleep i think someone set us up the bomb it's also from metal gear yeah no we have the bomb in your inventory right like the bomb is planted in your inventory it's from the genesis game called uh not you and squadron yeah yeah yeah yeah that one you and commander right or wing wing something you're if you think of zero wing that's all your base are belong to us yeah but i said someone said it's up the bomb oh they're both in the same game i think so wow okay all right all right then metal gear is so ahead of its time you had to dodge the cameras like no one was doing that back in like the mid 80s like it's crazy it's kojima man he was on to something very zelda-esque all right it was a metroidvania too

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29:55Justin Davis:CementMobile.com. For the final year of the 80s, I picked Mega Man 2. Classic. I was hoping somebody could pick that. But not you. No, I picked SimCity. Me too. Wow, interesting. Two SimCities and a Mega Man 2. I couldn't settle on a Mega Man. I like Mega Man 3 so much, and I like Mega Man 2. And I played this non-stop. Again, Destin Contra and Castlevania have the best music. They're just so good. Yeah, this is also a Nintendo Power Cover. Also a game where I just love the sprites. The large, colorful sprites. This is the best-looking NES games to me. I like how by the time 3 came out you could get 1, 2, and 3 you could just play a lot of Mega Man by that point it was nice to have a game once a year it wasn't a thing that was established quite yet yeah there'd be 4 more just come on the NES alone after this game yeah it's just unfortunate because 4 came out so much later and then by that point it was like the Super Nintendo was out so the 5 and 6 came out concurrent with the Super Nintendo so we played them but you both picked sim city did you play it on a computer or would you not play it until the super nintendo i played on a pc yeah i played it on a computer definitely not in 89 but probably 91 92 we probably played sim city or had it on our you know dos machine um and it was the first time i'd ever seen or been exposed to a video you know video games were mario and excite bike and punch out in Metal Gear and like playing a sim like any kind of like PC sim game just was mind-blowing like I'd never experienced anything like that before and um you know don't put the industrial area next to the residential area and residential areas like to have parks next to them like yeah you know it's very sort of basic stuff in a modern context but like it was just it felt it felt unlike anything I'd ever seen before yeah really good graphics I know this is hard to imagine but Like it looked better than the NES because before the Super Nintendo, right?

31:55Looked amazing. And then SimCity 2000 was just incredible as a follow. But this was just fun just because like it, it was fun to cheat. It was fun to give yourself a bunch of money and then just see what happens in the end states. The disasters were interesting. It had a little tune that it would play like everything about this game was set up to just feel like nothing else in existence.

32:16Justin Davis:I mean, it's great. It's an interesting game for Nintendo to want for the Super Nintendo. but I guess they're thinking of uses for their mouse that they had, that they're working on.

32:24Sam Claiborn:And a very cute will write sprite.

32:27Justin Davis:And they can put Bowser in it. I love that car traffic graphic. I forgot about that. That's really good. Yeah. This B-roll is deeply nostalgic to me. Yeah. For real. I want to play this. Okay. Well, now it is the nineties and there is time for clacks. When, when, when, when will a young fresh face, Nick Lamone be joining us?

32:45Sam Claiborn:I'll be joining you in 1992. Okay.

32:48Justin Davis:You're right. You're almost there. there's only one possible choice for 1990 as everyone agrees hold on wait a minute what's about to happen Super Mario Brothers 3 yeah okay this is the first year that was hard for me between Final Fantasy and Mario 3 I did pick Mario 3 oh Final Fantasy I love Final Fantasy 2 I've also no one likes Final Fantasy 2 yeah I mean, Mario 3 is a candidate. If someone said it was the best game ever made or their favorite game ever made, no shade to any of the games we've had up to now, but Mario 3 is the one where I'm like, yeah, totally. I agree.

33:32Justin Davis:Yeah, I don't know. What else is there to say about Mario 3 at this point? So whimsical, featured in a feature film. It's so well thought out. Featured in a 90-minute commercial. After that, kind of like, well, we made a Mario 2, we made a different Mario 2 and blah, blah, blah. Then they just like sat down like, no, we need to make a really, really, really good Super Mario Brothers game. Oh yeah. It's like the first true, you know, sequel that, you know, developed from the ground up to be a sequel to Mario. And to use every bit of the NES's power. Yeah. You know, and it came out in 89 in Japan, which is like absolutely crazy.

34:08I know. So that gives you an out to use, uh, to, to also have Final Fantasy in here, which I would say like if, when I was a kid, I probably liked Final Fantasy. you know, more than Mario for at least a little Mario three for a little while. But then I came back to like Mario three more, but just because Final Fantasy felt like the biggest, craziest big game ever, you know, like it felt like a Star Wars movie. They just went so hard on all aspects of this game, like watching this footage is like Mario's doing somersaults when he gets the star. And like they went so hard on the music and there's eight worlds and each one has a different theme and a different soundtrack.

34:41And there's airships and there's warp whistles like it's like it's unbelievable. There's secrets you might only see once, like the ghost ship stuff. Yeah. It's just like, it's such a weird trigger that like when you didn't know what it was. Yeah. You'll see a ghost ship, you know, once in your entire childhood. You're like, what the hell was that? Yeah.

34:58Justin Davis:Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But it's like, it's so big and massive. That's why it's crazy that Mario World came just the next year. Mario World was 91. That's my pick for 91. Like, were they developing these games at the same time? Are there just two different teams working on these games? if it was 89 to 91 then that gives you a little bit more time because they just waited to put it out yeah i guess they did yeah yeah if you look at the egn reading a bunch of egn's from 1989 they're talking about how the sega genesis and the turbo graphics are coming but nintendo is kind of just like they for them there was no sense of urgency because the nes was still the biggest thing in the world they didn't need to rush a new console out for the u.s they could by their time.

35:40Justin Davis:But yeah, I picked Super Mario World for 1991. Nice. Yeah, this is the first year. Well, we can talk about Mario World first because I have a different pick. And it's the first year that I mentioned me picking the game that was like, you know, formative for me at that point in my life is different than like the game I would pick now. Oh God, is it Actraiser? As an adult, I'd pick Mario World for sure. Yeah. I did not. You didn't pick Mario World? Okay, what'd you pick? I didn't. What'd you pick? I picked Sonic the Hedgehog. Yeah, me too. You said you weren't going to do any troll picks. Sonic the Hedgehog meant the world to me.

36:15It was like it was the coolest like this was the moment in which I was like this. This Mario game looks like a baby game to me. Wow. The marketing a thousand percent worked on me. I was like, I need to sell my NES and all my games and get a Genesis. And I regretted it so hard. However, I did really like the first Sonic a lot. and I played this like crazy at friends' houses and then had to get a Super Nintendo 2 eventually. But yeah, this Sonic, I mean, just look how good this is. It's a beautiful game. I have a vivid memory of like, you know, got a Sega Genesis for Christmas, hooked it up, playing Mario, and like showing my dad.

36:50I'm like, look at this shit. I mean, that's not the word that I use. I'm like, look at Sonic. Like, look at how fast he is and look at how, like, you know, and then my dad being like, yeah, I don't know. It looks like Mario to me. And then me getting all agitated that he couldn't like tell. how it was like so much faster and better um you know but the speed like you know we goof on sonic a lot on this show but like like the speed back then in mario one like was a real thing like it was crazy like he's so fast incredible music too i agree in the music i agree it's a great looking

37:23Justin Davis:game but there's never been a day in my life that i would rather play sonic than mario world i concur well those days for me were all in 1991 since then i didn't feel that way but i would have rather played this in 1991 and also there was a little bit of thing happening things happening like where if you had a friend group where somebody already had a super nintendo then like you it was really great to like fill in the blank by getting a genesis and i was the genesis household i already come over my house play genesis games i go over to theirs to play the other stuff so i thought that was kind of a fun little result of the 80s yeah 90s i mean mario world i love the overworld.

37:59Justin Davis:I love the color palette of the game. To me, if I have any criticism of Mario Bros. 3, I think it gets pastel and kind of brown. Yeah, a little Pantone-y. I know that they're trying to do as much as they can with the NES, but the color palette on Super Mario World is just so clear. Greens, blues, red. Oh my gosh, it's gorgeous. It's such a good-looking game. I remember reading in EGM before the game released about how it was using this Mode 7 graphics, and Mario on a fence can spin around, and there There appeared to be a transparent fog in front of him. So all this stuff was just completely captivating to me.

38:31Justin Davis:And I rented it. I rented a Super Famicom from Video Library in Lenexa and played through all of Super Mario World probably six months before the Super Nintendo was even released in the US. That's how obsessed I was with playing this thing. Wait, how? How did you get it? Just an import system. This video rental store had... That's so cool. They bought a Super Famicom and you could rent it. That's incredible. Yeah, it was great. and I filmed when I beat it I filmed the ending on our camcorder nice I filmed the ending I've never even seen the ending of Sonic the Hedgehog it's impossible to get there let it go and get all the Chaos Emeralds I think it's not a fun game by the time you get to the end of it I've beaten Mario 1 but I've never I don't know that I've beaten it with the Chaos Emeralds I'm not sure about that

39:18Sam Claiborn:you have to endure those 3D levels those rotating levels I mean vomit city yeah all those things you mentioned that mario could do uh sonic couldn't do any of those it just had a really good marketing department yep like this is nuts crazy yeah this does look crazy i played the sega ages version of this to finally like finish the game and man they do a lot of quality of life things but they don't make it easy to get the real ending of the game I like the style of pre-run years in the background. It was the style at the time.

39:55Justin Davis:Okay, 1992. We can start hearing from Nick.

39:58Sam Claiborn:I'm here. What do you want to pick? I made it, baby. My pick, it's probably going to be a ubiquitous one, I think. Link to the Past. Link to the Past. This game is one that, again, this is, I played this when I was like five. So this is me at zero retroactively, or in the future thinking about it. But I didn't know how to read, so every time I played the game, I would just pick new game, and I just remember being so obsessed with this little boy, and his dad leaves him and goes on an adventure, and his dad dies in the dungeon. I was like, whoa, that can happen in a game? That's crazy. And it's like my job now to do what my dad couldn't.

40:35Sam Claiborn:That really stuck with me, and I think this game is just so magical from the beginning and so many secrets, so many optional things to find, and I just love the idea that there's things that you could discover.

40:46Justin Davis:Yeah. Zelda 2 had been such a departure. And like, I still liked it and played it, but it did not have quite the same magic as Zelda 1. So yeah, kind of returning to a Zelda 1 style game really worked for me and seeing it on the beautiful Super Nintendo graphics. Gorgeous game. This is great. Well, while you guys are running around as a fat little baby with a sword that looks like, you know, a butter knife, I was playing Sewer Shark. Yeah. That's my ex-stack. Yeah. I almost pick Sewer Shark too. Yeah, I didn't think this game was very fun. I rented it and I liked it and I just didn't like Zelda by this point.

41:24I didn't play. I didn't like the original Zelda. I thought Zelda 2 was terrible. And now all those games I like a whole lot. I mean, obviously, Sewer Shark's my favorite game of all time. They'll never meet. It's just that I didn't I didn't like these other games. I didn't I didn't feel it, but I played this and I got to the point with a grappling hook and I was like, that's really cool. But then I had to put it back, give it back to the rental store. and I went back to not understanding a goddamn thing about what's going on in Sewer Shark.

41:51Justin Davis:Yeah, I never played Sewer Shark, but it was kind of an infamous game. You'd read about it in magazines and stuff. Three, six, niner. Yep, yep. Yeah, it's amazing. This is like, they actually filmed these rat tube segments. It was relatively like Star Wars, right? I like how this looks. It looks really cool. But basically what you're doing is you're... the actual game is that thing at the top. That's like a dragon's layer thing. So see at the top there, it has the directional thing. Oh yeah. It'll tell you, you need to turn three, six niner, which means right down left. Yeah. And that's the next couple of turns you need to make.

42:30And while you're doing that, you're, you're shooting Womp Rats and beggars Canyon. Yep. Yeah. The FMV cut scenes blew my mind as a, as a young boy.

42:40Justin Davis:You would have played this on. This is Sega CD. Sega CD. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And that's, I was all in, I got a Sega CD, you know, like nothing else was really out for it that I liked very much. But you know, again, we would rent every single Sega CD game we could and go through them all because they were really fun and they were targeted at me who was, what year was this? 1992. I was 11. You know, like how great was that for an 11 year old? It is cool. I like the overlay in like your cockpit and how you can see through the windows on the sides. the footage is still scrolling past you. That's cool.

43:13Yeah. I appreciate it. And on a CRT, I mean, look at those lit up tubes. They look awesome. Yeah, they are pretty cool. I mean, it looks really cool. It looks like Kallenwald City or like the Death Star or something like it. It's just cool.

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46:43way fair every style every home so i'll stop i'll stop caveating it modern me would pick link to the past but seven-year-old me in 92 picked mortal combat that was the game that made the mark on me as a kid growing up unbelievable ultra violent um i mean i don't i don't actually have too much to say about it like it's just the violence right like the gameplay in mortal combat games wouldn't become actually good until i mean you know some would argue maybe never but like you know it's good today for sure yeah but like mortal combat 3 is when they kind of figured out like oh we need to actually have like a good fighting game on top of this but the digitized actors and you know kind of the ultra violence and the fatalities and the rumors around the fatalities and the toasty which that may have only been mortal combat 2 but like all of that was just you know like never seen anything like it before so i can segue into the next year because i chose mortal kombat 2 because they are just a complete complete same game blur when they came out because mortal kombat 2 you know kind of solved all the problems in mortal kombat 1 on console which was that you didn't have blood in your super nintendo which looks so much better than the genesis right like that was the big deal but for both those games they were also that time where arcades came back for different reasons for street fighter but mortal combat and nba jams have kept the arcade going for a little bit in the early 90s and like i would go to the arcade and like everybody was trying to figure out the the just like in the documentary and watch world combat like i absolutely had people with and i had done this too printed out ascii or not you know or in early internet printouts with the fatalities that people knew the secret moves that people knew and it was hard to pull them off on a joystick and buttons and you know we're like little kids doing this it was really fun of course there's big kids smoking cigarettes it's all scary

48:32Justin Davis:yeah i've never been much of a fighting game guy but i love the aesthetic of mortal combat i just always want to see everything that it can do everything that can happen all the different ways people can die it's great so for 93 sam you pick more combat 2 yeah yeah i picked doom for 93 nice yeah oh i was obsessed with doom this is one of those games it's still really fun and playable today i love the look of it i love the feel the sound of it it's it's great i could play this game any day and have a blast yeah it's so good one thing i wish i knew like what i knew back then was all the secrets because i used to be able to like go to all the secret rooms and find them all and i'd have to look that all up now but i'm surprised like it's not like riding a bike for me it's all gone when i play it now yeah i love it and i never we never had a computer my next door neighbor had a computer and we'd play pc games like this but i never had one so i never really fully experienced this game until they released it on xbox live arcade oh that's the first time i played through the whole game i had like a boxed doom collection that was from maybe 94 or something 95 um yeah they used to make sorry yeah like but they used to do this thing where it would be like unauthorized you know you'd buy something from the bookstore in the mall that would be like 800 doom levels and then like you know they're all just mods like yeah like it's just mods and unauthorized things and packs like that and like that was like the way that i played doom and then i didn't sort of experience the canonical game that much until the xbla version as well in hindsight i feel very lucky that my parents like they knew about what movies i should be watching and what games i should be playing but never talked to me about them just monitored from a distance and they never said a damn thing.

50:14My dad would help me get games like this running on their PC. That's very cute. It's another game that is an early example of really strong environmental storytelling of you descend into hell as you're fighting these demons and you leave the facility and go into their hellscape. It's also another example, sort of like the original Mario, the Doom guy rips around these stages. Like he's so fast and like just the character movement is just like, it just, it just has a great game feel that I don't think necessarily gets enough kind of like credit when people talk about it.

50:52Justin Davis:If a game before this used exploding barrels, I can't, I couldn't tell you what it was. This might be the first appearance of that. And so smart to show the doom guys damage, taking damage on his face. It's so good. Yeah. Yeah. The, the outside, when you go outside on Mars, it's like the coolest thing in the world. How could video games be this big? It's really amazing. And then also the monsters later on are super cool. Like the big brain with the legs.

51:17Sam Claiborn:The double barrel shotgun, one of the finest shooting and reloading animations I've ever seen and experienced in a game.

51:24Justin Davis:Yeah. It feels good. All right, Nick, for 1993.

51:27Sam Claiborn:93. This is a recent edition just because I didn't really have anything good to pick when I looked at all the games that released. I played this for the first time when they released, I believe it's called Castlevania Requiem. but Castlevania Rondo of Blood one of the finest action platformers ever made incredible music incredible sprites incredible anime cutscenes so brutally difficult you can do cool hidden moves if you know how to push the buttons secret levels alternate endings alternate characters just again also I think Richter Belmont is one of the coolest looking video game sprites I've ever seen this game rules so hard yeah it's a turbo graphics game

52:06Justin Davis:my camera pc engine was on pc engine but uh it would be released in the u.s for the super nintendo

52:13Sam Claiborn:right in kind of like a yeah like a bastardized version yeah wait yeah dracula x playably bad

52:19Justin Davis:but this so this is why it's not playable that's why this is one of those games when you read uh egm and they talk about you know japanese games they've checked out they would sing this game's praises and be like i hope they bring it out over here i want to play this game so bad like look at

52:32Sam Claiborn:the intro of the werewolf boss battle is so badass like it's so cool this game just oozes

52:38Justin Davis:style yeah it's awesome that's a good pick that's a really good pick justin do you have something different for 93 i picked doom doom okay cool all right well justin i think i know you picked for 94 yeah no yeah mentioned it a few times right yeah super metroid that's my pick too by the way yeah favorite game of all time and yet another example of very very strong environmental storytelling. I mean, look, it's a perfect video game of like a perfect marriage of exploration and platforming and combat and gunplay and level ups and secrets and puzzles. And, you know, it's this stuff that sort of become a little bit kind of like trite or expected now, but was a lot bigger deal when this came out of like, you would get a power up and then it would recontextualize areas that you'd been to before and could revisit.

53:26Like all of that was like such a big deal back then and um it just felt so moody and like you know oppressive the the just the environments that you were going through um man what a great what a game i play through it once a year um you know i i like it's just that feeling of like i wish i could go back and play it for the first time but i can't like now i can get through it and like you know and i'm not a speed runner so

53:51Justin Davis:like you know two three hours um yeah even from the title screen the title screen is so moody and they show you're these dead scientists are lying on the floor and the the music like nintendo family friendly nintendo had never done anything like that before i played on a crt tv and imagine how mind blown i was when i played the game later and i'm like oh those are all dead bodies on the screen because i did not clock that when i was playing in fuzzy sd resolution yeah yeah because

54:18Sam Claiborn:i'm a big dork my instagram feed like real algorithm is people experiencing different retro games for the first time and i always stop and watch people trying to discover the wall bounce for the first time in this and how the game shows you what you can do but it's up to you to kind of put the two and two together to actually wall bounce and it's so so exciting to see people

54:39Justin Davis:discover it yeah yeah this super metroid was my pick for this year but i think this year would have a lot of different this is the year that final fantasy 6 came out that which is my pick Yeah, I knew other people would pick that. Yeah, although the game is called Final Fantasy 3. Correct. And that's for Super Nintendo. And that's what we all knew it as until really, really. Until just last year, I think. Fantastic, weird people started bringing that up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I picked that one. I didn't play Metroid at the time. I only played this after I played. My friends all had it. I played it at their house or I watched them play it.

55:15But I didn't play it all the way through until I played Metroid Prime. so yeah final fantasy six slash three is definitely my pick for this year i could i could almost go

55:23Sam Claiborn:either way that's also a completely valid six six is incredible the first time i ever experienced it again i still couldn't read at this point so just constantly doing new game over and over and i always get to the bit in narsh where you have to split the party and there's like mogs that you can send down different pathways to encounter bosses and that was just like like the discovery of narsh is just like oh this is like a snowy setting there's like magic and technology like this is pretty weird like i didn't know you could make a world like this and i just remember being so obsessed with the title screen music like when the credit opening crawl and you hear the just like whoa the presentation on this just blew me away as a kid and again this is a game that i probably revisit once every two years at this point is i think i would argue this is actually the best Final Fantasy, even though it's not my favorite.

56:14Justin Davis:A lot of people would agree with you. Sam, anything you want to add about it? Well, yeah, that intro music when the mechs are walking. Have you seen how they've discovered where the clip art is for the cliffs in the background? No. Cool. Just like all that stuff's kind of being discovered now, and it's really neat. That's awesome. Yeah, so this game, the anecdote that I always remember the most fondly is that EGM 2, probably. had Game Genie codes, whereas like, you know, this game is not what you think of for a Game Genie game, but they've made it so crazy and I would I could start a save and you could start it like nine nine nine nine nine eight or whatever.

56:56You get the weapon and just go through the game like on a speed run. That was really fun. But I like how this game had things like you could chain the Genji glove and something else and get like eight X attacks. And like, you know, there was all the optional characters and optional fights and then i just have the best memories of final fantasy one and three playing through the print strategy guide and it really got me into strategy guides like that's that's

57:20Sam Claiborn:what i loved about it and real quick just revisiting this in a modern context you know as an adult with a big brain now at least allegedly uh is that every the way the game is kind of designed its entire single players choreographed and done in a way where it's forcing you to think about every single encounter in a way that i never really thought about in final fantasy there is typically a gimmick to every boss battle and I really appreciate that.

57:45Justin Davis:Okay, well, speaking of Square, Square's off the time. For 95, I went with Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger here as well. My favorite game of all time. Wow. That's cool. This is one I haven't played in a long time, but yeah. I played this in the dorm room at the University of Kansas in Hashinger Hall, Sam. This is where I played all of Chrono Trigger. I know it well. So cool, like visiting all the different time periods. incredible really feeling invested in the story and the characters i mean i think this is the

58:13Sam Claiborn:first time that i became aware of the presence of a country japan you know like the idea that i was like wait a second chrono kind of looks like goku from dragon ball my brother would show me episodes of dragon ball like what's going on here and then you know lo and behold it's all kind of interconnected when i was like what do you mean the final fantasy guy uh one of the final fantasy guys designed this game like this is great what what's happening here this just incredible sprites It's one of the most beautiful pixelated games I think I've ever seen. Incredible music. And I think it's the perfect length for a JRPG.

58:45Sam Claiborn:It's like 20 hours, 30 hours if you want 100 % it. It's pretty short.

58:50Justin Davis:I think it's much smaller than Final Fantasy III. Yeah. That's interesting.

58:54Sam Claiborn:A lot of endings, though, which also kick ass because they're all like, what do you mean there's 18, 13 endings? HD2D remaster, please. Oh, yeah. That'd be an ordeal. That'd be interesting. I'm surprised. Damon, you're probably the only person I know in my entire life that played this when it came out. I didn't know anybody that knew this. Square Enix games before Final Fantasy VII were pretty obscure or Square and Enix games. And then this one was obscure because it wasn't a Final Fantasy, right? My friends played Secret of Mana. That is very true. There's been some, I don't want to say revisionist history.

59:30I don't know the phrase for it. But kids these days don't necessarily know that Chrono Trigger was not... Like this was a game that built over like a decade of like, you can find old message wordpress of like, you know what a role-playing game is actually pretty good. There was this game on the Super Nintendo called Chrono Trigger. Like it wasn't the game until like, until later. Yeah. That's exactly right.

59:50Justin Davis:The editors of EGM at the time knew that it was a great game and they were spreading the word. And so I'm sure that's where I learned about it.

59:57Sam Claiborn:Yeah. I never bought games at that age. My brothers are the ones who chose the games and I just, I think inherited their taste as a result. but the editors of nintendo power were squarely focused on the console launch of this year which was the virtual boy so my pick is mario's tennis for the virtual play which i i love i still love it it's really playable and awful for 10 minutes uh both things can be true at once and uh i was i played tennis as a kid growing up like i love the idea of uh you know a mario tennis game this was the first one i ever played and they did a good job with it and it was all red and black and I was fully in, just like with Sewer Shark.

1:00:36Is it the best? That's what I wanted to play this Christmas. Is it the best Virtual Boy game? Well, a lot of the Virtual Boy games ended up coming out right after the Christmas holiday. And so this was the 1995 game. But also it launched with Mario Clash, which is a pretty good, just Mario Brothers vanilla clone with 3D in. No, the best Virtual Boy game is either Nestor's Funky Bowling or Waterworld.

1:00:59Justin Davis:Okay, yeah. Thank you. thank you for getting to the correct answer. Justin, what'd you pick for 95? Warcraft two. Oh, cool. That's great. You know, it was another case of I've shared a couple, like I was 10 years old when this game came out. I think I've shared this story before of like, we were at some party, some adults party, and I was the only kid there. And I got sent down to the basement and I'm on their family computer, but they just had, it was just covered in video games all over the desktop. And I didn't know what any of them were. I didn't know what was going on i was 10 and i fired up warcraft 2 and like i just never i didn't know real-time strategy was a thing i didn't know that there was strategy games i didn't know you know anything about anything and like that game is another one that's still i mean this fmv cut seems funny but like the actual gameplay is still really playable and really funny and just clicking on the units and i remember being really fascinated that you know you gather gold in that game and you gather wood as your resources and the wood you chop down from trees that um that go away like there's a finite amount of them and so you know like you would you would have to you would clear out the whole forest and then have to gather wood somewhere else and just like just a great just really formative core memory for me of like oh like strategy games are a thing and i think i like them and then i discovered command and conquer came out that year too and i think i was on that shortly after as well i can't believe there's already warcraft 2 by this point yeah it's insane the original warcraft is not uh fun in a modern context and warcraft 2 still is like it still holds up yeah i didn't i've never seen those cut scenes those were like from a cd-rom version or something i don't know yeah i guess that's great yeah a few years later when i did get my first computer i would play warcraft 2 and 3 and love them i don't know why these strategy parts of this series had to just to disappear that's a bummer yeah seriously should be yearly right yep

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1:04:22Justin Davis:Okay, I would hope we all have the same game for 96. Yeah, I picked Mario 64. Mario 64.

1:04:29Sam Claiborn:See, I knew everyone was going to pick that, so I went with another one. Okay, well... Yeah, we'll talk Super Mario 64. Mario 64. I was tempted to pick Suikoden, but I did not.

1:04:38Justin Davis:this is just one of those times in my life when I've played a video game and everything changed. I first played it at that same video rental store that I rented the Super Famicom on a kiosk and just controlling Mario in 3D, nothing would ever be the same after that. And like they got so much right from the first 3D platform I complained about the camera today that you don't you can't control a camera, but they got so much right with their first try. It's crazy Yep, analog stick solved all the problems. It also taught me what I love to do in most 3D video games, I love to explore. That's what I want to do in my 3D video games.

1:05:14Yeah, exactly. And I think that kiosk thing brings back so many memories for me. I remember playing this so much at a Toys R Us kiosk and then thinking like, well, I don't really want a Nintendo 64, but my best friend had one, so played it at his house all night long some nights. As soon as Friday would come along, I just remember being a kid staying up all night. You're allowed to do that. It's crazy.

1:05:37Sam Claiborn:I mean, this is a game that taught me at a very young age. Really, the only thing a video game needs is a long jump and schmovement, and you're good to go. If it feels good to move around your game, I'm in.

1:05:48Justin Davis:Maybe throwing a butt stomp in there. Do you remember there's a puzzle you have to solve by looking at the ceiling and you see the sun? Yeah. You get transported to another level? Yeah. Is that for unlocking Metal Mario or something? That's for the skycap. But to be fair, there's a god ray, So you kind of, or it's, there's a hint that you're supposed to look at. Sure. Yeah. But it's a pretty weak hint. Yeah. And I remember like, you know, like being, I don't know, like away for a day or something and coming back and my friend was like, I just, I just got discovered this and just explained it to me.

1:06:19You know, just like, this is, I looked up at this guy and I did all these things. I was like, that is insane.

1:06:24Sam Claiborn:I also really liked the justification for the 3d as being, you are watching Mario from the perspective of a lack of two. and when you enter a room that has one of the levels has a mirror you can see the lack of two behind you when you're looking in the mirror and it's so cute it's such a clever moto he like he shows up in the boardroom one day and everybody's like we got the camera working and he's like yes but who is holding everybody's like

1:06:54yeah i mean this was this was the game this was the game that set me on the path this came out and I said, I am going to do video games for a living. And it set me on my path I am on still to this day.

1:07:06Sam Claiborn:But what did Nick pick? So I, because it was also very special to me, my family owned a fairly good like IBM computer and my brother owned, and this is what I would have to play when my parents weren't watching. It was the shareware, the first shareware episode of Quake. Quake. And I just, I played Quake nonstop. I was not very good at it and I played whatever I could in the level before I could. Like, I would get motion sick playing that game, so I would play as far as my stomach would allow me. But it was the first time I was like, I physically can't play this game, but I want to more. And once they did the remaster on the Game Pass thing, I revisited that game and destroyed it.

1:07:49Sam Claiborn:It is so fun. It still holds up. And at QuakeCon this year, they just announced a brand new campaign for the original Quake with music from Nine Inch Nails still. What? Yeah, it's nuts. And it's made by machine games. I heard that part. That's really cool. In this engine? Yeah. Yeah, it's a new Quake 1 chapter made by the best people making first-person shooters on the planet.

1:08:13Justin Davis:It's insane. I thought it was a big deal we were getting DLC for The Witcher 3. Good trend, though. Yeah, that is a good trend. Make new stuff for old games since new video games and new hardware is too expensive. So just make new stuff for all games. Make some new perfect dark levels. Is something happening here? What is supposed to be happening here? Is this a boss fight?

1:08:33Sam Claiborn:Yeah, he's shocking the demon by stepping on the...

1:08:36Justin Davis:Oh, see, you got him. He got him. I've made a game time decision that we're going to call this part one, and we're going to cut it off at 99. So we have three more years. Why? I was like, oh my gosh, we're going to be here forever. Yeah, we are. This is just part one of this. You know, this is a big project. 1997, I picked Castlevania Symphony of the Night.

1:08:57Sam Claiborn:This was a difficult one for me, but ultimately in my heart, I knew. This was one of the ones that hurt my heart to pick.

1:09:04Justin Davis:Oh my gosh. Okay, well, I think Symphony of the Night is a top 10 game for me. I can play it. It's fantastic. I like to play it every year. It never gets old. In the midst of when everything was going 3D, this is just the best looking 2D game that had ever been made. And I think it's probably my favorite game on the entire PlayStation. But what did you pick?

1:09:22Sam Claiborn:I mean, it's Final Fantasy VII.

1:09:24Justin Davis:Okay.

1:09:25Sam Claiborn:It's got to be Final Fantasy VII. The single most important game to me in my entire life. It shaped so much of who I am and what I enjoy. And I mean, there's been volumes written about Final Fantasy VII.

1:09:37Justin Davis:Yeah.

1:09:37Sam Claiborn:But Castlevania was also in the short list. But I was like, in my heart, I got to choose Final Fantasy VII.

1:09:42Justin Davis:They're about to wrap up an entire huge remake of Final Fantasy VII.

1:09:45Sam Claiborn:Fun fact, though. I would rent Castlevania Symphony and I never owned it. My cousin and I rented it. and he stayed over at my house for the weekend and we played the game but we played the opening bit where you fight dracula and then you beat dracula and then there's a title crawl again we weren't great at reading at this point i was like five uh and uh i was just like well i guess that's the end of the game because the titles go and there's like a bunch of text i was like well that's the end of the game and then my cousin was this boy he goes well that sucked whatever and we he left and then i was like well let me see what happens when the text finishes and then i was like what yes there's a whole other game here very very similar situation with my my

1:10:23Justin Davis:buddy and i yeah uh sam did you pick timfany of the night no i think i i only had one chance to kind of break into this other theme here and i chose medieval madness because it's the best pinball machine of all time that was 97 okay okay yeah and like i i i like castlevania games a little bit more and a little bit less than this Castlevania and I like Final Fantasy games a little bit more and less, but they are both contenders for me as well. Cool. And Justin? I picked Goldeneye. There you go. There was a few years that really hurt my heart to pick and Castlevania Symphony of the Night now is my second favorite game of all time after Super Metroid.

1:11:05And Final Fantasy 7 was probably the first JRPG I played contemporarily. No, no. I played Final Fantasy, but I was not like It opened my eyes to the world of JRPGs, then it caused me to go back and revisit all the 16-bit ones I'd missed. But GoldenEye, I wonder, sometimes I think about when I die, I want to get stats on my life, like how much should I do, this or that. And there was a chance that GoldenEye, hour for hour, might be the video game I played most of my life, because this is all me and my friends did. This is all we did for years, was play GoldenEye. I guess we did eventually maybe graduate to Perfect Dark, so it's like it's hard for me to separate the two out in my mind but um you know obviously the multiplayer right like yeah you know it was incredible for its time it's not really very

1:11:50Sam Claiborn:playable today by the way it runs at like 12 12 fps not very fun nowadays but also the campaign you know that it had um as the difficulty level went up it did more than just scale enemy health and damage but like you actually it made the levels more complex and you had more objectives and more things you had to do in the levels on hard mode compared to easy mode. That was a really big deal. And all the different weapons was a really big deal. The digitized faces was a really big deal. This guy is struggling to hit that headshot.

1:12:24Justin Davis:But this was it. They had ported Doom to consoles, but this was the first FPS on consoles that really took off and they made it work. They figured out a way to make that work. when I was in the dorms at KU this was the biggest thing that everyone was playing in the dorms this was it

1:12:40Sam Claiborn:for like a three year stretch every Christmas Eve it's like okay who's bringing the N64 I'll bring my two controllers you bring your one controller and you bring your one controller and just hours with my family playing this game I do remember Perfect Dark being just as big and that's why I think it's a little bit weird that people keep talking about 007 but they just blurred right together at the time yeah in obviously got perfect dark and loved it yeah in my opinion perfect dark was an improvement

1:13:07Justin Davis:in every way but yeah for sure golden eye was a bigger it was just a bigger cultural touchstone all right for 98 i picked ocarina of time yep youtube yeah which we just revisited last year sam and yep still holds up still super fun today it'll be really interesting to see how they handle this uh remake that they it's supposed to be out soon but they haven't shown us anything

1:13:28Sam Claiborn:of it except for that little teaser and we apparently a controller leave today controller console bundle since that virtual boy christmas i had basically stopped playing video games because i was so burned by the virtual boy and by the 32x before that but as i said i'd played mario 64 at friends houses and stuff like that but this was like after playing this this whatever i guess it came out in november and i remember being home from college in 1999 i think and finally deciding to go back and purchase a 64 by that point because I'd for a year been wanting this game.

1:14:05Justin Davis:Yeah. I mean, after this game, it was for years, it was just taken as a given that this was the best game ever made. No one ever questioned it. That's another thing that like if you're a younger listener, like sharing some context of what it was like back in the day, like this game was on a pedestal, like, you know, could not be surpassed as like undeniably, undisputably the greatest video game of all time. And then I actually think that like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom being so good, kind of like, you know, retroactively sort of made it easier to sort of knock Ocarina off that pedestal.

1:14:40I think Majora's Mask kind of hurt its reputation a little bit. Yeah, you might be right about that. In a modern, you know, you started hearing like, I actually like Majora's Mask more was something that is very common now. or that Majora's Mask was so weird and felt a little bit retro when it came out that it kind of made it seem like both those games are kind of old school suddenly. Yeah. I mean, the restraint it's, it's hard to sort of think about playing this game for the first time because we all know it so well now and we know the dungeons and we know the flow of the game, but like you play the game, you're in the game for like a while, like quite a while before you go to Hyrule field.

1:15:13And then when you do go, you're kind of rushing to the castle and you don't really get a chance to explore. Like it just, it just really feels really special in the way that it's all paced out and the restraint that it sort of has is, um, is really, I mean, it's a really, really special game. And I know what Nick's going to say. He couldn't read at the time. So he was really surprised when he found out that you got the three gyms and then there were six more dungeons after that. This is, that was a twist.

1:15:38Sam Claiborn:This is 98. This is 98. And I could read at the age of six. That was good. I think Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy and Pokemon helped teach me how to read. Joke's on you. There's no words in this game. i just love that there was optional items that you could find in this game like uh din's fire and stuff like that and also the different tunics i was obsessed with like blue tunic link i was like that's the coolest dude ever or sometimes you'd be like i could have solved all this with these bomb chews from the start of the game did anyone not actually yeah i did not but nick you can go first i did not pick this one i chose a game that again i I will not deny the greatness of Ocarina of Time, but it is, to me, there's one game that just is more ingrained in my DNA, and it's Square Enix's Parasite Eve.

1:16:23Sam Claiborn:As you could tell in that 10-year window, I was very square-soft-pilled. Parasite Eve was, I think, still, I think, one of the coolest games ever. It's a horror turn-based, well, actually, no, it's a horror-like action RPG with fantastic music from Yokoshi Mamura, who would go on to do Kingdom Hearts and stuff like that, and I love the character of Aya Brea. I think that the game is scary and it has, I would argue, the single coolest police track, like police department music track of all time. It's hyper funky, so good. Oh man, what a game. Also, another short RPG, maybe about 10 to 15 hours.

1:17:06Sam Claiborn:Yeah, yeah. I still don't understand what this game is. It's like 3D rendered. It's like Final Fantasy VII, kind of. But it's not quite though, right? It's like, look at these shots. It's so weird. I mean, I guess it's a pre-rendered background. Pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D graphics. This was actually originally the concept for Final Fantasy VII that was going to be set in New York with Detective Joe, but they've quickly adapted a Japanese novel called Parasite Eve, and they did this instead. What's the best way to play this today? Probably through the PlayStation Store. I would assume that it's available there.

1:17:42Sam Claiborn:I played this on I still have my ps1 so I still play this every now and then

1:17:47Justin Davis:this is a game I was hyper aware of at the time but just never played for whatever reason it's it's really good and Jesse you pick something different I did this is another one that was really really hard because Banjo-Kazooie came out this year Baldur's Gate came out this year a variety of like like 98 is a credible candidate for like best video game year of all time but I picked Starcraft. There you go. Another good one. It's another one like this is when I was, you know, I was 13 and so I was kind of unleashed to just be on the computer and had unfettered access to the internet. And so you know, Starcraft 2 every single day after school, not Starcraft 2, but like Starcraft, you know, play on big game hunters was the map.

1:18:29That's all anybody played on. And it was, it was 8v8 and then you would turtle up and then just carry or rush the other player. And like I don't, I don't, I don't know that I actually have too much to add to the StarCraft discourse, but like, that's my enduring memory of like that entire year was coming home and playing StarCraft after school, basically every single day, but, but, but also, and Ocarina of Time and Banjo-Kazooie, what a time to be alive. What a time to be, you know, to be a teenager.

1:18:57Justin Davis:Yeah. If, if Ocarina of Time hadn't come out that year, Banjo would totally be my pick. Yeah. Um, and you know, what we're looking at here, if you're watching the show is the single player campaign and like that was also really good like you know better like way better and way more to it than than their than they really needed to or like like the campaign goes really hard and the storyline is like 30 missions do you play 10 missions as each race and like you know there's lots of twists and turns and it's like you know they didn't they didn't they just went really really hard with this game in a way that like they didn't necessarily need to but yeah i i got like the multiplayer the ladder used like an elo system like it ranked you like you did in chess and like i got really really really good at the starcraft 2 ladder and um you know never never like close to like the pro level but like i played that game at a very very high level probably the highest level multiplayer of any game in my life this is another game that i would play later when i finally had a computer I like what makes these graphics so different than console all the time is it the resolution of the monitor because like it just looks so cool and different yeah yeah that may be it yeah it's just yeah it's just so sharp and different looking all the shadowing well I also don't think we're looking at like a remastered Starcraft 2 but I don't know that I can separate out like they did remaster it so yeah I think it looked like this is the original cool for the last year of this part one 1999 i picked tony hawk's pro skater yeah that's tough because two was kind of the big one yeah that's exactly i was gonna pick one and then i yeah except two came out in a year when another

1:20:39Sam Claiborn:game i would have to pick i like one better than two and i played both of these to death like

1:20:45Justin Davis:at the time i worked for the mail department at ku like the campus mail yeah and i worked there with my friend and we would load up a truck a pickup truck and drive the mail around campus and when we'd be done with our deliveries we'd go back to the mail room and we had a playstation hooked up with tony hawk just play this over and over and taking turns uh trying to uh complete challenges and unlock stuff these games are so awesome they also helped shape my musical taste at the time yeah yeah 100 yeah i mean i played a lot of uh tony hawk one over this christmas break And I had kind of forgotten that the entire game, the entirety of Tony Hawk 1 is just the two-minute time attack.

1:21:24And later games would add a little bit more secrets and collectibles, and obviously they got much more story-based later on. But even by Tony Hawk 2 or 3, you had a few more objectives, but the original was way more kind of like just a hardcore arcade experience than I remembered and finding the optimal line. Great game. Plus just Tony Hawk and his positivity and bringing skate culture to the masses was just great. Everything about that was a positive part of the 90s. I mean, we were all doomsday prepping this year, right? Yep.

1:21:56Justin Davis:This is the last rock. Y2K was around the corner. Nick, what did you pick for 99?

1:22:00Sam Claiborn:99, this is at the height of my Pokemon fever. So Pokemon Gold was the one to me that was like nuts. I mean, I think this 99 marks like... That's the Japanese release state for Pokemon Gold, right? Yeah. No, I think this is the American release. i believe 98 it came out in silver is 2000 right oh is it oh then i might be mistaken then but oh wow then i take it all back my my life is a lie but in that case it'd be pokemon snap but again just i might be wrong just indicative of the pokemon fever but while we're talking pokemon gold i just you know i love the berry mechanic this is the first game that had like a it had a night and day cycle and it also had um you would have to tune the time when you started a new game because uh the time reflected what time of day you were playing and you could plant berries and they would grow into trees after a day and you could start to min max these different berries to get your different attributes and things like that i believe this is also where they added pokemon breeding for the first time so you could start to create perfect pokemon and things like that and just uh again beating the game and being wowed by being able to explore the original game inside the sequel was nuts to me and it also one of the finest secret last bosses in a game what's up the post game added in the first game yeah exactly that's the one it has been debuffed since that satori wada basically optimized the game but he did optimize the game enough to help them put this secret game but that was always the plan from the beginning which is like a new revelation but the secret boss being the trainer from the first game who is like level 70 blastoise level 70 charizard so cool yeah and the first game is so tiny that in hindsight when you see a map of it you're like oh that makes sense yeah um i actually chose pokemon yellow because i love uh the first one hit 151 pokemon i think they're all the coolest designs i think it's Gold and Silver ruined Pokemon.

1:24:02Never made more Pokemon. No, I really love the one 51. I love Chonky Pikachu. That's his own game at the time. And I actually think Red, Blue, Yellow is pretty bad as a game, but it introduced Pokemon and it was just anime, which I watched all the time in college. Same joke. And it was so funny and goofy. And like, you know, it was for little kids, but it had like it was Nintendo. So I was like, this is crazy that this is the biggest pop culture moment on Earth. and my friends were you know freshman in college and it was like it was fun to kind of just like be involved in like the people that really like this and i'd be like you you guys are way too into this and then but i ended up knowing everything about it you know like i just love that it was a good time good time great game and damon this was the biggest thing in my dorm which is really weird to say really right because i i thought it was for little kids but like but you know people were i was playing you know whatever wing commander on my pc or something yeah and then everybody who's playing Pokemon, you know, on campus.

1:25:01It's weird.

1:25:01Justin Davis:I thought it was weird. Like, even though I wouldn't become a Pokemon guy, I definitely, I had read, I played that one and was into it. And for a while we played the card game and we went to see the movie in theaters. So there was a moment where, because it was new from Nintendo, I was there. Yeah. That's exactly what my proximity was like.

1:25:19Sam Claiborn:A bout of Pokefever. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Justin. And let me just be frank here too. Girls were really into Pokemon. All right. And so it didn't hurt to know about Pokemon if you were interested in hanging out with girls because they weren't playing Wing Commander.

1:25:36Justin Davis:All right, Justin, what was your pick? Yeah, I have to give a special shout-out to Grandia, which is a role-playing game near and dear to my heart. They came out in 99, but it's not my pick. I also have to give a second shout-out to Planescape Torment. Until Disco Elysium came out, there's a credible argument that Planescape Torment might have been the best written video game of all time just like every single character yeah but like every character you meet is just so interesting and like you can get into arguments with them and they can kind of be like but have you considered this point of view and i'm like i hadn't and like like i just had never played a game like that but but but again in the spirit of like i'm picking the game that made an impact on me it at that time in my life it is mario party in 1999 there you go nice um i picked a mario party but it wasn't for this year yeah like the original mario party is just infamous rightly so for just having absolutely hand destroying mini games in it several where you have to you have to twirl the analog stick as fast as you can and then people figured out the way to do it was to do it with the palm of your hand and then you would end up with these like burning on your finger yeah because the the stick has this concentric grip circles on it and it was just perfectly designed to grind into your hand.

1:26:49Yep, we played it a lot in my friend group and, you know, I just still remember, I mean, many of the mini games it's 99, so it's like well over 20 years ago, are still like they're still appearing in Mario games Mario Party games to this day, like the one where you're all on top of the balls and you have to try to bounce them off the side. Very good one. Yeah, it's great. Great game. Have a lot of fond memories of the Mario Party franchise and this is the one that started it all. I think Smash Brothers might have come out this year too but i i picked i i have a i have a later smash on my list all right well that wraps

1:27:24Justin Davis:up part one of games of our lives 78 to 99 and like i said i think we talked about a lot of good video games a lot of them we'll we will continue and conclude in the future it might take a couple weeks because next week nick is going to be you're already be in the uk on your way to germany for gamescom all four of us will be in gamescom and we'll do a game scoop but i think justin will have headed home already by the time we're recording. But at least... What day do we record? On Saturday.

1:27:50Sam Claiborn:I think it's Saturday.

1:27:51Justin Davis:Yeah, I think it's Saturday. Okay, TBD on that, but yeah. Regardless, we will have a GameScoop from Gamescom. And there should be a GameScoop next week as well. But part two of Games of Our Lives will come probably sometime after Gamescom. Please be excited for that. For now, though, that's all the scoops we have for you this week. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Justin. Thank you to Jober and everyone working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon, this is iChin Gamescoop, and we're out.