Houkago Game Time

About

I put shit here.

[1993/12/10] ロマンシング サ・ガ2 (SFC)
[1994/10/28] 真SAMURAI SPIRITS 覇王丸地獄変 (ARCADE)
[1995/03/10] マジカル ポツプン (SFC)
[1995/08/05] スーパーマリオ ヨッシーアイランド (SFC)
[1996/05/14] ファイアーエムブレム聖戦の系譜 (SFC)
[1996/06/22] Quake (PC)
[1997/06/20] ファイナルファンタジータクティクス (PS)
[1998/07/10] ヴァンテージ・マスター V2 (PC)
[1998/11/30] StarCraft: Brood War (PC)
[1999/05/27] LUNAR エターナルブルー (PS)
[1999/12/22] ヴァルキリープロファイル (PS)
[2000/11/30] テイルズ オブ エターニア (PS)
[2001/11/21] 大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズDX (GCN)
[2001/12/20] 斑鳩 (DC)
[2002/03/21] サクラ大戦 COMPLETE BOX (DC)
[2002/05/16] ファイナルファンタジーXI (PC)
[2002/08/31] 라그나로크 온라인 (PC)
[2003/01/23] アーマード・コア3 サイレントライン (PS2)
[2003/03/26] GUILTY GEAR XX #RELOAD (ARCADE)
[2003/08/17] 東方妖々夢 〜 Perfect Cherry Blossom. (PC)
[2004/01/22] スターオーシャン Till the End of Time ディレクターズカット (PS2)
[2005/06/30] イース ―フェルガナの誓い― (PC)
[2005/12/30] “SUGURI” a little war in brand-new earth. (PC)
[2006/06/22] ヴァルキリープロファイル2 ―シルメリア― (PS2)
[2007/01/25] THE IDOLM@STER (X360)
[2008/02/21] 世界樹の迷宮II 諸王の聖杯 (NDS)
[2008/11/18] Left4Dead (PC)
[2009/09/12] ポケットモンスター ハートゴールド&ソウルシルバー (NDS)
[2010/07/14] THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIII (ARCADE)
[2012/05/22] DRAGON’S DOGMA (X360)
[2012/08/23] DARK SOULS (PC)

ロマンシング サ・ガ 2

[Romancing SaGa 2]

Release Date: 1993/12/10
Platform: SFC
Developer: Squaresoft
Genre: RPG
Why I love it: It’s uncommon to have a JRPG without a progression style that holds you by the hand; you do not normally look to the genre’s library for open-ended worlds. Throughout all the years, SaGa 2 is one of the only JRPGs that truly and fully devotes to self-exploration. The game has many quests, but they are up to you find, and often up to you to complete.

Completing quests is primarily useful for increasing your affinity with other nations, bringing them under your own kingdom’s control. Doing so gains your kingdom more capital, which you can then spend on developing new weapons and spells. This is main thing that sets this game apart from the more popular Romancing Saga 3.

The open-world freedom works very well for the game (and pretty much every other SaGa game), as you also have completely customizable party compositions & character builds. Another aspect of custom strategy comes in a fairly deep formation system. You find yourself swapping around formations a lot to experiment with different members in different spots; definitely more enjoyable than your standard row system.

This game is also very battle-oriented, and you have to have a clear long-term plan in most boss fights to survive. Even random fights can wipe your party or give you a hard time. Part of this is probably due to the unique aspect of your HP being refilled to full after every single battle. While this sounds like it just makes the game easy, in reality it means that they beefed up the difficulty of most encounters to be capable of killing your PT if you play mindlessly.

To up the stakes a bit, there’s a LP (Life Point) system; when your character’s die, they may auto revive to full HP after the fight, but in doing so they lose a single LP. If LP hits 0, the character dies and isn’t usable until after you get back to town.

Finally it’s worth noting that this is one of the few games where I think a generational system is utilized decently. In most games generations simply remove all your momentum and force you to a scrubbier state; in this game, that isn’t really the case, and it doesn’t really tank the pacing.

Romancing SaGa 3 and SaGa Frontier are amazing games as well. SaGa Frontier 2 is pretty fun, but way different. I’d also like to give mention to Legend of Legacy, a 3DS game that rivals SaGa 2 in my mind for best SaGa game. Legend of Legacy modernizes the series in some ways (basically all small quality of life improvements) without taking away any of its core design of being open-ended and difficult. You absolutely must play it if you have a 3DS and care at all for RPGs; I’d give it its own entry on this list, but I love it for all the same reasons I love SaGa 2, so it’d be a little repetitive. I just wish the empire system wasn’t removed from the later games.

Biggest pitfalls: Some of the animations are kind of long and annoying. I think upping the difficulty of a few bosses might be nice too (this game is notorious for difficult bosses, but I’m maso and want some of the easier ones to match the truly hellish ones).

真SAMURAI SPIRITS 覇王丸地獄変

[TRUE SAMURAI SPIRITS HAOMARU’S HELL-STORY]

Release Date: 1994/10/28
Platform: Arcade
Developer: SNK
Genre: Fighting Game
Why I love it: Samurai Spirits is notable to me for being really unique. The way matches are played in this game, the pacing, is what really sets it apart from other fighters. The game isn’t slow; animations are snappy, everything feels responsive, and there are dashes and other speed-based mechanics. But it isn’t execution-heavy, combo strings aren’t your main source of damage. Instead, when you get hit, you get hit hard. This combination of “high speed gameplay” with “high impact hits” makes the game fast but still accessible, it’s way easier to pick up SS2 than a lot of other fighters.

But that doesn’t seem to affect the skill ceiling. Similar to Street Fighter 2’s greatness, even if the execution isn’t the flashiest, the skill gap between an experienced player and a newer one is pretty intense. Maybe because each hit is just so important, things like the precise spacing of attacks and extremely solid footsies become amplified in importance.

The game has a lot of really cool details that help drive home this feeling that “every action has weight”. For example, instead of straight clash frames like many games have, in this game if you clash weapons, it starts an actual movie-esque sword lock where you have to mash to come out first and get an upper hand.

Honestly of the entire Samurai Spirits series, this is pretty much the only one I’ve spent any significant time on. Also, this is the only fighting game I find enjoyment in playing by myself. Of course, playing with another person is infinitely more fun, but the CPU in this game offers a different kind of challenge and the game is simply fun to play.

also nakoruru kawaeee

Biggest pitfalls: The lack of a proper home release for so long probably prevented this game from launching into extreme popularity. Many years later, there’s a very alive netplay scene, and the XBLA release was fun times. If this game got a Steam edition, I think that would be great.

マジカル ポツプン

[Magical Pop’n]

Release Date: 1995/03/10
Platform: SFC
Developer: Polestar
Genre: Action
Why I love it: This game is super duper fast paced, you can blaze through screens extremely quickly. All of Pop’n Hime’s actions come out fast, her animations are almost all cancellable, and her voice files are quick and spammy (“EI! EI! EI! EI!”). All of this comes together to form just a super fast game feel.

This game’s progression falls somewhere between Metroid and Rockman. There are clear-cut stages, but the stages usually have a lot of paths and a bit of backtracking involved. There’s also a bunch of powerups which are gained in a Metroid-esque way. There’s a wide variety of power-ups (including a grapple hook!) and they’re pretty much all useful somehow or another.

In addition to item management, resource management can be pretty important. Using specials costs stars, which can get sparse if you spam mindlessly (think Akumajou Dracula hearts). That and the game isn’t a complete cakewalk, rushing forward spamming attack means you might actually see a gameover screen. Some of the bosses are kinda hard, too.

PLUS IT’S SO FREAKING ADORABLE OMG POP’N HIME IS SO CUTE AND HER VOICE FILES ARE AWESOME IT’S BEEN LIKE 20 YEARS AND STILL A GAME THIS CUTE+FUN DOESNT EXIST WTF THE ANIMATIONS ARE SOGOOD

Biggest pitfalls: The cart costs a lot, and I sorta wish it was a bit longer, but overall this game is just straight bliss.

スーパーマリオ ヨッシーアイランド

[Super Mario Yoshi’s Island]

Release Date: 1995/08/05
Platform: SFC
Developer: Nintendo
Genre: Action
Why I love it: DUDE, this game’s skill ceiling is UNREAL. It hits godtier and blows anything else Nintendo has ever made out of the water based on one mechanic alone: egg throwing.

Egg throwing by itself is so masterfully designed that might not even have room to discuss other aspects of this game (almost all of which are good). But seriously, in this game you can eat enemies and turn them into eggs, or sometimes you get eggs from blocks. Yoshi can throw eggs in about a 90degree angle in front of him, and he can carry up to 6 eggs.

Egg throwing is split up into two different parts. When you first hit the throw button, you transition to a state of aiming, in which the cursor moves up and down automatically, and you have to time your next hit to match the trajectory you want your egg to fly in. During this aiming phase, your movement momentum isn’t affected at all, so you can go fast running forward while aiming. You can also jump while aiming, and jumping of course changes the egg’s course appropriately.

Eggs can bounce off of walls, 3 times. Additionally, Yoshi can “regrab” any egg he’s already thrown by hitting it with his mid-ranged tongue attack before it disappears.

All of this combines to create an intense system of super fast aiming with egg management and clutch wallbouncing, while you can move around super fast and have multiple tools for replenishing your egg count. When you start to get a real handle on this game it feels fucking amazing. The general movement of Yoshi is great too, he has a flutter float, and that too has many many subtle properties that you can exploit to do many sweet tricks.

The base game itself has amazing assets and sweet level design, too. The game only truly shines in a 100% speedrun though, as that’s where the amazing potential comes out. There’s a run from AGDQ2013 which is a little outdated now, but has a lot of nice explanations of game mechanics as it’s played. If you’re interested in a more recent run, check out this one by 2stop.

Biggest pitfalls: The game is too good for its own benefit. Even a casual vanilla playthrough your first time is amazing, but I bet a lot of people miss how deep it really gets.