actraiser 1 ...(snes)

the first Really Expensive game my cousin got for his snes. i was the one who picked it out. he’d told me early that he’d like a game for his new console. so that christmas, i dragged my parentals around the video game aisle in toys ‘r us looking for something he might like. trouble was, i knew next to nothing (and that’s the negative side of nothing) about what was cool and what was not in games back then so had to judge purely by the illustration on the boxes. since the snes had just come out, there wasn’t much to choose from anyway so i thought this actraiser thingie looked interesting enough. i remember the parentals questioning Several Billion Times why this little plastic cartridge cost 60 bucks. mind you, 60 bucks back in the late eighties is a fricken fortune for us FOB families. the cousin and i made those 60 bucks count…this is the first gaming marathon i ever participated in. in-between screaming parents and piano practice, we were non-stop for 4 days saving the world. he played and i watched and we were the best tag team duo in gaming (the first of many tag-teaming efforts between us). once we finished it for the first time, he lost interest but i continued to have a mad obsession with the game’s set up of alternating god-mode (you build villages and stuff) and action-mode (where you hack and slash). very pretty graphics for its time and the cutest cherub bum ever digitized. a favorite to this day.

betrayal at krondor ...(pc))

incomparable. totally of the non-suckitude. super-duper, ninja-gaiden, how do you like them apples integrity. developed by dynamix (they who are neato) and produced by sierra (back when they were The Cool Company) in the early 90s. there’s so much history and love that accompanies my unshakable fanaticism for this game. have been pretty into raymond feist’s midkemia universe ever since picking up a copy of magician: apprentice back in high school (i still remember seeing it in the dime-paperback rack of the old school library, with the light filtering all yellowy through the dirty windows and showing up every minute pixel of dust…). unlike all the cool kids, i never had net access during the high school years, so when given a t1 connect during freshman year at ucsd, i fricken went all out and yahooed Every Single Thing i was interested in. was utterly enamored with the fact that i can find out so much about all the stuff i’ve ever been interested in – without going to the library (and risking late fees) or talking to people (because most people suck). one of the first sites to top a feist search result listing was kirl woll’s now defunct site devoted to midkemia love. from there, i found a link to a free download of BAK. this was back when sierra was cleaning out their vaults and offering up their older games in its entirety for download on their site. i figured it’d be fun to try out and installed it.

and for god knows how long, you’d not see hide nor hair of me cuz my ass was huddled in front of the comp day in and day out, utterly engrossed in the superb story and excellent gameplay. when the roomie went to bed, i plugged in the headphones and turned off all the lights. when people sat around bored out of their heads when it was raining, i crawled through sewers and escaped traps. fought dwarves and transported kegs of ale. time-traveled. alternated casting fetters of rime and flamecast on those deserving moredhel. i played so often that my roomie ended up playing it on my comp as well. she got better stats the first time around (bah!).

BAK is an rpg-styled adventure with emphasis on the rpg elements. however, it’s not a hardcore rpg a la baldur’s gate where you can get totally nit-picky about stats improvement and what not. it uses turn-based combat (which the lack of hand-eye coordination in me loves) and game developers dynamix created a truly amazing spell system. i never had cause to complain about the graphics cuz, unlike my usual graphical adventure picks, it isn’t the reason why i wanted to play this game. the pictures more than gets the job done. there is repetitive use of the same puzzles but because it requires incorporating knowledge of the game world up to what point you’d played, it was never bothersome. in fact, i don’t think i’ve ever seen another game do same thing. there’s quite a bit of effort put into adding realism into the world as well…for instance, stashing your extra loot in an unlocked trunk that’s sitting in a high-traffic area practically guarantees that your stuff will be stolen. nobody was doing this kinda detail back in the early 90s folks. i love that there were a million weapons i can choose from and that there were always bigger and badder trinkets to wreak havoc upon the wimpy masses.

because the game was so massive, i kept having to start over initially because the control-freak in me just couldn’t let go of the fact that i’d missed this, or that i didn’t do that, or that i could’ve done that way better than i did. so i went trawling on the net again and found this site. an incredible font of BAK knowledge…complete illustrated walkthroughs, strategies, listing of all the weapons, enemy stats breakdown, and the list goes on. again, this is pre-diablo era so for a guy to plot down this much information about a game on his own spare time is pretty freaking cool. story of my stupidity here: way back when, i was a total newbie to computers/internet and didn’t know that i can print out pages of websites. so i hand-copied down the entire walk web and most of the look web section of that site – complete with colored pictures and mini drawings. so that i’d have spell and item reference when playing. i still have the binder where i store those pages.

the first version of this game that i’d downloaded included a VERY cool bug where, if exploited carefully, allowed me to increase one of my character’s stats up the wazoo. it's insane when he caused one-hit kills near the end of the game. sierra subsequently released a non-bugged version, though imo, the buggy one is loads better. i’ve both versions saved on floppies. also have the cd version of this game and that one rules because the music has been remastered into .wav files and not .midis. the tracks are more symphonic especially considering the sweeping epic style of music. unfortunately, BAK is a dos game and thus it’s a major headache to get it to run on xp. i haven’t been able to get it to run since win98. bah humbug.

BAK occupies the honored status as both my first ever computer game that i got for myself and installed on my own (and very first computer), and it is also the game to Completely Sucker Me into pc gaming. it’s where i learned how to handle resource-distribution in a game and how to explore a maze. how to strategize in battle. how much of a control-freak i am because i scoured the map for every single item and enemy the game had to offer. to this day, i will not consider myself finished with a game if i did not do Every Single Damn Thing…bugs and weird engine/graphic anomalies included.

black dahlia ...(pc)

the game that killed Take Two’s adventure game ambitions. this thing was massive and took up eight discs…an insane volume to produce back in the late 90s. Take Two’s claim was that they managed to create a solid 40 hours of puzzles and complex storylines. black dahlia ended up being panned by critics and fans alike who felt that the designers tried too hard to add to gameplay and sacrificed plot/puzzle logic to lengthen play time. that the puzzles were un-necessarily hard and often do nothing to further the plot. i bought this thing used way after the negative hype …which is hype i’d never even knew existed since i don’t really keep up with the gossip in the gaming world. all i’d heard were a couple of complaints about its length (it had become somewhat of a joke in adventure gaming circles). really was interested in it because the box claimed it was set in the 1930s to 50s (some of my favorite decades) and the title suggested plot based on the infamous black dahlia murder case (which, as a true-crime fan, i've always been intrigued about). it was only after i started looking for a walkthrough online that i found the vast dissatisfaction with this game. but who cares? i don’t. i play adventure games for the story, characters, and graphics and this one, imo, totally delivered on all three. acting is pretty damn decent, design is more than adequate (though not spell-binding), and i love seeing how one small event uttlerly altered the course of the character’s life through 30 years. i'm into that sense of history and melodrama. puzzle-solving took second place to finding out what happens next (which is why i used a walkthrough). would really love to play it again someday. right now, it doesn’t run in xp. boohoo.

bust-a-move ...(arcade, n64)

this game is addicting. it’s like connect four except with prettier marbles, cutsey soundtrack, and a more complex aim system. pvp mode is fun. i was introduced to this puzzle madness by friends who’d visited my dorms in ucsd during freshman year. we went down to the common room arcade and played for at least 2 hours pvp before feeling the need to konk out. ever since then, i've been a fan. don’t currently have a copy on hand…oh but i will!

contra 1 ...(nes)

how awesome was i at this game? fastest time i've finished it by myself was 23 minutes. and that is withOUT up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-B-A-select-start. for the record, my favorite weapon: that spray gun. also, if i hate you (which is highly likely) i will jump upwards faster than you in levels 3 and 6 so your ass gets dropped when the screen moves up. violent mindset when playing the original contra is a given.

diabro 1 ...(pc)

man. i will re-install this game in every version of jedi bob until the end of time. hack, slash and collect pretty trinkets...everything else is just pudding. i enjoy feeling all badass when my character can Kick Yo Character’s Bootay. was in single player mode for the longest time and then found a partner in crime to ramble around battle.net with. i'm not much of a competitive player so collabing is more up my alley. everyone keeps telling me to install diablo 2…i swear i will one of these days now that jedi bob is a super-duper, all-mighty tower of effective nazgul wraith strength. (shut UP, i'm not a nerd). this game is not just elegant in its execution of the usual hack and slash…the soundtrack does more than a decent job of evoking the gothic medieval mood and graphics were pretty darn slick for way back then (late 90s i believe?). if only your character wasn’t such a dumbass in the end. 16 levels of dungeon hell and he gets suckered in by the devil. idiot.

douglas adams' starship titanic ...(pc)

this one got panned by critics and much of the public. but that’s because they are DUMB. (that thing about evil will always triumph because good is dumb? totally true). for once, here’s a game that doesn’t spell out everything to you and spoon-feed your brain. mind you, the best games expect the player to use a bit of intuitive noggining, but this game (perhaps due to ole dougie’s influence) tosses you right in the middle of the dirty without any preface. which fits perfectly for the story’s setup as, something’s gone wrong, and if your booty really was tossed into Trouble, you’d try to find out the whys and wheres anyway. and wow, once you find out what’s happened, the evil of the deed is such a perfect juxtaposition with the false “cheeriness” of the environment. fabulous. the other half of why i install this thing over and over again is cuz the entire spaceship (built as a “hotel” for space travel) is lavishly art deco. oh. my. GOD. beautiful, absolutely! i am such a sucker for art deco stuff. if the game reeked of donkey balls i’d still play…it’s that amazing looking.

final fantasy 8 ...(psx)

it hurts me to include this title, it really hurts me. the main hero is a stupid loser, the main heroine needs to be bitch-slapped, the romance is crack-whore hokey…i can go on. but dammit i've spent no less than 350+ hours on this rpg. it’s because i'm secretly in love with squall (though rinoa still needs to be slapped), really like quistis’ haircut, want seifer for dinner, and would prefer to live in balamb garden. it wouldn’t hurt either to wear selfie’s skirt or own one of them gunblades. dear god, kill me now. i like that the cast is all human and are beautifully designed (amano, i bow down to thee), as are all the GFs (shiva, diablo, tonberry, and tiamat owns you all). soundtrack kicks you in the face (nobuo uematsu, i twice bow down to thee). hp and exp are counted differently here but i've got my technique down and have been able to max out practically all my characters. (yes i so rock). all i haven’t done now is get the laguna card (there’s a mini-card game that’s within the game and characters are the best face cards). okay fine i admit it, i'm a fanboy for ff8!!! bah!!!! but i'm NOT a fan of faye wong.

gabriel knight series ...(pc)

you couldn’t escape gabe the year the beast within came out. Every Single Game Store had it. one day i wanted to play a cheap-o, no-brainer game and picked it up in the bargain bin. now i make-up fan-fiction for the characters. (gahhd!). intricacy in plot and characterization are the things that suck you in. i felt that the first gabe knight (sins of the fathers) had a rather hokey plot but the sophistication of humor was enough to keep me playing. beast within is a friggen’ masterpiece. part 3, blood of the sacred, blood of the damned, tried to pack too much mind-bending info into too short a time…yet it was a very enjoyable ride nonetheless. the theological theme of the story gains weight each time i replay it. game designer jane jensen came up with a much better twist of the magdalen theory than did dan brown in his da vinci code.

jedi knight: dark forces II ...(pc)

the only fps i've truly played for a good while. dunno why, but it’s the only one that’s worked out in my favor when it comes to this genre. i love cs and all but just haven’t gotten into the groove of playing that one regularly. i still get motion sickness with jk 2 but i've stuck at it until that level where you gotta stealth carefully along side of the building or else the wind’ll blow you off (level 14? 18?). anyway, very fun stuff this game is. kyle katarn’s an idiot but, under my capable direction, is a decent shot and lightsabre swinger. btw, stupid plot and horrendous acting but greeeeeeeaaaat set design and soundtrack. very good game engine and possibly the best easter egg ever in a game. i’m currently missing the 1st disc (it’s around the house somewhere)…will definitely finish this thing someday.

the journeyman series ...(pc)

i wonder how many folks have actually played this series. these games were made by geeks (i'm a fan of presto studios!!)…thus these games are near-perfect. i haven’t played part 2, buried in time, due to compatibility issues but i've been suckered into gage’s universe ever since game 1, the journeyman project. the plot has a great premise, protection against time travel abuse, but ultimately it’s the little details that make part 1 sing for me. when the game starts off, you can sit on your couch and listen to mood music for no reason other than because you feel like it. when you sit in the star trek-y molecular traveling machine, a fly smashes against the protective shield before your body disintegrates. stuff like that sucks you into the environment. the amount of tension in part 1 is also worth a mention…since you’re time-traveling, it’s against the rules to speak with any of the natives. thus, fear of discovery runs high whenever you’re in a different time zone. and i can’t stop gushing enough about the fab graphics(!). the third game in this series ups the graphics punch (especially in the dvd version) because it’s in 360 pan. there’s less quirky fly-on-the-screen humor, but that’s because the tone is much more serious in game 3. the acting is top-notch as well. i dunno about the rest of the world but i'm plenty sad that presto studios have closed their doors. dammit!!

the legend of zelda ...(nes)

dude, shigeru miyamoto is my God. (or, one of them anyway). why i'm a slave-hobbit of this game: my mommy never got me an nes back in the day (something about video games rotting your brain. whatever!). my cousin let me borrow his nes when he got tired of it and another cousin managed to snag a buncha games from his rich pal for me. one of the games was the original zelda…with the limited edition gold catridge even. but because the nes console i had was old, the much-lauded save ability of zelda didn’t work for me. so what did i do? i fricken replayed that game to my last stop point Every Single Time. i never did finish this game because, to this day, i've no clue how to get to the secret chamber in dungeon 8…even though i've managed to kill the boss in dungeon 9. was stuck in that weird spot for the longest time….which meant that i replayed it so fricken often to that stop point that i knew the location of every hidden item, every shop, got the best upgrade of weapons, the entrance of every monster…i was king of zelda. i could get to that one stop point under 30 minutes going on pure memory. i rock. except, you know, i couldn’t finish dungeon 8. inconsequential!

the longest journey ...(pc)

super fab fantasy storytelling and some of the best graphical settings to move into. took a while for me to digest this game after the first finish but i've since replayed this thing and it sure is Good Ish. the interesting thing though is that most fans of the game are in love with the story and characters and all that…whereas i'm more crazy about the details in the world-building. i like the vast deserted shipyard, the vertical police records room, the modeling of the garbage bag behind the old-timey theater. stuff like that. this isn’t to say that the story set-up and plot isn’t cool…just that for some reason i'm not totally into it. the other neat thing about this game is that i got it as a present and it cost the buyer only $10. mind you, this was during the holiday season when it first came out on the shelves in the U.S. now, that’s cool.

rampage 1 ...(arcade)

pointless destruction at its best!...you’re either godzilla or king kong, and you climb up the side of skyscrapers, AND SMASH THE BRICKWORK. period. that is all. that is The Whole Point. of course, they’ll increase the difficulty by having choppers with guns do flybys…but damn, you’re a big-ass movie monster, SCREW THE PAIN!! the enjoyment ever increases when you smash in rooms that have people inside. oooohhhh the destruction. don’t quite remember how i found this gem in the arcades…just that my closest girl cousin and i would flock to this machine every time all the boys were street fighting it or mortal kombating. since our quarters were wasted on those pvp fighting machines (what was that about combos again?!), we’d vent our frustrations out on stupid pixel civilians instead. if i ever get a chance to build my own in-house arcade, imma hunt this machine down for my collection.

seven kingdoms 1 & 2 ...(pc)

i picked this up years ago when i was in the mood for an rts. sk1 stood out cuz the use of different cultures as “kingdoms” screamed to the history-nut in me. plus, the game designer is chinese (trevor chan is massively cool)...and i felt that ethnic pull. this is the only rts i've played consistently -- something about a mass of little chinese avatars running around and speaking mandarin appeals to me. graphics are nothing to write home about but get the job done adequately and there’re plenty of options to customize game preferences. world maps aren’t that large (this isn’t wc3), but i like the money aspect since you get your cash by establishing trade routes among your settlements. sk2 added in gods specific to each culture. you build temples, have your little 'uns worship in them, and build up a god that has super-hero powers to rain havoc on your neighbor. that was neat. haven't played it lately cuz it doesn't run in xp pro. stupid microsoft. i got it to run on xp now. along with diabro, it's the only other game i keep installed on jedi bob permanently.

shivers 1 ...(pc)

hey man, i love this game so much i made a buncha fan pages for it.
http://www.redbeansoup.net/shivers/shiversfan.html
http://www.redbeansoup.net/shivers/shiverspics1.html
http://www.redbeansoup.net/shivers/shiverspics2.html
http://www.redbeansoup.net/shivers/shiversdwnlds.html
i think these speak clearly the madness of my obsession.

street fighter 2 ...(arcade, snes)

i suck at games that require hand-eye coordination (you SHOULDN’T see me play tennis), but i cannot even begin to count how many hours of my life were wasted away pounding on those six buttons, watching other people pound on those six buttons, stealing away after school to spend hours at the local 7 eleven because that was the closest machine within walking distance. when this thing came out on the snes…it was over. possibly the only years when family gatherings were loved by all the kids because the rich, older cousin custom-built himself the 6 button config arcade style. for two players even! none of that crappy joystick thing Nintendo tried to shove onto the public…we were hurling fireballs arcade-style in the comfort of our home…in front of our big-ass tv screen no less. those were the days. street fighter was such a big part of our childhood culture that it was considered especially foul to pull the “yoga breath” on any of the younger, bratty cousins. now that it’s out on the ps2, we’ve got the 2 year old nephews playing it. it warms the heart to hear them scream “hadooohken!” for no good reason.

syberia 1 ...(pc)

a graphical adventure i picked up after a loooooong absence from the genre. astounding graphics, set design, and music score. very cinematic cut scenes as well. the story and plot begin simply but grow subtly in complexity. this isn’t a story about saving the world and there isn’t some definite climactic ending that changes the game universe. rather, it’s an emotional journey that’s created between the game player and main heroine. not trying to pull the mushy angle on you or anything, but it’s rare that a game attempts (or achieves even) such a level of emotional involvement with the player without resorting to the usual “saving-the-world” clichés and/or catchy devices like “something’s wrong in the state of denmark.” the heroine is a regular new york lawyer arriving in a small french village to close a deal for a client. sure she travels to exotic locales and is chasing after a character who's actions gain almost mythic proportions, but it’s her wonder of her experiences that kept me clicking on. haven’t picked up part 2 yet (the cheapo in me is waiting for it to go down a bit in price) but i’d be content if this was the only chapter of the syberia world i've ever played.

thief 1 ...(pc)

A Perfect Game. design, story, characterization, pace, world-creation, game-engine. blend of fantasy and machinery themes in set design is amazing and, by emphasizing stealth, the tension is endlessly climbing. the undead level? yieah, creeps me out. OUT!!

titanic: adventure out of time ...(pc)

i'm a titanic buff so when i saw on the box that they’d created the entire ship in 3d, i was sold. boy the graphic designers went out to town…accurate down to the last detail and exquisitely rendered. if nothing else, i had the best time just jumping into the set. you can even go up to the prow and do the leo-and-kate flying pose, with the water whooshing down below you. the plot allowed you to wander into different class rooms, the dining halls and different staircases, the gym, the captain’s box, the turkish steam bath…even the famous car that was on board in the cargo storage. what added the frosting to the cake was that the gameplay and plot were engaging – lifting from the oft-used idea that there were peoples and events onboard that night that could’ve altered history had the ship not eaten ice. a very decent time-waster that i installed over and over again back when my tower could still run this game.

zork nemesis ...(pc)

i've never played the text zork games so i'm totally unfamiliar with zorkian humor -- which is why the lack of funnies in this game didn’t bug me. in fact, the deadly serious tone is what makes it very appealing. a totally believable threat. plus, amazing graphics, acting, soundtrack, puzzles…everything. the best puzzle has to be one where you guillotine a dead body. i appreciate the humor of that to this day. installed it on my machine the other day to see if it’d work and ugh, xp speeds up the game so much that the 360 panning made me sick.