SNES Plok

Playlist Link

or

Watch Part 1
Watch Part 2
Watch Part 3
Watch Part 4
Watch Part 5
Watch Part 6
Watch Part 7
Watch Part 8
Watch Part 9
Watch Part 10
Watch Part 11
Watch Part 12
Watch Part 13

It's my 50th game run! To commemorate this occasion I'm going to attempt one of the most difficult platformers out there, Plok. This game has haunted me since my childhood with its malicious level design and punishing gameplay mechanics.

This is a very good run. There are some mishaps, but considering that this game has no checkpoints and some stages take close to 10 minutes it could be a lot worse. Plus, there's a lot of really tense moments where I somehow come out on top, those are always entertaining.

Well, another painful chapter from my past finally closed. It's satisfying, in an "I'm never going to play this game again" kind of way.

GB Megaman V

Playlist Link

or

Watch Part 1
Watch Part 2
Watch Part 3
Watch Part 4
Watch Part 5
Watch Part 6
Watch Part 7
Watch Part 8
Watch Part 9

More Megaman. This particular game introduces the Mega Arm and P-Chips. It also features the easiest incarnation of the Yellow Devil in existence.

It's also a pretty expensive game, which is made doubly plainful by the fact that I have now owned this game on 3 separate occasions. Game seems to have a mind of its own.

Tero's Top 10 - GBA

Well, I need an extra week to practice something that I'm working on, and I haven't done one of these in a while, so I thought I'd try to write up one of these top 10s for GBA.

There's obviously some debate as to whether GBA would count as a classic system, since it's currently only one generation old. It certainly plays like one, but even you don't think it would count, you can see what types of games retro gamers like in a more modern system.

1 - Megaman Battle Network 2
2 - Summon Night: Swordcraft Story
3 - Sonic Advance 3
4 - Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
5 - Game and Watch Gallery 4
6 - Advance Wars 2
7 - Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
8 - Rhythm Tengoku
9 - Megaman Zero 3
10 - Yu-Gi-Oh: The Eternal Duelist's Soul

This is a pretty diverse list. It actually might not have been, because the GBA is very much a franchise system - most games that appear on this list have at least 3 installments - but I generally tend to list the best one in the series and not the others unless they're very different. To some extent, the placing of the various games here represents their franchises as well as the individual games.

Megaman Battle Network is a bit of a divisive franchise because there's no question it starts to get milked later on, but by MMBN2 the series was still really hot. MMBN2 expands the original in basically every way you could ever want and is an amazingly polished game. It basically gets the nod over 3 because it came out a year earlier.

Summon Night Swordcraft Story is a Tales clone of sorts that's built around weapon crafting, and basically everyone who's played it agrees that it's one of the best GBA games. This is a rare RPG that I've actually completed 100%, complete with grinding everything to the maximum level. And I've actually beaten the game a couple more times beyond that. It's just a really awesome title.

Sonic Advance 3, is, in my opinion, the second-best 2D Sonic (after Sonic 2), which should explain its position here. The game is very fast, has great music, and the addition of the "partner powers" is pretty cool and makes Time Trials much more interesting than they have been in other games. This is a really solid package and those who've dismissed Sonic for a while should give it a try (it's also much better than the DS Sonics).

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is another game that's kind of divisive. At the center of this debate is the story, which is a vaguely philosophical examination of escapism vs reality. However, many people seem to miss the deeper undertones and consider it childish. One thing everyone should be able to agree upon though is that the gameplay is great and there's an absolute ton of content in this package. I'm sure I spent well over 100 hours getting everything in this game.

Game and Watch Gallery 4 suffers from some degree of recycled content, but at least they pick the best games from the previous collections to offer again (and the new games they give are pretty good, too). If you're ever going on a long car trip or something, this is your game. It also tends to be the resident of the GBA slot in my DS.

There's not much to say about Advance Wars 2 or Megaman Zero 3. These are super popular franchises and with good reason. I picked Zero 3 because it shows the most polish and the story actually manages to be pretty interesting.

Everyone knew a Castlevania game would be on here, but I'm sure the choice of Circle of the Moon over Aria of Sorrow is one that would draw criticism. Essentially, CotM is on here for its time of release, it came out really early at a time when there wasn't too much else to play on GBA, and it pretty much ruled the roost for a while. Plus, the ability to play the game over many different times with drastically different skillsets was pretty cool, it forced you to learn the ins and outs of all of the game's mechanics.

Rhythm Tengoku is an import music game, which most people probably have not played or even heard of, though they may have heard of its DS sequel, Rhythm Heaven. This is a very quirky music game (think Warioware, but with music), and it's a load of fun and very addictive. I'd also give it a slight nod over the DS game because the buttons work better than the touch screen for a game as picky as this one.

And last, but not least (well maybe least), we have Yu-Gi-Oh EDS. I'm sure lots of people groaned at this, particularly those who most associate the franchise with its show, but this is a really awesome card battle game. Yu-Gi-Oh has a really accessible ruleset that keeps battles exciting, and the progression structure in this game is really well laid out. Though I've never bought any physical Yu-Gi-Oh cards, I was hooked on the game franchise for a long time. EDS gets listed here over the half dozen other GBA games because it was the first and I liked it's ruleset the best.

A couple titles here are conspicuous in their absense. The most obvious is Pokemon Third-Gen (RuSaE and FrLg), which I'm sure tops many people's lists, but I was never really that into it. To me, the Pokemon formula felt like it was beginning to get stale at this point, few major additions were really made to third-gen beyond adding a lot more pokemon. I did, however, enjoy the third-gen pokemon games for GC, the use of double battles kept them interesting (if not balanced, double battle is kind of broken). Thankfully, fourth-gen (DPP, HgSs) shakes up the pokemon world to a massive extent and that was enough to get me to put over 400 hours into it.

There's also Golden Sun. Let's not get into this one, suffice it to say I could rant for several paragraphs about why I feel this is one of the most overrated games of all time.

As usual, some games just can't make the list, there are only 10 spots. The next five games would probably be, in some order: Fire Emblem, Mario Golf Advance Tour, Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure, Mario and Luigi: Super Star Saga, and Riviera: The Promised Land.

SNES Wario's Woods

Playlist Link

Or

Watch Part 1
Watch Part 2
Watch Part 3
Watch Part 4
Watch Part 5
Watch Part 6
Watch Part 7
Watch Part 8
Watch Part 9
Watch Part 10

Here we have Toad's 15 minutes of fame, Wario's Woods. It's an action-puzzle game that bears some resemblance to Dr Mario, but it plays a lot faster since you can move your pieces around more directly.

Actually, it's more like 90 minutes of fame. This game is extremely long for a puzzle game.