The Hot Topic Returns

[OCH]

@radiofloyd Ohh I'd forgotten about Machinarium, I loved that game on PS3. It really scratched that Broken Sword itch. That and Braid, of course. Although I couldn't get into Spelunky. 

[spatular]

Indie games can be so good I’m often not sure if they are indie games or not. Some of my favourites- meat boy, Beat saber, Cave story, into the breach, blue revolver, crimzon clover, and score rush.

[Fragpuss]

21 hours ago, OCH said:

@radiofloyd Ohh I'd forgotten about Machinarium, I loved that game on PS3. It really scratched that Broken Sword itch. That and Braid, of course. Although I couldn't get into Spelunky. 

I forgot about machinarium too  that was a fun game. I loved the old graphical adventure games since way back on the Amiga with games like Monkey Island, Beneath a steel sky, flight of the Amazon queen and Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis (still one of the greatest today). There are quite a few decent ones out over the years like Demetrios, the little acre, her majestys spiffing etc.

 

I used to like the goblins trilogy on Amiga aswell comprising Gobliiins, Gobliins 2, and Goblins 3.

[Nag]

 

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GameCentral readers debate the fiercest rivalry in all gaming and ask what’s better, the Super Nintendo or the Mega Drive?

 

The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Alek Kazam and was inspired by the recent release of the Mega Drive Mini and the existing Classic Mini SNES.

 

Since the UK is one of the few countries where the Mega Drive was originally more popular than the SNES we expected it to be the winner but in the end slightly more people chose the SNES, citing its superior games that have generally aged better than Sega’s.

 

GENTLEMAN... CORNERS PLEASE.

[DANGERMAN]

I think some of the SNES' games have aged better, the likes of Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest (both of these I played ports of though, not the originals), Super Castlevania still holds up. A lot of its classics don't hold up for me though, true of the Mega Drive too I'm sure. Star Fox, F-zero, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Country (wasn't great at the time tbf) 

 

I don't think the Mega Drive has the rpgs of the SNES. I like Landstalker but it's got Zelda's bullshit with isometric platforming. Shining Force still plays well but it's a little simple. I've never really played the Phantasy Star games to comment on them. I suppose the Mega Drive's sports games are a bit redundant now, but Sensi is still Sensi 

 

The Mega Drive had Gunstar Heroes though, and that Mini has Dynamite Heady and Strider. Flashback was great, I think the Sonic games still hold up, Streets of Rage 2.

 

They've both got great games that still hold up, they tend to be of different types though 

[OCH]

Growing up, we had a Mega Drive II. I didn't own a SNES until I bought one myself, roughly a year before the N64 came out. I owned Mario All Stars, LTTP and Mario Kart. That's it. I had a cousin and my best friend at the time, who owned SNES' wherein I got to see other games in the library. Not too many, mind you. I never played F-Zero, Super Punch Out or even heard of a Square RPG until much, much later. Series such as Castlevania, for example, I got into through the N64 iterations and worked backwards.

 

Sonic 2, Vector-Man, Earthworm Jim, Eternal Champions, X-Men, Spider-Man vs The Kingpin, Shining Force 2, Rolo to the Rescue, Mortal Kombat 2 and Alien Storm. Those are an immediate list of games I remember owning on the Mega Drive. There were probably more than that, but I was in Primary School and I have a hard enough time remembering things I do now as an adult.

 

I've always been a fan of Nintendo, but when it came to the 16 bit era, I stood with SEGA.

[mfnick]

I was a Sega boy until after the Saturn. I adored my Mega Drive, thought it was the shit. I sometimes had access to a SNES through family members letting me borrow it but even then I preferred the Mega Drive games. 
 

However same as the original post, I’d say the SNES has generally aged better and most of the big hitters are “better” when I look back at them.  
 

I still look back at MD more fondly though and if I’m feeling the need for a quick nostalgic fix, the MD definitely serves that better IMO. Most SNES games are larger and require a bit more of a time investment if you’re wanting a retro fix. I always like the idea of going back to Mario World, Super Metroid etc and completing them again but always have my full after about 30 min or so. Whereas if I feel that about a Mega Drive game I generally end up playing longer and most are short enough to do within a couple of hours but have good replayability such as Streets of Rage. 

So in summary -  SNES probably a objectively better console with better games. But I prefer the MD still. 

[spatular]

i never had a megadrive (untill now!) so it's sort of uncontested victory to the snes for me, although i didn't have many snes games, mostly rented stuff. i like racing games too and the mode 7 really helps here, holds up really well, mario kart is still a great game, f-zero too. lttp is not my favorite zelda but is still a really cool game. the only MD game i've really played properly is gunstar heroes, which is great. and i've played streets of rage 2 (coop with DANGERMAN) which is cool but not my sort of game really. stunt race fx i really liked on the snes, hasn't held up well imo, the frame rate is just too bad, would be great to see a virtua racing style remaster.

 

got a megadrive mini...darius is pretty cool, and it's been interesting playing a level or 2 of stuff, a lot of it really isn't my sort of thing though, a lot of slow paced platform/fighting games that are difficult, and i'm rubbish at that sort of game anyway. turns out i'm not really a big fan of the old sonic game (although i remember liking the master system versions, and to be fair i'm not a big fan of the old mario games either). probotector seems cool but is crazy hard, need to try switching to japanese as that version (contra) is apparently easier. played a lot more of the megadrive than i expected though, so thats good.

[Fragpuss]

I preferred the mega drive, still do because it has and had more games that appealed to me

[HandsomeDead]

I grew up with the Mega Drive so I have more affinity for it though I played some SNES at friends and borrowed one for a while. 

 

I think SNES games were maybe bigger and had a sense of adventure to them that informs some modern games more but then I really like the Mega Drive's focus on arcade style action games.  They're different enough to offer different kinds of worthwhile experiences and I guess I'm just gonna sit comfortably on the fence this time. 

[OCH]

I do recall I never actually liked Sonic, as a character. Whereas Mario I liked since we owned the NES. Maybe the "edgy teen" vibe they were selling him with was lost on a 9y/o from the suburbs of London? Mario was just fun, which is a far more universal concept to grasp. I mean we owned Sonic 2 (I did play Sonic 1 on a cousin's Game Gear and hated it) but we never bought another Sonic game. We didn't play another one in fact, until Sonic Adventure came with our Dreamcast, years later. Then again, I was one of the "weirdos" that preferred Alex Kidd, so there is that.

[Nag]

To the surprise of absolutely no-one I sit firmly in the Sega camp with this one, the Mega Drive being the first console I owned has nothing to do with it at all... honest.

[OCH]

 

 

 

[AndyKurosaki]

I grew up with the Super Nintendo, and started with one of the greatest games of all time, Super Mario World. It goes without saying that the SNES has a ridiculous amount of absolute classics. Games that defined a generation, and still stand the rest of time (Super Castlevania 4, Super Metroid, Contra 3  Zelda Link To The Past etc). 
 

I didn’t play a Mega Drive until many years afterwards (around the time I had my PS1). But that enabled me to pick up some outstanding games dirt cheap. Streets Of Rage 2, Gunstar Heroes, Contra Hard Corps, Sonic, Dynamite Heddy, and countless others.

 

Out of the two consoles, I’d side with the SNES. As that’s what I grew up with, and naturally have many fond nostalgic memories of. But that’s not to write off the Mega Drive. As it’s pretty bloody good also.

[Maf]

I have a really weird history with the 8 and 16 bit gen. First I had a NES, then a Mega Drive and then a SNES. However for a really, really long time I didn’t know you could get other games for those systems other than Mario and Sonic. I don’t know how many years this went on for but it must of been a few. Because it wasn’t long after I discovered other games that the PS1 turned up. Maybe a year after. I’m not sure on the timeline. 

 

Point being that even though at the tail end of that gen I started to play other games the very large majority of it was just playing Mario and Sonic games over and over again. I think I must of started playing games around ‘91, ‘92 but probably didn’t play something that wasn’t Mario or Sonic until ‘94, ‘95. I think. It’s very hard to piece it back together. 

 

I think the only other game I saw at that time was Duckhunt with the NES light gun but I think I had somehow wrote that off as just some weird tech demo thing you played twice and then went straight back to Mario 3 (Not that I was using the words tech demo as a kid but just it was some random thing the NES could also do besides play the Mario games)

 

Anyway, I also remember the first time I went round a friend’s house and he had a 2 player Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck game and I was like “What the shit” it was great. I only played it one time and don’t know what one it was but it seemed cool.

 

Literally 5 minutes down the road from where this kid lived their was a Gamestar that my dad took me too and it was the most literal ? in my life. There was just a wall of fucking video games. A wall! I don’t remember how but playing a different game at that kids house must of somehow related to being taken to this video game shop. Probably the worst bit of parenting my dad ever did lol

 

I did end up playing more games at other people’s houses over time (I remember going to my aunts house one time and her boyfriend had Super Mario Kart and just being like WHAT IS THIS NOW). I think that was the one and only time I ever saw that game before it went retro.

 

Anyway, super long story but the point was even though I had those systems, I really don’t consider the start of me gaming properly until the PS1 era because pretty much for that whole period before it was just Mario and Sonic for me.

 

And I did and do still love both of those series. Everyday I used to finish school and go straight upstairs without talking to anyone and just play those games non stop over and over (Except Mario 2 because even then i knew that game was bad) 

 

I remember every time I would play Sonic 2 I would invent a slightly different story for the game when I was playing it and in my head come up with dialogue for Sonic and Tails as they used to race around the loops and narrowly scrape by in Dr Robitnik boss fights and stuff. 

 

So for me these systems really come down to these series only. And I think i would have to go Sonic. I think Mario World owns them all and is the vastly superior game in pretty much every way, but Sonic 2 was shit fucking hot, dude. That’s a video game. 

 

And plugging Sonic 3 into Sonic & Knuckles and all that stuff was super insane to me as well. 

 

I guess I can’t really say which one of the systems as a whole was better because I never really played any different games on them but just by the two main series I did play I guess Sega wins because I like the Sonic series more than the Mario series (Even if I also recognise Mario World is the best game out of either of those game series) 

 

[HandsomeDead]

One of the earlier memories I have is my sister's dad's family had an SNES and seeing them play F-Zero.  I'd played some racing games at this point: Hang On and one of the Monaco F1 games but I got the pad passed to me on F-Zero and I didn't get it at all.  I put it down to some complicated, technical game at the time.  Fucking F-Zero.  It's easy as fuck now but then...that Mode 7 was mind fucking. 

[AndyKurosaki]

Bloody good game. F-Zero was something else. Brilliant soundtrack as well.

[OCH]

9 hours ago, HandsomeDead said:

One of the earlier memories I have is my sister's dad's family had an SNES and seeing them play F-Zero.  I'd played some racing games at this point: Hang On and one of the Monaco F1 games but I got the pad passed to me on F-Zero and I didn't get it at all.  I put it down to some complicated, technical game at the time.  Fucking F-Zero.  It's easy as fuck now but then...that Mode 7 was mind fucking. 

I had the same thing when I went to a cousins house and he was playing Star Fox Wing. To a kid that almost exclusively knew gaming as 2D sprites, that was mind blowing. It is sad no one really has a 'Mode 7' equivalent anymore.

[Fragpuss]

I grew up more on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Commodore Amiga, but i did love the mega drive aswell, never really got to try the snes much, though i did get to play the NES a fair bit and enjoyed that. But yeah for me, the Amiga will always be one of the best platforms of all time, a wealth of varied game styles compared to consoles (which were mostly driving, shooting, and platforming with the very very rare rpg) but Amiga has it all

[Nag]

 

Quote

GameCentral readers decide which classic video games they’d most like to see get a remake, from GTA: Vice City to Panzer Dragoon Saga.

 

The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Onibee and inspired by the recent spate of big budget remakes, such as Zelda: Link’s Awakening, the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Remake, and news that Bluepoint are working on a major new remake for Sony.

 

All manner of different games were suggested but the most consistent comment was that the game in question should be difficult to get hold of in its original form and genuinely in need of a modern makeover, rather than just being a randomly picked classic.

 

Can't get away from the remake talk.