GB's 100 Games: 30-26

As Nappa would say, "This shit is getting crazy."

We are about to reach the games that were huge parts of my childhood and shaped my gaming preferences and direction. The games that my teen self eagerly discussed on GameFAQs message boards. The games that influence my writing and creative projects.

The game that began the long, tortured, twisting road to the Sarahkin.

It's all here, and the next thirty games are, as far as I'm concerned, some of the all-time greats.

Kick it.

GB's 100 Games: 35-31

As we reach the upper echelons of the 100 Games, we are starting to pass from "games that were pretty great" into "classics". Right now it's a bit of a hazy zone between the two categories.

Five different games from five different systems are the stars of today's installment. And yes, all five systems are from Nintendo. Again, though, a fair mix of the known and the unknown here, plus the highest-rated licensed game!

GB's 100 Games: 40-36

The list continues its' unstoppable march towards the mighty final ten games. As for todays' batch, one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong.

GB's 100 Games: 45-41

As you've probably guessed from the list so far, I'm a bit of a Nintendo loyalist. I was a Sega fan in the early and mid-90s before Pokemon drove me to Nintendo. In recent years I've been taking advantage of my brother's purchases of a PS2 and Xbox 360 to branch out a bit, but I've always had a connection to family-friendly Nintendo fare, and it makes up the backbone of my collection.

Here, we have five different games from four different time periods - pre-Nintendo, Nintendo, late Nintendo, and the branching-out period. And only two of them are actually Nintendo-produced games, so... variety, I guess?

GB's 100 Games: 50-46

Poop jokes, tanooki tails, robot deathmatches and the best damn photography game ever await you as we return to GB's 100 Games!

Additionally, I think a much better spot to place Mario 64 and Sunshine would be somewhere around here, maybe a tad higher.

Chatzy Madness Volume 36: I'm A Pile of Bloodied Giblets

TheDeleter: (_8(l)
TheDeleter: it's homer
RedSpy: No no no you're doing it wrong
RedSpy: Here's every face ever
RedSpy: B^U

---

TheDeleter: have you heard
TheDeleter: of gullin 15
SteelKomodo: no
TheDeleter: good
TheDeleter: because it's not worth knowing about him
SteelKomodo: oh, ok

---

Gooper Blooper: I've done it
Gooper Blooper: Both modes cleared, all monster trucks unlocked
SteelKomodo: WOOT
SteelKomodo: well done, man!
Gooper Blooper: Now I see there is a second level of difficulty
Gooper Blooper: uh oh
SteelKomodo: ...D:
TheDeleter: aw sheeeyit
Gooper Blooper: In the racing mode
Gooper Blooper: The AI has finally found the shortcuts
Gooper Blooper: Attempt 1: Follow AI to find shortcuts. Attempts 2 through X: Use shortcuts
TheDeleter: a sound plan

GB's 100 Games Intermission: The Bad Game Awards

With 100 Games having reached the halfway point, I'm taking a break from it to shed some light on the opposite end of the spectrum: Games that sucked.

There are many ways a game can suck. Terrible music, poor controls, glitches and bugs interrupting or interfering with gameplay, and most importantly a game that is boring, too easy, too hard, or poorly designed. The existence of Big Dumb Vidya Games not only in my collection but on the list of 100 proves a game can have some blemishes - significant blemishes - and still earn high marks. But if a game is not fun, it has failed as a game.

A game can also be bad by association. If your expectations are high based on the past of the series or the developers, and the game falls short, you may think of it as a "bad game" even if it's not bad. It could be mediocre, or even good, but it was not able to match your expectations. This has happened to me a couple of times.

So with that in mind, let's review three games in three categories: The game that most disappointed me, a game that's so bad it's good, and the outright worst thing I've ever put in a video game system.

GB's 100 Games: 55-51

We're all over the map in today's installment of GB's 100 Games! A game that everyone's heard of, a game that next to nobody's heard of, long entries, short entries, and everything in between.

And remember, U R MR GAY. And a hipster, as well.

GB's 100 Games: 60-56

A pretty motley crew in today's installment. We've got a couple obscure titles, a spinoff, and a port/remake up for evaluation, plus a company famous for doing only one thing finally deciding to make a game that did something else.

GB's 100 Games: 65-61

Another day, another group of five video games I'd like to share. Today's batch includes games from across my entire life, some obscure and some less so.

GB's 100 Games: 70-66

I'D BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR Edition.

All five games in today's group are older titles I played for the first time years after they were made, either as very late purchases or in collections. In one case I played a game three full decades after its' release!

Let's get this wagon train a-rolling.

GB's 100 Games: 75-71

DOES EVERYBODY KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?

VIDYA TIME!!

Okay yeah, on reflection I definitely ranked Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine too low. But it's not like Mario had trouble finding his way onto this list, so whatever. Away we go with yet another batch of five games in the ongoing GB's 100 Games series. Over a fourth done, folks...

GB's 100 Games: 80-76

I should probably mention at this point that from here until around 35th place I had very little idea of where to rank what, so it's just gonna be sort of a flood of "GB liked this" rather than any definitive ranking. I know I said when we started this wasn't a straight ranking, but it's especially evident here. I have no idea why some games are in one place and some are in another, so let's just take them as they come and when we near the end things should get less muddled as the true giants begin to emerge.

So! With that said, away we go with the next batch of five games. With Mario and Pokemon returning for the second batch in a row, it's mostly Nintendo here again with one exception: Ariel's favorite shmup!

GB's 100 Games: 85-81

Nintendo Home Consoles from the 2000s Edition!

After this next installment, GB's 100 Games will have covered twenty entries across seven systems. And we still haven't seen any entries from my N64, DS, and GBA collections, so look out for those plus more of every other system (except the poor old Game Gear) as we continue to climb the ranks of gaming.

An interesting theme in this set of five is "Games my brother bought that I wound up liking more than him", which has happened numerous times in the last decade. I can usually sense when he buys a new game whether he's going to actually play it or not, and I'm usually right.

GB's 100 Games: 90-86

 
Time now for another five entries in GB's 100 Games. Lots of crusty old classics here, and while some may be familiar, others are a bit more obscure...

GB's 100 Games: 95-91

This installment of GB's 100 Games is chock-full of Big Dumb Vidya Games. As I've mentioned in the past, Big Dumb Vidya Games are essentially the junk food of gaming. They tend to lurk in bargain bins and deliver cheap enjoyment by focusing on basic but enjoyable gameplay. No less than three such games have made it into today's lineup.

GB's 100 Games: 100-96

Welcome to the first installment of GB's 100 Games!

I have been gaming for two decades this year - ever since I was old enough to hold a controller. Over the course of the last twenty years, I've played a ton of different video games on a wide variety of systems - not as many as some, but enough to have a good grasp on what I like and what I don't like. Here, I have assembled 100 games to offer my thoughts on. First, a few important notes.

1: Only games I have beaten as of today will appear on this list, with the exception of a few arcade games that have no ending.
2: In order to cover a wide variety of games (and because I sometimes have difficulty choosing one game in a series to rank above others), I have grouped some games that are similar together.
3: This is not a definitive ranking. Games from different genres - and especially from different eras of gaming - are difficult for me to compare solidly against each other. There is a vague progression from "games I liked" leading up to "games I absolutely cherish", however, and the top fifteen or so is full of what I consider to be AAA titles.
4: For release dates, I use the American date, as that is where I live. Many games release earlier or later in different territories. Some older games may not have full release info.
5: For systems, I use the system I played the game on (unless it was part of a compilation).

With that settled, let's get started with Number 100...

Chatzy Madness Volume 35: The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers

Ears: Gandhi for SSBU
SteelKomodo: wat XD
Ears: His words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Ears: Best final smash
Ears: (Fun fact: in Civ V, every civ's research priorities are on a scale of 1-10. Gandhi's priority for nukes? 12)
SteelKomodo: XD:
Ears: Its all thanks to a bug in the first game, where Gandhi was so nonviolent it bugged the game and caused integer rollover
SteelKomodo: So non violent it flipped back to violent
Ears: Democracy gave extra nonviolence. Gandhi already had the bare minimum. So discovering democracy turned him from a pacifist into an Ork
Ears: From 1 to 255
Harpy: welp

---

Gooper Blooper: I love how ridiculously obvious it is that KIU was made by Sakurai
Gooper Blooper: turn it on, tap to start, oh look it's the Sakurai Menu
SteelKomodo: As Yahtzee put it, "It makes sense because Smash Bros. is the only reason anyone knows what Kid Icarus is."
SteelKomodo: which, sadly, is kinda true :<
Gooper Blooper: Pit is the second character to benefit ENORMOUSLY from Smash Bros
Gooper Blooper: first was Marth
SteelKomodo: True that
SteelKomodo: so goops, have you played much of Kid Icarus just yet?
SteelKomodo: and what can you say about it, if you have?
Gooper Blooper: Can't say too much, as I only played the first level, then messed around in the options for a bit
Gooper Blooper: I do like how it's sort of acknowledged it's been decades since the last game
SteelKomodo: true that
Gooper Blooper: And I am excited by the return of Kirby Air Ride Brawl's achievements grid
Gooper Blooper: Complete with purple blocks golden hammers feathers
Gooper Blooper: And I can collect trophies idols
Gooper Blooper: (yep, it's a Sakurai game)
SteelKomodo: (XD)

Chatzy Madness Volume 34: Toys May Vary From Illustration

Gooper Blooper: Today I would like to tell you about Big Dumb Vidya Games
Saberwulf: Big Dumb Vidya Games? Those are my favorite
TheDeleter: those are great
Gooper Blooper: If you look over my collection, you notice a few themes
Gooper Blooper: There's the Mario games, the RPGs, the Smash Brothers, etc
Gooper Blooper: But there's also what I like to call Big Dumb Vidya Games
Gooper Blooper: Every so often I get a hankering to play a game that isn't deep, that isn't meaningful, and that may not even be that technically good
Gooper Blooper: It usually fulfills a primal urge to beat the shit out of something
Gooper Blooper: Hence Big Dumb Vidya Games
Gooper Blooper: I bring this up because today, in addition to playing some Sticker Star, I started my Big Dumb Quest on MONSTER JAM: URBAN ASSAULT, which is a game about monster trucks
Saberwulf: oh god
Gooper Blooper: sunday sunday sunday
RedSpy: Awww shit monstah trucks
Gooper Blooper: I was Grave Digger
Gooper Blooper: The Undertaker of monster truckdom
Saberwulf: Now we're gonna have to fight a monster truck next RP year, aren't we
Saberwulf: THE BRINGER OF LIGHT OH YEEEUHHH
TheDeleter: yep
Gooper Blooper: I might have a character drive one
Gooper Blooper: Come on, Widow, seaplanes are so 80s
Gooper Blooper: get in there
RedSpy: The King of Day
Saberwulf: Sarah in a monster truck, for size difference hilarity
Gooper Blooper: She has to cast Float to get inside

Kauket

They called me Kauket. It was a nice name, so I kept it.

It means darkness, chaos, the unknown. I suppose I was a fairly frightening sight, even if I did... ugh, I can't believe I'm really going back to this old saw, but yes, I came in peace. *sigh*

They depicted me in their heiroglyphs as a woman with the head of a cobra. It's an odd interpretation, but I'll take it. Snakes are one of the more interesting creatures on this planet.

I noticed they were having difficulties in their construction of large stone monuments. I was young and eager to forge good tidings between worlds, so I offered my services. It took some convincing to get them to trust me, but when they saw what I could do, they were all too happy to accept my aid.

What Have I Become, Act II

Consider, if you will, a most interesting set of circumstances.

Two summers ago I roleplayed as a female character from the world of Final Fantasy. Another user's character took interest in mine, and eventually confessed their feelings. This character was a young idiot-hair-donning male with fair ability in both physical combat and magic. He was a friendly sort, and liked to eat stupid amounts of food. His design was based on his appearance in a video game that came out one decade after the one our setting took place in. Due to my characters interacting with this character so frequently, I grew to strongly like the character and enjoyed his appearances, and he became my favorite character in the user's roster.

I had been interested in the character's most prominent video game for a while, but it was Zoofights RP that led me to eventually make the purchase with my Christmas money. Because RP ruins everything, but it also makes you want to try new things.

Fast forward one year.

Last summer I roleplayed as a female character from the world of Final Fantasy. Another user's character took interest in mine, and eventually confessed their feelings. This character was a young idiot-hair-donning male with fair ability in both physical combat and magic. He was a friendly sort, and liked to eat stupid amounts of food. His design was based on his appearance in a video game that came out one decade after the one our setting took place in. Due to my characters interacting with this character so frequently, I grew to strongly like the character and enjoyed his appearances, and he became my favorite character in the user's roster.

I had been interested in the character's most prominent video game for a while, but it was Zoofights RP that led me to eventually make the purchase with my Christmas money. Because RP ruins everything, but it also makes you want to try new things.

"What is it?"
"Aside from being a 3DS game? I dunno. Help me flip it over."

"OH MY GOSH IS THAT-"
"Well, well, well. Look who's finally back in the business."
"Ooh, I should tell Mom about this! She'll be so happy for him!"
"In what way~?"
"WIDOW MAKER STOP THAT"
"Hahahahahahahaha-"

Toy Review - The BattleBots McDonald's Collection

BETCHA DIDN'T EXPECT TO EVER SEE A TOY POST ON THIS BLOG AGAIN, HUH?!

Ten years ago, BattleBots was my life. Absolutely loved watching these fancy RC toys beat the snot out of each other every week. I got into the robot combat scene unfortunately late in the game, missing out on the first three seasons of Battlebots and the first four seasons of Robot Wars. But I was early enough to get in on the ground floor of the BattleBots McDonald's promotion. And I took this thing seriously - I went back to eating Kids' Meals and requested to look at the available toys before making my selection. I HAD to collect them all.

But it was not to be.

In a tragedy for the record books, I was unable to get all eight toys before the promotion ended. I wound up with six different toys, most of which had at least one duplicate. However, thanks to a garage sale and an eBay auction, I finally collected the full set in early 2011. Let's meet the bots!