Here is my goal:
Collect the best games, with an emphasis towards sega and "old-school" (whatever that means).
I figure I'm probably not alone in this quest, so I thought I might get some help.
Here's how this this quest has gone in the past:
1. Pre-ebay days. Whatever they actually had in stock at funco or was found at a garage sale, with a name or box that sounded cool, or a review in the mag. Usually whatever was found cheap and was ok-good. This is how I got games back when the systems were still supported.
2. Interweb days. When I decided to revitalize my genesis collection, I surfed the web for reviews on every game, read everything on the genesis collective and looked at every screenshot. Having narrowed the list down to say a hundred, I tried out the roms for them all, and then picked the several dozen I liked the best.
Unfortunately, neither scale that well. #1 resulting in my missing nearly every great game back in the day. And #2 is impractical when it comes to say saturn, ps1, and nes.
I started by looking for a list of shooters to get. I came across this page:
http://www.classicgaming.com/shmups/xenocidefiles.html
which basically has a list and one-sentence (sometimes more) review for nearly every shooter for every system. Most of the systems were easy. SMS and GG only have a couple shooters. And genesis/cd/32x is already "done" from my prevoius endeavor. But once I hit saturn and ps1, I was overwhelmed. With hundreds of shooters, all of them with cool-sounding names and a rating of "good shmup", how do I figure out which 5-10 are the ones worth owning?
And it's not just shooters. All the good old stuff, like 2-D fighters and platforms and puzzlers. And even games that aren't old-school, but still have that old-school (arcade-maybe) fun to them, like some driving, flying, first-person, 3D fighting, and special gens (like say nights).
The other big problem is which system. A lot of the great shooters and fighters are available on multiple system (like say, both saturn and ps1). But sometimes they might be only available in Japan for one of the systems (so it might be easier/cheaper to get the ps1 version, even though I'd prefer the saturn just for sega). Region is not a showstopper though. In fact, games that we never saw in the US are some of the ones I want to make sure I don't miss.
The other problem is which collection. Some games like say metal slug or R-type can be found individually on older systems, or as collections on new systems. Which one is better? Cheaper? (money is an issue here obviously).
So, what I'm looking for is a list of best games for all systems, more from a "best games" standpoint. Games worth buying the system for. The "if you only play one game of type X on this sytem, it should be this game", etc. Graphis doesn't matter the most, just gameplay and fun (i.e., an NES game might be better than a PS2 game).
And by "best", I don't necessarily just mean the best one. Even like the best dozen out of a hundred (since I'm sure the "best" is going to be like the 200$ models like border-down and radiant-silvergun or something, so if second best is something I can find for 20$, hey!)
So, if anyone has some input, please do. Systems I'm looking for:
Atari 2600
NES
SMS
GG
Genesis/CD/32X (already exhausted, but you can post for the benefit of others)
SNES
Saturn
PS1
Dreamcast
PS2
Uber-thanks.
Collect the best games, with an emphasis towards sega and "old-school" (whatever that means).
I figure I'm probably not alone in this quest, so I thought I might get some help.
Here's how this this quest has gone in the past:
1. Pre-ebay days. Whatever they actually had in stock at funco or was found at a garage sale, with a name or box that sounded cool, or a review in the mag. Usually whatever was found cheap and was ok-good. This is how I got games back when the systems were still supported.
2. Interweb days. When I decided to revitalize my genesis collection, I surfed the web for reviews on every game, read everything on the genesis collective and looked at every screenshot. Having narrowed the list down to say a hundred, I tried out the roms for them all, and then picked the several dozen I liked the best.
Unfortunately, neither scale that well. #1 resulting in my missing nearly every great game back in the day. And #2 is impractical when it comes to say saturn, ps1, and nes.
I started by looking for a list of shooters to get. I came across this page:
http://www.classicgaming.com/shmups/xenocidefiles.html
which basically has a list and one-sentence (sometimes more) review for nearly every shooter for every system. Most of the systems were easy. SMS and GG only have a couple shooters. And genesis/cd/32x is already "done" from my prevoius endeavor. But once I hit saturn and ps1, I was overwhelmed. With hundreds of shooters, all of them with cool-sounding names and a rating of "good shmup", how do I figure out which 5-10 are the ones worth owning?
And it's not just shooters. All the good old stuff, like 2-D fighters and platforms and puzzlers. And even games that aren't old-school, but still have that old-school (arcade-maybe) fun to them, like some driving, flying, first-person, 3D fighting, and special gens (like say nights).
The other big problem is which system. A lot of the great shooters and fighters are available on multiple system (like say, both saturn and ps1). But sometimes they might be only available in Japan for one of the systems (so it might be easier/cheaper to get the ps1 version, even though I'd prefer the saturn just for sega). Region is not a showstopper though. In fact, games that we never saw in the US are some of the ones I want to make sure I don't miss.
The other problem is which collection. Some games like say metal slug or R-type can be found individually on older systems, or as collections on new systems. Which one is better? Cheaper? (money is an issue here obviously).
So, what I'm looking for is a list of best games for all systems, more from a "best games" standpoint. Games worth buying the system for. The "if you only play one game of type X on this sytem, it should be this game", etc. Graphis doesn't matter the most, just gameplay and fun (i.e., an NES game might be better than a PS2 game).
And by "best", I don't necessarily just mean the best one. Even like the best dozen out of a hundred (since I'm sure the "best" is going to be like the 200$ models like border-down and radiant-silvergun or something, so if second best is something I can find for 20$, hey!)
So, if anyone has some input, please do. Systems I'm looking for:
Atari 2600
NES
SMS
GG
Genesis/CD/32X (already exhausted, but you can post for the benefit of others)
SNES
Saturn
PS1
Dreamcast
PS2
Uber-thanks.
