Game of the Year

Loppan Torkel said:

It's true, the <> were strafe and you had some other keys to look up or down. I just wasn't sure it wasn't us being noobs..

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You most have been playing a source port then. Freelook was added in Heretic IIRC than the Doom ports brought that behavior over.

Also SC2K was actually came out in 94' apparently, but it's up against FFVI and UFO: Enemy Unknown. I doubt it has a shot.

I remember strafing with ALT. Doom was definitely not played with the mouse originally.

I posted the tally thus far. It's going to be Myst vs Doom for the winner. Unfortunate I played neither but at least I'm familiar with what type of games they are.

However I have to throw out as a strike against doom the doom movie. Basically suffocates the series in a big pile of poop. Should the original game be penalized for such? I think so! You don't see anyone trying to remake Myst into live action! It stands as a classic!

^ *cough* Super Mario

Kyriakos said:

^ *cough* Super Mario

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That's one of the worst and best movies ever. It's like the 60s Batman, you can't help but enjoy yourself.

civvver said:

I posted the tally thus far. It's going to be Myst vs Doom for the winner. Unfortunate I played neither but at least I'm familiar with what type of games they are.

However I have to throw out as a strike against doom the doom movie. Basically suffocates the series in a big pile of poop. Should the original game be penalized for such? I think so! You don't see anyone trying to remake Myst into live action! It stands as a classic!

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I'm sorry, but that literally makes no sense. Should we also fault Mario and Street Fighter for their terrible adaptations? Should we double fault Tomb Raider because it got 2 terrible movie adaptations? Extrapolating that still further - should we fault every book that was ever made into a terrible movie? The Great Gatsby? Pride and Prejudice? The Scarlet Letter? Beowulf? Even Cowgirls Get the Blues? The Last Airbender? Should we fault "Hello Goodbye" because it was used in a Target ad once? Should we fault "A Well Respected Man" because it was used in Juno?

The point of this thread is to evaluate which game was the best game of the given year. We aren't looking at Doom as an entire franchise, and nor are we looking at Myst as an entire franchise. "Donkey Kong" doesn't deserve "game of the year" because the characters would go on to be in games such as Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario 64, etc., Donkey Kong deserves game of the year because it was a brilliantly designed game that didn't have an equal for that year. A game should win because its design, mechanics, art, voice acting, control scheme, kinaesthetics, and music combined to create a better product than any other game out at that time.

Which isn't to say that I agree with this project anyway - I think categorizing art into "best/worst" categories is intrinsically dumb, especially when you're trying to do it across vastly different genres. How do you honestly compare SimCity 2k and Doom or Animal Crossing and Prince of Persia and Halo, it's just silly. It's like ranking movies, or ranking painters from Giotto to Sandra Blow, or all musicians/composers from JSB to Lorde. You simply can't do it. Either the art is effective or it is not - it either effectively conveyed emotion, meaning or ideas or it did not, but there's no such thing as "best video game", any more than there is such as thing as "best movie" or "best painting" or "best song".

It was just a joke lol. I agree with you about categorizing games into best ever status, but the idea that I had with this thread was to revisit classic games and expose more people to them as well as some discussion of game merits. I think we've accomplished that to some degree. A lot of games getting mentioned I've never heard of and I know far more about sonic and mega man than I did before.

Here's an interesting article on the legacy of myst. Maybe it'll sway a vote or two.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9713372/looking-back-game-myst-20th-anniversary

civvver said:

It was just a joke lol. I agree with you about categorizing games into best ever status, but the idea that I had with this thread was to revisit classic games and expose more people to them as well as some discussion of game merits. I think we've accomplished that to some degree. A lot of games getting mentioned I've never heard of and I know far more about sonic and mega man than I did before.

Here's an interesting article on the legacy of myst. Maybe it'll sway a vote or two.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9713372/looking-back-game-myst-20th-anniversary

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fromtheabovelink said:

Twenty years ago, people talked about Myst the same way they talked about The Sopranos during its first season: as one of those rare works that irrevocably changed its medium.

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Hmmm... I do not want to compare Myst which as i said i never played, to the Sopranos in regards to tv, but i guess that was just a bad parallel there

The rest of the article seems interesting, although looking at Myst's graphics, i can't say i like them. I did not even like the actual 3d world of Gabriel Knight 3 though, i love 2.5d in adventure games...

If I may, some mp3s from Myst. I'd say Robyn Miller's music is about as iconic as it gets.

Intro music:



"Compass Rose" plays after you turn on the power in the Stoneship Age.



Two characters have distinct themes that play in each Age. Here's the Mechanical version for one of them:



Rocking out when you find the way out of the Mechanical Age:



Victory music:

Some games, just hearing the first bar of a song from them brings a big smile to my face in memory. Myst is one such game.

Vote = Master of Orion.

Had an epic time with that game with my dorm suite mates. Still remember a great come-from-behind victory I notched.

It seems someone is stalling the results..

Loppan Torkel said:

It seems someone is stalling the results..

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If he voted for Myst he would be, Doom is up by one.

I vote for Myst... Just to even things up.

Which will win? I can hardly stand the suspense...

vote doom

Stalling? There was never an official end date. It was supposed to be 1 week for nomination/discussion, 1 week for votes with fridays as cutoff but it takes so long to get votes I've been leaving it open until people are fed up or clearly not adding votes. But since you insisted... Doom wins by 1!

1994? Lots of good choices:

Earthworm jim, not a hugely special game, but very cool characters for a platformer. I'm somewhat surprised the franchise didn't take off a bit more.
Sonic 3
Super street fighter 2 turbo.
Tie fighter, easily the best star wars flight sim and a great game (others being x-wing, x-wing vs tie fighter and x-wing alliance).
Master of Magic
Elder Scrolls Arena (I did not play but gotta give props to bethesda's first title of the series)
Warcraft Orcs and Humans
X-Com UFO Defense

I already know what my vote is gonna be, but there's a lot of good ones this year!

More 1994 Nomination=

Super Metroid
Final Fantasy VI
Sid Meier's Colonization
Panzer General
System Shock
Donkey Kong Country
Earthbound

vote= Master of Magic

Yeah I think you guys covered most of the games I would have nominated already. I guess I'll add:

SimCity 2000
Jagged Alliance
Might and Magic World of Xeen

This is getting tougher and tougher, picking between Master of Magic, Earthbound, Super Metroid, System Shock, X-COM and SimCity 2000 is gonna be hard. I think I'll cross off System Shock because I prefer the second one... It's hard because this is a case where I have to decide between what I feel are objective or a subjective choice. I loved all these games...

What's might and magic world of xeen? Not one in the series? A spinoff? I'll wikipedia it.

Edit: Ah it's a release combining 5 and 6. Nice.