Challenger
Famicom, Hudson, 1985
I am ALWAYS thinking about Challenger. Why does Challenger have the jump and attack button switched from the standard? Why does everyone notice this when they play it?
The first stage is on a train moving LEFT! The next stage is a completely different game. I’ll be honest I haven’t played that far myself. I am mostly familiar with the Game Center CX episode. That doesn’t mean Challenger has ever left my mind. It is one of those perfect inscrutable Famicom games. If you have any relation with Challenger you have this relation: fear, respect, and lifelong interest.
Battlefield 4 Multiplayer
PS4, DiCE, 2013
There are many other Battlefields that came after Battlefield 4; 4 is the one I played. Something was lost in the ones I played afterwards. Really I just got spawnkilled so often I didn’t play anymore. Battlefield 4, I played and played with my dear friends on a Skype call being piped from a laptop while the video game was on the PS3. Then it was a much simpler affair on the PS4. Imagine a console with voice chat that worked! I screamed with laughter. It was always funny to throw C4 on a tank, the driver jumps out, I jump in and just drive a tank away.
I could load a jeep with C4 and drive it into a strong enemy position. I could get in glorious sniper battles. Slowly adjusting my aim as the other player tried the same. Actually sniping a guy out of a jet is the highest euphoria video games have ever given me.
But this entry is for the friends I played with. Brandon, Drew, Justin, and Jeff kept me ever sane during the most terrible time in my life. They were and are good company.
Battlefield at its best is such a giant chaotic affair that my squad can just focus on performing its task and wind up turning it around for the team. We’d constantly show up others by simply playing the game and not trying too hard. Nevermind my friends are FPS geniuses. In any video game where you reach out and touch someone with your gun, there is true glory to see in their performance.
Shenmue Chapter 1 Yokosuka
Dreamcast, AM2, 1999
Ryo Hazuki’s father has been murdered by a Kung Fu Master. Ryo has decided he will go as far as it takes to get revenge. He will navigate the most realized world of 1986 Yokosuka, Japan. The world will let him know his father’s death is behind him and he should just live his life here. Get a job, take over his father’s dojo, confess his feelings to his girlfriend.
Ryo’s own single mindedness will ultimately destroy him. Everyone around him will remind him he is only going to get himself killed. At the end he’ll leave Yokosuka behind. The First Chapter of Shenmue is stunning in its integration of themes and gameplay. I am not sure they even knew how well they had succeeded. It is one of the best video games ever made.
Katamari Damacy
PS2, Keita Takahashi, 2004
I am a little guy with a ball that grabs anything smaller than it. I start with mahjong tiles and erasers, until I am big enough for pencils and orange peels. By the end of the game, I am rolling up buildings and clouds.
It is a beautiful game about everything in the world. Every object is simple yet identifiable. Sometimes there are strange objectives like only picking up cow-based objects. The story is even stranger. The music entered my brain and will never leave.
Dangan Ronpa Trilogy
Vita, Spike Chunsoft, 2013
There’s a whole ancient podcast where I didn’t get Dangan Ronpa because I complained about something it didn’t show, which should have been a clue that it wasn’t the point. It was not the point. Dangan Ronpa is 16 genius High School students trapped in an anime school and told to get away with murder or die. I’m tasked with catching the murderer in a jury trial where the jury also holds the suspects and the murderer, including myself.
It becomes a battle against the existential real despair we all face in the real world. The stakes are ratcheted a thousand times higher because this is anime. The despair is relatable. Do I roll over and die or do I get up and live my life?
It’s a game that encourages me to think about motivations and personalities. At its best, it surprised me with character depth and revelations to these almost literal cardboard anime characters.
With all that said, the second game starts with me playing a character with the same name as the first protagonist. It’s an entirely different murder school. I thought the school was defeated. One of the characters looks like a character from the first. Another character seems to be a fan of the first anime murder high school. How is that possible?
The third game triples down all the questions I had on the first and second. The game is talking to me, the player. They thought deeply on 2 and V3. What is a sequel to Dangan Ronpa? What does a player think a sequel to Dangan Ronpa is? It wants me to put the game down and keep playing detective until I pick up the game again.
I had about as good a time thinking about a game about existential despair while I wasn’t playing it as while I was playing it. It does the best job addressing what a sequel must be (with 2) and what a sequel could be (with V3). It’s a new day, students.
D2
Dreamcast, WARP, 2001
Kenji Eno was a provocateur. For evidence, look in wide eyed shock at the 18+ opening of D2. He struggled with making this game, a follow up to D. That game was a Myst clone about Dracula.
D2 is an RPG where the random battles are clumsy FPS shooting galleries. You need to cook and eat food to survive. You must navigate gigantic snowy fields and switch discs at least 4 times before the credits roll.
When I first played through the game I hated the ending, which I won’t mention here. Now I think Kenji Eno was right. There is more to this world than video games. Thinking about everything that is planet Earth can drive anyone to despair and hope in equal measure. Hope of course is the brave answer. With hope is love. It took me a decade to realize that. And Kenji Eno’s death as well.
Demon’s Souls
PS3, FromSoftware, 2009
The first level of Demon’s Souls is the most perfect 3D level in video games. It is so good it sits alongside Super Mario Bros 1-1 as a 1-1. It features beautiful architecture that wraps around itself. It is dangerous and full of comedy to destroy the player. It has an optional ultra hard knight waiting for the player to test their skill, enticing the player with what lies behind them. There are sleeping dragons.
This is the game that put FromSoft who had already made dozens of good games on the stage of video games. I can and have written pages about every stage in this game. They are all also uniquely incredible, from an expansive poison swamp to a hellish prison guarded by mind flayers and the echoing screams of the imprisoned.
It is filled with what would become beloved by everyone, that Fromsoft lore. Read the items’ descriptions. Read the words between the words of what every NPC says. Stare out at this storm swept keep under eternal cloudy skies and wonder “what happened here?”
VIDEOBALL
PS4,PC,Xbone, Action Button, 2016
It is a shame about VIDEOBALL. It has produced 100 of its fiercest frothing fans scattered across the globe. Four humans and VIDEOBALL is the best video game. In the stars-align moment where three VIDEOBALL fans are in the same room, the fourth person in the room is going to be tremendously out of their depth. It needs four real humans. The bots are fine, really. VIDEOBALL is a sport, and only humans can make a sport real.
VIDEOBALL is clean. VIDEOBALL is about holding, releasing, tapping, and not tapping a single button. If the online multiplayer had worked, I wouldn’t have played any other video games, possibly for years.
I can’t explain VIDEOBALL, dear reader, because you aren’t here with me and two other humans as I destroy the three of you and I wish y’all also had almost ten hours of VIDEOBALL across ten years. Friends can attest I LOVE VIDEOBALL. The chance of VIDEOBALL produces laser focus in me. It’s VIDEOBALL. Everybody wins. Especially me. Because I get to play VIDEOBALL.
Dark Savior
Saturn, Climax Entertainment, 1996
Dark Savior is an isometric platforming adventure game for absolute sickos, i.e. me. The story is determined by how fast I complete the beginning boat escape. If I finish all the story lines, it will force me to complete the entire game, backwards, in one life.
The stories are contradictory and weird. The graphics are an explosion on your eyeballs. There is almost nothing like it. It is not for everyone, but it is absolutely for those it is for.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2
Sega Genesis, Sega, 1992
Every year on my birthday, I play through Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I was perhaps inspired by a certain essay. It takes about an hour. I play the game casually, usually while friends watch across the globe. It feels great to play the game this way.
Which is to say I can’t objectively judge it at all. I know and do have a great time every year when Dreams Come True’s “Sweet Sweet” kicks in. I know to not go after the Chaos Emeralds. I know to slow down in Mystic Cave to miss the murder pit, and that Mystic Cave is janky in general. I know you can beat the final boss by just hanging back and taking your time. With the way I play Sonic the Hedgehog 2, it cannot be hard.
It is the best Sonic game to give a second controller to someone who does not know video games. Tails is effectively invincible. The level design has enough stops and starts to let the Tails player enjoy themself. Tails can be the one to safely attack the stage bosses. Thanks Tails!
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 stays the same, unless I play the dozens of romhacks for it. I can play it on any device I own. It can still surprise me with glitches and wonky physics. My performance of it can make my friends cheer. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is Video Games to me.
Thank You for reading
Rudie Overton
August 20th, 2024
Hinge Problems 
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