SNES Favorite 75

[Friday]

Alright, let's do the final entry. Coming in at number TWENTY NINE, because this list doesn't make any sense without reading a fucking guide first, is...

29. Harvest Moon



So what is Harvest Moon? I talked about it a little before, when I was talking about stepping stones in gaming history. Metroid kind of sucks by today's standards, but it was a requirement to get to Super Metroid, which was a requirement to get to Symphony of the Night, which was a requirement to get to the most important game ever made, Crab Battle. I mean Order of Crab Battle. Order of Eccrabia. Crab of Ecclesia. Orcrab crab crabesia.

Ahem.

Shanoa, the a top 4 placer in the original hottest girl thread.

Playing Harvest Moon today is sort of like playing DQ1. It's cute, it's fun, but it just can't really compare to what came afterward. It's so bare bones in terms of features and gameplay that by any modern metric you are better off just skipping it and going straight to Dragon Quest 5, or 8, or Stardew Valley.

But games are not rated solely by how good they are in perpetuity. They should be rated for the time and place they came out, too. And the original Harvest Moon was a powerhouse when it was released. The OG farming sim that spawned an empire of farming sims. Love them or hate them, they all started here.

What is there to say about Harvest Moon, really? You till your fields, you water your crops, you milk your cows. You give gifts to the girl in town you want to woo. You marry her and have a kid. The world of Harvest Moon is very very small. There's a mountain to explore, a town, and your farm. That's basically it. And it's not like any of those three areas are big. You can safely explore all of them fully in the first few days.

What makes a farming sim so addictive and fun? I think the answer here is basically the same as "what makes an idle game so addictive and fun?" You get to watch a number go up. You feel a sense of progress, of progression, and control. It's everything real life does not provide! Plus, you live in nature on a rural farm, but without the drawbacks of living so far from a city! I think the appeal of farming sims is their overall simplicity plus the general vibe of just quiet country living.

It's a bit odd to end my list on what basically amounts to a quick stop at an interesting piece of videogame history, but here we are. Thanks for reading along, I had a blast.

Do I recommend this game:
Nah. Play any of the sequels, or Animal Farm, or Stardew, or whatever. There's a million better farming sims out there with a ton more content and polish. Harvest Moon was the prototype. Get yourself a fully functional model.

[Friday]

HAHAHA JUST FUCKING WITH YOU MONGREL I ACTUALLY NEVER PLAYED HARVEST MOON

29. Star Fox



FEEL THE FULL FORCE OF THE SNES MOTHERFUCKERS

I know this didn't make the top 100 games list, but this actually feels like the correct game to end this thread on. Star Fox was the final boss of "run on this hardware" for the SNES. It's 3D, for real!

And yeah, it's a technological feat. Good thing it's a great game as well!

Star Fox is an "on rails" behind the shoulder jet fighter simulator. It's got space animals but that's really just the window dressing. The real game is the adrenaline rush of flying through an asteroid belt while blasting everything in sight. It's flying into a space dreadnaut and blowing up the main reactor and then blasting out the other side. It's the dive down into the final stage, Venom, complete with that awesome ost.

The game lets you pick your difficulty, and for once I don't actually mind this. Unlike most "start of the game" difficulty selects, the difference between easy, medium, and hard isn't just increased enemy health, speed, and damage. Instead the entire game changes. All new stages. All new bosses. All new stage osts. All new challenges. Even the final level changes. Venom on hard mode is a fucking nightmare of killer rectangles and plasma fire. And they even souped up the final boss with a surprise final form!

I don't know if Star Fox is actually the most technically impressive game, spec wise, on the SNES. I don't care. It feels like a fucking N64 game. Well, a N64 game with framerate issues.

That's pretty much the only problem I have with Star Fox. The framerate is bad. It's not like, unplayably bad, but it is a problem. Playing the actual N64 game fixes this issue and adds voice acting and some more bells and whistles, but honestly I still kind of prefer the original. If just for the sheer marvel of playing a real actual 3D space shooter on the SNES.

The music is great. Corneria and Venom are standouts, but the rest is top notch as well. The graphics are "early 3D blocky" but whatever, that's an aspect of the era. They do their job. The sound effects are great. I can hear the steady thrum of firing the level 3 plasma lasers as I write this. I can hear the sharp crack of an enemy plasma ball hitting your shields, the warning voice saying "wing damage" when you crash into an oncoming rectangle and it strips your wing off along with your laser upgrade. Peppy's voice, Slippy's voice, and Falco's smug "wah woo wing jabba" will live eternally in my head.

Get in, loser. We're going to Venom to kill Andross.

*Incoming enemy.* HA HOO HO, HO, HO. HA HOO HO, HO, HO.

Do I recommend this game:
The framerate is an issue and may turn some people off. But it's still a great game and worth playing today. I love the N64 remake as well, and most people would probably say that's the "version" to play if you are only going to play one. But for my money they're both equally great.

[Thad]

dit-dibbit-dit-dibbit

[Thad]

Apparently there is a 30 or 60 FPS patch. Haven't tried it but supposedly it doesn't change the audio or gameplay like past speedup hacks have.

[nosimpleway]

Amazing, I just came through the forums to pick up the Star Fox Ligma video we've all seen a dozen times but it was topical in Discord.

Anyway,


we-we-we-dabbin'

[Mongrel]

dit-dibbit-dit-dibbit

I can hear it.

But then I can hear everything.

My brother and I came late to consoles, soldiering on for years and years with our hokey old Intellivision picked up in its last days at Canadian Tire. Honestly I never became a big console guy at all - once I had my own PC I never bought a console again.

But the day we encountered a Star Fox demo in the aisle of a Toys-R-Us we became Nintendo Guys. SMW, F-Zero, then Ocarina of Time, and so on. We were filthy mainstream enjoyers, and didn't go in for RPGs for whatever reason, but there ain't nothing wrong with that. We had our fun.

But Star Fox never budged from my #1 spot. Every goddamn thing about that game is engraved on my brain in a very permanent way. So much so that two game control things are indelibly marked in my muscle memory in a way I'll likely never change: Because of Doom, to this day I use the arrow keys instead of WASD. And because of Starfox, to this day I always invert vertical, because why wouldn't you pull back on the stick to go up?

Good Luck!

[Friday]

Because of Doom, to this day I use the arrow keys instead of WASD.

Are you fucking telling me that all those years we played TF2 together you were using the arrow keys?

Are you left handed? Or did you just cram both your hands over on the right?

I mean, I can play mouseless using the arrow keys with my right hand on them in some games, but wasd was literally invented to prevent right handed people from having to put both their hands so close together for games that use the mouse.

[Thad]

And because of Starfox, to this day I always invert vertical, because why wouldn't you pull back on the stick to go up?

That would've been Pilotwings for me, but yeah, I have to invert the Y-axis too.

[Thad]

wasd was literally invented to prevent right handed people from having to put both their hands so close together for games that use the mouse.

There's that, but I thought it was so you'd have access to other keys with your left hand.

[Esperath]

dit-dibbit-dit-dibbit

I can hear it.

GOOD LUCK

hurry
hurry

ing n fighters, prepare for launch

---

d damn d da damn da damnit

willie be jammy

dib dibbit, dib dibbit

willie mays, be quimby

[Thad]

ing n fighters, prepare for launch

Airwing [sic] fighters.

[Esperath]

ing n fighters, prepare for launch

Airwing [sic] fighters.

ing n.

I cannot for the life of me hear "airwing", regardless of how hard I strain

[Mongrel]

Because of Doom, to this day I use the arrow keys instead of WASD.

Are you fucking telling me that all those years we played TF2 together you were using the arrow keys?

Are you left handed? Or did you just cram both your hands over on the right?

I mean, I can play mouseless using the arrow keys with my right hand on them in some games, but wasd was literally invented to prevent right handed people from having to put both their hands so close together for games that use the mouse.

Nah, I'm so severely right-handed it's possibly abnormal.

Mainly I sit kinda close to my desk, so my left arm just rests across my chest. It's never really been uncomfortable for me to play like this, I dunno why.

I did try on occasion to switch to WASD like I'm "supposed to" but for me, the problem is this: I am a very uncoordinated guy "I got no rhythm. I'm all white, like a breadstick.", like extremely uncoordinated and I know there's folks here who're probably be shaking their heads at this, thinking "no way man, I gotta be worse", but just trust me on this one. So what does this have to do with WASD? Well, they're just... ordinary keys, there's no distinct tactile feedback to keep you on point, and they're surrounded by immediately-adjacent keys which are often assigned other functions meant to be close at hand in games.

The arrow keys on the other hand are extremely comfortable because they are isolated in a dedicated open space of their own. This means my hands very rarely get lost in a mess of keys. For ancillary keys I have a couple extra mouse buttons and the U-shape of keys which surround the arrows are very easy for my hand to find. For example, Num0 has been my "reload" since back in the Unreal Tournament days, right Crtl is usually crouch, right Shift is often run and so on.

It's weird, but for me it works just fine and I can't really see any convincing argument as to why I'd urgently need to change this.

Plus occasionally I get a laugh when some game purist is actually offended by my doin it rong. Like, my dude, we live in a world where games nearly always have full control remapping by default.

[Niku]

[nosimpleway]

I've never been able to find exactly how all of the recognizable English voice clips got digitally mauled into the Fox Team's voiceovers, except that Falco's comes from "wing-wing-wing-damage". But given how little I played Star Fox, I was surprised there's as much understandable English as there is.

Even if it is really hard to understand what comes before "prepare for launch".

[Friday]

Plus occasionally I get a laugh when some game purist is actually offended by my doin it rong. Like, my dude, we live in a world where games nearly always have full control remapping by default.

I mean, you do you. There's no wrong way to play a videogame except using a shield in Bloodborne, so whatever. I mean, wasd "purists" are even wrong because esdf is just better to train yourself to objectively, since it gives you easier/quicker access to more hotkeys.

Also EARTH SPACE DEFENSE FORCE, so.

[Mongrel]

Plus occasionally I get a laugh when some game purist is actually offended by my doin it rong. Like, my dude, we live in a world where games nearly always have full control remapping by default.

I mean, you do you. There's no wrong way to play a videogame except using a shield in Bloodborne, so whatever. I mean, wasd "purists" are even wrong because esdf is just better to train yourself to objectively, since it gives you easier/quicker access to more hotkeys.

Also EARTH SPACE DEFENSE FORCE, so.

Also the F key actually has a tactile nub on many keyboards (it and the J key being used to help train people to touch-type properly).

[Niku]

i trained on ur moms tactical nubs

but then i blew my wasd

[Friday]

join me next time in my new thread "favorite NES 100" but I already made a top 100 for all videogames and also i made a top ten list when I was nine and also I've only played like 52 NES games so in the end it's just a thread about Bubble Bobble

[Friday]

Alright, I showed my top ten "best" list to a friend, and got some feedback. I refined the list a bit. Turns out I have one final thing to say about the SNES before this thread slowly drifts down the list of threads in this forum.

Remember, this is what I consider "best", not "favorite." It also only includes games that I have played enough of to consider myself qualified to review, so there may be missing games I simply have never played.

TOP FIVE GAMES ON THE SNES, IN NO ORDER:

Super Metroid
Chrono Trigger
A Link to the Past
Earthbound
Final Fantasy 6

THE NEXT BEST 10, IN NO ORDER:

Seiken Densetsu 3
Yoshi's Island
Mega Man X
Final Fantasy 4
Terranigma
Donkey Kong Country 2
Final Fantasy 5
Dragon Quest 5
Super Mario Kart
Tetris Attack (hi norn)

This still leaves out roughly 10 or so games, that could in theory fit in the above 10 depending on what you want. They are:

Super Mario RPG
Contra 3
Star Fox
Super Mario World
Super Punch Out
Secret of Mana
Demon's Crest
Super Castlevania
Metal Warriors
TMNT: Turtles in Time

And one personal addition that I feel just deserves mention for how original and cool it was:
Actraiser

The list is starting to bloat at this point, rendering a "top 10" pretty null. But I am confident in my top 5. Also, the list being bloated is just representative of how many great games were available for the SNES. I doubt I would have nearly as hard a time picking out the best 10 NES games.

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1. Zelda 2