Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

`Blew your B*ll*x off games`:

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    `Blew your B*ll*x off games`:

    Not games that you really appreciated at the time or slowly came to love (like Ketsui for me), only those that simply `Blew your B*ll*x off` the first time you instantly clapped eyes on them:

    OutRun - Deluxe hydraulic monster at a bowling alley in the south east of England during the mid-eighties. I had a ****ty spectrum 48k and this game made me ask `What `Japan` was?` from the `Made in Japan` seal on the machine. The scale, the power, the vividness, the speed, the smoothness, the brightness, the sheer entertainment had me in getting very aggressive at such an early age.

    The House of the Dead 2 - This Japanese DC port came to Videogame Centre quicker than even the coin-op had made its mark in London and everyone witnessing it fresh from Japan that release weekend realised this was real coin-oping in the home which we hadn`t seen since the PC Engine days. The latest coin-op in the home months later for pennies? Yes please.

    Ridge Racer 5-Next Gen`s showing of this straight from Japan days after the Japanese release date had me instantly ordering and getting a Jap PS2 with this game on March 13th 2000 for 550 quid and I couldn`t believe, finally after all the years of 3D ****e (in the home) we had a perfect 60fps, sexy Ridge Racer, in the home at last.

    OutRun 2 - The short location test in Ikebukuro of this coin-op which I was the first to report on and photograph on-line in English had me nearly in tears as I couldn`t believe they had done such an amazing job even though it took 20 years. Very emotional I tell thee.

    R-Type 1 - Purchasing a Jap Megadrive from Shekanna in late `88 was special even though I had to put up with Altered Beast (in-print C&VG highscorer though!) (There was only 2 other MD owners writing into the magazine at that early time though. One of them was Julian Rignall! - Ed). Seeing R-Type 1 running on this shopping trip was enough to make me realise that even though I was actually probably buying the wrong machine, the future had finally come home to a begrudged Spectrum 48k arcade loving (and R-Type) owner. It flickered a bit yes, but it didn`t slowdown like the coin-op which was simply amazing. The PCE wasn`t RGB scart then, that is the only reason for my purchasing of the MD, if otherwise, it would of been the PCE and this game for sure.

    These are just for starters. To try and inject some passion into this board, what about you?
    Last edited by JAPJAC; 06-09-2008, 18:43.

    #2
    Contra III on the SNES - the whole first level is amazing, at every moment you feel super powerful and completely vulnerable at the same time. It makes for a rip-roaring edge of the seat experience and one of the SNES's most viscerally exciting games. And then you get to THAT boss. I'd never seen anything like it at the time and it still wows me today.

    Contra III is made of awesome.

    Comment


      #3
      I keep saying it but first time I saw Icecap Zone Act 1 and Sonic was snowboardin'? WHOA!

      Gary

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by garyfoo182 View Post
        I keep saying it but first time I saw Icecap Zone Act 1 and Sonic was snowboardin'? WHOA!

        Gary
        I second that one... I very vividly remember seeing it on TV on one of the old game shows we all miss dearly!
        It was the point where i felt unlucky to own an Amiga and not a Megadrive. A silly thought at the time though!

        Comment


          #5
          Wave Race 64 - I remember playing some coin-op jetski game in the Troc years ago and having so much fun that I got my Dad to buy me Wave Race 64 on the way home. That night I stuck the game on and found that it did a better job than any arcade game at simulating the feel of actually racing on water.

          Good old Nintendo.

          Comment


            #6
            We only had a megadrive when I was younger, but I still remember being amazed by Streets of Rage II. SoR I was one of the only games I played, and my brothers had been going on about SoR II for ages before we finally got a copy. It felt like such a jump from the original. Absolutely loved it.

            I remember having the same sort of reaction to Sonic & Knuckles later.


            Getting an N64 for the first time with Mario Kart and Goldeneye was similar. I must have been about 10 by that point, and couldn't get enough of the thing.

            Comment


              #7
              Yeah Streets of Rage 2 is something else entirely. I just played through the entire game in Hard mode for the first time in years.

              Gary

              Comment


                #8
                Don't laugh but I was gobsmacked by Total Eclipse on the 3DO. I had a percy MegaDrive at the time and seeing this massive leap in visuals had me hooked. £400 of tick later and I was on my way home with a fairly playable shooter and not a lot else.

                Also the big 3 on the Saturn was a real wow moment as well. Here were games I had spent a bomb on in the leish running faithfully on this wee home console. Virtua Cop and VF2 just made every other console game at the time look a bit silly.

                I think it's quite unlikely any game will have huge impact on people these days as there is loads of web coverage and of course a lengthy build up for major titles. Sony I'm looking at you in particular here.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Pretty much every Zelda game. Mario Galaxy definitely did more recently, just running around in the opening area. And the opening of No More Heroes just melted my face off.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Love NMH's intro. We need more games like that.

                    This is an obvious one, but Super Mario 64. This was the first game I ever saw and thought, "I have to play this." It was when it was on GamesMaster about a year before the N64 launched. I was still at school at the time and, no doubt as many here have experienced, buying any game or console I felt like was a complete impossibility, so to immediately decide that I had to play this game no matter what was a big thing for me. Bloody managed it as well, after saving up and going halves with my brother. 'Twas a great day when we finally came home with our own N64 and the fabled "best game ever."

                    Ocarina of Time repeatedly blew me away from the very beginning onwards. It was amazing how perfect everything in the game was. It took Mario 64's title and had a profound effect on my life.

                    RE4 would be another one, but that's probably too recent. It was awesome, though. It had no right to be so unexpectedly, ass-kickingly amazing, but I'm glad it was.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      I have to agree with Sixty about Super Mario 64. Now that was astonishing on launch to long-term gamers. Genuinely was something new.

                      I'll have a think for more but one bollock-blower comes to mind. F/A-18 Interceptor on my family's new Amiga 500, December 1989. I had been very impressed so far by the Amiga, having games in colour at last, as my parents having just upgraded from a ZX Spectrum, but Interceptor was more than that, it was 'proper' 3D at last. I had played games with polygonal graphics before on the Speccy, like Driller, but this was faster, smoother and more realistic. It was the first time I'd seen an attempt at recreating the real world in 3D in a computer game, San Francisco bay in this case. Yes, it all looks primitive now, but we wouldn't have gotten to the likes of GTA4 (or even Google Earth!) without this kind of evolutionary step. Additionally, the stark 'grown up' presentation to the game was also something new to me. Games with a serious side...

                      Comment


                        #12
                        The intro to Krazy Ivan when I first saw the PS1 the game wasnt too bad! lol

                        Comment


                          #13
                          ESWAT (MD) Dad got us an MD (our first console) with that and Altered Beast for ?60 from the Loot. We finally figured out you had to jump off the building on the first level and fall right the way down onto this platform to fight the boss, which turned out to be a wicked helicopter that could walk around! And that boss tune!

                          SOR2 (MD) Obvious why, really. Borrowed it off a mate who brought it with him to the mosque. Now, when we're kids, most of us are itching to get out of the mosque anyway, but having SOR2 in my pocket made time grind to a halt. Ironically, turning SOR2 on for the first time was a pretty religious experience

                          Starwing (SNES) The sort of game that, when you see it, you look at your own console in disdain for a while, but also give kudos where it's due, and for a while the SNES vs MD arguments are over before they've started...

                          Sega Rally (Saturn) The sensation of speed is still hard to come by even today. The moment you boot it up, the first thing you see is a Celica flying towards the camera, which pretty much tells you what you're in for.

                          Mario 64 (N64) Played it at a mate's when the N64 first came out. I held the controller and started playing. Before I even realised what was going on, we were interrupted by a call from my Mum demanding to know how a half-hour meet had turned into a two-hour vanishing act. No other game has ever caused me to completely lose track of the time like that.

                          Shenmue (DC) It's the only game I can think of that goes straight from an action-packed and emotional intro to a boring bedroom where your first instinct is to put Dad's revenge mission on hold to open those drawers

                          Ridge Racer V (PS2) I remember bunking college one morning to traipse down to CeX in Harrow and browse the Jap Saturn collection (that weekend I'd managed to mod my Saturn for 60Hz and found an Action Replay for a fiver at the newly-opened Gamestation in Wembley) and walking into the completely empty shop and seeing the intro for RRV. The first thing that struck me was the scale - the size of the car, the road, the top-down shots of the massive buildings - and of course Ai Fukami flicking her hair. I felt like a bit of a sap buying Jap HotD after that!

                          MGS4 (PS3) From the 'smoking' install screen (sorry) to the intro section I just had to replay a few times (couldn't resist toying with the Gecko AI), it did something I never thought a game would this gen - make my jaw hit the floor. I'm glad I was sitting on the bed at the time or else that jaw would've shattered.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            For me, Shadow of the Beast for the Amiga. Owning just a humble Speccy at the time, I remember how good the graphics looked in magazines. Then I witnessed the game in person on a mate's brand-spanking-new A500. **** me, I nearly fell over! I had never seen parallax scrolling before, nor had I ever heard an Amiga's sound chip. I nagged and nagged my old man to get the family an Amiga and a couple of years down the line, even though they cost a f*cking fortune, he did. The things fathers do for there kids...

                            Comment


                              #15
                              F-Zero on the SNES. Made me buy a system then and there (I wasn't such a dedicated gamer back then, but this game along with the system was a definite turning point). The game blew me away because I'd never seen anything like it, and I can remember trying to get my head around what was going on onscreen.

                              Radiant Silvergun had a similar effect on me. The fact it still does today is even more amazing.

                              Lastly, Daytona (Arcade). When it arrived in our local Hollywood Bowl it felt like a major event. I'd have probably stood and gawped at the attract mode for an hour when I first clapped eyes on it were it not for the queues of people constantly playing it. Awesome.

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X