Games Important to Me 15-11
15: Tecmo Super Bowl (SNES)
This is a game that I have a lot of feelings about. I played the NES one as well as the three SNES ones, and they're all really fun, arcade style football games. This series of side-view football games ended up licensed by the NFL and NFL Players Association, so you could play with Troy Aikman or Warren Moon or whatever player who played for your favorite team. The 49ers in Tecmo Super Bowl for the SNES were so busted because even if the defense called your play and was able to break through your line, you could still connect an 8 yard pass to Jerry Rice by mashing the pass button. Bo Jackson in the NES one was famously broken, able to outrun most defenses as well as break dozens of tackles.
This was also a game I would play with my stepdad, during his better times, before the alcoholism relapse. It was fun. It was literally the only game he would play, though infrequently.
Tecmo Super Bowl III's presentation though rules. It's got such a good vibe. The QB barks of TSB (SNES) are baked into my brain.
14: Super Mario World (SNES)
I really don't need to say much about this game. It's just a really good platformer filled with interesting mechanics and fun levels. I didn't play it a ton growing up, but once I got emulators in the mid-to-late-00's, I played it a lot more. I also speedran this game some, 11 exit glitchless. Not an official category really, but 11 exit got dominated by the Cloud/? orb glitch so I just did it the regular way because I didn't want to learn the glitch.
13: Persona 3: FES (PS2)
Persona 3: FES rules. It's got such a great atmosphere, with the peppy lighthearted school stuff, with the darker, mysterious night stuff. As the game goes, the darker tone weighs on you as you play, and it seeps into this slice of life school year mode, and you can just feel it creeping on the edges. Still a little salty that the remake lets you control all your party members instead of just issuing them general directions in the Tactics menu, but whatever. This is a game I spent a bunch of time with but never beat. I actually started by renting Persona 3 standard edition, then bought P3FES for $20 from one of my rare trips to a Gamestop. I love the juxtoposition of the moods in this game and it does color how I think about tabletop stuff a bit, because why limit yourself to just one palette?
12: Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS2)
This is Peak. This is Nomura on his absolute bullshit and I am *here* for the ride. Not only is the story batshit insane, but this, to me, is the best combat in the series, beating out Birth By Sleep. Drive Forms ruled, the flexibility of your build point spending kicked ass, and the worlds were fun to explore. And I will die on this hill: If you can parse fuckin' Kojima or Taro or whatever, you can parse this series. Just say you don't like it's vibes or the story it's telling instead of calling it indecipherable.
11: No Man's Sky (PS4)
This game never really disappointed me. I never read into the hype around it, and it only looked like a space exploration game. And that's what it was at launch, and that's what it was when I bought it nearly a year later. And then it proceeded to have the most incredible lifetime support I've seen for a game like this, short of like, an MMO. Huge free updates every year adding and refining mechanics, updating biomes, but the core of just flying lonely through space still remains. It's such a good chill out game, a good podcast game, or just a meditative game.
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