Aug 31
Guest Post by Lukas “I Totally Got Banana Sniped but Deny It Ever Happened” Johnson
1. Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising – GBA – Not actually a close call. 30/30 war room S-ranks, and SUPER CO Power music.
2. RE4 – GCN – Probably the most well put together single player adventure I’ve played.
3. Metroid Prime – GCN – Held the single player title until RE4.
4. Super Monkey Ball – GCN – Best puzzle game of the generation, as well as the most difficult.
5. Disgaea: Hour Of Darkness – PS2 – I ‘only’ leveled my guys into the 300s, far from the 1000 level max.
6. Fire Emblem – GBA – The first in the series released outside of Japan, and has several things that work even better than AW2.
7. Katamari Damacy – PS2 – The simplest, best game concept ever.
8. Ikaruga – GCN – The most difficult game I played last gen.
9. Winning Eleven 9 International – PS2 – FIFA is a fun game, but playing Winning Eleven is so close to watching top-flight soccer it’s uncanny.
10. Shadow Hearts: Covenant – PS2 – Interesting story, terrific battle system.
Notable Mentions:
God Of War – PS2 – (very close to breaking the Japanese-Dev only top 10 list).
Mega Man Battle Network 2 – GBA – Surprise Megaman, it’s your birthday!
Front Mission 4 – PS2 – If it were harder it would have made the list.
F-Zero GX – GCN – If it weren’t impossibly difficult it would have made the list.
Super Smash Brothers Melee – GCN – Was the final nail in my college dropout coffin.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Xbox – The only great Xbox game I completed worth mentioning.
August 31st, 2006
I’m not really sure how you fail to include Tiger Woods on your list when the game is singularly responsible for buying over half of your late-night meals at Northwestern. I don’t think Fire Emblem ever bought you ice cream.
Also, with so many RPGs on that list it’s a pretty big shock that none of them involve training for Colosso.
September 1st, 2006
Only Shadow Hearts and KoTOR are traditional-ish RPGs, Disgaea, FE, MMBN2, and FM4 are S-RPGS
September 1st, 2006
Jason: your blatant attempt at rewriting history fails. As I recall it was you, not Lukas, who financed the majority of our late-night trips to JK.
ps Now that the fresh memory of a subsidized-by-jason cookies and cream ice cream cone from JK sweets is on my mind, I recall a particular incident there. I don’t remember if you were there, or if it was just Lukas and I. I ordered a bibimbop, and went to sit down. Lukas checks out the menu, and, just as he is opening his mouth to order, the old korean guy reaches across the counter and SMACKS him across the face.
The old Korean guy goes on as if nothing had happened. Lukas doesn’t say a word. He just walks over to my table, sits down, and says “dude, that guy just smacked me.”
“what?! who?”
“Miyagi. fuckin’ smacked me.”
I got to thinking about why the man smacked Lukas’s face. Is it that Lukas has a particularly smackable face? Does his face inspire smacking? Perhaps he resembles a prodigal son of the old man who refused all reason and was the subject of frequent smack-downs.
September 1st, 2006
oops. ok. now that i read your post correctly, i see that you weren’t trying to rewrite history at all. my bad
September 1st, 2006
Yeah, Lukas getting slapped in the face for no reason by the old man behind the counter is one of my happiest memories from NU.
Also particularly great: when I broke my long-running streak of last places at Tiger Woods and finished first while you finished in last place. I put on We Are the Champions by Queen and started doing a little dance. You got really angry and told me to turn off the music or you would kill me. So I reached over to my speakers and turned the music way louder. That made you even angrier, but I was too far away from you so you beat up lukas instead. Then you had to buy me ice cream. What a good day.
We don’t need to mention the game where we were tied and went to a three-hole playoff. I talked a little shit before ‘going for it’ and ended up hooking the ball off the cliff and into the ocean. That shot cost me two ice creams.
September 1st, 2006
Don’t forget, you really turned the speakers louder when “Another One Bites The Dust” came on. Then Jimmy really punched me way too hard.
September 1st, 2006
Yeah, but you literally threw a chair against my wall when I beat you at SMK. That was probably worse.
September 13th, 2006
Lukas, out of the very little times I played video games at your place, what was your favorite:
1) The dude at JK Sweets blatantly liking me a lot more than Jason the first time I ever went there,
or
2) Me losing to a girl that was blindfolded after I played for real without a blindfold in Ikaruga. That was fun…
September 14th, 2006
Losing to a blindfolded girl. That was seriously hilarious. Didn’t Lukas and I beat you too when we flipped upside down on the couch and played with the controller turned backwards?
September 17th, 2006
yup, good times all around.