Take my games!
As Ali and I move, we're getting rid of about 70% of our books, and about 40% of our video games - including some consoles!
I wrote a somewhat elaborate paean to games last night to preface this list, and then lost it all overnight, so here, without adornment, is a list of the games that might be yours!
.... and that's it. If you want one, speak for it and be ready to come by my apartment on June 19, or to meet up with me between now and then. Otherwise some donation store in NYC is going to get a real gift!
I wrote a somewhat elaborate paean to games last night to preface this list, and then lost it all overnight, so here, without adornment, is a list of the games that might be yours!
- Our original NES. This is tough to let go of, but it does have that blinky problem (easily fixed at a store, but hey). With it are:
- Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt - yep, the original that came with my console.
- Tetris - the original learning/science game gone commercial.
- Mega Man 3 - I loved this game, but not as much as Mega Man 2, which I never myself owned on the original console.
- I'm not getting rid of the SNES yet, but I am 'offing':
- Super Star Wars, Super Empire Strikes Back ... I know this is sacrilegious, but I didn't like these games, even at the time. They were very pretty, but their gameplay was nothing special and often, in pursuit of beautiful graphics, unclear about hatboxes. Pfeh
- Bubsy: In: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind. The response to Sonic that never went anywhere. Proof that it's very hard to make a mascot that will be beloved.
- I lost my Nintendo DS Lite a while ago on a trip. But even if I had it now, I'd still be getting rid of:
- MegaMan ZX - a fun game, and closer to the gameplay of the series that I loved than some of the franchise's bizarre fruit, but still about Megaman Z and X and, strangely, an RPG played out across a plat former action game.
- Avatar: The Burning Earth and Avatar: Into the Inferno. Classic licensed games, which is to say, mostly crap. "Into the Inferno", though, is the best of all the Avatar games by my taste, because it embraced the medium. The characters are SD, which is good for the DS' fidelity. The gameplay often revolves around stylus-controlled 3D platforming block-moving puzzles. While that's not the core mechanic of the series or likely at the heart of the players' love of the series, it works really well in itself and makes the game feel like more than Avatar skins pasted onto another game.
- Electroplankton
- Full metal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy. See licensed property
- PSP
- Luxor: The Wrath of Set - I wanted a match-three game and have enjoyed this mechanic. This game gave it to me.
- Mercury Meltdown - This is a cool idea, cool mechanic, and I am not sure why I didn't just eat it up forever. It could've been Marble Madness with sophistication, but somehow wasn't for me.
- XBox and XBox 360 - hey, I have an original XBox to give!
- Assassin's Creed - one of the best-researched historically-set games I've ever played, I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the setting. The gameplay was interesting to me, but didn't wow me the way that it wowed much of the industry.
- Crimson Skies - apparently really good, but Paul has a copy.
- Alter Echo - I enjoyed this game quite a bit, but am to my knowledge the only person who has ever heard of it.
- Panzer Dragoon Orta
- Baldur's Gate - this is how I played this classing game. Fun!
- Quidditch World Cup - I think that we played this. For a while.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - bought, several times for different consoles, for Ali.
- Wii - not getting rid of the console, but a a bunch of games
- Avatar: The Last Airbender, ATLA: The Burning Earth, and ATLA: Into the Inferno - to their credit, they improved the game with each iteration. To their fault, none of them escaped the trap of the licensed property. Good for die-hard Avatar collectors, and fun, but nothing transcendent.
- Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz
- Playstation 2
- Katamari Damacy and We <3 Katamari - loved them, not playing them now.
- Fullmetal Alchemist and the Broken Angel - I got this, embarrassingly, because I was working on the FMA d20 RPG and wanted to include the canon. However, I couldn't get through the fairly trite gameplay to enough of the story to keep going. Wikipedia will give me all I need.
- Megaman X5
- DVD Visual Novels - I got these when I saw an opportunity to get basically all of Hirameki's catalogue for dirt-cheap at an Otakon. I'm glad that I did so that I could experience some of this, but ... it's a lot. And apparently "American localization" means "stripping out all the weird sexuality nearly inherent to the genre in Japan." I wasn't in it for that and don't mind missing it, but it leaves some of the works feeling like swiss cheese. I'm keeping the PC games, but the DVD games, easier to play, are going.
- Amusement Park
- Tea Society of a Witch - This comes with a special Art Book DVD! Perhaps it explains where the title comes from.
- Dragonia
.... and that's it. If you want one, speak for it and be ready to come by my apartment on June 19, or to meet up with me between now and then. Otherwise some donation store in NYC is going to get a real gift!