What Game Was The Most Pleasant Surprise For You?

[racketboy]

Dynamite Cop: Picked this up for a couple quid, didn't expect much as it had a lot of poor reviews..turned out some of the most fun I've had in 2 player for a long, long time. It may of looked dated even when it came out, but god darn is this game a riot.

Have you played Die Hard Arcade on the Saturn?
It's even better:
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/01/ ... aturn.html

[claudio]

Yeah, Die Hard Arcade for saturn blows away dynamite cop for dreamcast by a landslide.

[GagaMan]

Only played the demo of that, never been able to find Die Hard Arcade (darn Saturn are so bloody hard to find nowadays..).

[kinn]

Dynamite Cop: Picked this up for a couple quid, didn't expect much as it had a lot of poor reviews..turned out some of the most fun I've had in 2 player for a long, long time. It may of looked dated even when it came out, but god darn is this game a riot.

Have you played Die Hard Arcade on the Saturn?
It's even better:
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/01/ ... aturn.html

Never got to play the full game but I played the demo of it to death. Man that game was ace. And the boss in it was the spitting image of Shun from Virtua Fighter!

[executioner]

Another one. Front Mission 3 for PS1. I first gave it a try 3 years ago and was astonished at the graphics (for the system, anyway), the unique concepts brought to the tactics genre, overall production value, and just how much fun it was. Also it has a very unique virtual internet mode. The fans of the series always agree this is easily the peak in the series, so if you want some mecha thrown in your Final Fantasy Tactics, see here.

I just started a new save file in it yesterday, and I am having a blast.

(Emulated, so its missing some visual effects)

Front mission 4 was my first experience on the series, and the first PS2 game I finished. Did you play it Mozgus? How would you rate it against 3? Hope to get my hands on FM3 for PS1 and emulate it on the PSP. Just sad that FM5 was never made available outside Japan, made me remeber a petition I signed online a long time ago.

http://www.petitiononline.com/fm5sotw/petition.html

[Mozgus]

Another one. Front Mission 3 for PS1. I first gave it a try 3 years ago and was astonished at the graphics (for the system, anyway), the unique concepts brought to the tactics genre, overall production value, and just how much fun it was. Also it has a very unique virtual internet mode. The fans of the series always agree this is easily the peak in the series, so if you want some mecha thrown in your Final Fantasy Tactics, see here.

I just started a new save file in it yesterday, and I am having a blast.

(Emulated, so its missing some visual effects)

Front mission 4 was my first experience on the series, and the first PS2 game I finished. Did you play it Mozgus? How would you rate it against 3? Hope to get my hands on FM3 for PS1 and emulate it on the PSP. Just sad that FM5 was never made available outside Japan, made me remeber a petition I signed online a long time ago.

http://www.petitiononline.com/fm5sotw/petition.html

I haven't tried it because every review I've read for FM4 that directly compared it to FM3, clearly said it's much worse. So I'm just going to avoid it unless someone can convince me otherwise. I can tell from the screenshots that it looks much more dull and the graphics just aren't much better than FM3. If you are going to play FM3, I suggest you get a real PS1. I dunno how good PSP's emulation is, but it's probably no better than ePSXe, and if thats the case, a lot of visual effects are downgraded.

[RockinB]

Are there any games that took you by surprise in terms of quality?
These would be games that you didn't expect to be very good, but somehow you tried it out and loved it...

I'd say D2 for Dreamcast.
I knew D for Saturn, it was rather short, got poor quality video scenes but still made fun playing. Having played Shenmue for DC, I didn't expect any game to come near that quality.

D2 proved me wrong, the whole game presentation is very professional and well thought. You can see that it must have been a lot of work to create the game. The music, setting and atmosphere gets you in a mood as good as Shenmue does. D2 is a giant leap improvement over D, so it's fits to be mentioned in this context.

[Daniel Primed]

Vagrant Story (PSone)

I had gotten through about a third of this game and then quit because it was too frustrating. Eventually some time later I returned and enjoyed the game so much more. I think that the second try made me actually understand how it all works.

I've got some more...lemme think....

[Morast Boxern]

God Hand, for PS2.

I heard a little bit about the game, it being reminiscent of old beat 'em ups (which caught my ear hard) and fairly difficult. I wasn't particularly interested overall, being generally apathetic to 3D, overly violent games (they're like white noise in the gaming market, along with FPS's). Several months later, with a fresh wallet full of cash, I came across it at the local Babbage's for twenty bucks, figured "what the heck", and took the puppy home.

It's the most outrageously, relentlessly hilarious non point-and-click-adventure game ever. Period. I haven't had this level of satisfaction from playing a game since Viewtiful Joe (by the same developers, to boot).

[fastbilly1]

But in Dynamite Cop/Dynamite Deka 2, you get to fight the krakken and kill people with cake.

A more recent surprise for me would be Dodonpachi. An artist friend and fellow shump enthusiast suggested it to me and man it is pretty. But not only pretty, it is a solid game with so much going for it is not even funny. There is a reason the best shumpers play the game endlessly trying to chain there score from the first enemy to the final boss - and the saturn port isnt half bad.