Breetai wrote:Original_Name wrote:@Breetai -- Yeah, the games I tried in my youth were similarly varied... NiGHTS into Dreams, Half-Life, Shenmue, Final Fantasy VII, Ecco the Dolphin, Daytona USA, Gran Turismo, Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy Tactics, Thunder Force IV, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, Shinobi III, Seaman, Toy Commander, Virtual ON, The Typing of the Dead, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, PaRappa the Rapper, Xenogears, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Chu Chu Rocket!, Virtua Fighter, ET CETERA... all over the place. When I bought Sonic Spinball, for instance, it wasn't 'cause Sonic was on the cover, it was because I'd never played a pinball video game before and it seemed interesting. I almost said that may be in part because back then the consoles were more oriented around such diversity, so my buying habits were just a product of that -- but then again, I didn't see many modern FPS nuts trying out Halo Wars just 'cause it seemed different and interesting. I wonder if a game like Metal Gear Solid were just now coming out for the first time today if people would pay much attention to it?
You had a Saturn and Mega Drive when you were little and played NiGHTS and Thunder Force IV on them? That is awesome.
Metal Gear Solid was huge because it was made by Konami and pushed by the magazines at the time. It was very heavily advertised. If it came out today it would still do awesome for those reasons.
Yeah, I had a Genesis/Mega Drive and a Saturn and my father had a PlayStation and a PC. We would buy games mostly for our own systems, but we would recommend games to eachother often. I'll admit that I didn't pick out Thunder Force IV myself -- my dad pretty much bought that and Gunstar Heroes and said "PLAY THESE WITH ME ON YOUR GENESIS," (So maybe that's cheating to include those, haha -- then again, I did the same thing with Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenogears, and PaRappa the Rapper on his PlayStation). We didn't even know about the options menu... when we ("we" meaning my dad... we would trade between deaths, but he got 90% of the progress) finally beat the first four levels on the default settings, we thought we'd beaten the game.
I think we just about gave up on it after that. I did finally beat it with my dad this past week... on Easy with 99 lives. It was more a payback for all the torment it caused us than an actual conquering of the game. It still kicked our asses, it was just nearly impossible to lose.
Anyway, yeah, I did grow up with TFIV (although the cart reads "Lightening Force"... blech)... that's probably the most surprisingly obscure game in that list. And NiGHTS came on a demo disc with my Saturn, and once I played it I HAD to have the full game... best gameplay ever in my personal opinion.
Perhaps Metal Gear Solid might catch on like it did back then... Little Big Planet, Mirror's Edge, and Heavy Rain all sold well in recent years even though they were doing things that were relatively out of the norm. At the same time, I think it would probably "undersell" its expectations just like the aforementioned.
