2014 Together Retro Calendar

[Menegrothx]

Dark Stalkers would be a great pick for a horror theme month, though maybe a tad bit redundant if we're already voting for Warzard (which is a much more unknown game, and thus more deserving of attention imo). Though that one seems (judging by the screenshots) more like just monsters fighting each other with out being horror themed.

[Sload Soap]

Red Earth/Warzard isn't really a straight fighter being more a boss rusher. And yeah, it's based more on myth and fantasy than horror. Cool game though.

[ExedExes]

After waiting for opinions, and getting some positive support, I think we're ready to go here. I honestly wasn't expecting to be the one to spearhead this, but I believe in the TR mission and the games we play every month are great. I like these picks too -- these were the ones I feel that besides the votes to back them up, really brought a lot of good talk from the community as a whole. I arranged them by month the best I could.

Jan - MMO - FFXI (from what I see, FFXI has more servers? I'd go with that one.)
Feb - Run N Gun - Shock Troopers
Mar - Action - Metal Gear
Apr - RPG - Ultima IV
May - Puzzle - The Lost Vikings
Jun - Platformer - Psychonauts
Jul - Shmup - Ikaruga
Aug - Beat em up - Capcom's RPG Style 4 Pack - KoD/KoTR/SOM/TOD
Sep - Racing - F-Zero Series
Oct - Adventure - The Longest Journey
Nov - Rail Shooter - Space Harrier
Dec - FPS - Deus Ex

I put MMO and RPG earlier in the year so that more can participate. To combat the shorter game that Space Harrier might be (remember we had a short month-long game in Bubble Bobble this year too) I have it in November to make it a simpler and easier game to play during the holidays.

The only issue is the MMO. To stay community-focused, I would suggest the one that is easier to set up and play for all those interested. From my research, FFXI has many more active servers than PSO does. If I was going to play and had a horse in this genre race, I'd lean towards FFXI.

With not much of any more discussion, I truly feel this is the best community-minded calendar that came from 3 weeks of tough deliberations. I would be ready to have this submitted to the powers that be.

[dunpeal2064]

PSO's lack of servers is not an issue, as we will all be playing on one server anyways. It is free to play, and is a dungeon crawly, so I think we would get a lot more out of it. Also, unless they made it easier, and they could have, FFXI is much more difficult to get set up. PSO BB is a breeze to set up.

Picking PSO is akin to picking Diablo 2 and letting us run amuk for a few weeks. FFXI doesn't even get going until level 30 (At least it didn't when I played), and that took me about 7 days of played time iirc?

Plus, PSO is on more platforms, it is playable offline (And is still fun), it has local multiplayer (For those of us with friends)... it just seems like a better choice all around imo.

List looks nice though, I should actually be participating in every month this year.

[dsheinem]

so we're not going to hold a poll on those games that were close?

I also disagree that there's small interest in an October horror month.

[alienjesus]

After waiting for opinions, and getting some positive support, I think we're ready to go here. I honestly wasn't expecting to be the one to spearhead this, but I believe in the TR mission and the games we play every month are great. I like these picks too -- these were the ones I feel that besides the votes to back them up, really brought a lot of good talk from the community as a whole. I arranged them by month the best I could.

Jan - MMO - FFXI (from what I see, FFXI has more servers? I'd go with that one.)
Feb - Run N Gun - Shock Troopers
Mar - Action - Metal Gear
Apr - RPG - Ultima IV
May - Puzzle - The Lost Vikings
Jun - Platformer - Psychonauts
Jul - Shmup - Ikaruga
Aug - Beat em up - Capcom's RPG Style 4 Pack - KoD/KoTR/SOM/TOD
Sep - Racing - F-Zero Series
Oct - Adventure - The Longest Journey
Nov - Rail Shooter - Space Harrier
Dec - FPS - Deus Ex

I put MMO and RPG earlier in the year so that more can participate. To combat the shorter game that Space Harrier might be (remember we had a short month-long game in Bubble Bobble this year too) I have it in November to make it a simpler and easier game to play during the holidays.

The only issue is the MMO. To stay community-focused, I would suggest the one that is easier to set up and play for all those interested. From my research, FFXI has many more active servers than PSO does. If I was going to play and had a horse in this genre race, I'd lean towards FFXI.

With not much of any more discussion, I truly feel this is the best community-minded calendar that came from 3 weeks of tough deliberations. I would be ready to have this submitted to the powers that be.

I don't see why Psychonauts was opted for over Ape Escape, they have similar numbers of votes. Same goes for PSO and FFXI, The Lost Vikings and Oddworld (Oddworld has MORE votes!) and The Longest Journey & Gabriel Knight (and for what it's worth, there are games from other genres, like Starcraft, that have more votes than any of the adventure game nominations for this year, so I don;t get why they were ignored).

I also don't think you can just remove Monster World from the list, it has a lot of votes.

I'm not opposed to this list in general, it's pretty similar to mine, but I'd like to see polls on the games that are close in votes like we did last year for games like Parappa and Space Channel 5. I'd also like to see some votes for the genres thatw erent clear - eg. adventure, beat 'em up and startegy, which all had simialr numbers of votes, and october horror month.

It seems to me we have about 10 clear genres and about 6 clear games, but a few of the genres are up in the air with 2 close nominations, and the last two genres are highly contested between several games.

[ExedExes]

If you all want to drag this process out with polls for the close games, that's fine with me, but nobody's stepping up to do anything about this but me and AJ at this point. I liked AJ's idea to just throw highly voted games and his personal preferences in and that's what I based my list on, because right now I don't think there's gonna be much more lobbying or discussion on the tied games. There wouldn't be a lot of voting or any real participation to get this thing done at this point. I think we'll be seeing a lot of double features every month with those close numbers. Heck, why don't we just have a year of double features for each genre on the calendar?

We have too many genres to be considered for October and that's gonna take out 2 genres with more votes for games right now. I like what I see in The Longest Journey and I'd throw my weight behind that one, but since that genre is gonna be taken up in October, it won't be on the calendar. Same with DE.

If we're gonna be serious about this, we need to take action and make a separate thread with time-limited polls for the close games and if people want a horror month in October. Otherwise this thread will stay dead and this process will keep going through to the end of the year. It's gonna be clear this won't be solved anytime soon.

[mjmjr25]

Polls created for what I think are the (5) sticking points. Set up to run for 48 hours. I would think with those (5) answers we can establish a finalized calendar.

[pierrot]

I'm going to strongly caution against selecting FFXI for TR, like dunpeal did. I've sunk a lot of time into both FFXI and PSO in the past, and I could see FFXI being a giant disaster. As was mentioned, the number of servers really only makes for higher instance of error in someone trying to select the server everyone else is on, and as I recall, selecting a server can only really be done by receiving a friend invite from a character already on that server. They may have added a one-time migration service, but the other issue is starting nations, and if a few people decide they want to start out in Windurst, god help everyone. The game is significantly less grind happy than it used to be, at least for the early game when one knows what to do, and has the resources to do them. It's still a long process to get to Jeuno, and that's barely cracking the surface of the game at this point. If everyone were to start out fresh on new characters, I would be a bit surprised if more than 3 people made it to that point by the end of the month.

Conversely, PSO is easy for people to group up, take some time to clear a dungeon, and log off with a sense of accomplishment most every time. It may not be as grand and robust as FFXI, but it's at least accessible, and doesn't require the significant time investment FFXI can. I don't think there would be a better fit of MMO for TR than PSO, but if people were unhappy with PSO's relative lack of scale, I might recommend lobbying for Guild Wars for next year, or something.

In any case, I agree with AJ that some of the games that are close really need a vote. There's still two months, which could fly by in this back and forth, but it's not such a short time that a few 24 hour votes should delay the process up to the new year, or anything like that.


EDIT:

Polls created for what I think are the (5) sticking points. Set up to run for 48 hours. I would think with those (5) answers we can establish a finalized calendar.

Thanks, Mike.

[alienjesus]

So, based on what I'm seeing so far, this is what seems definite:

1. Space Harrier
2. F-Zero
3. Shock Troopers
4. Metal Gear
5. Ultima IV
6. Ikaruga
7. One of Psychonauts or Ape Escape
8. One of Final Fantasy XI or Phantasy Star Online
9. One of Oddworld or The Lost Vikings

then we have a few up in the air:
October Horror Month
The Longest Journey
Deus Ex (both these rely on horror not being popular, otherwise Blood and Phantasmagoria are likely options instead)
Starcraft
Capcom Beat'em up month (is this a thing people actually want?)
Virtua Tennis
MULE


What about Monster World? It's one of the most popular options, so is it definitely in? In that case, we only have 2 spaces left. It seems odd NOT to have it after it got so much support.


My personal choices for those last 3 slots would be Monster World, Capcom Beat em ups and either of The Longest Journey or Starcraft.