The SNES and you, 25 years of SUPER POWER!

[Exhuminator]

That game is the very reason I was a bit disappointed in Final Fantasy VII when I finally got it.

To be honest, I think you'd have been disappointed with FFVII versus Chrono Trigger even if you'd gotten FFVII on release day. There's really no comparison between the two. I'm not even that big of a fan of Chrono Trigger, but I'd take it any day over FFVII.

[ExedExes]

I've played half that list give or take, and a few there I'd tell you to swear off of right now they're just awful. Carrier Aces, the only game in many years that I willingly got so fed up with it being so awful I snapped the damn thing in half in my bare hands because I felt I would be doing the next gamer a public service NOT reselling it or leaving it in circulation.

The controls are god awful, the setup in general is a tad confusing to combat stuff properly, the AI is stupid yet predatory but had the controls even worked partly well it would be more interesting at least. Avoid it.

Change "Avoid it" to "Emulate it/Play on the Retron 5" and it will be a far great experience. That's how I played it, with extreme save state prejudice. That gets through the tedious, difficult dogfighting faster and on to the COOLER part of it, the bombing runs (and bombing defense using the ship guns in some scenarios). I did like being able to play as America or Japan.

[Sarge]

NTSC-U:
ActRaiser 2 - Really hard, controls are tough to get used to as well.
Aladdin - I like it more than the Genesis version. Kind of a hop-and-bop Prince of Persia.
Arcana - Great first-person JRPG. Loved it.
Blackthorne - I liked this a bit more than Flashback, for whatever reason, although I enjoyed it, too.
Captain Commando - Pretty good port of the arcade game. Solid beat-'em-up.
Donkey Kong Country 2 - Everyone swears this is the best of the series, but I like the first one more.
Dragon View - Brawler-RPG hybrid (I should post this in the other thread!). One of my favorite overlooked games on the system. Get past the sketchy 3D overworld and you'll have a great time with it.
Earthbound - Despite the graphical style, a very humorous and well-written Dragon Quest "clone".
Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures - Surprisingly solid game based on the Super Star Wars engine, but also very difficult.
Operation Logic Bomb - A short but fun overhead shooter. Good stuff.
Run Saber - Definitely a good Strider knockoff.
Secret of the Stars - I have an unhealthy fascination with this game. I still want to beat it.
Shadowrun - One of the greats that I should sit down and play. Feels like it'd be better with a mouse.
Skyblazer - One of the best platformers on SNES. It reminds me more of a great NES platformer. Definitely worth a play.
Sparkster - A shockingly great iteration of the Rocket Knight series. Also pretty rare.
Sunset Riders - Contra in the Wild West.
Super Adventure Island II - Secret Monster World / Zelda II.
Super Ninja Boy - I want this and the NES version pretty badly, even though I've never been able to get into them.
The 7th Saga - This is on my shame list for not having beaten it yet. I want to, and there's so much about the game that I actually love.
The King of Dragons - Great beat-'em-up. The classes are different enough that each playthrough is worth it.
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja - Still need to beat this one.
The Twisted Tales of Spike McDangus - Ha, another one on my list. It's a pretty solid ARPG.
Tiny Toon Adventures - Buster Busts Loose! - Solid Konami stuff, need to get around to finishing it someday.
Top Gear - Kickin' music.
Top Gear 2 - More sim elements, and more kickin' music.
Uncharted Waters - New Horizons - I want to finish this one day, too. Since it's more RPG-ish than sim, it appeals.
Xardion - Thought this looked awesome in Nintendo Power, but it's really not...

I've got even more Super Famicom games in the bucket, and a few PAL exclusives.

So I've actually played a lot more than what I've commented on, but I just wanted to hit on these. I'm definitely a game sampler, I've probably played for at least some time almost all of the NES and SNES library...

If I had to pick absolute favorites from that list, it's probably going to be Dragon View and Skyblazer.

[Tanooki]

Change "Avoid it" to "Emulate it/Play on the Retron 5" and it will be a far great experience. That's how I played it, with extreme save state prejudice. That gets through the tedious, difficult dogfighting faster and on to the COOLER part of it, the bombing runs (and bombing defense using the ship guns in some scenarios). I did like being able to play as America or Japan.

Going to have to argue against that, sorry but no one should have to emulate or retron5 save state abuse it to make it playable. Yes the bombing runs were not a problem, hell they're actually functional and fun, but the dog fighting is a broken hot mess. Had that amateur one off crew of developers who made that for the publisher did their job right they would have had a cult classic one off unique gem for the system that's a lot of fun.

[Exhuminator]

Thanks for dropping the knowledge Sarge, will make prioritizing the bucket list a bit easier.

[BoneSnapDeez]

EarthBound is one of my favorite games of all time. The sequel is also brilliant. I get that not everyone likes it. The pacing is a bit off (starts off slow), the towns are huge, and the game is just friggin' weird. But holy shit is it an experience. Oh, and it has the best NPC dialogue I've ever seen in a video game ever. Kinda shocking, as this was a first-party Nintendo game.

Secret of the Stars is absolute garbage. The kusoge factor would be amusing if the game was like five hours long, but it's closer to thirty. Skip it unless you intentionally want to play a bad game for the yucks.

The 7th Saga is one I have talked about extensively. It's esoteric, melancholy, long, and hard. Little character development. No cutesy anime babes. Just a massive treacherous journey. I love it.

[Sarge]

The 7th Saga is one I have talked about extensively. It's esoteric, melancholy, long, and hard. Little character development. No cutesy anime babes. Just a massive treacherous journey. I love it.

It's the King's Field of SNES JRPGs. (Gratuitous Exhuminator bait dropped. )

[Exhuminator]

The 7th Saga is one I have talked about extensively. It's esoteric, melancholy, long, and hard. Little character development. No cutesy anime babes. Just a massive treacherous journey. I love it.

The part I bolded makes the game sound delicious to me. I really want to play it, but I get hung up on one thing. The way the American version totally screwed with the balancing of the game when it was localized.

So while The 7th Saga is considered difficult, its original incarnation, that is Elnard, is not as much so. I've read the balancing in The 7th Saga is so bad, that it makes certain characters basically useless. Also, it make the "grind" of the game significantly longer.

So I get hung up thinking I should play The 7th Saga using the Elnard-balance-restoration patch, so that the difficulty is on par with Elnard. But then I think maybe I'm just being a wuss, and to play it that way wouldn't give me the same feeling of accomplishment that you and Ack got from beating it. But if the "difficulty" is more due to unnecessary grinding brought on by intentionally slowed level development, than that's just dumb to deal with when I could play the Elnard patch.

Really it's a hard decision for a doof like me.

[Ack]

Actually grinding heavily in 7th Saga can hurt you too, because your rivals level at the same rate and also become significantly more powerful, even more than you do. In fact one character in particular is considered effectively impossible to beat once he reaches a certain level. So while it does have a grind, it also has some placed limits on how much you should consider grinding.

7th Saga is a hard game due to the localization changes made, but it's by no means impossible. I also found it fun to challenge myself. Rough, yes, and even infuriating in some places, but still fun.

Anyway, I do have thoughts on many of the games in your overall list, but I don't know if doing write ups with my thoughts on all of them would actually help you! Suffice to say though that you have a lot great games ahead of you, as well as a lot of games that I don't necessarily think are great but are at least still interesting.

[Exhuminator]

Here's an example of the kind of stuff I've read about 7th Saga's localization that worries me, this is from HG101's write up:

"That challenge is taken to an extreme level in the US release of the game. The 7th Saga was a difficult game for its time with its variety of clues to find and relentless enemies to overcome, but for the US release, the game was made even more difficult. Enemies were made more powerful, and the game's experience system was changed so that your own characters grow and learn new abilities at a much slower rate. This makes playing with physically weaker characters like Valsu or Esuna almost impossible in the early game as it will take longer for them to learn their important magical skills. No matter which character you choose you will spend an hour or so fighting a lone bird over and over again outside of the first town and barely surviving. The game's intro makes a huge deal out of the great training your characters received over the past few years, but in the US version of the game even a single, plain old bird can easily crush you the minute you set foot outside of the castle.

The increased difficulty is what hurts this game the most. Even for its time it was extremely tedious, but when you combine the many difficult battles with having to constantly search places for items as well as the complex world design (no really, when someone tells you that a place is just west of your current location, that means walk east, north, east, north, and then walk west across the entire game world, this happens more than once) and vague translations of what your abilities can do, it gets a bit too dated for its own good." ( http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/7thsaga/7thsaga.htm )

Another quote from a GameFAQs forum post:

"So, having finally beat the role playing monstrosity known as 7th Saga (and being disappointed with the rather anti-climatic ending) I decided to play the game in Japanese having a working knowledge of the language and hearing that it was easier. I was surprised to find out that this is actually completely true - the Japanese version of the game is a cake walk, especially after playing the American version. As you may know, the level ups are much, much more generous right from the start even. I have been using a team of Esuna and Olvan and having absolutely no problems - I just acquired the Moon Rune at level 23 with no problem. I wanted to compare my stats to my characters at the same level in the English version (Valsu and Kamil) so here's a run down." ( http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/563501-t ... a/41960584 )

So there you have it, the original developers (Produce) never intended for The 7th Saga to be as hard as it was hacked into being by Enix America. In that regard, I think I'm better off playing The 7th Saga with the Elnard balance restoration. After all, it's the moody world and atmosphere I'm interested in, not the artificial challenge brought on by an ill-conceived localization.