Editor's Note: Uphill, Both Ways

[TraumaHound]

My first system was the Sears Telegames (the Sears-badged Atari 2600). Didn't have another console at home until the NES came out. The NES holds the nostalgic-gaming-place in my heart. I loved the games and it was awesome to see home-gaming become insanely popular again after the crash (which I remember mostly for being able to get 2600 games super-bargain-bin-cheap, mom bought me Raiders of the Lost Ark for $6 and E.T. for $4. Think we got Pac-Man for $6, too. Only reason I remember those prices is they were on the boxes for all those years.) The NES was right there at the start of my best-friendship, a guy a few years older than me, who'd already graduated, and I'd cut school and go over to his parents' house on his days off and play NES games, watch anime, and eat piles of 7-Eleven food (oh youthful-metabolism, how I miss thee.) Those were good times, but there were also a lot of good games that I think still hold up despite the nostalgia. Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Balloon Fight, Mario Bros, Wild Gunman...there all still fun to play (though the lightgun doesn't work on our high-falutin plasma teevees.)

In later years, when I was collecting classic gaming systems, I picked up a Fairchild Channel F at a thrift store for $8, complete along with a half-dozen boxed carts at $1 a piece. It was a pretty sweet system considering the tech at the time. The controllers were weird, with the single-stick, twister-top (paddle-controller) that also functioned as the plunger-fire-button. The sounds came out of the console, too, instead of the tv (legacy Pong-console setup, I imagine.) And the carts were HUGE, about the same as an 8-track tape but longer and bright yellow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Channel_F

 

[blarghblarghhhhh]

I totally agree with you on this one. any pokemon thread i go to on this site will have atleast one person talking about how the first 151 pokemon were the best and that red and blue were alot harder then the newer games blah blah blah. you are wrong! its time to move into the future with the rest of us.

 

[Irridium]

if you can honestly say there have been better games than half-life 1, final fantasy 7 and ocarina of time since 2000, then you're mental.

Well there has been Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Timesplitters, Mass Effect, Unreal Tournament 2004, Uncharted 1&2, Pokemon gold/silver, Morrowind, Civilization, Battlefield (not Bad Company), F.E.A.R., S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Halo, Knights of the Old Republic, Fable, Crazy Taxi, Power Stone, Sonic Adventure (the only good 3D sonic game), Shenmu, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, God of War, Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City/San Andreas, and Call of Duty 4 just to name a few.

 

[Visuality]

if you can honestly say there have been better games than half-life 1, final fantasy 7 and ocarina of time since 2000, then you're mental.

Well there has been Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Timesplitters, Mass Effect, Unreal Tournament 2004, Uncharted 1&2, Pokemon gold/silver, Morrowind, Civilization, Battlefield (not Bad Company), F.E.A.R., S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Halo, Knights of the Old Republic, Fable, Crazy Taxi, Power Stone, Sonic Adventure (the only good 3D sonic game), Shenmu, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, God of War, Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City/San Andreas, and Call of Duty 4 just to name a few.

Well, the games you maybe could have mentioned in the same breath are Portal, Half-Life 2, Baldurs Gate 2, one of the total wars or possibly all of them and, er...yeah i'll give you a gta to be generous.

However, none of them are as good as any of the 3 I mentioned, and as my former comment can clarify, you're mental. If you'd actually played the 3, you'd see that only 2 of the games you mentioned are worthy to even be compared. I'm basically saying Jessica Alba is hot and you're saying Maggie Gyllenhall is as hot. She just isnt even close.

 

[Irridium]

if you can honestly say there have been better games than half-life 1, final fantasy 7 and ocarina of time since 2000, then you're mental.

Well there has been Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Timesplitters, Mass Effect, Unreal Tournament 2004, Uncharted 1&2, Pokemon gold/silver, Morrowind, Civilization, Battlefield (not Bad Company), F.E.A.R., S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Halo, Knights of the Old Republic, Fable, Crazy Taxi, Power Stone, Sonic Adventure (the only good 3D sonic game), Shenmu, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, God of War, Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City/San Andreas, and Call of Duty 4 just to name a few.

Well, the games you maybe could have mentioned in the same breath are Portal, Half-Life 2, Baldurs Gate 2, one of the total wars or possibly all of them and, er...yeah i'll give you a gta to be generous.

However, none of them are as good as any of the 3 I mentioned, and as my former comment can clarify, you're mental. If you'd actually played the 3, you'd see that only 2 of the games you mentioned are worthy to even be compared. I'm basically saying Jessica Alba is hot and you're saying Maggie Gyllenhall is as hot. She just isnt even close.

I have played(sorry for that. major typo) Half Life 1 and Ocarina of Time. I haven't played Final Fantasy 7 due to the fact that everyone everywhere seemed content to talk about every little point in the story. And since I already knew everything about the game a few weeks after release, I couldn't bring myself to buy it.

Personally I liked Majora's Mask a lot more than Ocarina of Time, and Half Life 1 was amazing, but I didn't play it until a few years ago, when every piece of hype died down.

And playing through Ocarina of Time and Half Life 1 today, its amazing how much things have changed, and how much better things have gotten. They were big and revolutionary for their time, but these days I would say most of the praise is due to nostalgia.

But, thats just my opinion, and it seems you can't be swayed.

 

[Visuality]

That's the entire point of my post, if you play ocarina of time and half-life 1 today they're still the best games out there. I didn't play ff7 until december and it made it straight into my top 5 games of all time, thats how good damn good it is.

If you honestly play STALKER and speak of it in the same way as half-life 1, prefer majora's mask to OoT and put games like fable, crazy taxi and god of war as being as good then I am just going to stop replying right now, because it's pointless.

Like Kross said, the last 10 years have been pretty dry of truely excellent games. There've been some very very good ones, but none that quite get to the level those 3 do. I didn't even mention Deus Ex either.

 

[Russ Pitts]

I found a Fairchild Channel F clip on Youtube for anybody who's interested in seeing what the games were like. I was surprised by the quality of the games considering it was the 1970s.

Wow. I don't remember there being that many colors.

 

[mechanixis]

I think the answer to this question is "When you are dead, no one will think so."

 

[Giest118]

I find it strange that film critics are allowed to call Citizen Kane, an extremely old movie, their favorite, while someone who says Chrono Trigger is their favorite video game is labeled as a nostalgia-filled moron.