For each system, what was the one game that you just had to have?

PlayStation 2 - WWE SmackDown Just Bring It - I was just thinking about this the other day, but the SmackDown series was a huge selling point of the PS2. With no more AKI games coming through the pipeline, the SmackDown series became the undisupted title of the genre and it seemed like the series had room to improve. All the talk surrounding the game made it sound like it would be an RPG set in the WWF. A season mode where every choice matters and you could participate in some incredibly crazy wrestling angles. It sounded like a dream concept, which unfortunately was the case because I had beaten everything in the game within two days. I was in denial and must have deleted my save at least three times to get some replay out of it, it was such a let down.

And yet it's the game that made me want to get a PS2. I was fortunate my brother received Jak and Daxter otherwise it would have been such a depressing (and hot! was the hottest Christmas on record) Christmas.

What about you guys? Anything out of the ordinary than say Pokemon for the Game Boy?

I must have seen this intro a 100 times in the lead up to buying the system. I didn't expect the game to look THAT good but at the same time I had no idea how much of a downgrade it would be. I was expecting something like HCTP and what I ended up getting was a hi-res KYR. Also after going from 66 wrestlers in the previous game to 44 (including Fred Durst!) was such a disappointment, especially since we were smack dab in the Invasion era. Since the PS2 was brand new, there was this impression that you would be able to fit more stars into the game, so the idea of having a roster of 100 didn't feel out of the question. Of course later on we'd know better, but this was 44 with just 10 CAW slots, not the 50 odd with 30+ CAW slots.

Most systems I just buy cause I like the system but I believe the only time I wanted a system for a game was Super Mario 64. Played it at my cousin house and we played that game all not.

Possibly Heavenly Sword for PS3. I know I definitely wanted that to be my first game on the system. I am amazed they didn't try to turn that into a trilogy.

I remember wanting a PS2 after skipping it initially for Kingdom Hearts and DBZ Budokai. I bought a 360 so I could play Blue Dragon and *cringe* Banjo Kazooi Nuts n Bolts. That game lasted all of an hour before I moved on.

I was a Nintendo guy since I was two years old. But in 2005, a surge during a power outage burned out my Gamecube.

So I went down to EB Games, with plans of buying a replacement. But then I saw a game that wasn't on the Cube, that had my attention. It wasn't a first party exclusive, but it drove me away from the simplistic, fun for all of Nintendo, to the juiced up, more mature and exciting Playstation 2.

That game was Burnout 4: Revenge.

My system sellers are few and unsurprising.

Playstation 2: I vividly recall the demo for Final Fantasy X that came with the PS1 remake of Final Fantasy VI. I've never been more excited for a game in my entire life. My 12 year old self was mesmerise by the graphics, and how beautiful the water looked.

Nintendo 3DS: Having not played Pokemon for years, I developed a surprising temptation to start again with Pokemon X. Thus I purchased my 3DS, and I even documented my Pokemon X adventures on this very forum. Highlight was naming my Axew "Curtis Axew". Or marking out over the ghost sword Pokemon whose name I forget. However, as a whole, Pokemon X was a fairly forgettable experience. To this day Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is the only 3DS game I really like and would play again.

NES- It was inevitable that my brother and I would eventually get an NES. That's what all our friends had. Our beloved Intellivision was already out of style. A lot of NES games had already captured my interest. But The Legend of Zelda accelerated the process. My cousins had it. They sucked at it. But I was already hooked. And one time I stayed with brother and those cousins at some random house while our respective parents were at a wedding. This house had a magazine (special edition of Nintendo Power, perhaps?) dedicated to The Legend of Zelda that made it seem like the greatest thing ever. We got our Nintendo not long after that. Fwiw Mega Man 2 was my brother's "Zelda." The way I remember it we bought both games with holiday money a day after getting the console.

Playstation 2- One or both of the Smackdown games. I had been playing them at various friend's houses for ages. All my cohorts had memory cards and would swap CAWs around. I didn't want to feel left out of the party anymore. The only PS2 games I ever had were Smackdown Shut Your Mouth & Here Comes The Pain, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (which I barely played), and 3 or 4 Madden's. 

PlayStation - For years I was a Nintendo zealot, I considered it blasphemy if anybody preferred the PS1. I presumed sales figures just came down to shrewed business than the quality of games, of course more families own a PS1, it was the cheaper alternative! Now there were some games that caught my eye. Crash Bandicoot was everything I hoped Donkey Kong 64 was. Tekken 2 was my first taste of 3D Fighters and I was instantly intrigued by their roster. And Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII were like television shows put into video game form with some of the coolest environments imagineable. Still, I stood by my N64, I cherished it's library of games and had built up a nice collection over the years. I was going to stick with Nintendo until one day I came across this.



Now I know what you're thinking, what an awful intro! Believe me, when I saw the ads for this show, I thought there was no way I could ever like it. Then one day I found myself bored with nothing else to watch other than this godforsaken Monster Rancher show and I didn't hate it? The show had a surprising amount of emotional depth and I became infatuated by the world, especially since it didn't have the rabid fanbase of Pokemon.

When I caught wind a game was coming out, I just had to have it so in 2001, during the early days of the PS2, I finally broke down and turned to the darkside and got my PS1.

I've talked about the game in the past, but it was similar to Pokemon Go where half the fun was taking real life CDs and finding out which monsters would spawn out of them. I would bring that game around friends places and we'd just raid their parents CD collection to see what we could get, it was usually a fun little game that even piqued the curiosity of said parents.

I think the game had something like 600+ monsters, which I never got close to collecting them all. I may have to remedy that at some point, but yeah, this third rate Pokemon knock off surprised the hell out of me and caused me to join the darkside.

OF COURSE, of all the series to rarely receive a PAL release, Monster Rancher had to be one of them. Monster Rancher 2 was the only game to be released in PAL territories and it was such a bummer. Now the series is nothing more than a relic of the past, it's such a shame it didn't stick around.

I'm incredibly jealous of your copy of Symphony of the Night, Bake. For a game that's revered as a PS1 classic, it was hardly ever mentioned outside of magazines. I don't think it ever received a physical re-release either so for years it was something of a collector's item.

NES: Mario, but ended up with Mario 3 instead by the time my parents finally caved.

SNES: Skipped this platform, but wanted the new Super Mario so bad. Spent countless hours at the Roland house playing on their system.

N64: Mario 64 for the first go-around, then all the THQ/AKI wrestling games collectively for the second go-around many many years later. Mario tennis and Goldeneye/Perfect Dark deserve strong shouts too.

PS1: Tony Hawk. Loved that shit almost as much as wrestling, Goldeneye, and Mario... Or as much as I'd grow to love COD and GTA.

XBox: WWF RAW? It seemed clear the THQ/AKI wrestling game magic was dead along with the N64. I knew I didn't like the high speed SD! games available for PlayStation. So this was my gamble. Epic fail. Game stopped my XBox for a GameCube after like a month or so of pure misery.

GameCube: WrestleMania X8. While miles better than XBox's RAW, nothing recaptured the magic of those THQ/AKI N64 wrestling games.

PS2: Call of Duty as 1a, Grand Theft Auto as 1b

PS3: Call of Duty.

PS4: Originally just the concept that I could connect and play and hang with friends back in Pittsburgh while still living in Boston. Picked up RDR2 and some other games because of all their hype at the time. Ended up playing Destiny 2 because that's what friends were into. Meh for me. Ended up settling on Call of Duty remastered and The Witness for Wife. Those two are the only reasons I really bothered with the RMA late last year.

I don't game anymore, but it was absolutely Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64. That's the first (and last) time I had to have a system so I could play a specific game.

Feb 4, 2020 16:29:50 GMT 🤯 said:

XBox: WWF RAW? It seemed clear the THQ/AKI wrestling game magic was dead along with the N64. I knew I didn't like the high speed SD! games available for PlayStation. So this was my gamble. Epic fail. Game stopped my XBox for a GameCube after like a month or so of pure misery.

The Raw series had a lot of good ideas at the time just poor execution and lack of patches. I believe it was the first time you could interrupt moves, first time you could do custom music without modding, and etc.

Feb 4, 2020 16:51:58 GMT jTjohncenaGOAT said:

PS3: DC Universe Online & Minecraft

Hopefully you played a villain. All the cool kids played villain. But if you had to be a hero it better have been working for Batman.

Feb 5, 2020 1:46:26 GMT jTjohncenaGOAT said:

Feb 5, 2020 0:50:39 GMT X-zero said:

The Raw series had a lot of good ideas at the time just poor execution and lack of patches. I believe it was the first time you could interrupt moves, first time you could do custom music without modding, and etc.

Hopefully you played a villain. All the cool kids played villain. But if you had to be a hero it better have been working for Batman.

I've actually never played as a villain before. I've been mentored by Superman and Batman both.

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