Quest 64 has become kind of an ironic internet meme but here’s the thing, I remember getting that game when it came out and actually enjoying it a lot at the time. I don’t even complete that many RPGs but that’s one of them. This led me to start thinking about other weird things I thought about video games as a kid. Obviously most of these will be goofy since I was a child but I do remember thinking that it was a mistake for everything to keep moving away from 2D to 3D graphics and dangit, I was right. Unfortunately I had a N64 and not a Playstation at the time, or else I could have kept rolling with 2D games for quite a bit. Anyway, here’s some random thoughts that no one was asking for:
- There’s a few games like Quest 64 and Gubble (I’m guilty of pushing this one) that have become a joke on the internet but I actually played both when they came out and had fun. Not even fun in the sense of not knowing that a game could be bad but it’s what you were stuck with so you may as well make the most of it, I just liked them.
- For some reason I was very jealous that TurboGrafx owners had Bonk’s Adventure despite having access to plenty of great games on pc and Nintendo consoles.
- Was also jealous that Philips CD-i owners got those Zelda games, even after I played two of them at CompUSA.
- Was very impressed with how Bug! looked on the Sega Saturn. That was the game I was focused on for that platform and was sad my computer wasn’t powerful enough to run the demo on the pc.
- Mortal Kombat was too violent for me but Doom was perfectly fine.
- Couldn’t get enough of pre-rendered graphics in games. Thought Donkey Kong Country was the best looking thing ever and thought this box art for Kyrandia 3 was Very Good, Actually.
- Games with lots of cds filled with fmv were better than games with less cds. In fact, graphics were never going to get better than fmv so why bother with other stuff.
I played the CD-ROM version of Bug! endlessly as a kid, some years after it came out. Found it maddening but I love it dearly regardless.
I think there’s plenty of “modest” games from that era that hold up perfectly fine when you’re willing to meet them on their terms!
I’ll have to give it a try. Even if it’s not great I’ll probably get some enjoyment from how much I thought it was the “future of games” back then
I’ve been an opponent of the “terrible games” thing for a long time now, especially with older stuff where you’re often coming in pretty blind to a game that expected you to read the instruction manual. It feels a lot like “ironically” listening to bad music or watching bad movies – if you’re enjoying yourself they did something right.
For my own takes, I had Hard Drivin’ on the Megadrive and my child self was convinced it was some kind of masterpiece that I just wasn’t skilled enough to unlock.
100%
Although that does remind me of Hard Drivin for the SNES which I do think is terrible, because it ran at such an incredibly poor frame rate. But even that was a memorable experience because I had bought a used copy of it, spent weeks trying to get it to work, and was rewarded with that. I found the whole experience to be very funny
Tbf, Doom didn’t have as much graphic violence against humans as Mortal Kombat did. I liked Quest 64, too, but was never able to beat the first boss even when I tried it again last year or so. I always liked what I liked regardless of how bad everyone else thought it was. I for one have absolutely no objection to more “thoughts no one asks for” 😉
I have my own “game that gets made fun of online but I thought was great” in Yoshi’s Story on the N64. My family cooperated to 100% that game, secret Yoshis, all melons on every level, the whole thing. We had a blast.
I also unironically love Donkey Kong 64, the game that killed the 3d platformer collectionfest genre.
oh yeah, I remember really liking Yoshi’s Story and DK64 at the time too.