Sword Master (NES, 1990)

This is a cool little NES game that nobody seems to remember. It's a bit of a Zelda II clone, a side-scroller where you go through seven levels and slash your way through various monsters. Each fight is treated like a miniboss / duel, and your character gets a variety of different sword attacks they can employ. So it's a little different from your average game, and deserves mention.

 

Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall #5 - World's End

GAZPACHO~! returns with what may be the unceremonious final post in this series, unless I fix the latest game-ending bug from this pain-in-the-ass game. In other news, that is one NICE stormy sky right there.

Originally Posted: July 2014, now remastered for 2025

Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall #4 - Dreamweaver

 Featuring boobies. Yum.

Originally Posted: July 2014, now remastered for 2025

Ranking all of Samus' Suits

Some of Samus' suits are remarkably well-designed and fun to look at, with colors and aesthetics that drip off the screen. Just absolutely sumptuous design on some of these, and it's probably a part of why the series has been successful over the years.

The ranking will be based mostly on the look and art design of each suit, with maybe 20% consideration given to their ingame abilities. It isn't about which is more powerful than which (something largely impossible to determine from game to game, given the mostly-shared ability pool). It's more about which ones are the most appealing to look at in action.

Now with Metroid Prime 4 added

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#509 - 519)

 #509 Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo 64) – Summer 2014

Today the list becomes MARIO MANIA. At this point in 2014 I decided it was time to finally play the Mario Kart series, having not beaten anything besides the SNES original back in 1996. Heck I didn't even play some of them at all. This was a pretty exciting endeavor...once I managed to actually get all of them up and running, which took a lot of work.

The Best And Worst Thing In Each Metroid Game

The Best and Worst of a series is a concept that I'm interested in doing a bit more with. I already did a Best and Worst for both the Mario series and the Soulsborne series; in the future I'll probably do several more of these. Each of the other game series' I'd like to do is missing a game or two that I need to play before I can comprehensively finish their lists, though. Now that Metroid's got its latest game I can finish this list.

Doing something a little different here and having a post with zero further images in it. More of an article. Like a regular website, only without the 14 ads obscuring the actual content, or flat text that could have been written by an AI. I've played and finished every game in this series / on this list, some many times over. Narrowing down the best and worst thing about each one was a lot more difficult than one would expect. Let's go.

Metroid Prime (GameCube, 2002)

With Metroid Prime 4 finally about to drop, it seemed like a good time to revisit and fix up the one post I did for a Prime series game. While sometimes I prefer their darker follow-ups, Prime 2 and Fusion, I feel like Prime is nearly tied with Super Metroid for the title of "best game in the series". That's some tall praise right there. Super Metroid is probably easier to revisit and has a nice quick flow to it, so I'd probably put it just above this one.

Fun Fact: The reason Metroid Prime 4 has taken so long is because it took a while to secure the rights to the Seinfeld riff every time Myles makes a joke.

Originally posted April 2013, now redone for 2025 with some new HD shots added. There'll be a mix of those and 2013 camera shots here.

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#501 - 508)

 

#501 Elder Scrolls: Arena (PC) – Spring 2014

The first and maybe most ambitious game in this series. It started life as an arena combat game (hence the name) and somewhere along the line the developers decided to create an entire world. As such, Elder Scrolls pioneered the "massive open world" RPG design that later became all the rage with things like Fallout 3 and Witcher 3. It's basically a single-player game disguised as a giant MMO, so it's no wonder they eventually made an actual MMO out of this world.

Editor's Note: I finally brought this list back from the dead. The first 500 did really poor views compared to most other posts so it petered out. Time to continue it. Since I'm over 1000 now, maybe I should rename it "The First 1000 Games I Beat". Low views or not, these are interesting retrospectives for me to write and bring me back a bit. The nostalgia was much higher with the early entries, though, which is another reason I fell off from doing these.

Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall #3 - The Greatest Elder Scrolls Post

After spinning my wheels for about an hour trying to figure out how to level up, and unable to find any enemies to fight, I eventually went full Renegade. Next thing we know, Gazpacho the WILD MAN went on a rampage in a town, killing everyone in his path before being apprehended by guards.

Will Gazpacho do time in D-Block, being passed around by Julio "Sugar Bear" Martinez? NO! I THOUGHT I WAS PAST THOSE DAYS!

Originally Posted: July 2014, now remastered for 2025

Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall #2 - The Keep on the Borderlands

 

Chapter II of many. If they stay on their current trajectory, we'll get Elder Scrolls IX in  2032.

(Future Editor's Note: lololololol)

Originally Posted: July 2014, now remastered for 2025

Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (PC, 1996)

IT BEGINS. The second game in the series, which might well be the largest videogame ever made in landmass, scope, and amount of content. No joke. Hard to believe they released this two years after Arena, given the five+ year development time on every game since. Join me as I do tons of character creation, and a minor amount of actual playing!

Originally Posted: July 2014, now remastered for 2025

Elder Scrolls: Arena #7 - Finale

Time to finish this game up and move on to greener pastures, as I go to the Imperial Palace and fight Jagar Tharn.

Originally Posted June 2014, now remastered for 2025

Elder Scrolls: Arena #6 - Between Doors

I wouldn't say you're too fake if the first thing you do is be brutally honest while introducing yourself. Isn't that the opposite of fake? Unless she's faking being fake, thereby causing her fakeness to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now I'm just confused. It's like John Connor sending his dad back in time to father himself.

Originally Posted June 2014, now remastered for 2025

Elder Scrolls: Arena #5 - Battle of Evermore

In the latest episode, I pass the halfway point of the game and go after artifacts.

Not sure why it has me confused with a Red Guard. Sting doesn't break bread with Bolsheviks.

Originally Posted June 2014, now remastered for 2025

Elder Scrolls: Arena #4 - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

Bellydancers strut their stuff as the heroic Bob Marley Sting looks for the next piece of the Staff of Chaos. Which would be nothing more than a lit blunt if Bob Marley had created it. In this episode I get the second and third of the eight fragments as the battle for Tamriel dungeon-crawls onward. Stir it up.

Originally Posted June 2014, now remastered for 2025

Elder Scrolls: Arena #3 - Indulging and Drowning Valley

The Queen of Rihad is smokin'. She could tell me where Fang Lair is, but first I have to do something for her. Unfortunately, it isn't sexual favors; it's another dungeon called Stonekeep. Turns out that each of the main story dungeons has another dungeon you have to do to unlock it. Generally the key dungeons are much easier than the main dungeons, with a couple of exceptions. So each dungeon has its own Nappa dungeon, more or less.

Originally Posted May 2014, now remastered for 2025

Elder Scrolls: Arena #2 - Morning Glory Milking Farm

 

With character creation and the intro dungeon over with, I can set out in the actual world. It's one of the best game worlds of all time, and was especially unparalleled circa 1993. How much will this game actually be able to flesh out Tamriel, given the limitations of the time? I'm going to find out.

Originally Posted May 2014, now remastered for 2025

Elder Scrolls: Arena (PC, 1994)

I begin my long-awaited (by me) excursion into the highly-acclaimed Elder Scrolls saga. The saga begins with a bang... a 1994 MS-DOS poorly-lit, poorly-rendered bang. That said, this game is pretty sweet.

(Editor's Note: With Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered just recently dropping, it was time to get back into this series after a decade-long absence. I probably should have reposted these 4 months ago when Oblivion was hot off the presses and on everyone's lips. Better late than never)

Originally Posted May 2014, now remastered for 2025

Dragon Quest 1 Explorer's Handbook + Nintendo Power Strategy Guide Supplementary Scans

 

Today I've got a few dozen scans from the Dragon Warrior Explorer's Handbook (a fairly thick guide that came with the NES game) and the Nintendo Power Strategy Guide (a prettier but less in-depth guide that was included with an issue of Nintendo Power).

Look at how good people had it back then. Maps, spell lists, guides, all packed-in with the game. All of these things significantly enhanced something like DQ1 and turned it from a basic RPG to a whole world to explore that you'd be thinking about all day at school, waiting to get back to it.

Nowadays we're lucky if we get a slip of paper inside of a game. If people grouse about how good the entertainment industry used to be compared to now, they aren't just old grousers. They're right.

Dragon Quest 1 HD-2D, Part 5 - Finale

 

Gotta say, this remake is nice. It's a little too padded-out, needs too much grinding, should have kept the fights at one on one, and loses some of the "can theoretically go anywhere at any point in the game's progression if your character can handle it" vibe that the bite-sized other versions of this game delivered so well. However, if you want it to be a more substantial game in the style of last year's DQIII remake, then they landed that. It's high-effort, and I especially like the occasional artwork.