Outcast

By Yod Almighty, what is this?

Is there a more fitting title for Outcast? A game so ahead of its time that you absolutely had to have the latest PC of the era to run it, running code that modern systems would struggle to run for the longest time should players have wanted to go back and find out what they were missing in late 1999.

Ignored by consumers for games that they could actually run, Outcast is one of those titles where I suppose you just had to be there to understand what all the fuss was about.

So here I am, twenty years later, trying anyway.

Mario Golf

Nice On

Golf is, quite possibly, the worst sport in the world. Golf on the Game Boy was alright though when I used it as a break from other, better games that were frustrating me or boring me or whatever. This isn't Golf, but Mario Golf, and it's a sort of sequel full of colour and RPG elements on the Game Boy Color.

Will it drive a bigger wedge between me and golf, or will it help improve my game?

SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash

SHUFFLE PILE

When I first skim read information for this game, I thought it would be one that I'd probably have a hard time finding in order to play in the first place. It's a Neo Geo Pocket Color title, a handheld that I've never seen in my life. In my experiences, you either had a Game Boy Color to play Pokémon or you didn't. There was no Neo Geo round our way.

The Neo Geo Pocket Color itself had such a hard run competing against Nintendo devices that the number of games available for it wouldn't even fill a top 100 list, but, according to this 1001 list, there is a title that simply must be played, and it is SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash.

Take a bunch of SNK characters, a bunch of Capcom characters, make them into a Magic: The Gathering-style card game... oh we're going to be all up and down on this one, I can feel it.

Mr. Driller

The town is being overrun by coloured blocks. Whuah?

So the PlayStation Classic was released in recent memory to critical acclaim, I think it was, and one of the twenty titles was Mr. Driller, a colourful little arcade game from Namco that began life as Dig Dug 3.

"Why?" seems to be one of the more prominent questions people have of the PlayStation Classic as a whole, and now I get to ask why Mr. Driller finds itself on the 1001 list as well. Can drilling blocks really be that much fun? And how is a drill the best tool for the job anyway?

I suppose we'll need to dig into this one a little further.

Homeworld

This is Fleet Command. Reporting Mothership status.

I'm having a hard time writing this opening and I don't know why. On the one hand, I want to get across to you the idea that I like the concept of this real-time space strategy title but am put off by the fiddly micromanagement of units that'll inevitably come with it. On the other hand, I need to tell you that this is a three-dimensional real-time strategy set in bloody space, where, while there is an 'up' and 'down', lest we all get lost in space, every unit on every scale is capable of breaking free of the reference plane to attack units from above, or below; to evade by skirting around, over, under; to weave through pockets of units duking it out across all the axis.

This is Homeworld, and I sadly never knew it existed.

EverQuest

Don't forget: You're here forever.

If you're thinking 'isn't it a little late to be playing a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game first released in 1999?', know that you're correct. It is a little late to be playing EverQuest so long after it's launch, but this game is still up and running and free to play for new players going back through the history of video games to see what the must-play titles are.

Because there is literally no other reason to play it.

Front Mission 3

Mankind never learns.

Ohhhhh boy. It's time. It's time...

When I was but a teen, I had some kind of cheat/walkthrough magazine, and to be honest I don't even remember why I had this particular magazine, but inside were pages dedicated to seemingly endless amounts of spreadsheets, tables for arms, legs, weapons... I knew what none of it meant, but I saw that it was for a game called Front Mission 3, and from then on, I knew that this game was awesome.

I didn't know what it was about, mind. In fact, I was probably only vaguely aware that it was about Mechs, and if you've been following along with the 1001 list you'll know how far I gush over Mechs. As time went by, and I learned more about Front Mission 3, I knew I had to play it - but never did.

It is time to rectify that wrong. It is time to play what could potentially be the greatest game of--I'm getting ahead of myself.

Jet Force Gemini

Astonishingly, this can played to this day.

You wouldn't believe how often I've gotten Jet Force Gemini's title wrong because of a certain other Jet Something Something game from the past. It's safe to say that I'm much more familiar with that than I am with this Rare title for the Nintendo 64, and I've barely skated and spraypainted at the same time in video gaming as a whole, so we're talking next to zero knowledge - just the way I like it.

Jet Force Gemini follows the story of some space police or something as they attempt to thwart the galactic spread of insects. Giant, weapon-wielding insects. Insects as big as bears. Bigger, even. This is serious business.

Final Fantasy VIII

Kept you waiting, huh?

Blimey, it's been a long time since I've been sat down in front of a blank blog canvas like this. Life, as it was always going to, got in the way a little bit, but I now find myself mostly settled and ready to crack on with the rest of the 1001 list, and the return title is quite the entry.

Hot off the heels of the insanely popular Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII stretches out a little (a design choice I would much rather look at than the animated potatoes of FF7), taking us to a world that's a little more familiar to that of our own - save for the introduction seeing students taking a final exam in the middle of an active military conflict, I suppose.

It was one of the first games I watched a Let's Play of, back in the day, and I watched it because I hadn't played it even further back in the day when it came out. Let's see how far I can get, and whether I'll be distracted by mini-games.

FreeSpace 2

Don't touch the controls until you are told to do so.

Is there anything as cool as a dogfight in space? Lasers pew-pewing their way into the infinite void as giant ships float in place in front of giant starlit gas clouds? I'm sure there is, but while FreeSpace 2 is filling up my vision, no there isn't.

Another joystick controlled space combat sim, this one is more chilled than past offerings. There's still plenty of buttons to target various opponents, cycle through weapons, alter your energy balance and what not, but you don't have to worry about that darned Newton fella and his physics. They're present but relaxed. You want to stop in the middle of space? You can stop in the middle of space, no need to calculate a week beforehand.

It sounds great - let's warp in.