The Typing of the Dead

Words

Source // Wikipedia

I've been looking forward to this one. The House of the Dead 2 was a blast, even though I was playing it awkwardly via Wii emulation, of all things, and The Typing of the Dead takes that game and replaces guns with keyboards and bullets with letters. Deadly, damaging letters.

If you ever want to test your typing speed, there's only one way to do it: with the threat of zombies looming on the horizon.

Team Fortress Classic

"Like Counter Strike, only messy and gruff" - Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Source // Wikipedia

Mods becoming ridiculously popular with players is a great thing, right? Taking a game everyone knows and loves and tweaking it in some way to make it better can lead to all manner of results - some not worthy of knowing about, but others creating entire games of their own.

That alone would be something to be proud about, but to then have a mod remade by Valve Corporation in order to promote their software development kit... you've probably got something rather special in your hands.

Team Fortress Classic is a remake of Team Fortress, a mod for Quake that brought more multiplayer mayhem to the mod-playing masses. What's so good about it then?

Vib Ribbon

"There's no time / Hurry Up / I'll be late so precious day"

Games are about the gameplay, and not the graphics, as excellently demonstrated by rhythm game, Vib-Ribbon, known throughout the video game world for its... graphics, probably, come to think of it.

But it definitely isn't all about the iconic graphic style when it comes to Vib-Ribbon. This quirky little game is so little that it can be fully loaded into the PlayStations' measly amount of RAM, freeing up the CD drive for something far more interesting/personal than the Japanese tracks that ship with the game.

Why on Earth would you want to play your own audio in a rhythm game...

ISS Pro Evolution

"I'm Terry Butcher." - Terry Butcher

The history of a video game series can get messy sometimes. Different names for different regions is one source of confusion, and subtitles launching an off-shoot series is another. ISS Pro Evolution manages to hit that special place of everything at once.

Originally released on the SNES, International Superstar Soccer would get sequel after sequel over the years. Eventually, it spawned a Pro line, at the time running separately to the main ISS line. This Pro version of the title would play more realistically than it's arcadey origins and would be a game for the smarter footballer, you might argue. ISS Pro Evolution is the evolution of that Pro line, and as the name suggests, it would ultimately lead to further separation from ISS series when it becomes the Pro Evolution Soccer series.

But that's in the future and this is in the distant past. Not the first 3D football title to arrive on home consoles, but supposedly one of the best. Indeed, as the intro outright tells us:

Threads of Fate

"Hey! When the time comes, I'll start shaping up."

Once more, the 1001 list presents a complete unknown to me, this time in the form of action RPG Threads of Fate. It's yet another title from Squaresoft, which makes me wonder just what kind of development farm they had back in the day, such was the amount of stuff they seemed to churn out, multiple times a year, year after year.

But this isn't a familiar title. Its original title, Dew Prism, isn't familiar either. What is this about? What adventures are in store? I've absolutely no idea. Let's get going.

Faselei!

ZZZzz...

The 1001 entry for this next title says that it 'is well worth the considerable effort it may take to hunt down a copy', owing to the fact that it was released so close to the end of the Neo Geo Pocket Colors' life that copies didn't even make it to the shelves. Thankfully, enough of them made it out into the wild and into players hands that someone, somewhere, managed to copy a ROM for us peasants to emulate, and what a game it is.

Turn-based Mech combat isn't new. Turn-based Mech combat where everyone programs their turns then fires them off at the same time, hoping not to see an enemy walk out of range of a 'well-planned' series of shots is new. New to my video game experiences at least. Programmable movement and board games I'm familiar with, in Robo Rally and Colt Express, but this isn't a board game. This is perhaps the best Neo Geo Pocket Color game in existence (is my bias showing?). This is Faselei!.

System Shock 2

"You're on board the starship Von Braun and something has gone very, very wrong."

Here and there, I come across a game on this 1001 list that I know is important in some fashion but don't know why. System Shock 2 is the next example of such a game. A first-person sci-fi horror RPG of some sort, we are a soldier aboard a spaceship with a few problems in the crew department - namely that the crew aren't exactly all here anymore...

Let's see how much of this mystery we can uncover.

Space Channel 5

Grooooove-evening, SpaceCats!

A game about presenting the news could perhaps only have come out of Japan. That it uses rhythm-based mechanics as its core gameplay could only have come from a developer so loopy that I can't fathom how it got off the ground in the first place. Clearly, I'm no good at this 'knowing a good game when I see one' thing, but am I good at groovy news reporting in Space Channel 5?

Ulala's got a call about an alien invasion, and the only thing that can save the day is the delusions of a news reporter thinking she can save the day by dancing into the thick of it. Bonus points for originality, I suppose...

The Longest Journey

"is the journey inward, for he who has chosen his destiny has started upon his quest for the source of his being." - Dag Hammarskjöld

Source // LongestJourney.com

The 1001 entry for this game calls it the end of an era; point and click graphic adventure games as a genre have fallen by the wayside, but not before a last great story about the mix of magic and technology in the form of The Longest Journey.

We are 18-year-old Art student April Ryan, and we're the mother of the future. Whatever that means. Must be true. Dragon hologram told us in our dream.

Source // GOG

Let's see what's going on here...

Seaman

"Come on, stay with me here..."

Source // The Wha!?, Emuparadise

It's a fish with a face. A disappointed, unamused human face. It's Seaman, the virtual pet for the Dreamcast so utterly bizarre that it has made its way onto a list of 1001 Must Play games, and I don't think it's for the gameplay.

This one is going to be different.

Shenmue

Did you see a black car?

When it was announced that Shenmue III would become an actual thing, rather than wishful thinking, I was unmoved. When peoples' minds were exploding at the thought of this story finally coming to completion, I wasn't fussed. When I learned of the first two games getting a remastered release, I thought 'ah, that'll be handy: Shenmue and Shenmue II are on the 1001 list.'

I didn't have a Dreamcast twenty years ago. I don't know anybody who did have a Dreamcast. I still don't know anybody who owns a Dreamcast. Anything groundbreaking and monumental to video game history that came out of the Dreamcast is unknown to me unless it would get ported since its release. Shenmue isn't strictly speaking an unknown to me, but what I know about it amounts to pub quiz trivia: It's set in this world, not a weird fantasy one or a distant sci-fi one, and it introduced quick time events as we know them.

Other than that, I know nothing about these titles. I don't know why people are losing their marbles over there being a third game. I should probably find out.