Shining Force III

Rain Thunder!

Source // Emuparadise / Baffou

The Sega Saturn has a kinda-3D turn-based tactics fantasy RPG, along the lines of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, so large in scale that it was split into three parts, only one of which made it outside of Japan and onto the 1001 list.

Its name is Shining Force III, and specifically Scenario 1, aka 'God Warrior of the Kingdom'.

I have a good history with the Saturn, aka 'not a chance in hell of being able to play this game'.

Total Annihilation

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only wa- wait, no, that one's taken, isn't it?

The real-time strategy genre - if this 1001 list has taught us anything - is dominated by Command & Conquer and Warcraft. You'll sway one way or the other, but those are your top dogs if you're a fan of managing more units than you knew you had built.

Even back when Total Annihilation was released, it was overlooked by more well-known series', yet it offers a surprising amount to the genre, including more units on screen than you ever thought possible, and those units being wee little 3D models, rather than sprites, and that's just the tip of this monumental iceberg.

Interstate '76

Funky Single-Player Unmitigated Vengeance Quest

Some games live long in the memory, and some stay a while on the shelves. Some appear out of nowhere, flying under the radar, and then disappear before you know what happened. I think that's how Interstate '76 can be described because I had never heard of it in my life until this 1001 list brought it up.

Now, no gamer is expected to know of every game there is, of course, but we ought to know some of the more unusual or unexpected titles if only to broaden our knowledge. This time, I'm catching up on my awareness of vehicular combat simulators set in the 1970s of an alternate American history - a genre that began and most likely ended with Interstate '76.

Let's get our groove on and see what this is about.

Quake II

Commence 'Operation Alien Overlord'...

It's not only fair but accurate to say that I know of the Quake brand far more than any individual piece of media that belongs to it. My knowledge of Quake II before playing it was tremendously limited and consisted mostly of the knowledge that it came after Quake.

But it's not a sequel, so beyond a first-person shooter, I don't really know what to expect. Slick gunplay in an otherworldly setting, with mouselook, I suppose. That's as good a starting guess as any.

Time to see what I've been missing for twenty years.

Ultima Online

A Muhmorpuhger, you say?

Ever since playing Dungeons & Dragons with a group of school friends a long time ago, I've enjoyed role-playing games. They come in many, many forms, of course, and there are highlights of this gargantuan genre in both physical and digital media. But of all the many ways you can play roles in games, I've never gotten into the MMORPG.

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. It's a mouthful, and it was a term used to describe Ultima Online, the next step for the already pretty damn big Ultima series.

Now, I didn't have the best of times with the previous Ultima entries on this 1001 list, and I'm not expecting anything different here, but I have to say up front that it must be doing something right to still have players twenty years after its initial release, and credit to whoever deserves credit here, but you can play a trial version with your choice of client, including the original.

All I need now is dial-up internet.

Grand Theft Auto

WASTED!

A long time ago, there was a demo disc for the PlayStation that contained a top-down crime 'em up infamously known as Grand Theft Auto. I played that demo disc an awful lot - until it broke, in fact. No idea how, but it did. It didn't break while I was playing GTA, but GTA was the most played demo on that disc because GTA was so different from everything else out there.

You're dropped into the criminal underworld of a stylized America, performing missions picked up from payphones and pagers for various mob bosses across three cities based on New York, Miami and San Francisco.

Let's find out what frenzies we can whip up in Liberty City.

The Last Express

Anyone want my ticket to ride?

The 1001 list write up for this rotoscoped point and click adventure suggests that The Last Express could be the greatest game never played.

A tale of murder on the Orient Express, characters who go about their daily routines in the background, multiple options and endings to make this express your express. Is it the first express of many?

Tekken 3

YOU WIN!

Some time ago, I wrote about playing Tekken for the first time, twenty years later, having only started the series with Tekken 2 in my childhood. I liked that I could, more or less, slot right back into the way I played, and while there were some differences and some difficulty spikes, it was Tekken through at through. No matter what it looked like, no matter how lacking I was in the skills department, playing Tekken was fun.

So imagine my merriment when Tekken 3 shows up in the 1001 list...

I've still got my copy of Tekken 3 because it's just that good, but I haven't played it for so long now that I'm almost ashamed. I say almost only because being ashamed to have not played something in a while is silly. We not-play things all the time, it's called Life, it happens. But here, now, Tekken 3 happens, and it happens with muh boy Lei Wulong.

Snake

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Versions of this mobile phone phenomenon have been around since the mid-1970s, but the 1001 list has singled out the Nokia port/remake/version of Snake as the absolute pinnacle of the hundreds upon hundreds of versions, and it's hard to argue with that decision - after all, I just referred to it as 'this mobile phone phenomenon'...

You'll need to use your imagination for this one.

X-COM: Apocalypse

Live Alien spotted.

They came from space, they came from the sea, and now they're coming through teleporters hovering above our megacities, infiltrating corporations to take over what's left of the world from the inside out.

That's the backstory to X-COM: Apocalypse in a nutshell, and it's more than I knew before going in. I know of X-COM, of course, but didn't know that it would go on to become what Apocalypse is, and what Apocalypse is is more of the same, sure, but also a whole lot more.