tree_ vs. Tragzabinga

tree_
1. Super Mario Brothers 3 (NES)
2. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)
3. Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)
4. Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (Gamecube)
5. Super Smash Bros. Melee (Gamecube)
6. Mortal Kombat 2 (SNES)
7. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Gamecube)
8. Wave Race 64 (N64)
9. Perfect Dark (N64)
10. Metroid Fusion (GBA)

Tragzabinga
1. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)
2. Mario Kart (Wii)
3. Half-Life 2 (PC)
4. Twisted Metal 2 (PS1)
5. NHL 95 (Sega Genesis)
6. The Oregon Trail (graphical version, 1985, Apple II)
7. Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)
8. Missile Command (Arcade)
9. Rocket League (PS4)
10. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father (PC)

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tree_

1. Super Mario Brothers 3 (Nintendo Entertainment System)
What can be said that everybody doesn’t already know about the greatness that is SMB3 (NES)? Nothing. Still holds up today as maybe the best, most enjoyable game of all time. This is the best no. 1 pick and everyone who voted before me was a fool not to choose it.


2. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)
I only played the Switch version. I never owned a Wii U. Because of the rules, the Wii U version it is. This is hands down the best Mario Kart game. If you’ve ever loved Mario Kart, you should love this pick. Another steal.


3. Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)
Everyone thought I was a fool to choose this. Trag is coming around. “Nominating a game that no one has played yet is fairly innovative too.” Huh. Yeah, it was innovative. And smart. This will, according to my calculations, I said, BEFORE the rave reviews poured in, be revered as one of, if not THE best game of all time. Just look up a review and kick yourself for not choosing this game before me. 3rd round steal. Validated.


4. Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (Gamecube)
Star Wars games make for exhilarating experiences, when made well. This, in my humble opinion, is the best Star Wars game of all time. It improved upon everything Rogue Squadron I did well, which makes it better. 4th round steal.


5. Super Smash Bros. Mele (GameCube)
I actually have only played this at friends’ houses. You like Smash Bros. games? Well, according to the general internet consensus, this is the best one.


6. Mortal Kombat 2 (SNES)
The best MK game. Legendary.


7. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GameCube)
I wasn’t the biggest fan of this. It was OK to me, at the time. But, it’s a Zelda game and it was the next best available Zelda game in this draft. Not a bad pick, I’d say.


8. Wave Rave 64 (Nintendo 64)
My most nostalgic pick, a game my friends and I used to play together as kids, making up our own rules to a tag game in multiplayer mode, laughing our little asses off, hard. And, as nostalgic as I am for this, I picked it up recently and it still holds up, unlike Tecmo Bowl. There's something about the movements of the characters that was awkward, yet made perfect sense, and you could master it with enough practice, and it was hilarious. We had more fun with this game than we did with Goldeneye 64 and Perfect Dark, which is saying a lot. It’s saying it’s better.


9. Perfect Dark (N64)
It blew my mind as a kid. It was Goldeneye, but better. The framerate drops were part of the fun.


10. Metroid Fusion (GBA)
I had to pick a portable game and this is the best available one I could think of. I never played it but I watched YouTube documentaries on history of Metroid and in-depth analyses of all the games and this one looks pretty damn cool. Vote for me.


Tragzabinga

1. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)
I wanted a marquee Zelda title on my team, and I wanted a marquee SNES title before they were all taken, so this was a no-brainer. I actually played the entire game sometime around 2005, and was shocked at how completely engrossing it still was. And not in a nostalgic way. It's a phenomenal game that improves on the original Zelda in every possible way.


2. Mario Kart (Wii)
When I was working at a restaurant in MA from 2005-2007, a couple of the guys I worked with lived across the street from the establishment and had this on their home Wii system. We would often go over to their place after a busy Sunday night (closed on Monday), drink fancy French wine, get blazed, and play Mario Kart into the whee hours. What really stuck with me about this game was how easy it was for non-gamers to pick up and enjoy; many of the other people who would join us at these post-shift wind-down sessions were not regular gamers, but the entire vibe felt like such a fun time. It's rare that a competitive game can so effectively be the focal point of a gathering, but this title delivered on multiple occasions.


3. Half-Life 2 (PC)
Totally a strategic pick. I played through most of the original Half-Life, but never finished it; and then I watched a buddy play this one occasionally. It's funny that Sierra, the greatest game developer of my childhood, would become known for their 2D Adventure games (King's Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc), but that they will perhaps be most remembered for this title. It took the adventure/puzzle mechanics of their older games and melded it with a modern first-person mechanic. I can greatly appreciate it despite not really being very familiar with it.


4. Twisted Metal 2 (PS1)
I was waffling on this pick, and ultimately chose to pick a title that consumed many hours of my life. I played this game like a fiend in high school, and it was one of the few games where I was able to dominate against my buddies.


5. NHL 95 (Sega Genesis)
The greatest sports title of all time? I think so. Eminently playable with great AI, slick controls, awesome sprite graphics, easy menus and no load times. Exhibition games were just as fun as season games. My buddy and I spent two months in the mountains of Idaho in 2007, taking care of my cousin's land and otherwise having our own Into the Wild experience: No cable/satellite, no TV reception, no phone service or internet, no radio. We brought a bunch of DVDs, books, and I scored an old Sega system with a ton of games on Ebay. We played this like it was 1995 all over again, with a ferocity and fun, breezy competitiveness that later sports games tended to bury in clunky AI or overly complicated controls.


6. The Oregon Trail (graphical version, 1985, Apple II)
So in 1st-3rd grade, I was the resident computer nerd in my school. I was actually writing MS-DOS code by the age of 10, and when our school got three Apple II computers to be shared, I was often sent to other classrooms to help the teachers get the machines running. Most often it was so that kids could play The Oregon Trail. Much like Mario Kart, I have a soft spot for games that pull in non-gamers. I loved that it was like a history lesson, but that it was also fun. The added bonus of including your friends' names as your traveling companions made for lots of grade-school laughter. Everyone knew this game, and no one was invincible to the harsh realities of the digital frontier experience it offered.


7. Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)
Another strategic pick, on a system I've never even played before. I needed a portable game, and wanted something that looked awesome. This update on the original Metroid (to clarify, it IS a different game, with modified maps and items) looks great on youtube, and I'd fancy a go at a play-through sometime.


8. Missile Command (Arcade)
My dad had an Atari 2600 as a kid. Lots of title I could have chosen from this era -- Pitfall, Asteroids, Arkanoid, Zaxxon, and I almost went with Tempest (arcade). But ultimately Missile Command was the first game that kept pulling me back in, that would excite and enrage me with its simple complexities.


9. Rocket League (PS4)
A simple concept executed perfectly: Indoor soccer with race cars. Some of the best controls I've ever seen in a game, and the expansion are mostly useless (the hockey puck version, the version with all the crazy powerups). But the core game is a thing of beauty, something small, simple, and endlessly exhilarating. Perfect game for when I need to kill five minutes while my wife finishes getting ready to head out.


10. Gabriel Knight, Sins of the Father (PC) (tentative pick, this may change)
The premier Sierra adventure title. I was obsessed with Sierra Online as a kid, played every title I could get my hands on. I even wrote a fan letter to the company, and the CEO wrote me back telling me he hoped I could come work for them some day. But I missed Gabriel Knight during its initial release: It was one of the first titles to require a VGA monitor, and I was stuck with the EGA tech of my Tandy computer. I'd salivate over the box art for this one, imagining that it could somehow improve on the complex and satisfying murder mystery experience of The Colonel's Bequest, a criminally under-appreciated adventure game in its own right. I finally downloaded the game a couple years ago and played it on my Mac, and holy cow -- it still held my attention right up to the very end. Complex puzzles, genuinely spooky atmosphere, even some really good music despite the limitations of its era. The era of PC adventure games don't get enough credit for the impact they had on today's gaming culture: Half-Life, Resident Evil, Red Dead Redemption -- none of that stuff would exist without the PC adventure catalog. Gabriel Knight is an exemplary title from a different era of gaming that required some real intellectual calisthenics (or a "hint book") to complete, and that delivered a narrative story that was deeply satisfying even years later.

as much of a mountain man as tree_ is, his country strong is probably no match at present for the raw survival fury that trag would unleash given his current employment situation

trag wins, with a submission after 3 mins

elbow to the face followed by an attempted face biting before the refs can pull him off

tree_, you savage beast

5-4 to tree_

He drafted an unreleased game. Lol.

it's out you dummy.. and it's a ground breaking game.. already considered by most as maybe the greatest game of all time

SMB3, Wave Race, Rogue Leader, and MELEE (!!!) earn tree my vote.

Outside of a few minutes of Half-Life 2, I’ve never played a single game on trag’s team.

If I weren't such a villain this would be a blowout. My games are better.

Okay... I have personally played only 2 games on trees team. I have played 3 games on trag's team. tree has Super Mario Bros 3, which is arguably one of the absolute best games ever. I struggled with taking that one #1 overall. I gambled and I lost. tree gets major points for not letting it slip by him.

However, Link to the Past, Mario Kart, and The Oregon Trail are better than Mortal Kombat 2. LttP and Oregon Trail are amazing games. Zelda is my personal favorite vg franchise ever. And I'm glad tree has that franchise represented. But trag's Zelda is better than tree's Zelda. Trag also has Metroid represented, which is awesome. Though, I've never played Zero Mission, I like that Metroid is a part of his team.

vote: trag!

guys tree picked a game that wasn't even out yet. also Perfect Dark is a bad game and has no business here. I admit my team leans heavily on older games, but at least their legacies are sound and on the record. Voting for a game that has only been out for 48 hours would be disingenuous.

Trust me, tree's picking that game in the 3rd round, well before the game was out to the masses, absolutely hurts him in my estimation.

It was close, but I voted for tree. I played the shit out of SMB3, Metroid Fusion, Wave Race 64 and all the GC titles he picked.

The Oregon Trail is a nice nostalgia pick, but did anyone ACTUALLY enjoy playing it?

It was the game you HAD to play at the library if you didn't want to read.

tree_
1. Super Mario Brothers 3 (NES)
GOAT. My favorite game of all time. I was going to pick it but I knew tree_ wanted it. Perfect platforming. Powerups are diverse but not OP. Excellent variety between worlds.
2. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)
Best Mario Kart game. So smooth and the online isn't bad either. Will be tough to top with future iterations.
3. Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)
This pick will probably payoff sometime in 2020.
4. Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (Gamecube)
Top 3 SW game. I prefer the original, but this one is great.
5. Super Smash Bros. Melee (Gamecube)
First great Smash game. I prefer Brawl and Wii U, but this one is obviously great.
6. Mortal Kombat 2 (SNES)
Meh.
7. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Gamecube)
One of my favorite Zelda games. The art design is still top notch. Game is too short, clearly rushed to ship.
8. Wave Race 64 (N64)
Fun game, but not deserving of being in this tourney. I also loved to play "tag" with a buddy.
9. Perfect Dark (N64)
Fun game, but does not hold up at all. Does not have the same nostalgic appeal as Goldeneye. Classic case where the developers were ready for the next gen and just tried to put too many ideas into this one.
10. Metroid Fusion (GBA)
Solid Metroid game, but not in the top 3 or 4.

Tragzabinga
1. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)
Never have played it. Plan to very soon.
2. Mario Kart (Wii)
Not as good as Mario Kart 8, but I put in a ton of time into the online mode.
3. Half-Life 2 (PC)
Really great. Gravity gun is a classic and is implemented perfectly.
4. Twisted Metal 2 (PS1)
Never cared much for these games.
5. NHL 95 (Sega Genesis)
I had a buddy in college who played this for hours each week in 2007. That pretty much says it all.
6. The Oregon Trail (graphical version, 1985, Apple II)
Educational, brutal, and a nice distraction from typing, but fun? Debatable.
7. Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)
I liked this better than Fusion. But still not a top 3 Metroid game.
8. Missile Command (Arcade)
Classic.
9. Rocket League (PS4)
My favorite sports game in a long, long time. A steal this late in the draft. Pretty much the definition of easy to pick and play and difficult to master.
10. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father (PC)
Never have played it. Videos look pretty interesting though.

tree_ gets the narrow win. Mario 3 is the tiebreaker and that breaks every tie.

i agree with R2D and MD that Oregon Trail wouldn't be fun now, but it was total blast when i was 7.

Half-Life 2, Twisted Metal 2 and NHL 95 is an outstanding run of picks.

yeah i've been surprised about the lack of love for TM2. Maybe if the series had continued to be great (Black was not great).

If I go by just games I played:



Then trag wins, and it's not just because of volume. SMB3 is an all-timer with extremely high replayability--I think I could sit down with it today and have the same amount of fun I did the first time I played it, and it'd be challenging, too--but my memories of MK2 are "meh." I think the original Mortal Kombat would've been more up my alley because of the "wow" factor when it first came out, the influence it had (in games and just culturally in general), and due to (unknown to anyone else) my interesting personal history with it. I think MK3/UMK3 were better on the same generation fo consoles, too. Mario Kart Wii is one of the only Wii games I played, and I loved it, HL2 wasn't as revelatory as HL but still a deep and solid game, NHL '95 is legendary (I've spoken about it in other threads), and Oregon Trail is a sneaky awesome pick for how it introduced so many of us to the way games can have replayability, stakes, options, and personalization.

Since there are 2 LOZ games on the lists that I've never played, they sort of cancel each other out. On tree's team, it's hard for me to know what separates that Mario Kart game from others I've played, even watching it on YouTube. RDR2 and Rogue Squad 2 are the most intriguing to me, since I played the games that came before. On trag's list, I really want to play Rocket League (have it on PS+), just haven't gotten around to it yet. When I ordered a lot of N64 games off of eBay once, Perfect Dark was included, but I only got through 10 minutes of it before getting extremely bored.

With all of this taken together, I pick trag's team here.a

.a

::sleeper cell activated::