Plok was a bastard. In its defence:

Hi guys, i'm new here.

My friend tigerswiftly mentioned to me about this forum. I happen to have Plok!, Donkey Kong Country 2 and Yoshi's Island as probably my three favourite games of all time.

I'm a big fan of 2D games in general, especially the whole WarioWare series. To me, that's what gaming is all about. Not all this 3D bullshit. The 'worlds hardest game' (the online flash one) is just a whole load of squares, and is mega fun.

So yeah, plok is just simply amazing. To diss Plok is almost, to me, as uninformed as dissing Tetris. Apparently Bubsy the bobcat (who I saw mentioned earlier in a post) overshadowed Plok, and that's why Plok became a sleeper hit. Bubsy is so inferior.

For me, what makes Plok! so great is the music (which is listenable even without the game, and soulful) and the control system. The parts where you lose all your limbs and have to slide down everything are just genius.

I have never actually completed Plok!, and actually, part of me never wants to.

Thanks!

By the way, plants vs zombies is another one of my favourite games. They have made it free for halloween.

http://www.stopzombiemouth.com/

Moot_Geeza wrote:

I'm glad it wasn't me who mentioned Bubsy then; I have now played both, as a retro gamer, and can concur that Plok is most definitely superior (although surprisingly Bubsy wasn't entirely unplayable, I have to say).  Plok seems to be one of those games that I'd be more fond of had I played it in '94, but as a first time experience in 2012 (to a fellow 2D enthusiast), I thought it edged towards the unreasonable side of hard, and I found the detachable limb attack a bit cumbersome.  Don't hate me, I'd still rather be frustrated with Plok than play Unreal Powered Testicles on Sleeveathon: Mumcuss Edition.       Welcome to the forum, feel free to recommend us (mainly me admittedly) some 2D classics/underrated gems to play in the coming weeks.  The current schedule is in the original post.

Thanks

I like the difficulty of plok. I think it helps to counteract the friendly colours. When you get to the bobbin bros. for the first time, it's like "woah, this isn't so cutesy after all". I'm not going to battle anyone about their views about 'Plok!', after all, it's just what I believe.

For me, my top 10 games of all time (If I was to recommend some to people) are:

1. Donkey kong country 2 (DKC 1 is unplayable once you play this one, 3 is unbearably hard and charmless)
2. Yoshi's Island (I don't know what people see in SMW1, *compared to this* seriously)
3. Plok! 
4. Theme hospital (A more polished sequel not coming out is a crime)
5. Wario Ware: Minigame mania
6. Advance Wars 1 (Such a good storyline and feeling)
7. Okami (Possibly the first game to make me laugh?!)
8. Day of the tentacle (Me and my sisters completed this together back in the 56k days. Everything is just so twisted and lovely)
9. Tetris DX (I like the multi user design, but not the cheat where the pieces go back to the top )
10. Phoenix Wright: Ace attorney (The way the music changes makes me jump every time)
EDIT: Oh my god, I missed out Resident Evil 4!

I know this isn't a 1 to 10 posting thingy, but hey. That's pretty much all I have to say about gaming anyway.

SMW was a different game. Can't compare the two really. They are both amazing.

Not sure what you see in DKC games, they were a bit shit. At least the first one was anyway, didn't bother with the other 2 as a result.

eze_robinson wrote:

I know this isn't a 1 to 10 posting thingy, but hey. That's pretty much all I have to say about gaming anyway.

Don't worry, most people on games forums love lists (the process is usually as follows: someone posts a thread requesting lists, a few people moan about another thread requesting lists, then the replies start flooding in anyway).  Some great games there - WarioWare and Yoshi's Island are within a hair's breadth of my top ten.  Here's what most of us thought at the time of writing, if you fancy a look.  The first half is kindly summed up by adkm if you skip to page 10.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

I've called it 'Choose Your Illusion' to annoy Retroking after he spent ages making that image.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

The Master System version of Castle of Illusion is one of THE great 8-bit platformers for me.  I'm pretty sure Escape agrees, iirc.  Once upon a mouse...

I played the Master System Castle over the weekend. Took a couple of hours with state saves which is the only way I play these things now. Not taking the piss with them or anything but I definitely try and take the tedium out of difficulty spikes. 

These games have got some special memories for me. The Lucky Dime Caper and Castle of Illusion were some of the first computer games I ever played. Quackshot was one of the first MD titles I played. Castle of Illusion holds up really well. Cutesy cartoon graphics tend to stand up the best over time. The bum bouncing mechanic is enjoyable enough when you get to chain them up or turn it into a hillslide. Very megaman-esque level design. The soundtrack is wonderful. The bosses range from hard to piss easy and that doesn't match with what stage you are in the game but that's a small gripe. Another gripe is the physics of Mizrabel's bouncy balls things in the final battle (they pass right through the top set of platforms. Why?)

In terms of the greats of the era, its up there.

Completed Castle (MD) will post my thoughts at the weekend. Gonna do my best to play Castle (MS) and one other.

Mickey's Magical Quest is another one of this type I've spent some time on recently - it was a very early SNES release by Capcom and is rather good. It's typical early 90's fare and variation comes from the various costumes that Mickey can don that have their own moves etc.

There's a grab and spin move that throws enemies away but in some cases makes them helicopter up the level - so you can grab them to access hidden sections. All of these platformers, including the excellent Castle of Illusion on the Megadrive, suffer in comparison with Super Mario World though. I'm still rather fond of Quackshot though - I think something more could have been made of the plunger mechanic.

If you are looking for a decent post-Mario platformer then I'd recommend Rainbow Bell Adventures or Buster Busts Loose on SNES - maybe for a future week (probably need to give platformers a rest for a while though)?

If you want a shooter I'd still recommend Gynoug/Wings of Wor. Played it again recently and it's still very enjoyable. Might be a good change of pace.

davyK wrote:

For a shooter SNES-wise you are limited - but I can vouch for Super Aleste aka Space Megaforce, RType III and Pop n Twinbee. Never played Axelay.

Megadrive-wise I'd vote for Sub-Terrania - a quite lovely thrust-em-up.

Super Aleste is a great game.

For the megadrive Musha Aleste is great.

New schedule:

Week eight (29/10): *Choose Your Illusion* (take your pick from Sega's excellent Illusion series)
Week nine (05/11): Snake, Rattle 'N Roll (NES)
Week ten (12/11): Flashback (Amiga, Megadrive, SNES)
Week eleven (19/11): Gynoug (Megadrive)
Week twelve (26/11): Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose (SNES)
Week thirteen (03/12): Super Aleste (SNES)
Week fourteen (10/12): Back to the Future III (Megadrive)
Week fifteen (17/12): Sub-Terrania (Megadrive)

Re-jigged so it's less platformy.  I'd bumped BttFIII back a bit because it's bound to be on telly at Christmas.  Sub-Terrania is one of my favourite MD games.  I tried to complete it again last month and failed near the end, will happily give it another go.

davyK wrote:

For a shooter SNES-wise you are limited - but I can vouch for Super Aleste aka Space Megaforce, RType III and Pop n Twinbee. Never played Axelay.

Axelay was pretty amazing at the time, and not too tough. R-Type 3 gets very harsh after a few levels. There's always the Parodius games of course - surely we have to do one of those at some point.

Completed World of Illusion in co-op with Retroking last week.  It's one of the best simultaneous two player platformers I can think of from the era.  Too easy, too short, and inconsistently balanced at times (plus the bosses are pretty much all weak sauce), but so pretty, so polished and so playable.  The team-up moves are quite central to the proceedings and don't feel like an afterthought, which is rare.  I prefer jumping on heads, as seen in the previous Illusion games, to the magical cape attack, but (thankfully) not all platformers play the same, and apart from the bizarre annoyance of being able to hit your partner I grew to like it quite quickly.  The pastel graphics are gorgeous, the tunes are decent and there's enough variety to spice up the left-to-right jumping (magic carpet rides, underwater sections, minecart levels). 

I remember it being quite dull in one player, but it comes alive in co-op and I'd happily play it again at some point.  Once again, it's woefully lacking in longevity and replayability, but while it lasts it's a rare two player platform treat.  Not a game you'd be happy spending £44.99 on though.  81%.