What's everyone playing?

I just started a playthrough of the SNES version of Super Mario RPG. I've gotten pretty far but have never actually completed it, so I aim to this time around.

Replaying Super Mario World for SNES with my five-year-old. First time for him, he loves Yoshi. I haven't really played it all the way through in about a decade; my wife and I did it together when we were engaged, was the last time.

It holds up SO WELL!

Sometime's you go back to an old favorite and you can't figure out how you played it for so long back in the day. But Mario World, despite being the first game for it, is still one of, if not THE best SNES game.

Fuck those ghost houses though.
I can't wait to do this with my kid, he's currently 12 months so I've still got a while to go. Super Mario world is a must, and the donkey Kong country games too 😁

With the 25th anniversary update out, I've been loving playing through the original Half Life again.

TFW you're old enough that a game you bought on release becomes "retro"
- "A" game? v.v creaky old person noises
Same, but I have never gotten more than a third of the way through... and I've owned it for 20+ years.
I have the PS2 port which I have never completed. I think it comes with Blue Shift as well, so that will be my next game on the backlog once I finish Zelda II
- I had just started it again on Dreamcast which is a similar port with Blue Shift included, immediately switched to the new anniversary PC update.
  
  I might try Blue Shift on DC just for fun though, the load times are really rough though.
this.
If you missed it, the game was free until the 20th. It's only ¢99 right now.

Built an arcade machine running MAME. We have been playing a lot of Boogie Wings and Windjammers.

Cool build. Thanks for sharing it!
We also had fun playing through Leisure Suit Larry 1 a couple of weeks ago :)

Earthbound - never played this so I’m looking forward to it for my next retro play through after recently finishing a replay of both A Link to the Past and Golden Sun 1 & 2.

Afterward, it’s the Soul Blazer trilogy. I’ve only played Illusion of Gaia, and perhaps an hour of Terranigma. I loved Gaia, and remember really liking the bit I’ve played of Terranigma.

I played it long ago in emulations in the 2000s it had anti piracy thing where it prevents you from progressing. How do I know it’s a patched version?

ooooo if you enjoyed Earthbound, may I recommend Undertale next? Not exactly retro, but similar vibes (and there's some fun fan theories about these two universes)

I didn't realize they are similar, but yeah I'll give Undertale a go!
- eeeeeee if you do, please try not to google anything about it

I haven't started but I really want to play through Golden Sun again.

I did this last year. And finally for the first time started my extended file on Golden Sun TLA.

Golden Sun is top 5 all time game for me.

I just rage quit Abe's Oddysee because despite checking a walkthrough for possible missed Mudokons, I managed to miss 3 by the time I got back to Rupture Farms

Ha, I went thru that too a while ago.
I was intending to play through that soon, I'll have to keep that in mind before I do.
- If you haven't played it before and planning on a 100% run, at least find a walkthrough that tells you how many you need to save per level and then do your best to keep count as you progress.

I recently beat the PC port of Chrono Trigger, which was my first time beating it. It held up better than I expected.

Currently I'm switching off between Megaman Battle Network 2, Half Life, and Lost Odyssey. It's my first time playing Lost Odyssey and I'm a little surprised how much I'm enjoying it. It helps that the localization has been really good so far.

Zelda II, I’ve never beaten before so I’m trying to do it with out looking up a guide or using save states. That last one is really hard

I started a run a while ago and got stuck in Death Mountain. That game is MUCH harder than the first Zelda.
- As a kid I could never figure out how to get the river man to let me cross so I couldn’t even get to death mountain. At least I’ve gotten that far this time!
If my mom could do it, so could you! I believe in you.
That games goes great with a real NES controller, so you can throw it across the room after dying.
I did this - on the Zelda Collectors' Edition on GameCube, so save States weren't available. I did have to use an emulator to practice the final boss without the 10 min runback 🙄 , but after practicing I repeated the feat back on the official hardware.

I did the whole game without any guide. It was SO satisfying. On both the NES games, if you can read the context clues, every required secret is fairly clear. And the game is really fair! It is hard, it's true, but it's very fair! It felt very good to master the combat. This was a great gaming experience.

Later in life I felt that Dark Souls had very similar vibes except in 3D (and except for a bad feeling from having a heavy story that it's hostile to telling you what it is 🙄)

I'm still playing Baulders Gate 3 a bit but I also started South Park the Fractured but Whole and I'm really enjoying the easy game play and basically watching an episode of the show.

Cool! Speaking of South Park I surprised to read recently that Earthbound was an inspiration for Trey Parker when creating South Park. Or, at least, one of the South Park games. I see the connection though, a bunch of cute kids in a quaint little town who wind up dealing with epic monsters, aliens, piles of puke, insane adults, etc :D

About half way through Mother/Earthbound Zero on my NES flashcart. I’ll have to pick Earthbound up after. I got about half way through years ago but never finished it.

Most recently finished Crystalis.

I've started Earthbound maybe three times, and I've enjoyed it each time, but for whatever reason, I'd forget about it for a few years and start it over.

Right now I'm in the final stages of Final Fantasy V (Translated Super Famicom ROM). So far it's one of my favorite old RPGs. The pacing is perfect for me. When I get to a new area, I'm leveled enough to hold my own without grinding, but the bosses usually require a few attempts as I learn their weaknesses and tweak my strategy. The Jobs system is pretty neat because you can mix and match abilities.

I recently got sick and decided to play through ff2 (iv). I've owned it since I was a kid but never beat it.

I finished it in less than 24 real world hours.

I was astonished at the difference being an adult makes with regard to gaming.

The first Sims game! Good times

Ultima Runes of Virtue 1 & 2 for the Game Boy. Great action-adventure-puzzle games. But very unforgiving, every dungeon is filled with fatal errors. I couldn't get to the end when I was young!

I dusted off my childhood n64 and trying to do a 100% speed run of ocarina of time. It's been a while since I've played it, I think the last time I did a playthrough was when it was re-released for the 3ds.

I already had to start my save over after discovering there's a glitch, after you get the saw it is impossible to get one of the stick capacity upgrades.

I've been streaming it locally to some friends on discord, it's been a good time.

I really want to play the port but I do most of my retro gaming on the go using my retroid pocket 3. Instead I've been playing OOT using the redux patch, which does add quite a few QOL improvements, just no camera control unfortunately.
Have you looked into the port? I played it in my Steam Deck earlier this year. It's phenomenal.

Playing at 60fps with right stock camera controls makes it feel like a new game.
- I have seen it, it looks good and I plan on playing it eventually, but there's something about that nostalia of playing with the n64 controller... Plus the lag spikes when there's too many elements on screen, classic.

I am playing the Gameboy 3DS and also the laptop with a duckstation

Permanently Deleted

I’m playing Pokémon unbound

Jumped back into Yoshi's Island recently. So good.

Would X3TC count as retro? It's from like 2005. I tried playing X4 because fans said it was like X3 but better... But it's not. It's so much more convoluted in all the wrong ways. The menus are trash. The RNG sucks. The AI economy is even worse. X3 is still a way better game.

Pokemon Ruby, I'm planning on buying a 3ds to mod but for now I'm just playing on my computer. I missed this generation of games and the speed up option on the emulator makes it better although some of the dialogue gets repetitive.

Hard mods or soft mods?
- I'm not sure the difference, but I'm doing the standard mod to allow emulated games and changing the language because the Japanese ones are so much cheaper

Gun Nac on NES, my favourite ever Shmup. It's fairly forgiving but I still haven't beaten it!

I was playing super star wars. But the lava kept killing me

Yeah, that part is stupidly hard.

I'm playing Zelda Link's Awakening DX. There's a fan made patch that fixes annoying things like those text boxes popping up every time you pick up an acorn, or when you touch a rock without wearing the strength bracelet. And I was able to continue playing the same save file.

I really didn't think the game would be all that good but it's great. The whole island feels very alive and every screen has something special about it. I wouldn't mind the next generation of Zelda being a little bit like this.

On the remote chance you don't already know - definitely check out Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages. They have the same engine but have much cleverer gameplay and dungeons and much deeper stories.

Deus Ex and System Shock.

Finished playing Summon Night Swordcraft Story GBA, playing Ghost Trick Phantom Detective NDS, and started yet again Final Fantasy IV this time on the GBA, all emulated in my Android phone thanks to Lemuroid.

Also started playing Resident Evil 3 PSX on my Android tablet (also Lemuroid).

I've been playing through a few castlevania games. I've currently completed super castlevania, rondo of blood and am almost finished with SOTN. All amazing games. Rondo's soundtrack is so good!

Are there any others I should try? I was thinking of trying to play through the NES trilogy but not sure.

The Gameboy Advance ones are fun. Especially Aria of Sorrow, which got a sequel on Nintendo DS called Dawn of Sorrow. Dawn of Sorrow is one of my favorite games of any series!

Those two games are unique in that the main character, Soma Cruz, can absorb souls from enemies and use them as magic spells. Mostly for attacking, but also for defense or utility. It adds so much variety. Some souls are like progression items and you're guaranteed to get them at the right time, but most are random drops. Getting more of the same soul (up to 9 of them) makes the effect more powerful, so it leads to farming the same monsters over and over if you like a certain spell and want to level it up.

This mechanic is so fun that when Castlevania creator Koji Igarashi left Konami, he produced Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (not retro) with the exact same mechanic. His own favorite games in the series are SotN, and Aria of Sorrow. Once you're done having fun with retro Castlevania games, you must try Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night! It's so good!

Bloodstained: RotN even has a built-in randomizer. I'm not sure if you're familiar with "rando" games, but lots of old-school games have rando versions: Zelda games, Final Fantasy games, SotN, etc. They use logic to randomize the order you get key items, but still allows the game to be completed. In games like SotN, they even randomize which items each enemy drops, so you might get something really powerful from an early enemy.

There are Twitch channels where competitors race against each other in real-time using copies of the ROM created with the same randomizer seed, so they're all playing the same exact game, but no one knows where anything is. It's fun and amazing to watch very skilled players play these games where no one knows exactly how to finish it, but they are speed-running it.

SotN is my all-time favorite game, and I've played it as rando many times, and the built-in randomizer in RotN is also tons of fun.

The other Nintendo DS games are also great: Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia. All three DS games have such beautiful pixel art.
- Nice thanks I've just completed sotn so will move onto the gba games!
  
  Yeah I'm somewhat familiar with randomizers. However I've only attempted an OOT randomizer myself. Definitely tests your knowledge of the game and keeps it fresh after multiple play throughs. I can see how it'd be fun for a metroidvania style game so might give it a try once I've experienced more of the series.

I started Phantasy Star on my Odroid GO Ultra. Was looking for the game on my Master System but the pricing is a little over the top. Purely priced for "collectors" and not gamers.

Played through the entirety of FFT:WotL via PPSSPP on my tablet. Great game, first full playthrough since the 90s.

In my Steam backlog:

KOTOR II
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire
Deus Ex
System Shock 2
Devil May Cry Collection
Styx series
Resident Evil 1-4
Okami
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy
Star Wars Pod Racer (just for kicks)

None of them are super retro, but you can definitely tell when I was a kid. These are either games I enjoyed or games I wanted as a kid but never got.

Also need to play through a few Gamecube games for the same reason. Viewtiful Joe is first on the list

Re-playing Shadows of the Empire on 64 right now. Always loved it as a kid, reading reviews as an adult and I'm shocked to find out it was never highly regarded outside of the opening Hoth level. It felt like a real gamer's game, hardcore difficulty growing up. The ship levels were so good.

Resident Evil on DC Parasite Eve on PSX

^^^

Picked up a Wii recently for Gamecube and Wii games I missed out on, just started Paper Mario TTYD.

I was playing Donkey Kong for Gameboy, but save got corrupted when I was near the final level. Then I was playing Pokemon Pinball for Gameboy Color, and Pokemon: Fire Red and Warioware Inc. for Gameboy Advance.

World of Warcraft: Retail.

Obviously Baldur's Gate. Just started up a new franchise in Planet Zoo last night. Installed Warhammer 40K Space Marine for nostalgia reasons last week, hoping to spin that up in a week or two. BloonsTD6 and Brotato are my "I've got 10 minutes" games. Might fire up another colony in Oxygen Not Included tomorrow. I've also got Satisfactory penciled in for December for Ficsmas. All in a futile effort to not give Valve more money just yet.

Fallout 3 on my Xbox 360 and having a blast with it.