nick_md wrote:

Thread is a weiner for me too.

Andy wrote:

The Case for Switch

I’ve had a patchy history with Nintendo. I never owned one growing up. My Game Boy was bought very late in the game. I’ve owned all the handhelds since, but they didn’t rock my world. I bought an N64 and remembered every time I switched it on what a turd it was. I owned two Wiis during its lifespan but, again, it never gelled. Perhaps I was railing against the notion that it was a revolutionary controller (it wasn’t) but nothing I played really grabbed me. The WiiU was a joke as far as I was concerned. Just more Fisher Price nonsense from Nintendo. So, when I heard they were abandoning it and releasing another console, it was a Partridge shrug from me.

Then I saw some pre-release footage of Breath of the Wild, and my mindset changed. I had never been interested in Zelda games, but this looked interesting, looked fun. Then there was the launch announcement video for the Switch, and it looked incredible, roof-top parties aside. In a very short amount of time I went from, “I will maybe pick up a cheap Switch late in its lifecycle to play that Zelda game,” to, “I’m buying a Switch on day one, with that game, so help me.”

I probably couldn’t afford it when I bought it (anyone reading and retaining my lengthy posts in this thread will notice a running theme) but I had absolutely zero buyer’s remorse at any time afterwards. It came out a week after Horizon Zero Dawn launched on PS4, and BotW utterly vaporised my relationship with that game.

I know a lot of the indie stuff is available elsewhere, but the portability plus screen size makes it a great successor to the Vita as the place to play them, as far as I’m concerned. Stardew Valley is one of the games I’ve played the most, but I couldn’t have seen me getting so into it on other platforms; the intimacy and immediacy of the Switch sells it to me.

And, as for Nintendo’s first party stuff, it has come at a great time for me; as I get older, my enjoyment of the sort of thing they produce has greatly increased. Unfortunately I’ve never gelled with Splatoon 2, but the entire weekends I’ve lots to ARMS Party Crashes has more than made up for it.

I’ve heard complaints about the hardware, but I think the Switch is great. The shift from resistive to capacitive touchscreen makes a massive difference, imho, to the quality of the machine. The JoyCon have some nifty refinements of existing tech; HD rumble is incredible when it’s used well (hello to the balls in a box game of 1 2 Switch, and Golf Story) and the Pro pad is excellent.

On Friday I’ll start playing my second Zelda game, in the reworking of Link’s Awakening, and I cant wait to see BotW2.

I swear, I’ll never have a big enough SD card in my Switch. I love it so much.



The Case for PlayStation

Growing up, we had home computers. The ZX Spectrum was first. At out old house, it would only come out occasionally, and our parents gave us a choice: if the computer is set up, you don’t get to watch any TV. So, it was Chequered Flag or The A Team / CHiPs / Street Hawk / whatever. In 1986, when I was 7, we moved to a bigger house, and it got permanently set up in my brother’s room. The binary choice of TV or computer was replaced with strict time limits. Some time around 1988 or so, we replaced the Spectrum with an Atari ST.

I remember asking for a Game Gear one Christmas, and an Atari Lynx another Christmas. My mum always said we’d have to ask my dad, and my dad torpedoed it every time. There would be no games consoles in his house. It didn’t seem to matter to him that I rarely used the art or music packages and mostly played games, it was important to him that the option was there. (I got a Yamaha keyboard instead of a Game Gear, btw. I still can’t play.)

In 1996, I got a summer job working for my uncle’s company. £100 a week. Every day I would walk from my work to my mum’s office for a lift home, stopping at the Virgin Megastore and HMV to fill in the time until she finished. It was the Saturn that I loved first, but after a while it was the PlayStation demo units that took more and more of my time. Every Friday, I would be doing the same thing, but with my £100 pay packet in my pocket.

Once I had saved enough, there was one last step. I may have been 17 years old, and it may have been my money that I earned, but I was still living in my parent’s house, so I asked permission to buy a PlayStation. Reluctantly, my dad agreed.

Destruction Derby, Blast Chamber, Actua Soccer and Tekken (which won the coin toss with Battle Arena Toshinden) we’re amongst the first games to come home. Shockwave Assault and Assault Rigs followed very soon after. I had finished school, and this was the first time in years that evenings and weekends weren’t shadowed by homework, and I was diving headlong into videogames. My job was physical and outdoors, so it didn’t feel harmful to spend my full evening with my PlayStation.

Where FIFA is one of my most played games these days, I wasn’t a big fan of it back then. I usually preferred the Actua games and, latterly. This Is Football and Pro Evo.

I have so many memories linked to PlayStation. When people describe pouring over a recently purchased game’s manual in anticipation of actually playing, the first thing that comes to my mind is reading the Project Overkill manual on the bus home from town after uni one day.

Or, if talking about the building anticipation waiting for a game, reading about Bushido Blade before its release felt like a wait that would never end. I even bought Star Gladiator Episode 1: Final Crusade in an attempt to satisfy my hunger for a weapons-based fighter. It was a great game, but it didn’t quite scratch the itch. I also bought Shaolin while waiting for Wu-Tang Taste the Pain, and then never bothered with the latter, because the former turned out to be awesome.

Similar to the Bushido Blade hype I remember reading a preview of Colony Wars in Play magazine, at the kitchen table, just as clearly as I remember playing the game in the dark in halls of residence. That’s a game that stands up incredibly well, btw.

I was late to pick up my girlfriend for our first ‘date’ because I was playing Worms. I have great memories of playing Bishi Bashi Special with my girlfriend, or playing Final Fantasy VII while she had a post-sex snooze on my bed in halls.

I remember getting a lift into uni one Friday morning, listening to Newsbeat on Radio 1 as they talked about grand theft auto. “That’s not the new game your buying today, is it?” Yup!

When the manager of the tour company I worked for in Amsterdam wanted to get a games console in the semi-basement hang-out, PlayStation was the only option. It was seen as the cool console, when that felt like it mattered. A multi-tap and Crash Team Racing was a successful combo (although my girlfriend and I preferred Muppet Race Mania when it was just the two of us.

Rally Cross remains one of my absolute favourite racing games. As much as I loved the FlatOut games on PS2 and Xbox, they never lived up to the hours of my life I lost to Destruction Derby 2. (Wreckfest is the first game that looks like it might reach that bar.)

I missed an entire week of lectures after Metal Gear Solid was released. The hairs on my neck stood on end every time I loaded Medal of Honor.

I can still hear the voice samples of Die Hard Trilogy. I still love the explosive energy of One. I still don’t follow the opening of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.

wipEout. Tomb Raider. G fucking Police.

I’m so sorry, Switch. I love you so much, but not quite as much as I love my PlayStation. I still play the games on Vita, on PS3, and on the PSone (with the attached screen). And I still bought a PlayStation Classic, for some reason.

I vote PlayStation.



A list of all the games I wanted to mention in my post:

Spoiler:

Actua Soccer series
Anna Kournikova’s Smash Court Tennis
Assault Rigs
Bishi Bashi Special
Blast Chamber
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
Bushido Blade
Colin McRae Rally
Colony Wars
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Cool Boarders
Crash Bandicoot
Crash Team Racing
Deathtrap Dungeon
Destruction Derby
Destruction Derby 2
Die Hard Trilogy
Driver
Eagle One Harrier Attack
Final Doom
Future Cop LAPD
G Police
Gran Turismo
Grand Theft Auto
International Track & Field
Jonah Lomu Rugby
Le Mans 24 Hours
Legagcy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Madden
Medal of Honor
Metal Gear Solid
Micro Machines V3
Muppet RaceMania
One
Project Overkill
Quake II
Rally Cross
Resident Evil: Director's Cut
Ridge Racer
Road Rash
Road Rash 3D
Road Rash: Jailbreak
Rollcage
Shaolin
Shockwave Assault
Sled Storm
Spider-man
Star Gladiator Episode 1: Final Crusade
Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles
Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire
Starfighter 3000
Tenchu: Stealth Assassins
Tekken
Tekken 3
This is Football
Time Crisis
Tomb Raider
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
Urban Chaos
Vigilante 8
Virtua Soccer
Worms

Looking back, I’m not sure aI left that many out...

hylian_elf wrote:

Somehow I knew Andy would go for PS.

Diluted Dante wrote:

Early 3D does suffer a lot in that way. I had a reply to Davy ages ago that the forum ate which made that point, and compared to 8/16 bit games it lacks that visual charm. I can look past it, but appreciate many can't.