Round 4, in which we covet our neighbours' stuff

[This Old Neon]

Round 4, in which we covet our neighbours' stuff

You can vote for 1-3 games in this poll. Vote carefully—you can't change your votes after submitting them. The #1, #2, and #3 ranked games at the end of the week will move on to Round 5.

1993 - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening [DX] - GB/GBC
1996 - Quake - PC
1996 - Pokémon [Blue/Red] Version - GB
1998 - F-Zero X - N64
2000 - Skies of Arcadia - DC
2000 - The Sims - PC
2005 - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - GBA/DS
2007 - Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - Wii
2010 - Super Street Fighter IV - Multiplatform
2011 - Bastion - X360

You are encouraged to discuss your choices and your reasons for selecting the games you did.

[Humphries90]

Holy crap. Needed to use all 3 votes here:
Pokemon as per usual.
F-Zero X, spent countless hours even on just the death race.
Skies of Arcadia which is probably in my top 5 games of all time. One of the best RPG's ever. The airship battles, the story, the characters were all amazing. Absolutely love this game.

[The Shoemaker]

Like I said week, Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn is probably my favourite FE, and possibly my favourite game. It made a lot of divisive choices like slpitting your characters up between armies and opting to let everyone support each other at the expensive of detailed supprt conversations. But I think it made a lot of advancements in strategy for the series, and the splitting of the armies not only kept you on your toes gameplay wise, but made you feel for the characters on the other side. It's definitely deserving of my vote.

I'm still playing through the first Ace Attourney right now, but I do really like it. It has a lot of charm.

[VictorViper]

SSFIV deserves to go deep, and I'll pull my weight to see it get there. As I stated last round, this is the current pinnacle of the fighting genre.

Skies of Arcadia didn't make my nomination list, but it's no secret to those who've known me a while that I absolutely adore this game. It's a game I find impossible to criticize, though wouldn't call perfect. The setting, story and characters quite simply swept me away. A wonderful adventure from front to back, it's a game I treasure like few others.

[Sharecrow]

I went with Skies of Arcadia only on this one. As Vic says, it's just a wonderful game. The amount of stuff to do and the sense of adventure that is present throughout is just outstanding. I never did complete it - it can be really tough to discover everything faster than your competitor explorer will and there's also quite a few missable collectibles. I really liked this game, though, and logged a good 150 hours or more into it. Would play it again if I had access to it...

[Kong Wen]

I cast my main vote for Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. This is the game that got me into the Fire Emblem series, and it's not hard to see why. It's still one of the top entries in the franchise. I went back and played Path of Radiance afterwards, followed by a replay of this game, and taken together, these actually have a pretty strong sense of narrative progression and character development (for the main characters, Ike in particular) for a series where characters are necessarily bland cookie-cutter chess pieces. This is one of the best tactical RPGs out there. I feel bad that so many people missed out because they ended up being niche games on bad systems. I've always been a proponent of the idea that Nintendo should do an HD package of the Radiant games, but then they'd be buried on the Wii U, too. Since it's unlikely Nintendo won't warm up to the idea of a PC version any time soon, maybe the new 3DS would be a better place for them...?

My second vote here is for Super Street Fighter IV, currently the pinnacle of the fighting game genre.

[Claytone]

My "primary" vote goes to F-Zero X, which is one of my absolute favorite games of all time. I've voiced my praises of it time and time again around here. I love the soundtrack, I love the characters, and I love the art style. Naturally, the gameplay is where it really shines, but just about everything about this game speaks to me. It's rough around the edges in terms of presentation, which I think loses favor among a lot of people, but getting past that, I have basically no complaints. It's high speed racing at its finest. A shame we haven't seen an entry in the series in so long.

But I also couldn't leave this bracket without casting a vote for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I'm not as inspired to write a bunch about this game, but suffice it to say I was quite captured. It *still* holds the record on my 3DS for longest average play-session, since I played through nearly every multi-hour case in a single sitting each. I was very much taken by this game, and it's shocking to me that I haven't yet played the rest of the series. I really ought to get around to that.

[Kong Wen]

Super Street Fighter IV, Pokemon Red & Blue, and Link's Awakening will advance to Round 5!

[Sharecrow]

Poor Skies of Arcadia...

[The Shoemaker]

I never expected Radiant Dawn to make it past its first round, still happy to see at least 5 people felt it deserved to move on.