This Old Neon Forum

Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round Lower Bracket!

Each game in the lower bracket is still seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools! Every game in the lower bracket has already been defeated by another game in a 1-on-1 poll to get to this point. This is their chance to claw their way back into the main event... but the stakes are high. The games that lose in these polls are out of the tournament for good! The games that survive will face the next crop of upper bracket losers in the next round.

Polls are updated weekly, typically on Saturday... or Sunday or Monday. Check back throughout the week to make sure you don't miss a vote!

HOW TO VOTE

This is easy. You only get one vote per poll. The game with the most votes wins. In the event of a tie, the higher seed advances, so don't get complacent!

Even though I played (and liked) the original .hack quadrilogy, I had to look up which one Outbreak was - it was the third game, where the plot started moving a bit faster. I recall it being disappointingly short, but not much else.

I think Infection is the only one I really have a soft spot for, since it was a slow burn and showed what the simulated MMO subgenre could be (the message boards, emailing etc). Slowly finding out who the characters actually were and not just the personas they presented themselves as was a treat. In the later installments new characters came along but I felt the initial round was best.

Popful Mail has a good reputation, but I never actually played it. Probably abstaining here.

Popful Mail is a good, cute platfoRPG in the Monster World vein that was blessed to come out on the perfect system for the game. It's got that '90s anime and Sega CD voice acting charm going for it on top of being a competent and tight game. I should replay it soon. Pretty sure I have an actual Sega CD copy here, although I think it was also included on that recent Genesis Mini 2 that I didn't buy?