This Old Neon Forum

Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round of 512!

Each game is seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools. Every game in the Upper Bracket has defeated multiple other games in 1-on-1 polls to get to this point. These are still the best of the best.

Polls are updated weekly, typically on 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!

I'm not as big a fan of Mega Man from a pure gameplay standpoint as I am some of its sequels, but it did manage to lock in the series' action platforming action right from the get-go. And the character designs are also on point.

I appreciate the first Mega Man mostly for its music - the stages are a little long and are trickier than its sequels so I've found it hard to return to.

Star Control II is now open-source and available as The Ur-Quan Masters. I bought the original from Accolade's website maybe a year or two before it went open-source, and even in that form it was an excellent exploration/strategy/action game. UQM brings the 3DO version's voice acting and upscales things, not to mention generally bringing the interface up to date. Highly recommended!

"Why do you do this thing? What you are doing is wrong!"
"The words, the words, the words..."

This was a no-brainer for me. Mega Man isn't even the best early Mega Man game - that honor belongs to Mega Man 2. It's still an accomplished and important game, but if it weren't called Mega Man it wouldn't stand out half as much. Star Control II, on the other hand, is amazing no matter what you call it (and indeed, anyone playing it in the last 20 years has probably called it The Ur-Quan Masters instead). The lore, the humor, the story - the universe of SC:II is a fully-realized and evocative place, and the gameplay provides a genuine sense of exploring a dynamic and real universe with planets and solar systems and alien fauna.

The last time I played SCII was literally in like 1992 or '93 and I remember being quite captivated by its pure scale and scope. I don't think I would dig the VA and upscaling/hi-rez backgrounds/assets etc. in UQM. I'm feeling convinced, though. I'm feeling convinced.

Kong Wen wrote: ↑29 Jan 2023 17:52 The last time I played SCII was literally in like 1992 or '93 and I remember being quite captivated by its pure scale and scope. I don't think I would dig the VA and upscaling/hi-rez backgrounds/assets etc. in UQM. I'm feeling convinced, though. I'm feeling convinced.

It's been awhile since I ran the UQM installer, but if I remember right most components including VA are optional. I don't think you can quite play it in DOSBox, but you can probably play with solely keyboard controls and no VA if you want something closer to the original. Here's some documentation of the differences.

I honestly didn't think I'd like the VA that much, but it's very good considering what I remember from other games of the era.