Great stuff Roo, looking forward to more commentary. Some Commentary on the painful memories would be sweet too. :D

I keep my games and books in order too...I worked in a bookstore for 4 years, it rubbed off on me...

Bargain basement anniversary celebration!! Sweet!! haha.  Really like your commentary on this, and respect the process of going back and looking at your own past work. For those that don't know, speaking from first hand experience, it is pretty brutal to do! So props to you for your bravery on this one Roo! 

I had played 'Illusion of Gaia' back in my early teen years with my best friend when it was first released for the SNES. Having seen your video on it, I was so psyched that you chose this title as your first 16 Bit Gem. As it is so deserving of that recognition and I couldn't agree with you more! Fantastic game! I've since tracked down a copy on ebay so I can play through it again in all its 2D glory.

Really like Bismark's idea of doing commentary on the Painful Memories in Videogame History as they are great as well and more back story and behind the scenes coverage on that would be a blast.  What is your favorite part of putting one of these videos together? Huge props for the humor though,  really like your work!

~ Chris

Thanks for the thumbs up, guys.  Looking back at this one was pretty brutal.  Strangely, I hadn't even considered doing a commentary for the Painful Memories videos yet.  I'll have to see if I can rope the Commodore into doing one or two with me...

I don't know why I enjoy commentary, but I do.

Bring on some more.

Personally, I would like to see some on Earthbound.

I don't know if you've answered this but are those the game boxes from when you were a kid?  I know mine never made it past day 2.

Yeah, I still have most of my original game boxes (I'm anal retentive like that).  I'm missing a few - sadly my Earthbound Box is MIA.  But maybe I will have to do a short video in the future on my meager collection.  I have nothing on the AVGN, but if that's what the people want, then so be it.

Roo,

On the subject of game boxes/box art. Was there ever awesome or awful box art that influenced your decision (one way or another) to pick up a copy of a game on the Super Nintendo or other platform? Or did you largely base your purchases off write-ups in magazines such as Nintendo Power and by word of mouth from friends?

Trying to think of an example similar to that that I've done. For me it was more about buying a game that I didn't know much about because it was licensed as part of a beloved franchise (like Star Wars) and then having the game itself be well, total crap. That sort of leads into a follow up question for you, that being are all of the Super Nintendo games you own gems or at least good, or do you have a few Shaq-Fu's mixed in there? That won't be getting a highlight video on them anytime soon, haha.

Peace,

~ Chris

Chris -

Very infrequently have I relied on box art to purchase a game.  The one time I really did was for Populus on the SNES:

And that was mainly because I was looking to buy SimCity and the store was out.  But the guy behind the counter said Populus was similar.  I looked at the box, front and back, and was sufficiently impressed.  Too bad the game sucked balls.  It was one of the few games I've ever returned.  And I own "Mario is Missing" for God's sake!

Luckily, I was an avid reader of Nintendo Power back in the day, all the way back to the NES era (I picked up a subscription somewhere around issue 14 I think).  So that helped a lot concerning my decisions on which games to buy.  I mean, I read those issues cover to cover multiple times, so I may have picked up on some games that casual readers may have missed - in fact, that's why I read about "Mother" when NoA was inthe process of translating it.  I'm sure that if it had been released in the US, I would have picked it up on the first day, much like I did with EarthBound.  And that was all thanks to Nintendo Power - THE resource for Nintendo games before the internet.

I have a few games that I wouldn't really call good (like the "Mario is Missing" bit from above), but most of what I have I enjoyed on some level.  I'll probably touch on that in any vid I do concerning the collection.

 This was the first CoTGW video I ever saw and I was amazed that someone else considered this a classic. I loved this game so much when I was younger and still do.I loved the video but you have definately improved very much :)

Btw that populous cover art is the most misleading thing I have ever seen!It looks like a freaky action horror rpg or something..

 loooooool Mario is missing. Now THATS a 16-bit gem that deserves a review ;)

i rememer how ball busting hard populus was, I remember using all of God powers to makea pretty decent city for my people, then all of a sudent a knight would just walk thorugh and burn everything down

/ragequit :P

Arkus, rage against a game . . .

That NEVER happened.

lol

I briefly played Populus (more than 15 minutes less than an hour) and thought it was okay but it bored me a bit at the time.

I would be willing to give it another go.

Haha, that Populous box art is phenomenal! Guess we can thank the Nintendo Power gods for saving us from many other such purchases. I was browsing through my collection tonight to see if I had any prime examples of awesome box art, lousy piece of crap game.  Actually found that most of the games that sucked had appropriately sucky box art, go figure! Clearly they somehow sneaked past my good sense and made their way into my collection.

But if I had to come up with one 'winner' of this phenomenon it would have to be 'King's Field II' for the Playstation 1. And for everyone that may have really enjoyed the game, no disrespect. I wanted to like it, I tried to like it, I pretended to like it, haha. Couldn't do it though, couldn't live the lie! So without further rambling, here is the cover.

Not THAT awesome, but not the worst thing of all time by any stretch. And the game? Whew... painfully slow, wish I had returned it cause, what a total dud. Curious to see if there is any gameplay videos up on youtube of it for those that aren't familiar with the franchise. There was actually a version of the PS2, but after that the series was subjected to a mercy killing and hasn't been heard from since.

Totally with you though Roo as Nintendo Power (The Source!), EGM, Gamefan,  and Gamepro were all regular reads for me in the pre-internet era.

Peace man,

~ Chris