The Besties - The Video Game Required Reading List: 1995-1999 [The Resties]

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

The Resties Required Reading List returns!  Our goal is to curate a "must play" list of 25 games released between 1980 to 2020. Think of it like Video Games 101. This week, we've selected games from 1995-1999. Join us as we revisit the moment when video games went  mainstream! Visit @thebestiespod on Twitter to see a full list of games from this week's episode.Previous picks:1985-89 - Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, SimCity2005-09 - Resident Evil 4, Wii Sports, Call of Duty: Modern WarfareThis week's bonus recs: Deep Rock Galactic and When Worlds Collide (1951)  Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

hello everybody my name is christopher thomas plant my name is russ frustek and welcome to the resties where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest this week we are talking about the resties required reading list We're back, baby. It's back. Better than ever. By popular demand, the people want to know what they haven't played. They need to. And we're going to tell you.

For people who do not remember or people who want a catch-up, here's how it works. Our goal is to collect a list of 25, count them, 25 on the dot games from Pac-Man to modern day. That is 1980 to 2020. Keeping a round number there, not going all the way up to 21, 22, because that's not even history yet. Who knows how we'll feel about those things. These are not the best games or even our favorite games. This is definitely not one of those top 100 games of all time list. You can find plenty of those. Go to google.com, type best 100 games of all time. You'll get a lot of good results. Is that how Google works?

That's how Google works. There's one on Polygon that's pretty great. Yeah. These are the games that we feel everyone who wants to have a fundamental appreciation of video games should play. They're the games that we think will give you a richer connection with video games. So you could think of this as a syllabus for like Video Games 101, or if you were going to make a video game dedicated to museums, these are the 25 rooms that you'd want to put into it. It is intentionally limited. rooms that you would want to put into it it is intentionally limited that is both to emphasize the importance of each game and to make it so you could actually play the entire and the entire list

we want to make it a doable achievement yeah and because i think most people are not going to make a video game about a museum or whatever you just said uh it's more just like if someone is at a party and you overhear someone saying like man man, I really love Halo because it was the first first person shooter ever made. You could just dunk the shit on that guy and say like, you're an idiot because I don't know what the what was that? Faceman was the first person. Faceman. Faceman. What was that with the faces and they float around and you shoot them?

I mean, that wasn't even the first person. You're thinking it's a tank game. Yeah. Anyway, here's the point. You can dunk on that guy. Yes. And if there's any reason to listen to this, it's apparently to be smug. The good news is we've already done two episodes of this. So we have some games on our list. Maybe you've heard of them. We did 1985 to 1989. It's a five-year chunk.

We did Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, the original one, and SimCity made the cut. And then we did an episode on 2005 to 2009. Resident Evil 4, Wii Sports, Call of Duty Modern Warfare also made the cut. So we got six of 25 already. Six of the 25.

Each episode is, as you could probably guess from that, following a five-year chunk, a half a decade. And that's from 1980 to 2020. So we have many more to go. This week, I am extremely excited about it. Maybe the most important half decade in the history of video games there are some pretty insane uh years in these in this chunk it's a bonkers window we are doing 1995 to 1999 wait bonkers came out at this point yes bonk came out well actually bonk came out a little bit before this, I believe the Jaguar.

Real humor for an audience of four. 1995, I mean, this is the SNES era, the Sega Genesis era, and then going all the way to the Sega Dreamcast. A lot happens during this period of time. So, I think without further ado, we should dig into it. We'll start with 1995 and start picking some narrowing down the list. Yeah. But before we do that, we're going to take a quick break. Okay. We're back. Here's the good news, brush. I think 1995 is not the best year on this list, which is going to sound bonkers because it has Corona trigger Trigger in it.

That's true. But this to me is a really awkward transition point. This is where video game developers and publishers have this sense of, okay, we need to be moving into 3D. 3D is the future of video games. Say goodbye to 2D gaming, which we've spent the better part of a decade really even longer than that because the 80s was also sure i guess what i'm saying like you know console gaming mario

yes like really think establishing this type of game um they they'd honed in on it so we're getting some of the best games we're getting things like chrono trigger the best 2d games yes yes we're getting things like x-com ufo defense things that are kind of like playing with how 2d is even portrayed donkey kong country 2 which is using um pre pre-captured is that 3d images but and then presenting them in a 2d uh. Yes. So all of that's happening. And then at the same time, we have stuff like Tekken 2 and Virtua Fighter 2 and Jumping Flash, where studios are trying to figure out, like, how the hell do people even get around in 3D worlds? Yes. So it's a weird time.

What are some of the games from this year that really stick out to you? Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting. Looking at this list, you mentioned Chrono Trigger, certainly one of the best. You know, I've talked a lot of it in the past about how I can't play JRPGs. That is one of the few that I've played and really enjoyed, mostly from a narrative standpoint, from a structural standpoint. I think it's spectacular. I'm not sure it's going to make the final list, but certainly an amazing, amazing game.

I also greatly appreciate Super Mario World 2 Yoshi's Island, which I think came up very high in our tier list or bracket, whatever we did for the Mario games. Amazing. Probably the only standout, super amazing Yoshi game, uh, that has come out. Uh, I, that's kind of hurt people's feelings. I'm sorry. Um, of the, those are probably the two that like immediately jump out to me. Although, you know, you mentioned we are starting to like dip into 3D. I did want to, even though it's not going to make the cut, call out Jumping Flash, which I think might have been the first that or Virtua Fighter was the first like 3D game I like witnessed and it was pretty mind-blowing. Yeah

and Jumping Flash was like one of the, if not the first major 3D platformer. Yeah, you were a rabbit, a robotic rabbit and you jumped around a world in 3d i don't know what you did collecting carrots what were you doing yeah it's it's a bit proof of concept these days yeah um to give folks an idea of stuff that came out this year i mean a ton of big stuff warcraft 2 command and conquer panzer dragoon tactics ogre uh dragon

quest 6 which i think is good i can't tell you if it's good or not yeah x-com ufo defense which we had to take a beat here with x-com did you have any games in your childhood that like defined your childhood and now as an adult you look back and you're like wait did i even play it yeah that was not one of them i never played the original x-com when i was growing up i my my neighbor my best friend my neighbor his older brother was obsessed with x-com ufo defense and therefore i thought it was the coolest game in the world sure but now that i like i look back and i'm like how much of that game did I actually play and how much did I just watch? Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

I guess the Final Fantasy games was similar for me. I never really hands-on played them until 7, but definitely watched a lot of people playing them. Yeah. NHL 96 is here, which is, I think, a masterpiece of sports games. And Twisted Metal. But a lot of this stuff, I mean, I don't think it's a secret for listeners of our show, we are not big strategy game people. I mean, I love Fire Emblem, but none of the other ones.

Sure. That's not true. I like the newer XCOM games as well. I do think there is another strategy game that's going to come up in this episode that I think will outdo both Warcraft 2 and Command & Conquer. I have a feeling that for Warcraft, World of Warcraft will get on our list later. I would be shocked if it doesn't. Yeah, but I wouldn't, I guess the question on Warcraft is, I mean, I wouldn't even categorize them as the same because World of Warcraft, MMO, Warcraft 2, and RTS.

So what is the like RTS that people look to that like define the genre it arguably might be warcraft 2 or command and conquer yeah i i do think it probably is one of those and i i think we'll i think we'll come back to it the case for chrono trigger while we're here it doesn't have the legacy that you know a dragon quest has right or a final fantasy but i do think there's just the simple case of it's the best rpg ever made maybe like it might be i certainly think it's up there i think it there's something to be said for it being a quasi cogent story which is very rare in JRPGs, quite honestly. While being kind of experimental

in structure. Yeah, very experimental with the time travel. Great characterization, great music, amazing art, as we've talked about. Like, this is the pinnacle

of 16-bit art. So of these, you know, I would certainly, I think it does stand out to me as a pretty high peak of certainly 2d of the 2d jrpgs it is my favorite by a mile yeah i think we'll be coming back to it uh should we move on to 1996 yes okay and for everybody who's listening for the beginning of this episode we're just

going to get through these years and kind of start to narrow it down. Yeah, we're going to make a short list. Yeah, what's going to stick? So 1996, now we're entering what I would call peak PC computing superiority era. Like this is the year of Quake and Diablo. We're like starting to see a really healthy mod scene. We're like starting to see a really healthy mod scene. Land culture is like the way that you play competitive multiplayer games across screens. Yeah, it's funny you say superiority, though, because it really was, you know, I feel like consoles and PC were both putting in some pretty heavy hitters this year.

Oh, I mean, that's not to say that the console games don't matter. I just think the culture, like as a culture, I remember this being, wow, PC gaming is cool. It's legit. You could, like, I felt like an outsider looking in when I knew, like, what I knew about PC gaming culture. Maybe it's a approach, PC gaming is approaching a little more mainstream this year. Yes, before eventually like completely falling off a cliff and then taking another decade to revive. Yeah. So 1996, it's the Nintendo 64 year, Super Mario 64. It's also the year that Pokemon Red and Blue comes out.

Yeah. Absolutely bonkers year. I'm just going to list these off really quick. Quake, Civilization 2, which I think is another game up there in terms of strategy that we should be thinking about. Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Mario Kart 64, Super Mario RPG, Diablo, Pokemon, Knights into Dreams. I'm putting Die Hard Arcade out there just because it's a personal favorite. It is fun i do like that arcade game a lot rules yeah um the original persona harvest moon yeah it's like again this now we're now when we just you know we're cooking with gas we are what what of those

do you think really stands out for you i mean it, it's hard to like look past Mario 64. That's what I was going to say. I would be very surprised if we ended this episode and didn't continue Mario 64 on, even though I realized we already have a Mario game on our list. Mario 64 defined how you can smoothly explore a 3d space in a third person game. Like that game is it. I know Tomb Raider

came out the same year. I know Resident Evil was out this year, but no game came close to the fluidity to the, uh, just look and feel of moving through a 3d space as a third person character. And all of the stuff that was introduced to Mario 64, like so much of that stuff, that DNA exists today, uh, whether it's like camera controls or just again, moving around the world. It is, uh, it was totally mind blowing. I was at the mall and I didn't have an N64, but there was this place where you can rent an N64 for like by the hour you'd pay whatever, $5 an hour or something like that. And you just like had full access to it. And I just spent that entire hour just running through the castle, sliding down the banisters with my mouth like fully open. It was shocking yeah i mean that comparison you made to resident evil and tomb raider actually hurts those two games now and

in the present day because it's almost like all three of them were taking different approaches to how it feels to move and control a camera in a 3d world yeah and resident evil said like no you don't get to control the camera at all yeah and then it was like yeah yeah you're kind of like limited to like angles effectively it was just behind the back i think for 90 of it right you didn't get to move the camera independently yeah you're kind of like moving somewhat also like a tank it's just it does not feel um it feels like eight point direction yeah it was rather than full 360 yeah and then super mario 64 and that that that format clearly has won out in the long term yeah um i mean tomb raider and resident evil did their

own things they did they both have like significance i think Resident Evil probably more so than Tomb Raider at this point. Yes. Yeah. Just for introducing, you know, survival horror to gaming, really. Yeah. Yeah. And really making it popular. And then I think there's Diablo, which just absolutely consumed a certain set of players. But if we're going to include that, I feel like Diablo 2 is the polished version

that we would want. I would agree. I think Diablo was an interesting concept that didn't really get turned into Diablo until Diablo 2. So Harvest Moon, this one I'm going to pick with because I think Harvest Moon

is an extremely important game. Yeah. It basically showed an alternate path. As games were getting increasingly violent and, like, combat-focused, here is a game that came up with an entire style of play separate from that that I think was more inviting to gamers

and it was more inclusive. Yeah, I'm trying to think of, like, what were like life was there were there life sims before harvest moon there were but not necessarily popular in the u.s yeah um i think it brings the trend over here and weirdly you know harvest moon was very hard to come by at its time of release i remember as a kid kid calling Babbage's, which every one of those stores became GameStop eventually, but calling them day after day asking if they had gotten a copy yet. And that's where pre-orders kind of started

because it was just so hard to ensure that you were going to get a copy of a game and you didn't know how many prints it would get. Yeah, Donkey Kong Country was my version of that. I was calling Blockbuster repeatedly. copy of a game and you didn't know how many prints it would get yeah donkey kong donkey kong country was my version of that i was calling uh blockbuster repeatedly oh yeah yeah it was yeah i somehow ended up sorry brief segue i somehow ended up with a vhs tape of a trailer of donkey kong country that i guess i got i don't know with my nintendo power oh yeah i i remember that i think you could even like they would have like late night commercials or something where it was like call in and get your here's how the nintendo 64 works yeah i remember vhs so weird i remember

clearing out a house and and finding it and i was like oh this is probably worth something and then chucking it because who has the time um and then i mean pokemon red and blue which speaking of games like really really difficult to imagine not being on our final list basically creates the biggest brand on planet earth bigger than mickey mouse bigger than mario bigger than anything uh i mean it just yeah the problem with mickey mouse is there's only one of them you can't you collect one mickey mouse and you're done yeah and there's just they just keep making more mickey mouses over here i mean the wildest thing about pokemon red and blue and why i i don't know it's on that like best games of all time most important games of all time every

every list you can think of is they coded it like to be the size of i don't know like your calculator calculator game yeah it's like a google doc yeah it is the smallest amount of information and they ended up creating a template that is effectively just still used today yeah you know they still add stuff onto it but the templates the template the template and yeah if we're gonna include a pokemon game it has to be this one because so many like the modern pokemon games pull so much from this original pokemon game that yeah it'd be hard to not include this one in particular although i'm not saying that we necessarily should because the counter argument is that outside of the pokemon franchise no other real

franchises still exist that pull a ton from this format there are a couple like in what attempts no pokemon form and how you well what what are some good recent examples well not good but ugo is still like or yug-Oh or whatever it is, is still a huge thing. Like, there's still brands out there that are doing this. I would also say you see the kind of monster collecting in other ways, like Persona, you know? Yeah, but monster collecting existed before Pokemon, right? Not really like this. I feel like this is a pretty distinct.

Well, let's bold it. We'll bold it. Yeah, we'll bold it and keep going. We'll come back. You want to hop over to 1997? Yeah, I think that's is a pretty distinct... Let's bold it. We'll bold it and keep going. We'll come back. You want to hop over to 1997? Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea. That is a crazy year, though, man.

97 is the year that basically first-person shooters go to consoles and truly go mainstream. Yeah. And this is the year that GoldenEye 007 comes out. I wrote in our notes that, to me, this is the punk rock game design era. And I'm not saying that as either praise or pejorative. It's just that studios were still small enough that they could kind of make what they wanted to. But they were getting large enough that they could swing big. large enough that they could go like swing big so you had you know postal with came out in 1997 which do you know how would you describe that game for god it's like it's an important first person shooter right where it's intentionally just like obnoxious like horrifically offensive

yeah you're peeing on people ha and you're like pooping and throwing. I honestly haven't played it, but I've seen video. Extremely hateful game. They made more of them. But it's important because this is ahead of the Supreme Court ruling in the favor of video games as art deserving protections of art. So it was incredibly provocative and kind of spurred along that conversation. This is also when Fallout, the very first Fallout comes out. It's when Parappa the Rapper comes out. The very first

Grand Theft Auto is this year. Final Fantasy VII, which Final Fantasy VII, let's not discount the fact that you play the role of eco-terrorists. Like, that's your function in the game. These are big, popular games, but the things that they're talking about and the game um you know these these are big popular games but the things

that they're talking about and the things they're saying are inherently i mean especially today would be seen as provocative yeah um the other big one castlevania symphony of the night oh boy yeah uh so a big year here's one thing i'll say i don't think golden eye should be on our top 25 well i would agree with that even though i think people at home might be like shook i mean it's tough because you're right here's what i'm gonna say if you try to play gold nine now and and people are gonna get that chance because it's about to come out in hd on xbox and switch uh if you try to play gold nine now i do not think it's a very fun game brace yourself

yeah it just isn't uh it's very stiff and um the levels are very simple and but it was the only game in town when it came to console first person shooters and it like multiplayer wise like you know it was fun to like move through a 3D world and then shoot your friends in multiplayer. Like I got it. But if you try to play it now, it's it's pretty rough stuff. But it was, you know, if we're talking about like must includes, it really did set a format for games like Halo and Call of Duty to follow in the future. So I am hesitant to totally rule it out, even though i do not think it's a fun game to play today i think it its importance has kind of been a bit of a roller coaster ride where there was a period where you know console gaming was dominant pc gaming you know kind of died down for a while before, again, really boosting in recent years.

And I think the idea of, hey, this game started, you know, bringing shooters to consoles, that felt like a distinguishing factor. But now that shooter, like, playing any game on any platform, they all just kind of blur together. Like, okay, you're playing it on PC

or you're playing it on a console, you're playing it on your phone, whatever're just playing the game yeah there's not really a pc shooter versus a console shoot yes and because of that i think now you know making our list in 2020 what's more important is what just set up the first person shooter in general like what are the either online multiplayer which i think we could point to Quake as one of those games, or Doom or Counter-Strike. Goldeneye fell in the middle, and the nuance was really just that it was on console. And people loved it because it was on console, because multiplayer was super easy to set up. But as a game, you know, that's really the only distinguishing aspect of it.

Yeah. And even if I was going to give credit to a console game in that way, I don't even like the series that much. But Halo would probably come to mind. Here's the counter argument, though. Yeah. Was Goldeneye the first big head mode? It did have DK mode and it had paintball mode. Yes.

Grand Theft Auto 1, I assume, no. Yeah, it's a big no for Grand Theft Auto 1. I really like Grand Theft Auto 1. There is a little bit of DNA here that carries forward through the series, but it is so different and so simple compared to you know more defining grand theft auto games that it would be i'd be hard pressed to include it castlevania symphony of the night now this one i would definitely consider but again if we're looking at like originators is is the metroid genre, which is really what, you know, Castlevania and Symphony of the Night help define, is it more Metroid or is it more Castlevania?

I kind of think it's more Metroid, quite honestly. And if I'm going to pick a defining Metroidvania game, I think I would pick a Metroid game, even though I think this is a better game than like uh the super metroid for example yeah no i i think that'll make sense i i mean the one that stands out here is final fantasy 7 yeah chrono trigger earlier is like is it the greatest rpg of all time well it's going up against the other greatest final fantasy 7 here's what final fantasy 7 did first of all it was the first one in three days. Secondly, it was the first one that showed, and like, correct me if I'm wrong, yeah, so this predates Metal Gear Solid.

Final Fantasy VII was like a cinematic event for video games. Like, it really did have outsized impact on culture, broadly speaking, and very few games had done that at that point where it became like as big as a major movie release um yeah and that really is why i think final fantasy 7 stands out and every final fantasy game and really a lot of jrpgs since then have taken the scale that was set forth in Final Fantasy VII and carried that through.

So I do think it is unquestionably worth considering. It was also one of the first games to cross the sports gamer Rubicon. Oh, yeah. We're like people who, you know, bought a Sega Genesis like my cousin to play, you know, triple play baseball or whatever every year in CWA football. Something happened with Final Fantasy VII where everyone played it. Yeah. Everybody.

It was wild. And it's especially wild in hindsight. It's a weird, weird game. It's weird. It's good. I think it's really good. It's great, but it's just weird that everybody's like yeah i'm gonna play the game about eco-terrorists where they go snowboarding at a

certain point and you know what it is great opening that's why that game really more so than any other uh final fantasy game has such a grabbing throws you right in opening without the like big throat clearing like first the crystals were created and the crystals created babies and those baby crystals created more crystals and then 30 minutes later you might get to fight one crab final fantasy 7 you're on a fucking train heist and you blow up a giant like reactor it's awesome yeah and the developers really knew how to mix 3d like simple 3d polygons with 2d you know effectively matte paintings with you know pre-rendered cg video in between i mean every time they had to choose which one to use they chose the right one so that it

felt like it was from the future yeah uh which I think is like a big trick that very few other games pull off because they either just go, hey, you know what? It's all going to be the best 3D. And then they can't maintain that polish or, you know, it goes the other direction. They just, wow. What a game. Okay. 1998. We're moving along.

This is the year. So we're building up games. First-person shooters have become popular it's now pretty common to see people owning pc gaming and doing land parties pokemon red and blue got games in the hands of like kids everywhere and then 1998 happens and this to me is like the year that video games go legit this is effectively the year that sets in place the franchises that we have for the next two decades. Yeah. It's wild.

1998, Zelda Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil 2, Starcraft, Baldur's Gate, and then we get into stuff that's not as big but is still relevant. Grim Fandango, Thief, The Dark Project, and then we get into stuff that's not as big but it's still relevant grim fandango thief the dark project fallout 2 final fantasy tactics parasite eve body harvest suikoden 2 radiant silver gun jurassic park trespasser which we'll get back to space station silicon valley sonic adventure and

banjo kazooie yeah whoa yeah where do you even start big year um i mean yeah i mean we can talk you know looking at obviously ocarina of time man bringing bringing the franchise of zelda into 3d and doing it with some like very creative elements of just a simple example the idea that you could determine how far you were jumping based on how quickly you were running at a ledge is like a very creative game design solve to a problem of like should we let people jump everywhere because if we do that then that's going to change our whole level design system so here they they came up with that um yeah why certainly worth uh considering half-life i want to call out the original half-life uh it's worth noting because of its intro in contrast to final fantasy 7 half-life starts

with a tram ride where essentially nothing happens you just stand on the tram as it slowly introduces you to Black Mesa, which is this scientific facility. And the credits roll. And the credits are rolling. And while you're on the tram, you're like, you can look out through any window. You have full control to like walk around the tram, but there's nothing else going on.

And it actually was like one of the most cinematic introductions to any video game I've ever played. Because the idea that like you were getting introduced to this world as you would if you were actually in that world, like starting a job at this facility before shit goes wrong and you push a crystal into a giant laser beam and end the world. Very amazing. push a crystal into a giant laser beam and end the world uh very amazing and and again as like a cinematic shooter it really redefined what like a shooter could be whereas every even quake you go back to that it's just like you had dropped on a planet and there's aliens running around you just like rock shit with shotguns half-life showed another way to do a shooter. So, you know, in that way, I consider Half-Life way

more impactful than like GoldenEye, for example. Yeah. Then we have two, I mean, completely defining games for the Sony PlayStation, probably the two games that Sony would not be here without them. They made the console, and that's Gran Turismo and Metal

Gear Solid. Gran Turismo, I mean, it's probably hard for people to believe now, which is weird to say, but Gran Turismo used to be one of the biggest things in the industry. Yeah, I mean, yeah. It was huge. Yeah, having a Racing Sims was a really big deal. Yeah, and this is getting away from the arcade racers. This is letting you tinker with the cars. It gave you at the time a sense of ownership of these cars. Like that was the fantasy, right? Yeah. Um, and I, this is another one of those games.

I remember all of my uncles and cousins being absolutely obsessed with Gran Turismo. I think Gran Turismo 2 kind of even further solidified this, but the flip side is talk about a series that has lost its luster. Well, not only that, I would say like there were racing Sims long before Gran Turismo. I'm pretty sure the Need for Speed franchise predates it. Yeah, I wouldn't really call them racing Sims in the same capacity, though, right? No, I think they were. I mean, they weren't quite as physically accurate as Gran Turismo. Gran Turismo definitely took it to a new level.

But I think at its core, it is a realistic racing sim and there are there were like early racing sims uh you know i wasn't playing them but it wasn't the first one certainly yeah i guess it's the first one that's like good because great tourism was like we're running from the cops i mean i can't tell you what's a good one i didn't play enough of those there you go um the the other one here metal gear solid i mean it is what we know hideo kojima for it is the cinematic video game yeah of that time uh you could smoke cigarettes in a video game how a thrill it was meta and it had a story that, well, I don't know if I would necessarily love the story. It is ambitious as all hell. Sure. And I think clever.

I think Kojima has become a stronger, I don't know if storyteller is the right word. I prefer his ideas now than I did then. I like Death Stranding more, which is a hot take, I guess. But, I mean, this game, again, hard to overstate its importance. Yeah, I think it really was, you know, more so than Half-Life or more so than even Final Fantasy VII. This was the, like, you're playing a movie game. Yes. And it was very good at that like it wasn't a movie

game like a knockoff whatever we're gonna cash in on a jurassic park game uh this was like a full-on like you're you're controlling a movie and it really is wild we've not seen a cinematic adaptation of metal gear yeah that is a little so i, you know, rights and all that stuff, especially with Japanese franchises, I can imagine, rightfully, they're very precious about how they're used. I feel like Konami, it's like... Yeah, Konami seems to find their money

wherever they can get it, so that is surprising. Some other big ones here, Resident Evil 2. Significant... But again, I kind of lean towards Metal Gear Solid Some other big ones here, Resident Evil 2 is significant. But again, I kind of lean towards Metal Gear Solid in terms of what these are accomplishing for the industry. Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 1, again, extremely important. It's a matter of comparing fractions of a millimeter in difference here. Yeah, I agree. I think Metal Gear Solid would be the game to to pull out even though they're both excellent um and starcraft i think starcraft 2 would be

the game that if no i disagree with that really yeah no i i mean if we were to i i still would go back to like i think warcraft 2 is the game from a rTS standpoint that like really started selling the genre, but Starcraft one was totally formative and defined so much of what Starcraft two is that, uh, yeah, no. See,

here's why I put Starcraft here and I would actually put Starcraft above the Warcraft two pick. Okay. Starcraft gives us e-sports. Like, that's a good point. I think have esports you're right especially internationally without starcraft yeah it's a fair point that is a good argument um yeah it wasn't really here but certainly in korea starcraft as an esport like blew up and everything kind of came out of that yeah and you're right in that case that starcraft 2 would still be a follow-up to like it only magnified that yes 100 yeah i'm gonna keep that one okay that's fair um some other

stuff here parasite eve i think criminally underrated in terms of what it did with the resident evil formula that said i don't think it's like a must play i think body harvest is at least worth mentioning because i think it has more to do with the grand theft auto 3 and onward dna than even the original grand theft auto does body harvest is made by many of the same people it is an open world game in which you can hop in vehicles and drive around it It is basically kind of recreating the 1950s sci-fi monster space movie matinees. Just an awesome premise, and I really wish it could come back. But again, because it's a Nintendo 64 game, way too ahead of its time. It is trying to accomplish things that, honestly, it would not be able to do for another decade.

And same thing goes for Jurassic Park Trespasser. A absolutely bad, just a bad game. But a game that does so much. It tries so many things, including like real physics, that we would not have a lot of the stuff that we see in action games today without it existing i believe i don't know if this is true or not if it's apocryphal or what but i believe half-life 2 is like influenced by jurassic park trespasser i think i wouldn't be surprised because it is so defined half-life 2 is so defined by physical interaction stuff uh and really all of valve's development after um since half-life 2 has been like a lot of like boxes falling on levers

to push other things yeah so yeah it's not super surprising uh not to oversimplify like obviously they make the best games on the planet or some of the best but uh they are very interested in doing like physical objects moving in and interacting okay we got one more year and then we can take a break and we'll come down and narrow this down so final year 1999 this for me is taking like all that weirdness of the early 90s that we talked about. Yeah. But people have actually had time to learn how to do it. There are lessons learned from making games in 3D spaces. We're actually starting to see publishers get a grip on what they want to accomplish in terms of giving notes to developers.

Development studios are getting larger. And games are going online right now. This is, again, the beginning of the Sega Dreamcast, $9,999. And because of that, it's the new generation of consoles. Games are just getting more expensive. So, yeah, it's kind of like a professionalization period, I guess I would say say for the games industry. And it's not quite the right word because the behavior there isn't professional, but you know what I mean.

It's been a few years, uh, after 3D was introduced and now they're, everyone's got their feet wet and they understand how to at least make it like legit game. And it's not like a experimental thing anymore. Yeah. experimental thing anymore yeah so this year soul caliber gran turismo 2 homeworld system shock 2 tony hawks pro skater shinmu pepsi man everquest super smash brothers age of empires 2 medal of honor which i wrote down as meal of honor which sounds like a much cooler game uh planescape torment ape escape siphon Filter Silent Hill Final Fantasy VIII Resident Evil 3

Chrono Cross yeah which of these stand out for you? yeah well certainly Tony Hawk Pro Skater you know just as an amazing skating game

there aren't a ton still today but certainly defined an entire franchise um you have shenmue bolded here which i kind of roll my eyes at because i think it is really unplayable but i understand that people like it um the definition of a game that i do not think is good but i think is important can we we talk about Pepsi Man? You included Pepsi Man here. Please.

I love to talk about Pepsi Man. I've never played it. Okay. But I know it involves Pepsi. Yeah, it will. So it actually is, I think, culturally relevant because it is, you know, all the endless runners that you have on iPhone,

like the 3D ones, like Temple Run? Sure. Pepsi Man. That's the game. that was the whole game yeah i mean it's an endless runner in that in that style do i think it should be in our final list no do i think people should know that pepsi man exists yes definitely um everquest yeah everquest is almost certainly i think uh a candidate for inclusion yeah i mean the question i have with everquest and well can you explain what everquest was sure everquest was a fantasy mmo and really i mean it wasn't the very first mMO ever, MMORPG ever, but it was certainly the breakout one and defined how to make a broadly appealing,

successful online massively multiplayer game. And, you know, that alone sort of has its stand out. Now, the genre, the MMORPG genre, I don't think is certainly at its heights these days, but so many games came out of the EverQuest model, and some of them did it much better than EverQuest did. You know, World of Warcraft certainly jumps to mind, but this was the first, and certainly a lot of games owe their success to EverQuest. games owe their success to everquest yeah i i think this is a case where while immensely important we get a lot of that with world of warcraft 2 a few years from i think this was i think so much of world of warcraft owes its credit and its success to this game so that's why i would include this i think that's true i think that's true i guess for me it's again if this is like

a syllabus right it's not just the game design that they did at first it's that the cultural conversation of video games to not talk about world of warcraft would be just a tremendous gap where i think like you could talk about games without talking about EverQuest. That's fair. I want to say EverQuest is a footnote in World of Warcraft. It's not that. It's immensely popular. But you just get into a tricky thing with MMOs

of which one do you prioritize as the first to do it right yeah is it is that request or is it ultima online right exactly it gets it gets a little tricky there um i like tony hawk's pro skate skater a lot oh yeah let's get to that in just one second but tony hawk's pro skater i like a lot but i i think it is kind of like rock band where it had its moment it had its moment and and that's about it and it was i mean unlike rock band like tony hawk's persecutor moment was like 10 years it was like a long long period of time yeah yeah i mean yeah that's true um you said smash brothers yeah i mean today smash brothers is like way more relevant now than it has been in a while just because we're seeing games like multiverses

and what was the other one that's like another one floating around these days i guess with smash it's like i would put melee up there because i think the culture that it creates yeah melee did define it wasn't a moment it wasn't it was smash brothers the original was like a popular game people really liked it but melee was like oh this is like something else this elevated to another level so i kind of agree yeah yeah yeah for smash the original Smash Brothers was like a great party game. Yes. But Pikachu was OP and there was not a lot you could do about that. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we made it.

We made it through five years. Oh my God. This was such a meaty one. Do you want to take a quick break? Yeah. And we can come back and actually narrow this thing down? Let's do it. Okay, we are back.

And now comes the difficult part of narrowing thing down let's do it okay we are back and now comes the difficult part of narrowing this down we are allowed three per episode and there's a little bit of wiggle room for a fourth or like i mean a fifth would be really hard that would that would dig into some options later on for us yeah uh so i think we want to go for three and then if we have to go over that well we we we can make it work we've been good with ourselves so far we've left some wiggle room with our previous episodes yeah what is like a absolutely it's gonna make the cut game for you yeah um i'm going down i'm gonna guess it's super mario oh yeah sorry yes it's definitely super mario 64 yes one question i think i think that's right we do now have two mario games on this but i think it's a pretty simple case the original Super Mario Bros. effectively was the proof of concept

and a great execution of 2D side-scrolling video games. Yes. And Super Mario 64 is the exact same thing for 3D. Exactly. Just absolutely disgusting how much they nailed it and how it would take other developers, I don't know many many years to come even close sure to how good this game feels um complete just a hole in one so yeah i i agree i think that's up there after that it gets complicated i think i think pokemon red and blue also for me is a gimme it it creates the biggest franchise ever yeah any kind like i mean that

that alone and and because that franchise exists we get pokemon go which i think is just a huge cultural moment and will feel like a even bigger one later on is augmented reality becomes a bigger part of our daily lives um and it's pokemon i mean i can't not include pikachu on a 25 list everybody who if somebody didn't know anything about video games they should come out of our experience knowing who pikachu is he's yellow he's got electricity he's an electric rat. Yeah. Okay. So now we have two. So now I think kind of stuff that we had narrowed it down to, again, these are some great games. I think if we're going to, this might be helpful to narrow things down a little bit.

I don't think we include both Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid. Like, I think both of those are checking the same box, which is the introduction of true cinematic feeling games, and maybe Half-Life is in that same category. Like, this is bringing that level of cinematic things to video games.

I think that's true. I also don't feel like we include Final Fantasy VII in Chrono Trigger. That's probably true for different reasons. Yes, yes, yes. Which makes me think that Final Fantasy VII does the most for us. That's true, yeah. It is both a pretty defining RPG while also being a very cinematic video game

and the most discs out of any of the games on this list that's very true so many so so that takes half-life off for sure it takes off chrono trigger i i don't think that we do ocarina of time i I agree with you for because of Mario 64, which I think defined the 3D exploration space, which Zelda is doing that. And it does some pretty amazing things as well. Like the day night cycle was introduced in Ocarina of

Time. I'd never seen that before in a game and so many other things. But I think that at its core, it was a game about 3D exploration, and Mario 64 really popped the cork on that. This is where I remind people, this is not a comment on whether or not

the game is fantastic or not, or even if it's better than some of the games that are going to make the final list. Yeah, I don't love... Definitely a case to be made. I don't love Ocarina of Time, but that's notwithstanding. it's not my favorite uh zelda game i think it's a little overrated quite honestly but wow hot damn um okay so that that is off uh i think starcraft makes the cut i think starcraft makes the cut because i think we I think we need to recognize strategy in here, especially real-time strategy.

While also recognizing esports. While also recognizing esports. And also, Starcraft, just a great game. It is. A very good game. I think it's the best Blizzard game. It's the best what? Blizzard game. Oh, I best what? Blizzard game.

Oh, I don't know about that. I'm saying that as somebody who does not get into Have you played Diablo Immortal? Okay. I'm certain that it's the best. Yeah. It's the Lost Vikings.

Yeah, I think it's the eSports thing takes it over over the hump for us. Yeah. And I would say it also for what it's worth provides some aspect of the cinematic-sports thing takes it over, over the hump for us. Yeah. And I would say it also, for what it's worth, provides some aspect of the cinematic-ness because of the,

the cut scenes were amazingly good. And LAN multiplayer. Yeah. Like it's doing three playable races that were completely different from one another. Zerg rushes. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Name all the other buzzwords about StarCraft that you know. That's all of them. Harvesting my crystals for ire. That's all I really remember. You nailed it. Where does that put us, though? That is four picks. That's four.

I think that's good. Are we okay with four? I mean, four is more than normal. We're not going to get a pick four every time. Yeah, that's four. I think that's good. Are we okay with four? I mean, four is more than normal. You know, we're not going to get a pick four every time. Yeah, that's true. And I think, you know, going for five makes it even more challenging later on. And I don't think we need to. I think this is a good place.

No, I feel pretty good with this list. You know, there is one slight, one, and maybe, are we going to do our favorite picks? Yeah, we're going to do that. Okay, so that's fine. I will hold my comment for that. So for the listeners, what I will do is I will share

a public Google Doc that just has all of the games on it. So if you are the type of person who wants to know all of the games that we think are great games from these period, from this kind of window, you can have that too. And if somebody wants to put together like a top 500 games list, please be our guest. Go for it. But I think we've got some great additions to our required reading list.

Those are, again, Super Mario 64, Pokemon Red and Blue, Final Fantasy VII, and StarCraft. And we're working our way through. We're getting close to halfway through the process. Amazing. It's wild. Do you want to take a beat to pick our personal favorites?

What are the games that you would put on your desert island list, I guess? Okay, so the game- Or that defined you. You know, the game that jumped out at me as we were going through this list that, you know, I would put Thief the Dark Project

on this list. I didn't mean to say that. For my personal favorite. Thief was a, I guess you would call it an immersive sim these days games like um dishonored and prey and system shock 2 which came after that were very much informed by the earlier games defined uh the studio was called the looking glass studios and and a lot of their games, you know, that design mentality carried throughout. Bioshock certainly informed a lot by projects that were created at Looking Glass.

So, yeah, I love the Thief franchise, and this was really showing a first-person game where you weren't like an unstoppable killing machine. You weren't Duke Nukem. You were just like a thief, thief and you had a blackjack and you could hide in the shadows but if anyone saw you the second like your sword had to come out you were basically dead um so it defined not only immersive sim but also kind of stealth games in general so really very good game i think each of us can pick three here and you just want to go back and forth seems like too many does it yeah i think we were only doing one i think you're right there's just so many games i'm going to mention harvest moon again that's not going to be my pick yeah i'm just mentioning it again because that game like that game made such a great impression on me i

adored that game as a kid and it was exactly what i was what i wanted without knowing what it was i was looking for yeah you know but the game i'm going to pick also from 1998 same with thief banjo kazooie bushido blade 2 oh yes bushido blade 2 absolutely incredible talk about games that just nobody did it again. Machito Blade 1 and 2 were fighting games, one-on-one fighting games in which you picked a character and then their weapon could be like kind of daggers or large hammers or swords. And it wasn't quite one hit kill, but it was dang near close yeah there was no life bars and the way kills worked was kind of like well if you got hit in the leg

that's how it would hurt you would do a lot of damage and if you got hit in the head yeah you would just be dead if you got struck twice you would be completely KO'd yeah and you could like throw dirt in people's eyes you could throw your weapon but then you were out a

weapon if somebody you know chopped your arm you suddenly had to change your stance uh and it captured that thing that is so awesome in samurai films that i would i really wanted from um what was that the the samurai game on the the PlayStation 4 or 5 that everybody loved? Ninja Gaiden? No. That's ninjas. That's not samurai. Oh, my gosh.

It was the big open world game from the studio in the Pacific Northwest. Anyway, it'll come to me before the end of the episode. Oh, Ghost of Tsushima. Ghost of Tsushima. The first time we saw a trailer for that, they kind of showed a hint of this idea, which is a samurai showdown is mostly two people staring each other down and you're watching their hands grip the sword and you're watching their feet adjust to each other and then somebody makes a big move and either it's countered or it's not

and like that's most of the fight yeah um and that that's what this game is do i think uh ghost of tsushima would have been good if they had actually done that no probably not that probably actually is not a great way to make a game as an open world action game that appeals to lots of people but bushido blade it was just so cool to have a fighting game that rewarded patience and confidence yeah where you really did have an advantage if you could just keep your chill um and let somebody come at you and then just sidestep them and get them with one good swipe uh it rules there is somewhat of like a spiritual predecessor out on steam now

have you did you play that game no uh it's good i'm trying to remember its name i don't know it'll come to me i'll tweet about it uh but yeah there really hasn't been a standout game like it ever since and i kind of just assume that we'll never see another bushido blade that it's caught up in that same sort of like i don't know limbo of rights that a lot of games from that period are where even if we wanted to get another one it wouldn't be able to happen um that game by the way i just remembered hellish court ah if you want that there was also um versions of this with um deadless world's deadliest warrior was that what it was called? Deadliest Warrior? Yeah. Yeah, they made two of those for Xbox

Live Arcade, I think. They were fine. You could be Genghis Khan and chop people's arms off. Anyway, great game. Next to zero influence beyond itself, but I would be remiss if I didn't encourage

people to give it a try. Anything else you're playing and or watching um nothing that really stands out i think uh yeah we we obviously talked about a lot of different games on besties which has been keeping my attention uh i did play some deep rock galactic with justin and griffin for a little bit so we'll talk more about that i think on besties this coming besties nice so i i really need to make time with y'all very interesting game um and i watched when worlds collide last night i don't know what that is this movie from 1951 and it is an absolute trip the premise is that a sun and not our sun a different sun a star if you will is barreling directly towards planet earth that seems bad and it also has another planet that is orbiting it that is basically

also an earth like it has like a breathable livable climate in it and uh yeah it's about the end of the world and whether or not they can build an arc to fly off of our planet at the last second and land on the new earth to kind of basically swap seas yeah um and let me tell you for a movie from 1951, it goes for it. All right. Uh, really commits to the bit was not prepared for it to go as dark as it does. Uh, so it's great. And if you love kind of like schlocky B movie, visual aesthetics and practical effects, I

think you'll like it a lot. I was, I was really tickled and honestly like pretty tense, which is another thing I did not expect from a movie that is effectively about how we should bleed Elon Musk of all of his money to fund a means of getting off of this planet. But then maybe not invite him. So, yeah. Cool hang. Did we do it? Did we do an episode? Yeah, we did it.

We crushed it. Well, friends, that's it. Did we do an episode? Yeah, we did it. We crushed it. Whew. Well, friends, that's it. That's been another episode of The Besties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. I'm Chris Plant. I'm Russ Frustick. You are Russ Frustick. And this is it.

Yeah, you screwed it up, because you normally do the outro after the names. But that's okay we'll let it roll resties resties