See in Japan i feel like FFX would be that, given the reputation it still has there, but i guess the RPG boom had already slowed enough in NA by that point that it didn't quite hit the same

Ah, see i was there for early AVGN and that initial wave of knockoffs, then fell out of the space during the whole peak NormalBoots era. Thanks!

What i was getting at is, zoomers will try out the NES Classic and think that console sucked, when i think they'd have a lot more fun with the more refined action games that came in the 90s (Vice Project Doom, Shatterhand, Little Samson, Kick Master)

i mean stuff more off the beaten path in terms of creativity or just really strong mechanically (think Hagane). You also have the big RPG franchises as non-Nintendo stuff and i think e.g. FF5 is definitely interesting and underrated among the EN audience

It's more nuanced than that because even the more well-known "games for gamers" titles on the PS2 outsold most of the GC library (think FFX, Kingdom Hearts, Tekken 5, etc.), but i think the basic idea is more or less true yeah

Yeah tbc i didn't mean to imply all that was the case in Europe as i don't know that region nearly as well! i just know Sonic was even more massive there apparently, considering how many more Euro platformers tried to be like Sonic than Mario

(the Blues Brothers game is the funniest case imo)

First-person 3D platformers were never as popular in general so that tends to get overlooked, dig that game tho!

Yo i know so many people who first got into non-Smash fighting games because of Link in Soul Calibur II lol

i wonder how much of this trend can be traced to Scott the Woz, he's THE retrogaming content creator for that generation and ofc he focuses on Nintendo

Another underrated component of this imo is that the gaming press in the 2000s was *very* anti-Japan, there was a lot of talk about how their ideas were outdated and western studios were the future (what with the success of GTA, Guitar Hero, etc.)

i saw this shit like 15 years ago in the speedrunning community and it felt like a psyop to me then, all the kids in my neighborhood who played games had a PS2 and NONE of them had a Gamecube

Turns out Nintendo kids are just more likely to stay gamers as adults than the PS2 kids were!

Like all the ads attacking Nintendo, Sonic's whole presentation, and (esp important to kid me) Nintendo toning down the blood & fatalities in Mortal Kombat while Sega's version had a code to restore all the arcade gore

None of that mattered in Japan, hence the discrepancy

tbf the Megadrive got bodied harder in Japan than the Genesis did in the US, easily

They were #3 there, the PC Engine outsold it even

Also the Genesis's success in the west was heavily tied to 90s Cool(tm) in a way that comes off cringe to the kids now when you try to explain it

Yeah it's this, the PS2 kids were way more likely to be the people who get tired of video games later

It's just that the system sold so huge that the more "hardcore gamer" titles got pulled up as well (cf. Tekken 5 being a top-3 selling game in that franchise)

To go back to your original point, i feel like the N64 is similar as well wrt most people having the same favs

Mario 64, Goldeneye & Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, Mario Kart & Diddy Kong Racing, Star Fox 64, WWF No Mercy...feel like you always see these on the lists

Also coming from the competitive fighting-game scene, it's always funny for me to see how revered Brawl is with the general population

That game is basically the Great Satan in tournament circles - horribly unbalanced characters (Meta Knight) and random tripping

People tend to associate Nintendo consoles with the first-party releases, and yeah the PS2 didn't have that same kind of identity

(i'd argue this tendency actually *hurts* the NES & SNES these days, as a lot of the most interesting titles there aren't Nintendo's own)

This was a thing in the gaming magazines, G4, that kind of stuff back in the day. As someone who was there i can assure you there was a TON of talk about Nintendo being a dinosaur & dying

Really that space just had a lot of anti-Japan sentiment in general during that era

But, well, i'll just say there's a reason they landed Trent Reznor for the soundtrack (at around the mainstream peak of Nine Inch Nails, no less)

Quake was pretty much only a PC thing, so if you weren't into that side of gaming as a kid it's no surprise you wouldn't be aware of it

Like at least Doom got ported to everything in the world (including calculators eventually!)

This is, at least in part, revisionist history

People became more sympathetic to MLK once it became apparent that the alternatives were Malcolm X & the Black Panthers - you can also look at queer liberation being driven by radical actors like ACT UP

We were never in it, hope this helps

One problem is assuming all third-party voters would've gone for Clinton, when in 2016 Trump was hurt more by that! Despite all the discourse around Jill Stein, Gary Johnson got way more votes than she did...and the Libertarian Party is much much closer to the GOP ideologically

Have people already forgotten how many polling places received anonymous bomb threats? Look through the election updates and there were a ton of those, it's pretty clear what the purpose was

i'll just say:

A. This is far from new

and

B. At least the trans community isn't directly endorsing Trump/Vance, the way that certain activists (e.g. Jackie Robinson) endorsed Richard Nixon!

The way so many establishment figures have tried to destroy Mamdani suggests otherwise

i think a key disconnect here is that a lot of marginalized people value their own well-being over "democratic norms" at this point

Appealing to western liberal democracy is not going to land with people who've spent their whole lives getting fucked over by western liberal democracy

Under the microscope: E.T. Interplanetary Mission (PlayStation) In which the beloved movie alien condemns terrorism in very colorful terms

I swear this is a real screen in the 2002 E.T. game for PlayStation.

32bits.substack.com/p/under-the-...

Also i really connect with the Minutemen's whole "econo" approach to life, i.e. living as cheaply as possible and not chasing the bag

Even though i understand it's not feasible for a lot of folks to do that these days, i can't help but be attached to that ethos

Been reading through Our Band Could Be Your Life (long, long overdue for me!), so i might post anything i found interesting here

For instance, apparently Huntington Beach has been asshole jock world since at least the 80s - guys there were known for going to punk shows just to start fights!

Dokibird got an offer from one of the big Canadian parties to do something for their most recent general election, but she turned it down

Could def see it happen by then!