PixlBit

I am not seeing this on iTunes...am I jumping the gun?

It should be on there now. I slept in and forgot to update the feed. 

Stage Select

3. Rainbow Six Patriots - Patriots looked like it was going to be a tactical single player FPS with an intense story, but we got the multiplayer-only Rainbow Six Siege instead.

2. Prey 2 - I just wanted another weird sci-fi shooter that connected with the first Prey, and now we're getting a shiny reboot that I doubt will have any of the 70's hard rock blue jeans wearing native american personality of the original.

1. Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 3 - they started work on this but Black Isle Studios ran out of money and couldn't retain the Dungeons & Dragons license. This is one of the franchises that got me into RPGs, and I wish I could've had more.

Chrono Crossing 1999

It was between Syphon Filter and SimCity 3000. SimCity was completely addicting, but at the same time Syphon Filter let you wield an absurdly long-range taser that could electrocute dudes until they burst into flames! I have to choose SimCity 3000. Syphon Filter was a cool shooter with some novelty mechanics that I thought were hilarious, but SimCity was the game I kept coming back to after school got out.

Reply to this podcast. Chrono Cross and top 3 cancelled games to come in another comment. (I promise, no essay this time).

Still serious about maybe having Patrick skype into my Intro Social Media class about his experience as a brand ambassador. 

Console Wars:

To answer your questions, Pat:

Yup, I meant to say Sunshine>64 for me. The first N64 game I played or was aware of was SF64 (got my N64 in '97), so I was never wowed by Mario 64. I'm not going to argue about objective quality necessarily, though I have played both recently and still prefer Sunshine, but Mario 64 doesn't have the same "wow" or nostalgia factor for me it did for others. 

And no, GCN wasn't popular because of me at my school. Trust me, I did not have that kind of social pull or power. Actually, I think Ray (non-nerd) did mention getting a GCN because of how much I talked about it, so maybe? He also mentioned he didn't like Metroid Prime which a lot of us didn't at the time, to be honest. The gameplay wasn't something we were interested in or used to at age 12. I love it now, but I preferred Fusion then.

And Julian is correct, the XBOX controller being bulky and the GCN's being just right for our tiny little hands was a big reason we didn't like XBOX. 

Chrono Cross:

I forgot I chose THPS2 for 2000, but tbh it was mainly because I played nothing else of not that year besides Spider-Man, which would have been my favorite, but I mostly played it on N64. I only saw the PSX version listen on Wikipedia.

Consumption Junction:

I haven't been to Best Buy in a while either. Hmm... still sad Hastings is gone, so now the ONLY entertainment options in Nacogdoches for books, movies, anything are GameStop, Game X Change, the Carmike 6, the bookstore downtown (not sure how that's doing), and ... Wal Mart. So not terrible, but none of those are really close to each other and I never really go to the bookstore. 

The flying pigs of Tera sound awesome. but I don't like MMOs. And is mount referring to an in-game saddle? To hell with even a penny for that if that's the case. 

I'm with Patrick as far as For Honor. I thought the combat was really simplistic and rock paper scissorsy when I played the beta.

Oh, and I loved Street Sk8er! The fact the CD would play in CD players was cool. Favorite song from that one was "All My Friends Are Metalheads" by Less than Jake.

Stage Select: My top 3 cancelled games.

1. Earthbound 64 (Mother 3 prototype): This is always the one that hurt the most. It looked great for the late 90s, coming close to Final Fantasy VII, and would have helped to fil a huge need for RPGs on the N64. Sadly, it was a 64DD game, and instead of converting it to a cartridge game - which would have been feasible late in the N64's life cycle, given that they were able to stuff Resident Evil 2 into a 64MB cartridge -  they gave up on it and ended up releasing it on the Game Boy Advance instead. I guess by that point I had completely moved on to the PS1, but I would still have loved to play it. Hopefully the GBA Mother 3 will make it out on the Switch.

2. Mega Man Legends 3: It sounds sacrilegious, but Mega Man Legends was the only part of the Mega Man franchise I ever really got into. I had the first game on PS1 and have since downloaded MML2 and The Misadventures of Tron Bonne on PSV TV. This game looked awesome and it was frustrating how Capcom just pulled the plug on the project.

3. Socks the Cat Rocks The Hill: Honestly, a game starring the then First Cat sounded interesting, even more so when the team released the ROM online.

Chrono Crossing:

My favorite game of 1999 was Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. I wanted Lunar ever since I saw the ads for the Sega CD version, and I was excited when the clerk at Electronics Boutique told me it was being remade and released, and on the PS1 instead of the Saturn no less. I would probably have bought a Saturn just to play it though. The other games of 1999 I enjoyed were Final Fantasy VIII and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.

https://soundcloud.com/joe-mike-step/99-problems

Chrono Crossing 1999

For me it was a tie between Ape Escape and Ridge Racer Type 4. Ape Escape was the very first time in my life that I purchased a newly released video game. I felt like I had finally caught up to everyone else instead having to buy games that were a year or two older.

I played that game to death for well over a year and it stands of one the best plaformers on the PlayStation (in my humble opinion).

Ridge Racer Type 4 has gotten plenty of accolades over the years, so I won't waste time gushing over it. But my best memory of that game was when my brother brought it home and we saw the intro movie for the time. The first few seconds were so impressive that we thought he somehow got the wrong game.

R4 represented a suave style in racing that Namco has never quite been able to nail again, which was really disappointing to see when I played RR 5 on the PS2.

Great podcast again. I got you Julian, I will not miss my chance to glorify my favorite game of all time. It's the only reason I stumbled into NWP which has become a favorite of mine.

Once I realized I'd be sticking with NWP for the long haul, I did a quick inspection of my entire collection for possible Chrono Crossing candidates. I then used a quick Google search to get their release dates. Before submitting I tend to hit Metacritcs best games of whatever year to nail down my final choice in case I missed something. I had Chrono Cross under 1999 initally because Google gave me the Japan release date. So with that technicality in mind...

Chrono Crossing 1999: Chrono Cross

Easily my favorite game of 1999 (based on the Japan release date) and even my favorite of all time. Without it I don't think I'd be here listening to NWP which would be a shame. I've replayed Chrono Cross enough times to see all endings and collect everything. It was my first trip into RPGs which may be why I'm so nostalgic for it. I remember seeing the commercial for it. The cutscenes and music grabbed me and I knew I had to have it based off nothing else. I can still recite the opening poem since I'd watch the whole opening cutscene before starting the game every time. I would even sit down the controller while I listened to "Another World" play in the background constantly. I realize it isn't perfect, especially as years have passed, but it's still the game I remember most fondly. I know I'll be replaying it well into my old age.



Hope I'm doing stage select right. I wasn't sure if it was for games never released that we saw were in development or something rumored could be sufficient as well.

Stage Select:
3. Ura Zelda:

A recent article reminded me of this. It was going to be an expansion to Ocarina of Time. At the time I had replayed OoT at least a dozen times and couldn't put it down. The idea of new content was making me anxious. The Master Quest was supposedly the end result of Ura Zelda but, while great, was disappointing because it lacked true new content. 

2. Metroid Dread:
The hints of another side scrolling Metroid game had me salivating. Especially since it was going to be the first to take advantage of my lovely DS. Unfortunately, it never manifested into a game we could all enjoy. At least Metroid Prime: Hunters gave us our DS Metroid fix, right? Prime Pinball? Federation Force, maybe...

1. Chrono Break:
The game I still hold onto with the sliver of hope that it'll come. Not long after playing Chrono Cross, I read news about Squaresoft copyrighting the name of something called Chrono Break. It immediately jumped to the top of my, "MUST HAVE" list and I waited very impatiently for ANY news I could get on it. Every E3 that passed without even a name drop drained my soul little. That said I do believe that there may be a day where Square brings back the Chrono series.

First off, Pokemon Gold/Silver is not the same game as RBY, they have a different region with different gyms, 100 new Pokemon, and after you beat it you can go through the area and gyms from the last game. 

Stage Select:

3. Scalebound- Very new on this list, but a Monster Hunter inspired game where you have your own dragon and combat by Platinum Games is too cool an idea to see die like that.

2. Kirby Gamecube- I really wish Nintendo pulled the trigger and made the jump to 3D for Kirby with this game. What they showed off for the cancelled Gamecube game looked fantastic and over a decade later Kirby is still 2D only.

1. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3- The first two are my favorite games ever and I know this had to have been at least in planning at some point after 2's cliffhanger ending. TOR has its fans, but I'm not an MMO guy and didn't even care to play far enough to see what happened to Revan and the Exile and just looked it up on Wiki. And it was really lame.

Chrono Crossing:

My 1999 pick is Crash Team Racing (heads up: my picks are going to get very predictable these next few episodes and probably annoy Julian a lot). In some ways it still hasn't been topped such as with its awesome story mode. It takes a lot of a racing game to get my GOTY, but this game was just that good.

I never got excited about Horizon Zero Dawn because I don’t have confidence in the developer, Guerrilla Games. They have a really spotty track record, in my opinion. Take their previous game, Killzone: Shadow Fall. Everyone agreed that it was a really pretty game…but also pretty boring and that’s kind of the sense I’m getting about Horizon. Oh, it’s gorgeous—those robot dinosaurs do look awesome—but it sounds like a pretty rote open world game, with the side quests being one of the biggest offenders. Aside from them being super generic, I’ve read several reviews where they talk about how helping strangers actually goes against who Aloy is as a character. But if you want good side quests (I’m looking at you, Patrick), definitely check out Gravity Rush 2, a great PS4 exclusive that has really flown under the radar for most people. There are a gob of side quests but they are all framed so differently that even when you’re doing the same kind of thing, mechanically, it feels like a different experience. I’m just finishing it up and it’s been a really, really good game. I’m normally not a completionist but I’m going for the Platinum on this one because I’ve just been enjoying it so much.

Stage Select

3. TimeSplitters 4

I never played the first TimeSplitters game, which was more or less a multiplayer-only early PS2 game by the people who made Perfect Dark (after they left Rare; that is why Perfect Dark Zero sucked). TimeSplitters 2 made it to the GameCube (where I played it) and it had an awesome campaign—with co-op!—in addition to the great multiplayer. It just didn’t have much of a story. The third game, Future Perfect, was the total package: Fantastic co-op campaign with a legitimately funny story and great multiplayer. Even had online play for the PS2 and Xbox kids. I struggle to say anything bad about it. But I guess it didn’t sell very well, unfortunately, and the developer went on to make Haze, which wasn’t very good, and then Crytek bought them. Crytek, to their credit, looked into letting them make TS4 anyway but the project was officially cancelled in 2012. The world is a bleaker place now without TimeSplitters.

2. Metroid Dread

We really don’t know much about Dread other than it was going to be in 2D on the DS but man, I am hungry for some classic Metroid. The name is also really evocative. What does “dread” refer to?

1. Mega Man Legends 3

I played Mega Man Legends last year and other than the archaic, pre-analog controls, it held up really well. What hurts about Legends 3 being cancelled is that Capcom never said that was a possibility. It was finally in development and the community was involved and NOW we’re going to cancel it. Wait, what? If memory serves, Keiji Inafune left Capcom after development had started and I wonder if it was at least partially an “f--- you” from Capcom management to Inafune. Whatever the case, it sucks. I suspect I will rather like Legends 2 and I already know that poor Mega Man Volnutt winds up stuck on the moon at the end. He’s still up there…

Chrono Crossing: Jet Force Gemini (N64)

I was sold on Jet Force Gemini from the moment I saw it on that promotional video Nintendo Power sent out about it (it shared that VHS tape with Donkey Kong 64). Two playable characters, a bunch of weapons, multiple planets and space ships to explore, secrets to find including entire secret levels…it was a meaty campaign! The multiplayer was a lot of fun too. The one thing that dragged it down was Rare’s blasted insistence on collectables. The main victim of the evil bad guys was a race of teddy bear-like aliens and there were some of these bears in every level that you could save. But the only way to get to the final boss, you discover at the end, is to use the special teddy bear alien spaceship…and they won’t let you unless you save all their cuddly brothers. Dang it, Rare! That was too much for me in those days of internet infancy (seriously, kids have it so easy these days) and I never beat the game. A couple years later I found out one of my friends had the player’s guide but when I went back to finish the game, guide in hand, I discovered that all the save data had somehow been erased. And so I STILL have not finished that game and probably never will but I sure had a good time with that game back in the day.

So, recording episode 108 was a nightmare. You'll hear why when the episode goes live. Somehow, I didn't see the last couple comments on here, and I forgot to integrate Super Step's audio comment. I'm really sorry about that. We love everyone's submissions, and I hate that I missed some again. It shouldn't happen again. 

You should hit the last couple comments at the top of the next episode, so you can start with a clean slate and clear conscience. Just sayin'...

Good idea!