game #25

Hint 1: This game kicked off professional e-sports-leagues - in Korea.

Guessed by TruckOSaurus: Starcraft

game #24

Hint 1: This game has a diamond horse.

Hint 2: There is a quest in the game, that asks you to kill yourself.

Hint 3: Edgecountries 2.

Guessed by Liquid_Laser: Borderlands 2.

game #23

Hint 1: You probably want Ivan on your starting team.

Hint 2: You learn to know Reuban and his feat with a hedge trimmer.

Hint 3: Fidel is good with explosives and with a gun.

Hint 4: Seemingly mercenaries are a bunch of drama queens.

game #22

Hint 1: Tactical turn-based RPG on a hexgrid.

Hint 2: Level-up into an advanced class.

Hint 3: Fight with knights, mages, elves, thieves or ... merfolk?

game #21

Hint 1: Oh no! They can mind-control my troops!

Hint 2: The door is to well-guarded? Blow a new entry into the wall.

game #20

Hint 1: If I would've played this game, this should be not lower on the list than #20.

Yes it is indeed Medieval Total War.

My hints lately have been really specific lately to actual in game moments. I think that is because I don't want to do hints and a write up for the game so as to not spam, but combining them into one seems to work :). Unfortunately my 27 will probably need both as I will give my final hint for it tomorrow. Unfortunately/Fortunately that means one has to have played the actual game to answer the hints.

Civil wars only happened if you didn't do well at keeping loyalty up. And if that happens it was pretty much game over, especially on higher difficulties. As I said in the hint if a civil war happens and then all of a sudden you choose the new force, all the loyalties are changed again and immediately another civil war could happen effectively ending the game.

27 is Command and Conquer Red Alert, but not quite the right moniker. I will just give it to you though. I also had it for PS1 and mine was called Command & Conquer: Red Alert: Retaliation.

My hint was going to reference the fact that you could play some very uhhh interesting levels where you fight ants. And my previous hint already mentioned the tesla but I forgot to say that tesla tank from the cover was also exclusive to this version.

22 is Black and White?
21 is Earthbound?

Both are correct.

As guessed by TuckOSaurus, the next game is Starcraft.

Starcraft was Blizzards big success in the world of real time strategy. In many regards the game defined the genre.

In a single match you play on of three science-fiction faction, the humans or one of the two alien races Protoss or Zerg. You gather resources, build structures and create an army with which you overrun your enemy. Or not and get overrun. Each faction has specific buildings, troops and specialties.

The game had a campaign with three main chapters (one for each faction) and around 10 maps (=fights) for each chapter.

This game ate hundreds of hours of my lifetime with in LAN-Parties: playing fights with friends. It was tremenduous fun set up a map with each having similar starting conditions and battle it out. This was so much fun, that in Korea people started watching other people play. This was in my knowledge the start of professional (payed) e-sports leagues, although something earlier might exist I'm not aware of. But look, how they played in public:

With the expansion Broodwar Blizzard added some more unit-types, more maps and a new single-player campaign with similar length.

One thing you have to credit Blizzard for is the tremenduous support they offered for the game. They delivered regular pathces that fixed stuff, balanced units and so on. They also released new maps. And this for years. But also the community helped with the big success. The game contained a level-editor, and so a ton of community-made content was available. Not only own maps, but also new single-player-campaigns.

The game was back then released for Windows (I think Windows 95 or so). It was also ported to MacOS and Nintendo 64. Recently Blizzard gave the game away for free, but also releasing a remastered edition with better graphics but gameplay still intact. They also have a sequel, Starcraft II.

Starcraft: Wikipedia, MobyGames, OGDB, IGDB

Broodwar: Wikipedia, MobyGames, OGDB, IGDB

game #24

Hint 1: This game has a diamond horse.

Hint 2: There is a quest in the game, that asks you to kill yourself.

Hint 3: Edgecountries 2.

Guessed by Liquid_Laser: Borderlands 2.

game #23

Hint 1: You probably want Ivan on your starting team.

Hint 2: You learn to know Reuban and his feat with a hedge trimmer.

Hint 3: Fidel is good with explosives and with a gun.

Hint 4: Seemingly mercenaries are a bunch of drama queens.

Hint 5: You fight for honor. You fight for justice. You fight for the right thing. You fight about... trees?

game #22

Hint 1: Tactical turn-based RPG on a hexgrid.

Hint 2: Level-up into an advanced class.

Hint 3: Fight with knights, mages, elves, thieves or ... merfolk?

Hint 4: Sprites for the units on the map and comic-graphics for overlayed people in conversations.

game #21

Hint 1: Oh no! They can mind-control my troops!

Hint 2: The door is to well-guarded? Blow a new entry into the wall.

Hint 3: If the enemies make too much terror-attacks, the countries that are funding my troops will reduce their payment or even make a contract with the enemy.

game #20

Hint 1: If I would've played this game, this should be not lower on the list than #20.

Hint 2: Sword-fighting obviously is won by best banter.

game #19

Hint 1: The rebels of the dawn brigade are lead by the silver-haired girl.

#22 - Hint 2

Because while you can actually ride your bike up the vertical cliff that's supposed to be the barrier if approached under a certain angle, you'll get blown away as if shot from a canon when at the top.

22

Motocross Madness

• Windows PC
• 1998
• Arcade Racing
• Rainbow Studios Inc.

'Motocross Madness' is one of the few racing games that gave me a good time. A lot of racing-games are throwaway to me, but this one isn't. Racers almost never interest me, but probably because this particular one seemed to fail at being what it wanted to be, in a good way, attracted me towards it.

Or at least, that's what I assume. It seems that 'Motocross Madness' was supposed to be a serious motocross racer, but due the way riders crash, fly and ride in general, it creates a myriad of humorous situations. This also made for a fun multiplayer game, and it's accessibility meant getting a couple people together was an easy task. Those days are over though, but the game remains fun.

What also kept making me come back to it was the easy map-editor which was included with the game. It's probably one the best I have ever used, and making a good track and riding it is done in no time. Of course, the editor could also easily be used to troll your friends, by just making a track that only contains those annoying bumps that messes up your steering.

#21
Every main game in this series seems to have a certain "main location", though you do visit multiple, as evidenced by the box-art. This second one, seems to have most to do with an icey environment.