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Forums - Gaming Discussion - 1994, Game of the Year

 

1994, Game of the Year

Tekken 2 2.17%
 
Doom II 2 2.17%
 
Warcraft 3 3.26%
 
X-Com 2 2.17%
 
Sonic 3/Sonic and Knuckles 5 5.43%
 
Donkey Kong Country 18 19.57%
 
Earthbound 6 6.52%
 
Final Fantasy VI 21 22.83%
 
Super Metroid 29 31.52%
 
Other (please specify) 4 4.35%
 
Total:92
SvennoJ on 12 October 2023
S.Peelman said:

Fun to read.

You are older than me so you remember this all much better than I, and the Amiga was before my time altogether, but even I still have some vague memories of how it was a little like this from when I was a child a little later.

Also, 300 Guilders rent including utilities.. I know you've been away for a while now but let me tell you, today you couldn't even rent a closet without utilities for that kind of money!

It was an exception back than as well already. I lived in Uilenstede at the time, in Amstelveen on the border with Amsterdam. It's a student campus where I lived on the 12th floor with 14 others sharing the same kitchen. The room was 3x4 meters, with a hallway and your own bathroom.

Six of us got together to get ADSL internet in 1999 and install LAN network on our floor so we were sharing internet and playing games together in LAN. No wonder I didn't want to leave and so much better than dial up was lol. That dial up fiasco was actually in the last year I lived there. The old subscription was up, something went wrong in their system while getting a new subscription and KPN told me they couldn't 'fix' it for a year until their billing cycle had come around. Customer service in The Netherlands was (is?) a joke, getting to Canada was a revelation in that regards. So I switched back to dial-up for the last year (2001) I lived there.

Another reason to stay there was my love for movies at cinema volume. Living underneath the runway approach for Schiphol with other students that generally didn't complain about noise was the perfect excuse to crank the volume up. Twister with speakers meant for much bigger rooms on a 150 watt 7 channel amplifier was awesome!

The alternative was finding a place in Amsterdam where I got an offer to buy a loft for 450K Euros in Amsterdam Zuid or rent a small apartment for 800-900 Euros a month. So I just stuck it out in Uilenstede while saving up my money to buy a house in Canada. CAD 130K was what my first house cost us (about 94K Euros) and good thing I had saved up because I didn't have any credit score here yet so we had to pay 1/3rd up front as down payment to get a mortgage. Just under 35K Euros. Ah my first house, still looks pretty much the same

I bought a house before getting a car lol. Coming from Amsterdam and living across from a supermarket, I just used my bike to get around. My wife (then engaged) borrowed her parent's car until we could comfortably afford our own car a few years later. I never liked debts so we paid the house of as fast as we could, using the max yearly extra payments we could do. (Mortgage is not tax deductable in Canada like it is in The Netherlands, which imo is why the house prices got so out of hand in The Netherlands)



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Jaicee on 12 October 2023
SvennoJ said:

I had to pay for my own internet and phone bill as well. I played Everquest from 1999 on, first on dial up. So that was $9.89 a month originally for the EQ subscription (989 studios publisher), paying for ISP access (35 guilders a month), plus paying local phone costs which Everquest drove up to avg 200 guilders a month. Then you had to buy the expansions separately as well. So about $1,400 a year to play Everquest before expansions. $2,380 in today's money.
Plus I was playing on a 9,000 guilder PC at the time. About $4,000 back then, now $6,800.

But it was all possible because I got a good job while still living in cheap accommodations right out of university. My living costs were 10% of my gross income. My rent was 300 guilders a month ($136 at the time) including utilities. I didn't have much though, but enough to play games in!

Btw I always find it funny Americans complaining about sales tax. It was 19% for us in 1999, nowadays it's 21% in Europe! I live in Ontario now where it's 13%. But I also remember getting 6.5% interest on my standard bank account back then...

There are still some people keeping the tradition going


Most screens had this running


Sweeeeeeeet! I mean about your setup and the peeps still keeping such a cool tradition alive (), not the expense, fucking yikes!! I could never have afforded that in my life. I guess the sales tax here feels pricey to me 'cause I don't really make that much money and because it just seems unnecessary. Why not a system of progressive taxation that's rooted in people's ability to pay? Well, public policy opinions aside, I actually wound up getting most of my Super NES (and also Genesis, Neo Geo, Jaguar CD, and 3DO, old NES, and other games of this general era) games in a single clearance sale at a FuncoLand that went on for months from 2002 well into '03. It was the closeout period before their full rebranding as Game Stop. They massively discounted a ridiculously extensive library of classics for all kinds of older systems that they had left over to the point where you could acquire all but the rarest and most prized of titles for like $10 or less. Thinking I might never get another chance like this, I shot the wad on my first sighting of the clearance tables. Fortunately, the sale continued for many more months and I was able to repeat visits. By the time it was all over and Game Stop in that area was officially born, I'd acquired just about everything I'd ever wanted before from that era in gaming. One of the smartest investments I ever made!

First time I played EverQuest, which was also in '99, I enjoyed the miracle of a DSL connection which...just YaY for that! Even more luckily, I was still 17 at the time, so the basic cost of living was still being covered by my parents. I was working though and had my own income, to that end.



Jaicee on 12 October 2023
Hiku said:

 

Seeing as you have Terra as your avatar, I was looking for your post to see if you'd chose something other than FF6. And I see you did, for understandable reasons.

While I've played several games I'd describe as formative experiences, I think I only played one game that helped me take my mind of things when I really needed to, and that was Persona 3.
I don't remember particularly identifying with a character in any game, but in that case the main character being a silent protagonist did add a bit to the immersion of being in that setting and forgetting about my real life setting.

I have a question though. How much of what you described in your post did you see in Super Metroid and FF6 at the time?
Because I only played FF6 once (in 2001), and I pretty much took in everything about the story at face value, and don't remember pondering the meaning behind character's action and motivations, etc.

Perhaps as a result, FF6 didn't make a strong impression on me. I had a friend who had it as their favorite game at the time, and I played it for that reason.
But what I got out of it was a good FF game that didn't really stand out much compared to the ones I had already played. I liked Celes quite a lot in terms of design, but sadly I don't remember much about her story. I think my only real negative opinion of the game was disagreeing with how Kefka turned out in the 2nd act.

I thought he was a very interesting and menacing villain before that.
And due to how the story had shaped up until that point, I expected the showdown with him to involve a confrontation of ideals.

*FF6 Spoiler*

Spoiler!
But at that point he was just a mindless shell of his former self, as I recall. So it didn't feel like a satisfying confrontation to me.

 
But I do want to go back and replay the game again at some point and see if I feel differently about certain things now.

Oh Persona 3, 4, and 5 are all masterpieces, in my mind! Those rank high on any sane person's list of most and moving JRPGs ever made. For me, Persona 4 in particular.

Anyway, as to your question, at first I took FF6's story at face value until she and Locke spoke at the Returner's hideout. Their exchange was brief and to the point and didn't overstay its welcome, but something about it really got to me. Terra was talking about how there are no loved ones in her life to care about like the others around her do, seeming to just feel lost in the world, wondering what to live for. Then Locke reassures her that yes, she is capable of loving other people and that must be others who care for her. It was far from the conclusion of her character arc (closer to the beginning, in fact), but somehow it felt like, in that moment, Locke was talking to me. That's when I started to feel a special connection to Terra as a character and to Locke as well in a different way.

Maybe it's just me and the way my brain processes shit. I'm told I'm a sensitive person. Specifically, I'm told I'm too sensitive a lot. Many of the exchanges between the characters in FF6 made me tear up even back then. Even things like Cyan chasing the Phantom Train as it carries the spirits of his wife and son away that don't always get to just everyone.

As to Kefka's fate...

Spoiler!
Today's me kind of wishes for a different resolve for him too, to tell you the truth. But at the same time, I do actually read it as a contest of ideas in essence. Kefka I read as a sort of warning of how people can wind up without social connections. The whole game is about the importance of social connections.


So kind of in summary, I'd say about maybe 40% or half of what I see in the game now thematically I understood at the time. I feel like my understanding has evolved over time on many repeat plays over the decades, but there was always a foundational connection that I felt had on some level or other to Terra and Kefka in particular in different ways.

Do replay it. Your sensibilities and sensitivities are likely different at this point in life.

Last edited by Jaicee - on 13 October 2023

S.Peelman on 13 October 2023
SvennoJ said:

It was an exception back than as well already. I lived in Uilenstede at the time, in Amstelveen on the border with Amsterdam. It's a student campus where I lived on the 12th floor with 14 others sharing the same kitchen. The room was 3x4 meters, with a hallway and your own bathroom.

Six of us got together to get ADSL internet in 1999 and install LAN network on our floor so we were sharing internet and playing games together in LAN. No wonder I didn't want to leave and so much better than dial up was lol. That dial up fiasco was actually in the last year I lived there. The old subscription was up, something went wrong in their system while getting a new subscription and KPN told me they couldn't 'fix' it for a year until their billing cycle had come around. Customer service in The Netherlands was (is?) a joke, getting to Canada was a revelation in that regards. So I switched back to dial-up for the last year (2001) I lived there.

Another reason to stay there was my love for movies at cinema volume. Living underneath the runway approach for Schiphol with other students that generally didn't complain about noise was the perfect excuse to crank the volume up. Twister with speakers meant for much bigger rooms on a 150 watt 7 channel amplifier was awesome!

The alternative was finding a place in Amsterdam where I got an offer to buy a loft for 450K Euros in Amsterdam Zuid or rent a small apartment for 800-900 Euros a month. So I just stuck it out in Uilenstede while saving up my money to buy a house in Canada. CAD 130K was what my first house cost us (about 94K Euros) and good thing I had saved up because I didn't have any credit score here yet so we had to pay 1/3rd up front as down payment to get a mortgage. Just under 35K Euros. Ah my first house, still looks pretty much the same

(..)


I bought a house before getting a car lol. Coming from Amsterdam and living across from a supermarket, I just used my bike to get around. My wife (then engaged) borrowed her parent's car until we could comfortably afford our own car a few years later. I never liked debts so we paid the house of as fast as we could, using the max yearly extra payments we could do. (Mortgage is not tax deductable in Canada like it is in The Netherlands, which imo is why the house prices got so out of hand in The Netherlands)

In hindsight 450k in Amsterdam Zuid might've been a good investment depending on things, but I get what you mean lol. And yeah customer service for those type of companies is still a joke. Nowadays if you call or write the biggest telecommunications operator here, called Ziggo, about some issue with tv or internet, their standard response is basically always that there must be something wrong with your cables.



SvennoJ on 13 October 2023
S.Peelman said:

In hindsight 450k in Amsterdam Zuid might've been a good investment depending on things, but I get what you mean lol. And yeah customer service for those type of companies is still a joke. Nowadays if you call or write the biggest telecommunications operator here, called Ziggo, about some issue with tv or internet, their standard response is basically always that there must be something wrong with your cables.

Hmm not so sure, I see 51 m2 for 400K, 53 m2 475K 60 m2 for 550K. That top floor for 450K wasn't much bigger, but definitely wouldn't have lost money on it. The house we live in now has doubled in price already, there's a housing shortage in Ontario and prices have been going up a lot here. Still nothing compared to Amsterdam, but Toronto is also insane now for housing prices.

Here you call and they can have a technician over the next day, or go to the nearest store and exchange the box, or pick up new remotes for free. And they'll put new cables down as well if it's a problem with the cable. We had an issue with our cable after sewer repairs. They tore the cable up, spliced it back together but it wasn't a good splice. Technician came over to measure the signal levels, found a short and replaced the cable to the house as well as replaced the amplifier and splitter junction box inside for free. They should since Internet is expensive here! "Ignite InternetTM with download and upload speeds up to 8 gigabits per second is now available, starting at $399.99/mo!" tax not included in that lol. We pay CAD 107 tax included (75 Euros) a month for up to 150 mbps down (15 mbps up)

Ha, I just checked my old address on Ziggo "We zijn druk bezig met de aansluiting naar je woning." jeez, still not available there. Anyway I see 52 Euros a month for 400 mbps down / 40 mbps up. It's mostly for my kids though, I still stick to physical as much as possible, including (4K) blu-ray and even CDs. And Sony's download speeds are usually a lot less anyway for the odd digital game download. I did max out our connection in FS2020, photogrammetry data over London and Amsterdam is a lot of data, got to fly slow for streaming to keep up.


Did I ever think in 1994 that this would be possible in a flight sim, heck no!