Blazer 31 : There's nothing legal about abandonware. Copyright law covers intellectual property for the life of the author plus 75 years. AFAIK, Nintendo is well within their rights to remove games which they hold the copyright for. The only reason that so many companies tolerate abandonware distribution is because those games are no longer sold and they have no real motivation to enter a legal battle for something they stand to make no profit off of. Unlike, say, Bungie's Marathon series, Nintendo has been porting their old games to virtual console, so ROMs could potentially hurt their sales. It absolutely sucks, but this has been a long time coming. I don't think that Vizzed has any legal recourse. 

zanderlex : It's definitely a possibility that there's something wrong with the PSP, but visually it's in very good condition. Even the silver ring on the back is only lightly scratched. When I plug it in with the charger it's able to read UMDs, read memory cards, and all of the buttons work just fine. I'm looking at the battery compartment right now and there's no evidence that a battery leaked in there and the leads all looks perfectly straight and clean. It's possible that the PSP is the problem, but the cheap knock-off battery with a reputation to fail seems like the more likely culprit. I'm not really sure how I'd go about testing if it's the PSP, either. I don't have another PSP or know anybody else with a PSP that I can test the battery on.

bigger0gamer : Yeah, it gives the same info. The official batteries are generally more expensive, and from what I've heard, many of them no longer work. Because of how old they are they're starting to bulge and get deformed. Buying an official one that's in good working condition might be a challenge.

Vanelan : I'll give it a shot, but I'm not sure that's possible. The orange charging light will stay lit for all of five minutes then turn off. If I take the battery out and put it back in again it'll turn the light on again for another few minutes. I guess I could rinse and repeat several times, but I'm not sure if it's actually charging or not. For what it's worth, if I go into the battery info page in the PSP settings it doesn't even seem to detect the battery. It says power source: external and shows dashes (--) in the other info fields. From what I can tell, that means dead battery. I'll take your advice and try leaving it plugged in for a few hours then turning it on to see what happens. Thanks for the advice.

There are so many good remixes out there that it's hard to pick. I mostly like orchestrals.

I think this remix of E.V.O. Search for Eden's overworld theme will always be one of my favorites. It's very moving.

This remix of Fisherman's Horizon from Final Fantasy 8 is pretty great.

I'd list the entirety of Vernian Process' Cave Story tribute album. Gestation is probably my favorite of the bunch. 

I recently bought a used PSP off Amazon. It came with this battery - new in packaging. It's truly terrible. I put it into my PSP, snapped in its jumbo sized battery door because it's bigger than the normal battery, and it turned on fine. I plug my PSP into my PC to transfer some files. I come back 20 minutes later to see how the file transfer is working and my PSP is turned off. I try flipping the power switch - nothing - set it to charge, flip the switch, and the PSP won't turn on. I leave it to charge for a few hours and still nothing. If I pull the battery out and plug the PSP in then it'll turn on and play normally.

The point of my long-winded post is that I gifted myself a PSP and have no battery with which to play it. I've been searching on Amazon for a replacement, but they all seem to have low ratings, meanwhile the official Sony battery, which I'd imagine is more reliable, is crazy expensive. Are there any batteries which you guys would recommend?

That's pretty sweet, congrats. With any luck those review copies will get you more views and more studios will send you games.

There are a lot of good ones here. Bastion's ending comes to mind. Admittedly, a lot of the emotion comes from the soundtrack and not the story, but hey, a gut punch is a gut punch.

Spoiler: Just before The Kid, the protagonist, recovers the last item needed to possibly reverse The Calamity, (an extinction-level event,) Zulf discovers that The Calamity was purposely created to destroy his people, The Ura. He gets pissed and destroys Bastion, (a movable base which can go back in time.) The Kid now goes to The Ura's homeland to retrieve a device to restore Bastion. Near the end of the level The Kid finds Zulf beaten bloody by his own people. The Ura were pissed because they believed that Zulf lead The Kid to them. At this point players can choose to leave Zulf to die or carry him to safety. If you leave him then you simply fight your way out of the level, killing all of the remaining Ura - genocide. If you take Zulf then the Ura archers start opening fire, but eventually stop and watch in silence as you carry Zulf to safety. Meanwhile, this track is playing. When The Kid returns to Bastion he is given a choice, use Bastion to find a paradise or use it to go back in time and possibly stop The Calamity from occurring.

Good list. With Super Mario All-Stars and Kirby Super Star in the bottom 5, I'm going to go ahead and predict that Super Mario World and Kirby in Dreamland 3 are going to be in your top five. Also, given that you haven't listed any RPGs yet, I don't think you'll be putting any RPGs in your top 10.

Here's my list:


10: Super Smash TV - a top-down shooter where you clear rooms and collect money and power-ups on a fictional TV game show. This isn't the greatest top-down shooter I've ever played, but it has a special place in my heart because I spent countless hours on it as a kid. The game is challenging, controls are responsive, and the bosses are pretty good.

9: EVO - a neat platform/action RPG where you evolve your creature by eating other creatures to earn "evo points" (experience) and spending the points to upgrade certain aspects of your character. A very cool concept, it doesn't control perfectly, but it's a blast to play and mix and match different animal parts to fit your play style.

8: The Firemen - every kid wants to be a fireman or police officer, and while there were plenty of cop games, there were relatively few firefighting games. This is easily the best firefighting game I've ever played.

7: Do Re Mi Fantasy - a fun Japanese language platform game where you have a magic bubble wand or something like that can trap enemies in bubbles. The platforming is solid and the worlds are imaginative, but some of the level designs are questionable.

6: Final Fantasy 6 - Possibly the best game in the flagship series. This game is tight tight tight.

5: Pocky and Rocky 2 - my favorite top-down shooter of all time. It looks fantastic, the music is enjoyable, the bosses are punishing, and the fact that the second player plays as one of your many possible companions, and not a clone of Pocky makes multiplayer all the more interesting.

4: Super Ghouls N Ghosts - hard as nails and supporting plenty of play styles thanks to its varied weapon selection. I've poured what must be thousands of hours into the SNES and GBA version of the game.

3: Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - I'm not sure if this is the best Zelda game, but it's up there. At this point Nintendo had just about perfected the Zelda formula and knew exactly what they wanted to do with it. Side note: Definitely play the sequel, A Link Between Worlds, on the 3DS as well.

2: Super Mario World - superb aesthetic style, perhaps the most memorable across the entirety of the Super Mario Bros. franchise. Memorable music, tight controls, and Yoshi's first appearance. I hadn't actually played this until about a decade ago, but it skyrocketed in my standings past every other Mario game I had played. Everything about it felt right. I could've just as easily made this post Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World since they came bundled on a cartridge, but that felt kind of like cheating. Super Mario All-Stars is also an excellent port of the NES Mario games.

1: Chrono Trigger - We all knew it would come to this. How can there be a top ten SNES list without including perhaps the best RPG of all time? Great story, graphics, and music. The combat mechanics were damn near revelatory. Enemies and allies move around the battlefield? Who'd have thunk? The idea that different abilities affect the battlefield in different patterns and that you can combine your characters' moves depending on their position on the battlefield was a stroke of genius.

So there it is. It's important to note that the SNES has a great number of fantastic games, and there are a great number of other titles which could have easily ended up on the top ten list. While this is the list I chose to post today, if you asked me tomorrow it's possible that I would've posted a completely different list, or put the same games in a different order depending on my mood. Trying to choose the best among over 100 truly outstanding and memorable games is incredibly difficult.

I'm very fond of Dungeons of Dredmor. It's a solid roguelike and has some really good humor. The mod support is really nice as well. The community has created countless skills and new types of rooms.

I recently got Brogue on my iPad. Unlike Dredmor, it has ASCII graphics. At first it was a bit of an adjustment, but now that I'm used to it I hardly notice the lack of graphics.

Cardinal Quest 2 is pretty fun, if someone simplistic, as well. I play it between classes.

I tried Nethack, but I got frustrated with it. At the time I was new to roguelikes and ASCII games so I was a little overwhelmed. I should probably revisit it considering that the game is considered one of the best in its genre.

I've had my eye on The Curious Expedition since I played it on its free weekend a month or two ago. It's still in early access, but what's there is already pretty great.

Besides those I really like what are sometimes called "roguelites" It's a game that has some of the features of roguelikes - usually procedurally generated levels and permadeath - but lack others (like being an RPG.) FTL, The Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy, Don't Starve, and Spelunky are all worth checking out.

Certainly entertainment, but also just to kill time. I end up finding myself playing some games not because I enjoy them, but because what else am I going to do?

Gamers are frequently accused of engaging in escapism, and I used to argue that, but the more I think about it, the more I agree. We do. When you play an MMO do you refer to your character as a character or as an extension of yourself? I've never heard someone say "heal my character," it's always "heal me." Unlike people who point this out, however, I don't think that this is unique to video games. Books are frequently written in the first person, when people watch movies they cry for the characters, etc. The escapist nature in gamers is an inherent part of human nature. It's called empathy.

Square is still making quality games, they just aren't Square or Enix games. Most of their quality titles over the past few years have been Eidos IPs. As to why Final Fantasy games aren't good anymore, that's hard to say. It's possible that Square just doesn't care anymore, but it seems more likely that we older Square fans have just been left behind. FF13 and its sequels had a sizable following, and I think that we're just in the minority that didn't like it. For what it's worth, their other RPG series are still very good. FF14 has a large following and is considered very good post-reboot, Chaos Rings is one of the best video game experiences on mobile, and Bravely Default is a wonderful throwback. I would like to say that Dragon Quest is still worthwhile, but I wouldn't know because Square hasn't localized it anywhere for some reason. If you can stand playing in Japanese then Dragon Quest X is a solid MMO.

Since Chrome support is coming back with the next plugin update, DOS games would probably be the best thing to add moving forward. It has a massive number of games, they have small file sizes, and many of them are abandoned so there's little chance of retaliation. It seems like a prime target.

It stopped because we're now up to Chrome 45, which is when Google said they'd be completely eliminating NPAPI support.

Is new inherently better? Certainly not, but it has the potential to be better. Take Metal Gear Solid 5 as an example, it is able of doing things which, a decade ago, would've been totally gimped, if not impossible to achieve. 

As for the current gen consoles, they're alright at the moment. I don't have a problem with the controllers or interface, and the libraries will grow over time. The interface and controllers can be changed later. Remember, the 360 dashboard saw a major overhaul in 2010. Similarly, the PS1 saw three controllers: the original, Playstation Analog, and Dualshock. Then the PS3 saw two official controllers: the SixAxis and Dual Shock 3.

The nice thing about current gen hardware is that there's always the potential for change, whereas past hardware is set in stone. If there is something you don't like then let the company know and they might fix it after a certain number of complaints.

This is a fantastic feature. Up to now I've agonized over whether to buy X or Y, but now it doesn't really matter too much. A short video is a small price to pay so that I can continue saving toward the PlayStation and accelerator.

Adventure - 17
Comedy - 20 (+1)
Fantasy - 10
Science Fiction - 14 
Superpower - 3 (-2)

happiness7 : I never really considered it, though it doesn't surprise me. I've never been a big fan of offensive items in RPGs. 

happiness7 : I'm well aware of that, but it's not something which should be done at the beginning of the game because you won't be able to beat enemies in a single turn then you're a sitting duck. 

Sonic 3 and Knuckles will probably always be my favorite. It was my first one, so it has nostalgia going for it. It also introduces Knuckles to the series. I also think that the Michael Jackson involvement mystery is pretty cool too.

My favorite 3D one is, no joke, Sonic the Fighters. I've only ever played it as an arcade game and it was always a blast. It was literally the only redeeming factor about the local Chuck E. Cheese.