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Mario Kart (after Warlords on the Atari 2600 or MULE on the Atari 8-bits with 4 players) is my favorite group game. It just has the fun feel, and hearing the various characters screaming or victory yells is hilarious.



Other than Mario Kart my go-to would be N64's Goldeneye. That thing was a masterpiece in so many ways.


I also played a ton of goldeneye when I was around 10 years old, so I get where you are coming from and it pains me to be the bearer of bad news but that game is ... so bad.

That doesn't mean it wasn't fun. It doesn't invalidate the good times we had. But there is so much about that game (from the controller itself, to the control layout, to the gameplay) that just does not hold up. N64 Goldeneye is a clunky, hard to play, unbalanced mess.

It was a ton of fun, and I wouldn't trade the experience of playing it for anything; but it is not a 'masterpiece'.

Mario Kart 64 is, even by modern standards, a good game, but calling that a masterpiece would mean we need to come up with a classification higher than masterpiece for Mario Kart 8.


Please don't forget that Goldeneye had several controller layouts. Personally, I thought the default one was terrible, and I always used "1.2 Solitaire" which was copied from another N64 Title, Turok. In 1.2, the stick is used to look, which felt much more natural for an FPS. And while in "aim mode", it allowed finetuning the aim very quickly too.


I also played a lot of Goldeneye multiplayer as a kid. My memories of it are far fonder than more recent plays on emulators! That said, I learned through a comment a couple years ago on HN that Goldeneye's multiplayer mode was a total afterthought, not really supported by the publisher and more or less done by one guy (or at least a very small team) in a month or two. Pretty incredible, considering its kind of the grandfather of local multiplayer first person shooters. I don't think its fair to hold it up against many other games that jumped off its shoulders.

If you haven't, I recommend checking out the story on Goldeneye!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldenEye_007_(1997_video_game...


It's not bad, it's actually got some of the best game design and multiplayer options that the steep learning curve (or clunky / hard to play factor as you call it) for a console FPS shooter. A couple major faults (Oddjob) but great level design I think redeems it a whole bunch.

I'll stand by it, because later I went on to be a Half-Life and Adrenaline Gamer hardcore player, and HLDM's complexity with the long jump and tau cannon required a lot of study and practice for most. Goldeneye was a good trainer for that.


So was Quake.

I maintain that HLDM stands amongst the best of Multiplayer shooters: Up there with Quake, Q3A, CPMA, and UT.


Yeah I knew a lot of the Quake and Q2 guys in our circle, definitely quite a high-tier game. We had fun with Q3 but it was definitely a less brutal take on FPS skill than Q2 in my opinion. I swear HLDM was the absolute best because at first when the Tau Cannon could splash damage through walls and arc around corners, there was no other weapon like it in any game. Later Valve patched it down and whatnot, which made it easier on (1)Player population but was frustrating as it mandated a playing style change somewhat.


Q3 was arguably less brutal, although its rockets actually moved, which was nice. This lack of brutality is why CPMA was devised, which brought back the brutality and advanced movement tactics in full force.

I really don't swear by Q3 or HLDM: Although I do swear at them a lot. My preference is either Quake 1 or Xonotic, which is like Quake meets UT, and lowers the floor on advanced movement so plebs like me don't get totally stomped the first time they log on (we still get stomped, just not impossibly fast).

I love them all, which probably means I'm a masochist or something.


Whereas Quake and Quake 3 actually are masterpieces: to this day, they are the multiplayer shooters against which all others are judged.

Another masterpiece would be the Megaman 2: It's one of the best platformers out there, and there's been nothing like it before or since.


The controls are the only way I'd play a console shooter. It does come with same game play and level design restrictions though.


Goldeneye is an amazing game which I hope is ported. Perfect Dark was pretty good when played in multi-player. It pretty much was a Goldeneye sequel at that point.


Unfortunately, there's a lot of licensing issues. It was pretty much ported to the 360, but legal reasons kept it from being released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRRuhviJGMQ


It really doesn't hold up these days. Perfect Dark is still playable though.


> Perfect Dark is still playable though.

Especially the version on the Xbox360, or, as I call it, "that big white box I own solely to play Perfect Dark on". A straight port with upgraded graphics, better framerate, modern controls, and (or perhaps this one I'm imagining) subtly rebalanced difficulty to account for those other changes. Nothing like that garbage trying-to-be-Call-of-Duty-and-failing-miserably Goldeneye reimagining a few years back.

Still unmatched in terms of gameplay options. Coop single player, versus(!) single player, the great multiplayer of course. The way the difficulty settings changed objectives and even starting location(!) in addition to damage values and AI. The fun "cheats" you unlock with speedruns. Brilliant game.


Yeah, it's mine too, followed by Xonotic/Quake. It's semi-luck based, which just makes it more fun for MP.

Doom is also a good one.


Thinking about it the Warcraft series when they were RTS was a pretty amazing LAN party game. Marathon on the Mac also.


Goldeneye for me. It would be amazing if this new console could play 'retro' games.


> Warlords on the Atari 2600

Wow, now that is a great multiplayer game. One of the few video games that my whole family played together (the other being 'Where in Time is Carmen San Diego' for the NES).

Very nice to see it mentioned here! It is a huge classic.


Man, with reccomendations like that, I might just have to grab a copy and give it a go.


We played it when it was long past its prime in the dorms at college in 88-89. A 4 player game that was addictive, short and generated a lot of trash talk and claims of the one true technique. I think if you can design games so easily accessible you are doing well.

Functionally, it filled the niche that would be occupied by Mario Karts, Goldeneye, M.U.L.E., and Perfect Dark. 4 player head-to-head games that were simple to understand and fun to play repeatedly.


Ba-Bomb Blast on the GameCube was my favorite, i never got that setup for the Wii, as i had the GameCube controllers for a while, but couldn't find the GameCube Game... if i remember correctly, they were compatible.


Yeah, they were compatible: The Wii was very similar to the Gamecube, technically.




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