Some games fall into a category I call “mystical”. These games inspire the imagination and there seems to be more to the world than what you can see at face value. One of exemplary game series are that of the character Rayman. Just look at Rayman himself, he has no arms or legs, so his body parts just float! When I first played the demo for the Dreamcast version of Rayman 2 at nine years old, I knew it was something special. Though strangely, I didn’t really play Rayman 2 until this year. Perhaps it’s because when I rented Rayman 1 many years ago, I was put off by the crushing difficulty. Thankfully that’s not the case with the second one.
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I love looking at games from what amounts to the puberty of video games, there's so many things to talk about. Transitioning to 3D was an awkward time for video games. Many 3D games of the era had what are commonly referred to as "tank controls" -- You turn your character left and right, and then you move forward and backwards. You never performed these actions at the same time, until Super Mario 64. SM64 changed how 3D controls were thought of, thanks in part to the analog stick on the N64 controller.
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I absolutely love the Doom games, it's a close contender for my favorite game series. I love to get more Doom whenever I can, and thanks to all the mods and addons constantly being created that's never a problem. The guys at id Software felt the same way, they wanted more Doom even as they were making it. This is why they were very open to the modding community, and very open to licensing their engine to other companies. Midway handled the console ports of Doom to the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn. However, when it came to the Nintendo 64 they decided to not just port the game and go with something more original. Originally titled Absolution, they went with the much less cool name of Doom 64.
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On a platform dominated by Mario, Zelda, and a ton of great Rare platformers, Mystical Ninja was not a game that got a lot of press, but it was a great parody of Japanese action stories. A action-adventure game set in ancient Japan, Mystical Ninja starts off with a UFO crashing in the town of Edo. You start off the game playing as Goemon: a blue-haired ninja that wields a pipe. At any time you can switch to his best friend Ebisumaru, who is also a ninja, albeit a little on the overweight side. The self-titled Ninja of Justice wields hammers that are very useful for dispatching the game's various enemies. They begin their adventure exploring the crash site at [Oedo] Castle, only to find it full of monsters and villains. There, they meet a character called the "Baron", who planned to turn the castle into a "beautiful stage". From there, the game takes you all over Japan in an effort to stop "The Gang of Four". On the way, you meet Goemon's friends Sasuke and Yae, both ninjas with their own awesome moves and abilities.
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