I guess I'll start mine then. And we'll be starting off with a pretty obscure title--at least in my group of friends.
25. Stuntman
Released: June 2002
Platform: PS2, Gameboy Advance
Developer: Reflections
Publisher: AtariThe game was pretty unique at the time. I remember the day my brother bought it, I had bought Spider-Man The Game, which had come out a few months before. I was watching him play it and just watched him get frustrated with it. We were really young at the time, but even today when I play it, it's an extremely frustrating yet rewarding game when you get the scenes right.
The basic plot of the game is that you play as a new stuntman who takes on a variety of films where you have to perform the stunts for the movies. Movies include: Toothless In Wapping, a London based gangster film; A Whoopin' and a Hollerin', a Dukes of Hazard-like film; Blood Oath, a Tokyo, Jet-Li inspired movie; Conspiracy, a techno-thriller film; The Scarab of Lost Souls, like Indiana Jones; and Live Twice For Tomorrow, a James Bond parody. Each of these movies has similar stunts that need to be performed, but each scene features different cars that each handle differently.
The cars are single-handedly the most frustrating part of the game. They handle sluggishly, they are slow, and sometimes don't seem like they respond to the controller very well. But that problem makes the game very rewarding all things considered because when you master the stunts and the scenes, you really feel like you accomplished something. Take for instance a scene in the second movie. You drive a General Lee like car and have to drive it off a bridge and onto a moving train, ride on that for a while, and then off the train into a tight parking lot back onto the train tracks to avoid two oncoming trains. It may sound confusing, but when you are performing those stunts in a row with the director calling out the stunts going at high speeds, it's a lot to process. It was basically Driver controls and graphics with a director yelling at you.
One of my favorite aspects of the game was the Stunt Creator, which gave you the cars from the movies as well as a few bonus cars, all kinds of stunt items like the 360 ramp, flaming hoops and banks of buses--a regular old Evil Knievel setup. I would spend hours playing around with this and would create different setups. I would also just spend time destroying the cars as I saw fit--they damaged quite nicely as you could lose the tires, doors, engine, etc.
I think nostalgia is the biggest thing with this game. It wasn't FANTASTIC by any means, but I have very fond memories of it. Passing the controller around with my brother as we both got frustrated with it--these memories make me smile. After each movie was completed, they had a trailer made for the movie with scenes interspersed with the stunts you filmed. The trailers were pretty good, but the implementation of the scenes was poorly done, but that was part of it's charm.
In 2007 or 2008, THQ released a sequel for the game where the sluggishness was corrected and there was more to do, but for me, it didn't play the part very well--Part of Stuntman's charm was the sluggishness and toughness and that's why it will forever be one of my favorite PS2 games.
Gameplay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPrODqp6esY (Oh, and the load times were ridiculous
)