23Mario Kart 641996 8 characters from the series. 4 cups, 4 maps. 4 modes. Lots of fun. You know the rest.
Although I missed the Gamecube, and got something else instead, I'm always gonna be a Nintendo gamer (after a glorious-PC-master-race gamer, of course). My love started when I received a N64 when I was 4-5 years old. Just 5 games (damn third-world country), but they were enough to blow my little brain. I played thoroughly each of them, and despite spending almost afternoons with the controller on my hands (that shit was huge), there was always something new. Or at least, I never got bored of them.
I guess, because I have no memories of it, that I cried like a baby when it stopped working. And for a time, I was (almost) a normal kid who played with his friends to non-virtual games.
But it wouldn't last for much time.
22REmake2002 I was never a fan of horror games. And still are. But years ago, I gave Resident Evil a chance with RE4. And let's just say that it made me want to play the whole series. From the beginning, of course.
But the first RE on PS1 was... ugly. Crappy acting voice. Awful live-action cutscenes. The tanks controls, more like elephant controls. The mansion felt empty, with little decoration. And how boring was the OST.
But I had heard good things of the Remake, and my PC was powerful enough (just enough), to run it on an emulator. And after some hours of tweaking, updating drivers and DirectX, finding a good ROM in Spanish, blah blah blah, it was the time. It started slow, and some parts with heavy ilumination made Jill look like she was walking on a pool.
But it worked. Oh, it fucking worked. I'd spend entire afternoons going from one extreme of the mansion to another, trying to figure out what to do. And getting killed by zombies. It took me some weeks of getting frustrated and not knowing what to do (and looking for answers on walkthroughs) to finally beat it.
I couldn't believe it. Not that I never expected to finish it, but was rather surprised by another thing. How a Campcom team turned a crappy game into a fucking masterpiece. Even when I replayed it on the Wii port, it still felt magic. A kind of terrifying magic, actually. But still. Magic.
The level design, which makes the player go from one extreme of the mansion to the other after finding a small object or a key, to enter a new room. The limited ammo and ink. Save now, or maybe later? Kill the zombie, or run? It'd have seemed easier to just beat the bastard. But they added something brilliant. If you killed the zombie, when you returned to the room after a long while, it would come alive again, but stronger and faster. The only way to avoid this was either by blowing its head, or burning the corpse. And guess what? There's not enough gasoline to burn all the zombies in the game.
The bosses, the amazing variety of enemies, the huge map. Bonus and extra missions that could get you more ammo or even a Magnum. How Jill's inventory is larger than Chris', but he's the strongest. How both of them were balanced. How the team added more puzzles, and the great Lisa subplot. It is all, from a game design point of view, superb. Brilliant. This is how to make a remake.
I think the only weak point of the game is the story. It's way deeper than the original, but it still feels a bit clichéd or predictable at times. But I guess it has more to do with me being totally familiar with it.
And even up to this day, this game looks fantastic. A new HD remaster was released earlier this year, and although I haven't tried it yet, go and get it. It brings this fantastic game to the new generation, in full, glorious High Definition.