Turn-based: Bravely Default. A stellar evolution of FF5 that gives you so many toys to play with, and the titular Brave/Default mechanic opens up a lot of cool ideas just by giving you flexibility in when to take your turn. Specifically BD1 and Second though, I felt like BD2 was a massive step back by trying to introduce a turn order system at the expense of no longer queueing everyone together at once.

Action: Tales. Hard to pick just one, and there are still a bunch I haven’t played, but I think I’ll go with Vesperia specifically for all the advanced tech it allowed for.

Honorable mention to CrossCode as well, but I know someone’s gonna debate whether it counts as J or if it’s just sparkling Secret of Mana.

I’'m that guy who’s been disgruntled for years about how Sega has been handling Puyo Puyo. After so many years of waiting, we finally got a new standalone game that isn’t a crossover… but they made it exclusive to Apple Arcade.

The game was so dead on arrival that if you try to play online, you simply get matched with bots. Which means Sega knew the game would be dead on arrival and tried to cover it up, as opposed to, I dunno, not taking the damn exclusivity deal then.

I primarily play competitive fighting games, so I’d just be looking for a steady stream of opponents to challenge myself against. That’s something I can grind for five years.

Damn, no multiplayer hurts like hell.

Slay the Spire - I could grind Packmaster forever. And everything else on the Workshop. And vanilla.

Stepmania - You said I have access to all existing mods and content, so I’ve basically got a trillion charts to play. Maybe I’ll even have time to actually get good at a rhythm game?

Crypt of the Necrodancer - Had to think long and hard about a third game. Been a long time since my Cadence speedrunning days, but I guess five years on a desert island might give me time to try and shoot for Coda.

I’m shy.

Learned that the people I thought were my friends… weren’t. Set off an awful chain of events that cost me my dreams.

I feel like don’t know how to make friends anymore, and I don’t know how to trust people.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Uzuki is here! I haven’t been playing much since Combo Breaker, but now I gotta boot it back up to check out the funny girl with the big hat. She’s an absolute blast to play, I just love big buttons. Streamed an open lobby night, have some highlights: 1 2 3 4 5

Splatoon 3 - Had a long session with our coach picking apart two replays from our last LUTI set, they thoroughly exposed how incompetent we all are gave us a lot of helpful advice on what our team needs to work on.

Persona 4 Golden - Still early in, finished Kanji’s dungeon. My attention’s getting split between too many other stuff but I will finish this thing eventually.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Last two weeks have been rough at the local club, I am not doing so hot in league standings. Shoulda drawn better tiles.

Summon Night Swordcraft Story - Browsing through what to play next on my Miyoo Mini Plus, just felt like revisiting an old childhood favorite. Still waiting for the third game’s translation patch…

Slay the Spire - Packmaster runs are second monitor content while I watch Youtube. Chill comfort game.

I miiiiight have had an existing list sitting around to just paste here.

Gamecube:

• F-Zero GX: It’s been over 20 years since the GOAT dropped and all we’ve had to show for it is that damn 99 game. Go play this and weep that we’ll never see another like it.
• Kirby Air Ride As a racing game, it’s okay. But City Trial mode is one of the best damn party games ever made. Check out the hack pack for extended goodies.
• Nintendo Puzzle Collection: The best version of Panel de Pon, but SNES is a close second if you wanna play on a device that can’t run Dolphin. GBC is also kinda noteworthy for having a unique singleplayer to work around platform limitations - opponents have a lifebar rather than a board. Just don’t bother with 64.
• Tales of Symphonia: This game got a PS2 rerelease with some extra content, and the HD remasters are based on that version. But the catch is that they were downgraded to 30fps, and yes that includes the so-called remaster. So I still recommend playing the Gamecube original at 60.

Wii:

• Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary: The absolute pinnacle of the series (by which I mean it’s all downhill from here, I will never forgive Sega for what came next ), crammed with a whopping 20 game modes. I really love the challenges where you have to chain under bizarre restrictions. I prefer the Wii version for its 480p assets, and it’s the easiest to emulate, but if you care about story mode the translation patch only exists for DS.

GBC:

• Game & Watch Gallery 2: Holds a special place in my heart as the first game I ever owned. Has the best lineup out of all the collections, with 3 and 4 you can kinda tell they had used up all the heavy hitters.
• Mario Tennis: An incredible tennis RPG. And Mario doesn’t even show up until the postgame as a bonus boss, which I find hilarious. Has connectivity with the N64 version if you can get that running, lets you transfer your RPG mode character and unlock more content on both titles.

GBA:

• Boktai series: These games were so near and dear to my childhood, especially 2. Really though you want the Solar Sensor hardware for the full experience, but I love these games too much not to plug them anyway. Emulating them is worth it over not playing them at all. And for the third game, you’d have to pick between original hardware or the translation patch anyway.
• Golden Sun 1/2: These games were way ahead of their time for how they designed a combat system that encourages you to use all of your tools and not just click basic Attack as if you gotta hoard your MP for a rainy day. Fantastic puzzles too.
• Mother 3: Surely you have already heard of this game and do not need me to tell you to go play it. Have you not played it by now? Why not? Well, okay, if you haven’t played Earthbound first, go do so, then play this.
• Rhythm Tengoku: A wonderful game about pressing the A button. Sometimes you press the d-pad too. Translation patch.
• Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1/2: If you’ve ever played the classic 2D Tales games, these are excellent spiritual successors to those. There’s a third game that’s JP-only, translation patch is being worked on but it’s been stuck in development hell for years…

Romhacks:

• Celeste Mario’s Zap & Dash (NES): SMB1 turned into a Metroidvania with Celeste mechanics ported in. I think what impresses me the most is that they got 4-directional scrolling into this engine.
• Super Metroid and A Link to the Past Crossover Randomizer (SNES): It’s an absolutely incredible technical feat that this even works. SM and ALttP smashed together into a single ROM, with a few doors that take you from one game to the other, then the item pools are shuffled together so you have to go back and forth to find one game’s items in the other. Unfortunately because ALttP is a much bigger game with a lot more items it kinda overshadows SM, you may not find this to be as replayable as the standalone randos. But I recommend trying it once because it’s just so cool the first time.

Arcade:

• Capcom vs. SNK 2: The Groove system is one of the coolest dynamics to tailor the game to your playstyle. Is it balanced? Hell no, but I love this game casually.
• The King of Fighters 2002: KOF fans will tell you either 98 or 02 were the absolute pinnacle. I side with 02 because it has Kula in it. Also note that 98 and 02 both have updated rereleases with an extended roster and rebalancing, but those are Windows-only.
• Puzzle Bobble 1/3: You’ve probably played some flash game clone of this. IMO I think 1 was best for its simplicity, I’m not as fond of the garbage patterns introduced in later titles in an effort to give characters some asymmetry. But PB1 does not have AI opponents, singleplayer is only the stage clear mode, so if you don’t have a human to play with try PB3 for the next best thing.
• Soldam: The singleplayer modes are nothing to write home about, but it has one of the most unique versus modes I’ve seen in a puzzler. Shared piece queues are normally horrifying, but Soldam makes it work by giving P1 the objective to match red while P2 matches blue. So if you want to snipe pieces that are desirable to your opponent, that means taking pieces undesirable to yourself. Garbage is also based on how you clear lines, so crafting maximally disruptive garbage gets interesting. The catch, unfortunately, is that there is no AI. But if you can play this game with a human, do check it out.
• Tetris: The Grand Master 1/2/3: The only good Tetris, do not @ me. Start with TGM2’s Novice Mode, then once you can clear that go back to TGM1.
• Twinkle Star Sprites: A versus shmup with a very unique format. Chaining enemies on your screen sends attacks to your opponent’s screen. Hard to really explain, just give this a spin and feel it out for yourself. There are a lot of moving parts, screenwatching is vital, and feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game’s depth.
• Vampire Savior: Aka Darkstalkers 3. This game is fast as hell and it’s a blast. Like with any classic fighter, good luck keeping up with FightCade folks who really know what they’re doing, but I love it casually.
• Waku Waku 7: This game’s mechanics are honestly borderline kusoge, you can’t even cancel normals into specials. But I love the design and atmosphere so much. Tesse is really fun to play even in spite of the system mechanics.

NES:

• Fire 'n Ice: A very rad little puzzle game.
• Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!: Just an absolute blast. I won’t bother listing them seperately but also check out Super and Wii. Super’s kinda the black sheep of the series, but it’s still a good game, just not as good. Wii is an absolutely top-notch successor and I’m sad it didn’t get any more sequels after that. The two arcade predecessors are honestly forgettable.

SNES:

• Chrono Trigger: I am hesitant to recommend most JRPGs from this era if you did not grow up on them, because many of them haven’t aged so gracefully. Chrono Trigger is the exception, this game is a fine wine. You may want to check out one of the rereleases though, or at least a retranslation patch, because the original translation was made on a rushed deadline and bound by heavy technical limitations.
• Earthbound: A bit more of a slow burn in comparison to CT, but this game is carried by incredible writing. It’s also required reading before playing Mother 3 next.
• Kirby Super Star: Definitely the peak of the series, giving every copy power an entire moveset is a blast. Has an updated rerelease on DS with added extras, I do highly recommend this version, but DS can be awkward to emulate so SNES is fine.
• Wario’s Woods: The NES version is more well known since it was the system’s last first-party title, and for whatever reason it’s the only version Nintendo ever rereleases. But the SNES version is a notable upgrade, biggest thing it has is AI to play versus mode against. Versus mode is wild as hell, so if you’ve never seen it please check out the SNES version.

N64:

• Dr. Mario 64: Best version, but can be notoriously difficult to emulate. If you have issues with it, SNES is a good alternative. Don’t play NES.
• Mario Party 2: Still the best in the series.
• Paper Mario: Pure perfection. Many fans will say TTYD was better, and it’s certainly a good game too, but I think 64 was peak simply because the pacing is so much better.
• Super Mario 64: It’s Super Mario 64. You do not need me to tell you that this game is good.

Older JRPGs in particular are definitely a bit of an acquired taste. There are a lot of games that I love dearly but have a hard time recommending to anyone who didn’t grow up on that style of game.

That said, Chrono Trigger is the one that really stands the test of time and I think is the best entry point into the classics. Or just try some more modern games, the genre has evolved considerably.

Earthbound is probably the one I’d put next after CT, but it’s a bit of a slow burn that’s honestly carried by its writing. Mother 3 raises the bar considerably, but you gotta play EB before M3.

Certain levels in Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World end with Mario collecting a ? orb rather than the usual goal. During speedruns, it’s customary to shout “Orb!” upon completing these levels.

I don’t think that analogy makes sense. The parent and child would be two players with a massive skill gap between them. The point of matchmaking is that you don’t match them against each other to begin with, rather than asking the parent to hold back.

But then somehow devs started getting it in their heads that what people really want is noobstomping

What dev ever said that?

Yeah so matching players with opponents at their skill level is a good thing. Should’ve been obvious to anyone with half a brain, but somehow there was a whole saga where people were radically opposed to it for some reason. And it turns out they were full of shit.

I mostly play games that are so niche that the matchmaking simply consists of “whoever’s available”. But the idea that being matched against opponents at your skill level is somehow a negative might be the most bewildering discourse I’ve heard in a long time. Genuinely why?

Futurama

Parks and Rec

The Good Place

It’s somewhat embarassing to admit how much this game resonated with me when it came out. I think I’m afraid to see if the cripple porn game still holds up today though.

He really could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and his voters would love him for it.