I learned about this game long before Wario Land, but not before Wario (thanks to Mario Party), and it just seemed Cool. He has Attitude, the game will be like a brawler version of Mario Sunshine, look how much money he has on the cover! Something about the way the game was presented stuck in my brain, but it's another game I never got to own.

I don't know what game it was or if it was a commercial or something or even the inside of a Gamestop, but I remember seeing a demo for this game and being like "yoooooo this is RADICAL" and thinking it looked like this super cool game on the Nintendo 64, and then I never got to play it but the mental image of those polygonal bikes going vroom vroom over dirt remained in my head.

I have no idea how I managed to own Sonic Adventure 1 and Sonic Heroes but never Sonic Adventure 2 when it was the one that most interested me! Look, man, Shadow is peak character design, his character arc is genuinely compelling, and the entire game and this era of Sonic has a kind of...modern, urban feel that appeals to me. Sonic and everyone are just kinda part of a world with a President and GUN and modern cities and seeing how that interacts is both interesting and funny. The Sonic game I'm most interested to finally play.

Plus all the Sonic games of this era have amazing soundtracks.

My name "FrozenRoy" comes from the fact I was a Roy main in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but when I first started up Smash I obviously had no idea what a Fire Emblem was. Scouring the internet definitely got me interested in this at-the-time strange strategy series. Of course as I recall back then there was no fan translation of it, so I had no way to play it. But how could I forget about a game ultimately responsible for my name?

Remember how I said FrozenRoy's name comes from FE6? Well, Ike was one of my favorite characters in Brawl (even if my main was Mr. Game & Watch), and the fact that Ike's game was in english made me REALLY want to buy it! On top of that, the lore looked in depth and like a game with complexity, the designs are good!

Too bad it was impossible to find in stores.

A bunch of my friends were VERY into this, some of my early forum memories include RPing with Tales of Symphonia characters, and Tales of Symphonia here goes for exactly what I like from JRPGs (or at least tries to IDK I haven't beaten it even today): Plots that give out some real meaning, strong characterization, a well constructed world, Zelos Wilder is a great character. But despite searching for AGES, it was probably the childhood game I most wanted I never got, I could just...NEVER find it in stock. I only ever got it on PC years later, and then it took like 4-5 years for me to get a PC that can run it! God, I really gotta get to this.

You know what's difficult? Being an RPG fan but only having the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube for those generations of home consoles, although the GBA tided me over quite a while and I did get a PS2 early enough to play great games like Persona 3, 4 and Tales of the Abyss early.

Anyway Baten Kaitos is one of those RPGs that actually WAS on the Gamecube and on top of that had some interesting ideas, particularly with the Big Twist, and so while it was never ToS in my brain it was something I thought of as "I want this some day as one of the definitive Gamecube RPGs".

I honestly have no idea how I have never beaten this. I'm a big Mother 3 guy, I ended up a big Undertale guy, I knew about Earthbound early in my life, but have to my knowledge never owned this game and have never hooked up the SNES I own (which I should sometime tbh). What can I say? It's EARTHBOUND

Had a friend (who I had a crush on) who was REALLY into Golden Sun and then I went into Gamestop, all telling myself "I know there's two, don't get them mixed up, buy the first one" aaaaaaaand then walked right up, purchased the wrong game and didn't realize until later. I still don't own Golden Sun 1 and in turn have never beaten these two games, with them becoming higher priority games for me to beat for that reason. Dark Dawn leaving the series on likely an eternal cliffhanger is depressing.

Golden Sun would be EXCELLENT for an Action RPG remake btw, imagine the potential with Psynergy / Djinn combos!

Consider this a placeholder for ALL of the Mega Man Zero games, which in my head still stand as a strong benchmark for platformer stories. The stylized graphics in this game are strong and well defined, I ALWAYS think of this Zero design rather than his MMX look, it continues soooo many themes that run throughout the entire Mega Man series, some of the best villains in video games period like Dr. Weil, Zero here is so cool and additionally cool development as a character is present. The story feels poignant. It has one of the best endings to a game series ever with Zero vs. Weil. I love things like Craft being designed as a MMX Reploid and struggling with many of the philosophical issues from that game along with an "obsolete" feeling, a somberness. Being able to really play these games is a highlight of me finally owning a Nintendo Switch.

If you're turned away from the series' difficulty or some of the prominent gameplay issues especially the early ones can have, please give it another shot!

Did I mention this is one of the smoothest controlling 2D Platformers EVER? I wish more games had dashes and wall jumps with THIS level of snappy polish to them!

It was pretty much impossible to be on the internet in the mid to late 2000s and NOT know about Phoenix Wright, the OBJECTION shouting lawyer with a sarcastic rival that combined comedy and drama. There isn't much to say here: It was all over the place, most of my friends were highly into it (and I think got to actually purchase it), and it's something I really want to get into and finish on my Switch as an adult.

There was a few months of time period when I was younger I had to stay at my grandmother's house for Reasons and she is an excessive boomer who lacked even a computer, so I had to interact via a WebTV on MSN Messenger with my friends as back then MSN Messenger was the dominant chat program.

Anyway this relates to Umineko because one of my best friends was getting into Higurashi and Umineko and so read through all of the translated Umineko chapters at the time and basically text-LP'd them over MSN Messenger. The combination of the story and the bits of music I could get working when I was alone transfixed me and has remained one of the top Visual Novels I NEED to get into at some point. It seems like such a narratively dense, fascinating game!

Fate's another VN series I got into very early, long before Fate/Zero was a thing, but I never exactly got the fan translation of the time working back in the day, so my mind has just been turning it over and over in my head without ever actively touching it. Sakura is one of the characters in gaming fiction I find most interesting to dissect, the game plays around with conventions (both "subverting" and NOT subverting) in a way I feel later VNs somewhat cheaply imitated without understanding, it becomes philosophically dense, the soundtrack is sooooooooooo good dude EMIYA is an all time banger and there's SO many big, memorable moments, Shirou is a great protagonist. This isn't a game for everyone, it is dense in many ways and you're gonna have to roll with some WILD stuff, but it's something that will never leave my mind and one of the big ones to affect me that I never got to play when I was younger.

Despite owning a Nintendo 64 as a console, I NEVER owned Ocarina of Time. Instead I owned Majora's Mask, an amazing game that sucked me in for hours and hours no matter how bad I was at it, and is an iconic game in my gaming library. But going onto GameFAQs and the question is what's better: Majora's Mask or the mythical Ocarina of Time.

This is basically one of the two definitive N64 games along with Super Mario 64 and one I've always heard is great, some friend's Top 5 favorites, and it seems like a fascinating one to go back to! In some ways I think the technical limitations might help: I tend to prefer smaller, yet dense areas than super large, sparse ones (and yet I'm loving Breath of the Wild...), the story feels like it makes some subtle points along with some great ones, I've seen the final battle and it is epic, and the game's a companion piece to Majora's Mask that's a big one to keep in mind. Needless to say, it is one I've always wanted, although I had so many Legend of Zelda games as a kid I didn't focus on it as hard as some others.

I debated on if to count this one, as I did get it at some point later, but I'd say not until I was more of an adult so I'm counting it. This is one of my MOST influential games to my tastes, it's got this delicious mix of Mario whackiness and dramatic, JRPG-style Extraness and hijinks that I feel like is VERY distinct from Super Mario RPG. Count Bleck's tragic story felt like some of the saddest stuff at that age, the color and style of his cosmic black and purple cape felt iconic, Dimentio as a pure evil antagonist is fun, Mr. L is a great design and this was from some of the highest point of Luigi in Mario I feel. The Thousand Year Door is one of my favorite games ever as well, so the sequel to it was big. The fact that it was followed up by Sticker Star and essentially the death of Paper Mario that it may only be recently reversing only makes my thoughts of it stronger.

There's also the fact that the first place I went to after GameFAQs forums was, of all things, Digibutter.nerr.biz where I posted SO MUCH. This then led to seeing more forums, meeting who would become a close friend, and thus an introduction to the wider internet. So, Super Paper Mario will always occupy more of a spot in my head than just the game as well.