I think it's kind of cool they called it Sonic 4. As a kid, I always wanted to see a 4, but usually got a subtitle instead. I was a weird kid.

It looks cool! The episodic thing is interesting, I never really associated Sonic with story much. But I like the idea of episodic games in general.

Am I the only one who likes Tails, though? I get why people hate how there's a billion playable characters that are just as fast as Sonic, but Tails seemed like a good addition to me.

I wonder if the Doki Doki Panic heroes are now technically apart of Mario continuity? They could be more characters for Mario Kart/tennis/party/etc.

Foxhound from MGS was a pretty kooky band of misfits.

I enjoy having peripheral vision so I said fps.

uh oh, this says differently. Google is inconsistent!

http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Yoshi+is+a+boy&word2=Yoshi+is+a+girl

We'll never know!

Yeah, I think he's "Yoshi of the Yoshis."

Kind of like Mario of the Mario Bros.

The Mushroom Kingdom must have some weird naming convention we don't know about.

Kamek seems to have a dangerous level of political power, wouldn't you think? He's a pretty minor character for someone who's essentially responsible for the power and entire genesis of Bowser's empire.

Also, for some reason he always struck me as looking female.

Punch Out for the Wii.

Oh yeah! Doc Louis eating the chocolate bar. 

Unanswered questions in the Megaman series?

I actually thought about that one, but figured it might make the forum explode.

Run Hamster Run:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvBZ7Hs5yZk

haha! that's good.

okay, that's a good one. I'll add it in there. Votes can be changed on this, in case anyone wondered.

I'm curious to see if there's any trends with this.

Heart of Darkness! (at 2:32 in particular)

Yeah! I wanted to include that in the list, but I couldn't remember the name in order to look it up and remind myself.

Karateka is obscure? Really?

Well, maybe not so much around here I guess. I've just never heard anyone ever talk about until I saw a video of it a few months ago.


There's some great examples in this thread. I had forgotten how well animated Street Fighter 3 was, and Wario Land: Shake It looks even better then I remember-- I should actually play it.


Here's some more games I'd add:

--The Neverhood. Great animation that hasn't aged a bit. Claymation, even!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRwjTz_RmJk

--EyePet. There's an impressive combination of believability and cartooniness in the animation for this game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPENA1Bpm68

--The Last Guardian. It's not out yet, but I don't think there's any question how good the animation is. No motion capture at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4E0e-ZCn14

I don't know if there are many animators or animation fans on this forum, but I thought it'd be interesting to look at video games from that perspective. I'm an animator myself, and I always like to see games that go above and beyond the norm for character movement. Adding the little things like anticipation or squash'n'stretch that often get ignored in games is pretty impressive to me. I put together a quick list of some games that I think display some great animation, though feel free to suggest others. Generally, I don't consider cinema scene animation to be a part of the game- I look more towards the in-game stuff since that's what's unique to games as a medium.

1. Shadow of the Colossus. The main character's actions feel incredibly realistic, right down to the trips and stumbles. The colossi themselves also have a great sense of scale.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13xbhz2il5M

2. Prince of Persia (original) and PoP: Sands of Time. I lump these together because they're in the same series, but they take some different approaches to animation. The original game is rotoscoped, which although generally frowned upon by animators, is done with a good eye for animation design. Sands of Time, on the other hand, is hand-animated and done especially well considering all the acrobatics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zyQ_OVyhNE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC2J2YblVQ8

3. Mark of Kri. The animation here was taken care of by some former Disney artists and it shows.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqBPuUidk8Y

4. Shantae. Impressively fluid for a GBC title. There's even some really entertaining dance moves in there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9rCDKJhFm8

5. Odin Sphere. The unique visual style tends to outshine the actual animation in this game, but I want to list it here because the motion isn't shabby at all and really works well with the graphic style.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJOocAmNmho

6. Alien Hominid. There's a lot of liveliness to this game in the motion that just adds to the fun. It's real unrestrained cartooniness. Castle Crashers really refined the style, but I like the more fluid roughness of this game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3GYmeAQ2ug

7. Karateka. This one is pretty obscure, I only found out about it recently and I've only ever seen video of it. It's quite an old game, but uses some impressively accurate looking martial arts moves on the characters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbCNABqNVMo


I have some more, but I'll leave it at that for now. What are some games you'd add?

awesome twist on pong, and really clever.

I've always liked this interpretation on Pac-Man.

Pong is actually the fever dream of a dying tennis player.

This is probably an obvious one, but the idea that Pikmin takes place on Earth, maybe a post-apocalyptic one. I never finished either game, so I'm not entirely sure if that's addressed officially or not.

Another one that's also pretty well known (I lack originality at the moment), is every Zelda game (or every two Zelda games depending on the theory) having a new Link and Zelda. I don't believe that's ever been officially addressed, with the exception of Wind Waker.

Thought this might answer the question before about Mario and Luigi's relationship:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1912670

haha, I was going to post this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkVscVBnZIU but I like that one better.