Retro and New Video Game Picture/Video Thread

I loved Castlevania IV (part of the golden age of SNES gaming, as far as I'm concerned), but SOTN blew my tits off.
It is easily one of the most polished and satisfyinggamesI have ever played, and I don't think I will ever get bored of it.
The huge castle to explore, the countless weapons and items to collect and mess around with, the clever bosses, the incredible enemy design, the secrets... oh, the secrets! SOTN set a new standard for whatvideogamesare capable of achieving and deserves every ounce of praise attributed to it and more. It was so well-designed, even all its successors that followed the exact same formula were incredibly fun to play. An absolute masterpiece.
You could rightfully say that without Super Metroid (another classic from the golden age) there would be no SOTN, but as much as I love Super Metroid it just isn't as tight (control-wise), freeing, or ultimately satisfying as SOTN is. SOTN took the outstanding foundation created by Super Metroid and ramped it up to the Nth degree. I want to name my first three children "Symphony of the Night".

Speaking of masterpieces, Earthbound has been re-released on the virtual console!
An outstanding and relentlessly clever RPG absolutely worth playing if you haven't yet.
It has some bizarre flaws, such as each character in your party having his own very limited inventory (which works completely against the numerous items you will find that are only usable when repaired or combined with another item, wasting precious space in the meantime), an unnecessarily high miss rate (it doesn't matter how much a staple of RPGs it is, I can't fucking stand whiffing attacks), and the main character's habit of getting "homesick" where he flubs commands in battle until you call or visit your mom. But it is also sometimes brilliant, such as when you can kill underpowered enemies instantly (saving you from having to slog through a one-sided battle), it's filled with charming and memorable characters and locales, and it's a game that bends the fourth wall in one of the most clever ways I've seen in avideogame. Oh, and there's a part when your character's brains are transferred into robot bodies, which actually felt a lot creepier than I expected. You can also scour the desert area to find a couple of talking sesame seeds. Oh, and one of the characters you meet is a walking, talking dungeon. And there's one part where your martial artist character undergoes some intense meditative training that kind of freaked me out. Oh, yeah! I almost forgot to mention the soundtrack, which is unlike any other RPG but absolutely incredible. So much win in this game. So much win.

I dunno, I always thought Castlevania 2 wasterrible. Maybe part of the reason I hated it was because I didn't play it during my "infinite patience" childhood phase, so I was well past the point where I could forgive its many glaring flaws. Obtuse clues that mean nothing, things you could literally never figure out what to do without hearing it from an outside source, that motherfucking 30-second long "What a terrible night for a curse" interruption every time night falls... blech.

Give me Castlevania 3 with multiple unique playable characters (Grant Dynasty is da bomb), branching paths and challenging but straightforward levels any day.
I did think it strange that Nintendo Power gave this game "Best Graphics" in their NP awards, when almost all the backgrounds look like they're formed of broken, almost randomly arranged tiles, though.

Umihara Kawase!!
Never got the Super Famicom version, but I do have the PSP version. I think it's extreme difficulty and very-hard-to-get-used-to control scheme keep it from being accessible enough to be considered among the best platformers, but it certainly has its charm.










Also, an outstanding track from Axelay: