Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
I would go more general and say beverages.
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Let's go even more general - Top 50 LiquidsI would go more general and say beverages.
Going to be hard to do an interesting write up for water...
Same here (but that wasn't always the case).Water is also my beverage of choice.
#3 - EarthBound
Ape & HAL Laboratory . SNES . August 27, 1994
522 points . 33 votes . Highest rank: #1 (Cyrael, FelixSH, Isrieri, Loki, Octopus Prime, Patrick, TK Flash, Raven)
TK: Earthbound was divisive way before it was legendary. Even by '96, about half of the gamers you’d ask would say they loved it to death, and the other half would call it cartoony, boring, cookie-cutter garbage that is wacky for the sake of being wacky. There’s probably been more said about this game in the last twenty years than anything else out there.
Both points of view are valid. It is a shallow Dragon Quest clone and its 90s America twist seems so obvious in hindsight. The graphics are big, bright, and colorful, like something you’d see in a children’s picture book, or maybe a Peanuts comic. The playable cast is almost entirely silent which makes them that much easier to write off and too similar to casts of countless NES RPGs.
At the same time, Earthbound grows deeper the more you observe it. Consider the Mani Mani Statue. Many first-time (or even returning players) overlook its significance and write it off as a sub-plot trinket. Look a little closer at who is using it and on whom and a deeper narrative begins to emerge. With a bit of imagination, you can even wring complexity from minor gag characters. The few lines between Jeff and his father speak volumes. Can you while away an evening contemplating the self-actualization tale in dungeon otaku Brick Road and drawing parallels to the playable cast? Sure. Not that I recommend doing that. You can draw many conclusions that probably aren’t exactly what the creators of Earthbound intended, but that isn’t because it is misleading. It’s a case of masterful extraction. Things have been left out of the game so that the remaining elements add up to more than their sum.
Or maybe you look at it and they don’t add up, in which case you probably didn’t vote for this game. Or maybe you found more meaning in its slightly more straightforward, long-delayed sequel [Double Dracunote: Hi!]. Like I said, it’s divisive. I, for one, am an EarthBound lover for life, no matter how much ill-will and spite Nintendo seems determined to pour on people like me. But that’s another topic for a different day.
That was the thread that finally gave me the push to track down a repro cart and play through Mother 3.
And the thread where Wildcat first promised me that he was going to play through Suikoden 3. (IIRC, I wrote a big love letter to S3 to kick off at #50.)
*taps watch*
Mostly though, I just remember it as the cleverest thread tag I ever came up with; I've been chasing that high ever since. (Cloud Computing)
That was the thread that finally gave me the push to track down a repro cart and play through Mother 3.
1996-2003
37. Dexters Labratory (91 Points)
Excellent! My sneaky ways have put me in the lead! I'd give myself a pat on the back, but I'm driving, so I'll have to do it later!
78 episodes (221 segments)
Mystery Solving Teens: Yep
Talking Animals: Well, Dynomutt showed up once. Otherwise the animals make animal sounds.
Dexters Lab was one of the corner stones of the early years of Cartoon Networks existence and kept the lights on at Gennedy Tartakovskys house for several years, and for that, I will be forever grateful.
The show was split into multiple segments focusing on different characters, but the ones that the show were named after involved scientific wunderkind Dexter in his lab, either being pestered by his sister, Dee-Dee, trying to keep his lab secret from everyone else, trying to thwart his mad scientist rival Mandark, or just generally off doing whatever weird stuff you might reasonably expect to happen since this is one of those shows where "science" pretty much means "magic".
Other segments included The Justice Friends (Earths Greatest Superheroes in a cheesy 70s-style sitcom setting), and Dial M for Monkey, in which Dexters pet lab-monkey is secretly a superhero existing as a living pastiche of Silver Age Marvel comics.
Gennedy Tartakovsky only intended the show to last the two seasons and gave it a pretty definitive finale, but the show managed to remain popular so Cartoon Network handed the reins over to Seth Macfarlane and Butch Hartman for the rest of the run, Gennedy coming back to direct the FOR REALZ finale with the TV-movie Ego Trip.
Homestar Runner was my #1. I and several others twisted the rules into pretzels to get it on the list. This is the only contest I've submitted a list to that I don't still have my list saved. I must have accidentally deleted it at some point. It mostly wasn't very good though, IIRC.
I feel the same way about Planter's Cheez BallsMy #1 was, is, and ever shall be Nutchos, my snacking white whale. I wake up every morning and frown slightly as I realize that they no longer exist in this world and I'll never taste them again.
2. Darth Vader
STAR WARS franchise (Movies, pretty much all forms of media)
11 votes, 182 points. Top vote: 1st (Adrenaline, Karzac, Masterthes)
Forget the prequels and the expanded universe. You can even forget Return of the Jedi if you want to. Darth Vader in the first two Star Wars movies is the best movie villain of all time. The way he looks and sounds is perfect. It could be goofy as hell, with the breathing and the panel of lights and switches on his chest. But they establish him as a threat in his very first scene, and from then on he is relentless in his pursuit of the rebels' destruction. He can beat them in a dog fight or a sword fight, he can suffocate people who displease him even if they're not in the same room, and he's smart enough to set several successful traps for the good guys, who only escape because good guys win in these movies. And personally, I love his journey to redemption in Return.
Karzac sez: "I don't know if Darth Vader is the scariest villain on this list. I'd probably take him in a fight over lots of others - he certainly goes down fairly easily in the end. But Vader has style. He's got the look, with the black mask and black cape and glowing red laser sword. He's got the sound, the menacing rasp of his voice through his mask and the ominous horns of the Imperial March that herald his arrival. And he's got the gravitas provided by James Earl Jones and one of the most famous lines in cinema. Darth Vader is simply the most memorable, most iconic villain of the 20th century."