My Perfect Console - Talking Time Edition

[Falselogic]

Inspired by the old Desert Island Discs and My Perfect Console I wanted to find out what Talking Time's favorite games are. The games that if you could only play these five for the rest of your life you'd be okay, even happy with. I'll go first.

1. X-com: UFO Defense - One of my perfect games. I play this game at least once a year. I don't usually get through an entire playthrough but I am always trying something different and I almost always see something new. Still as scary as it ever was.
2. Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 - I love city builders. But, it turns out I love Theme Park Builders even more. This is another game that I could endlessly tinker with. Especially if I have OpenRCT2 which is a complete rebuild of the original game with a lot more optimization and customization options. Endless fun here. Chris Sawyer is a genius.
3. Star Control 2 - Got to find those Rainbow Planets! Another amazing game that I seem to get lost in over and over again.
4. Civilization 4 - Not the newest version of the series, and you can't go wrong with any of them that you pick but this would be the one that if I had to play forever I would be happy with.
5. Contra (NES) - Some times you just need to mop up alien hordes. This is the best way to do so.

So that's my perfect console. I could play these forever. How about you? Also, if you like music or video games I heartily recommend the two podcasts up above!

 

[Kazin]

Ooh, I'm on board with this. For me:

1. Phantasy Star Online - I just find this game relaxing, and I've never gotten a SUPER rare drop or even a character to level 200. That I can play it solo or online, still, in 2024 is wonderful. I like every version of the regular game, Dreamcast, Gamecube, Blue Burst. Whatever version you want to play, it's good.
2. Super Mario World - I play through this every year, sometimes multiple times. I just love it. I always 100% it. Having played the GBA version for the first time in years, that ones fun, too. Played it as Luigi for a slightly different experience.
3. Stardew Valley - I play a lot of farming games, but this one is the best one I've yet played. I go back to old Harvest Moons often, but there's still plenty of this game I haven't experienced yet, not just marriage candidates, either.
4. Pokemon Crystal - My favorite gen, my favorite aesthetics, I can't stop playing this game.
5. Metroid: Zero Mission - Always a fun, breezy playthrough, can't imagine how many times I've beaten this game.

Runner ups include Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Shining Force II, Final Fantasy VI, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, and the original Metroid.

 

[Falselogic]

Stardew Valley was on my shortlist, it wasn't easy to cut it but Civ 4 did. I had no idea PSO was still going! I played it decades ago and enjoyed it.

 

[Vaeran]

Oh, only five favorites is hard. Why can't I have ten? or two hundred and thirty seven

In no particular order:

1. Super Metroid - Gotta have my Metroidvania fix, so why not go with the original and best? This game's as deep as you want it to be.
2. Diablo III - Supreme gaming comfort food to me. Love to just turn my brain off for a while and smash monsters into paste by the dozens.
3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I guess I technically like BOTW more, but Tears has more to do. If I only get five games for the rest of my life, I'd better get my money's worth.
4. Chrono Trigger - I just tried to imagine a life without ever playing Chrono Trigger again, and a cold wind blew across my back.
5. Super Mario Odyssey - Even with the rest of my life to play this and four other games, I'd probably still never get all the moons.

If I were to list runners up we'd be here all day. Video games! Gosh. They're just so good.

 

[JBear]

Hrm. This is tough. I feel like my 5 favourite games and the 5 games I'd like to replay forever aren't the same question? Like, my three favourite games of all time are FFIV, Phantasy Star, and Vandal Hearts, and I play all three of them every few years, but they're all pretty linear and fixed so I think I'd get bored of them all pretty quickly if they were all I had to play? So if the goal is the 5 games it would take me longest to get bored of:

• Final Fantasy I - I can play this game forever. It's fun, fast, and there's a ton of different party comps for variety. I might bring a randomizer ROMhack instead so I can fuck around even more once the base game gets boring.
• Monster Train - My most played Steam game at 360 hours. The basic game is great, and there's a million optional ways to vary up your experience.
• Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - Probably my most played video game, although I don't have any way to track my time with it. I fell off of this because of the stress of maintaining my win streak, but not because I was bored of it.
• Civilization IV - The only reason I don't play this all the time is because Just One More Turn is too addictive, but presumably that's not a concern here.
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - I have played this game countless times and there's always something new to find. Also I need something that's not turn-based when I want to vary things up.

ETA:

Also, if you like music or video games I heartily recommend the two podcasts up above!

Huh! That does look neat! I'll give it a listen! (The games one; I hate music.)

 

[Falselogic]

• Final Fantasy I - I can play this game forever. It's fun, fast, and there's a ton of different party comps for variety. I might bring a randomizer ROMhack instead so I can fuck around even more once the base game gets boring.

You might like Final Fantasy Renaissance! It's a remake (not a romhack) that includes a bunch of later classes incorporated into the game. You can read more here and get the game here.

 

[Kazin]

Hrm. This is tough. I feel like my 5 favourite games and the 5 games I'd like to replay forever aren't the same question?

Yeah, this was how I thought of it too - the five games I picked aren't necessarily my five favorites of all time, but games I could play for a long, long time before getting bored.

 

[Kirin]

The rules of this are also complicated by the existence of games designed to be continuously updated... hopefully you can get updates forever on your desert island. As in my main quandary here, which is do I include Pokemon Go? It's in many ways a very uneven game, but it's also the game I've been playing pretty much continuously for the past eight years, so... I guess it's kinda in by default.

Beyond that I'd probably mostly go with unsurprising picks also on others' lists for similar reasons to theirs - Chrono Trigger, SotN, TotK, and, hmmmm, maybe the latest Theatrhythm, unless I'm allowed to assume the existence of endless Picross updates from Jupiter.

 

[Patrick]

I gave it a bit of thought and came up with this list:

Final Fantasy V - I'd really like an RPG, because sometimes I just want to build up a little party and kill a bunch of monsters. FFV4JF has shown me that this is a good one to replay. It clearly works with a lot of interesting restrictions, so I think I'd get a lot out of it.
Dark Souls - Souls games are great, and this is the best one. Again, there are just a ton of interesting ways to play this using different builds and challenges. I thought about Elden Ring just due to the sheer scale of it, but I really think that Dark Souls 1 has plenty of content and it's so fun to replay.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I had a tough time picking which Zelda to go with, and for a bit I had Link's Awakening penciled in here. But, for this one the amount of content won out. It's just a big sandbox, and it's good to have at least one of those.
Into the Breach - It's good to have one game that's a bit of a brain burner, and it's so easy to jump back in for another run. Especially once you start creating custom squads there's just so many interesting challenges.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury - I'm cheating with this one, but they were packaged together and Bowser's Fury does use the 3D World engine. Mario games are just a delight to play, and this one has a lot of levels and characters, and the post game challenges are great. BF gives just a taste of the more open field style Mario. It's just an amazing release.

Hey, I just realized that all five games are on Switch! If I replaced the joy-con sticks with hall-style ones to avoid stick drift, I'd have my perfect console. I'm so close to perfection.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

I've literally played 250 hours (well not literally because I think it was more) of FTL... but I don't think it would be that.

Tabletop Simulator! HAHAHA!! PERFECT CHEAT! It's so many other games, ya'll. Playing the Slay the Spire board game on it now.

Final Fantasy VI - It's so weird, I've played through this game 5 times and I think I've always stopped AT the final battle. I think it's possible I finished it once picking it up months later after putting it down for a long time. Anyway, this is My FF Game.

Blather Round - This is apparently one of the Jackbox games people don't care for? I love it. I know in practice that it would get repetitive if played too frequently, but still. God, I wish they would update this one.

GoldenEye - I haven't played it in forever but I remember being blown away about how tricky this game was compared to all the other shooters. Generally, I think the most replayable games are the "play with friends" ones.

Super Smash Brothers Ultimate - Like this. That said, I actually don't care for Final Smashes. Anyone with me on this?

 

[ShakeWell]

Contra (NES) - I mean, I can just play it endlessly, it's always fun, and I honestly still believe that mechanically it's never been surpassed in its genre.
Resident Evil 2 - I'm not specifying which version, because then I can always change my mind (if you pressed me, I'd probably have to say '98, but '19 is also fantastic), but just the platonic ideal of survival horror.
Risk of Rain 2 - I've got almost 500 hours into it now, there are things I still haven't done in it, so I think I could get at least 500 more out of it.
Metal Gear Solid 3 - I mean, it's just... maybe the best stealth-action game ever made?
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - I need to have at least one metroidvania, and... this feels like the correct one to me, especially in terms of replayability. But on another day, I might say Hollow Knight.

 

[Baudshaw]

If multiplayer counts in this scenario:

Sky: Basically the perfect social game, imagine a club penguin style world with the polish of Breath of the Wild.

Civilization 6: Yes, there may be other games that are liked more here, but there's so many interesting modes, scenarios, and ways to play that it seems hard to get rid of.

Worldbox: A combined sandbox/city builder with RPG elements. It involves waiting in the "watch all your plans come together" sense, not the "number go up" sense. The complexity is on the level of Dwarf Fortress (it's really not, but some have made the comparison.)

Crusader Kings 3: The roleplay part of this can't be missed. You can construct your own story and legacy, or just go wild and cause absolute chaos.

Bloons Tower Defense 6: It gets constantly updated all the time with new towers, missions, and stuff to do. If you come back after a year or so, it'll feel like a brand new game.

 

[Beowulf]

I mean, I feel like there's a difference in approaches here, between "I keep coming back to this game after years" and "I could happily play a zillion hours of this." Like, if I was making a "replay nostalgia" system and had to cut it down to five games: A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy 4, Symphony of the Night, Secret of Mana, and Wario's Woods.

If it was "this is all you ever get to play again"...well, I'd be sad, because I lean a lot more towards short games. But I'd probably go with Gems of War (which I've played daily for more than four years now), Stardew Valley (which I've played 5 times and have 250+ hours logged on), Hyrule Warriors (the Warriors game with the most content while still being balanced), maybe a hefty tower defense game like Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows, and maybe Dragon Quest 9 (which was just drowning in postgame content).

 

[Paul le Fou]

My first impression is to answer the games I can keep playing for the longest time. Knowing myself, I still get bored of stuff, but let's see...

Elden Ring: so much content, so many builds and ways to tackle it, such compelling gameplay, such a fantasitc world to explore. I've spent something like 600+ hours on it to date, after the DLC, and I could easily spend more if it was one of my only options.

Splatoon 3: at least one competitive game, because those don't really "end." I can always spend an hour or so on a few matches chasing down a win, and there are lots of weapons I haven't even touched yet, much less mastered.

Gigantic: Might as well fit two competitive games in there in case I get mad at or tired of one. Gigantic's rerelease didn't capture me as indelibly as it did back in the day, but I could be happy having this as one of my few available games.

Animal Crossing New Horizons: Endless variety and playability, and nice and calming for when Elden Ring or Splatoon piss me off. And I can always restart my island if I get bored!

Hades: a roguelike seems to be an easy answer for endless playability, and Hades is the best of them I've played. Although maybe I should wait until I play Hades 2...


Runners-up: I don't really replay old games, I've realized, but Chrono Trigger and FF6 are candidates as well. Dark Souls, or maybe DS3? Sekiro. I didn't spend all that long on Monster Train, maybe 50 hours or so, but I never got into the postgame/challenge runs either...

I've never played Stardew Valley, but I do own it twice, and could probably put it in there without regret. FF14 is another I've never played but could probably get hooked on for hundreds of hours if I had to.

 

[Issun]

I've been giving this a lot of thought. Do I want to include games that go on forever, or my favorites. I ended up landing on the side of my five all time favorite games because they are all my special babies that I want to have access to forever, wherever.

Chono Trigger: Just the perfect RPG, with engaging systems and fun characters. Plus there's endings I still haven't seen.

Final Fantasy IV + Free Enterprise: Sure I may be cheating a bit here, but I love the original FFIV. I've sunk more hours into it than maybe any game ever. And having Free Enterprise bundled in means endless replayability.

Life is Strange: Maybe not as replayable as other title, but Max & Chloe's story is incredibly special to me and I will never not want to reexperience it. Plus there's choices I've never experimented with so there's still some stuff I could do.

Okami: The longest game on this list. Such a wonderful game to play and there's still so much I haven't done i it. Finding all the Stray Beads, for example.

Super Metroid: The perfectest perfect game and so many nooks and crannies still to find. I might even try learning some speedrunning prostratz.

Yep, I'd probably get more out of Elden Ring or ACNH or FF14 but i love no other games the way I love these so they go on the perfect console.

 

[4-So]

Based on the criteria that I could only play five games for the rest of my life, off the top of my head (and in the case of live service and multiplayer games, the assumption that those would continue to be available and populated):

Elden Ring
Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
World of Warcraft
Battlefield 1
SimCity

None of those games are actually in my top five GOATs, or even top 10, but they do satisfy the criteria of longevity and engagement. As much as I'd like to say a Chrono Trigger or a Super Metroid, I'm much more likely to get bored with those sooner rather than later.

 

[Bongo]

Is it cheating to name UFO 50?

 

[Tomm Guycot]

I did not realize we had this thread or I would have posted mine. Now I can't post until a future time.

Mysterious.

 

[Falselogic]

I did not realize we had this thread or I would have posted mine. Now I can't post until a future time.

Mysterious.

Because you're going to be a guest on My Perfect Console?