How to play the best games of all time
Hello! By arriving at this webpage, hopefully you have finished watching "Just a Game of the Year Video". If you have somehow found yourself here without having watched said video, this page will spoil many of its surprises. Sorry. At some point during the video, you may have been introduced to a game which you would like to try, but are unsure of exactly how to do so. I’ve put together this page to point you in the right direction.
General advice
For emulating unfamiliar hardware platforms, the Emulation General Wiki is your friend. If you’re new to emulation, it’s not as scary as you'd think! Just make sure you have the right BIOS files and you’ll be fine.
I would also recommend this subreddit.
This is an easy-to-use online tool for patching ROM files.
I played most of the older games in this video on a MiSTer FPGA. While it’s a hardware purchase I recommend, unfortunately this means I won’t have as much specific advice for people going down a more traditional emulation route. Sorry.
City Connection/Super Mario Bros. 2/Star Fox 2
All four of these games are available through Nintendo Switch Online.
Coors Light Bowling
The MAME romset is clbowl. If you’re using merged romsets, it will be found under capbowl (Capcom Bowling). I am admittedly not the person to ask about MAME: my experience with it generally involves a lot of banging my head against a wall. Just make sure you have a configuration for trackball controls.
Plumpy
Plumpy can be played in-browser on the Internet Archive.
Controls are S to start game, O/P to move, Q to jump, Space to shoot.
Alternatively, for maximum authenticity, you could manually type in all eleven pages of program data from the original magazine (probably don't).
Not The Lord of the Rings
Again, this can be played on the Internet Archive.
A walkthrough can be found at the Classic Adventures Solution Archive.
King James Bible For Use on Game Boy
If the game crashes upon selecting a book, it means your emulator does not support the Bible’s mapper chip (BizHawk and the MiSTer core are victims to this). BGB will work fine.
Another Bible
This game has been translated into English by Aeon Genesis.
Another Bible is straightforward enough to play without consulting a walkthrough, but the GameFAQs guide does contain contributions by Jesus Christ.
Imadoki no Vampire: Bloody Bride
Bloody Bride's complete English translation can be downloaded here (or, like, basically anywhere else people download fan translations).
While the archive of the translator’s website hosts a patch download, this does not include the 180 megabytes of subtitled cutscenes because, again, this game was translated in 2003.
The translator's site also includes a guide that I found helpful. Unfortunately, that page seems to use HTML features not supported by modern web browsers. I had to break out an older browser for it to load correctly. If you’d rather avoid the hassle, I’ve taken the liberty of copy-pasting the guide into a Google Doc. Note that this guide was never fully completed and may contain errors.
Schrödinger no Neko: Die Katze von Schrödinger
This game has a walkthrough written in Japanese. Depending on your web browser, you may be able to machine-translate the page directly (I use the To Google Translate add-on for Firefox). I'm not aware of a way to do this on a mobile device, unfortunately.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
My video uses footage of the Ship of Harkinian PC port running at 1080p 60fps. While I’ve grown partial to the limited graphics of the original N64 game, I have re-recorded the same segments of OoT so many times across different versions/settings and am trying to Make A Change. Play whichever version you fancy (the 3DS remake has a less frustrating Water Temple).
Pussy
If googling "Pussy" isn’t getting you the files you need, most sites call the game "Pussy: Love Story From Titanic". I elected to drop the subtitle since it’s absent from the title screen and is also less funny. When the game asks you to rewind the tape, on the MiSTer I simply re-selected the tape file in the menu. Not sure how it works in other ZX Spectrum emulators.
Gyakuten Saiban/Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
There exists a work-in-progress fan project porting the English Phoenix Wright script to the original GBA game. However, if you’re getting into the series for the first time, you should probably just play Ace Attorney Trilogy (available on PC and all modern consoles).
By the way, you should play Rise From The Ashes after finishing Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations.
Watch Out!
If you aren’t using the physical cards, the mGBA emulator has full e-Reader support, as demonstrated in the video. You’ll need both the e-Reader ROM (just a gba rom) and the dot code files (in .raw format). You only need to scan the long strips.
Kirby & The Amazing Mirror
Kirby & The Amazing Mirror is available through the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, which also allows for online multiplayer.
The game footage in the video, however, is of a randomizer.
I'm O.K.: A Murder Simulator
I'm O.K. can be downloaded from Derek Yu's website.
Everybody Votes Channel
While the service has been discontinued by Nintendo, it has been revived via the WiiLink project. This will require a hacked Wii (or emulation).
Chrono Trigger
Chrono Trigger and many other games can be downloaded from the excellent Old/Lost RPGMaker Games List.
I use EasyRPG Player to play all games made in RPG Maker 2000 or 2003. It’s as simple as copy-pasting the Player executable into the game folder and running it. If a game displays text in a weird, nearly-unreadable font, it’s probably a technical issue! EasyRPG will fix it automatically! Also, it lets you play games in fullscreen with less hassle.
Other RPG Maker Games
While not needed for Chrono Trigger, many other RPG Maker games require downloading a shared Run Time Package (RTP) of common assets in order to lower file sizes. However, due to official English versions of RPG Maker not existing for some time, many older games made in RPG Maker 2000/2003 used unofficial translations of the software (the Don Miguel translation of RM2k and the RPG Advocate translation of RM2k3). The official RTP distributions will not work with these games! Files are named differently, and Don Miguel added extra files not found in the official versions. It’s all a huge mess.
The unofficial RM2k RTP can be found here.
I haven't found a non-sketchy source for the unofficial RM2k3 RTP. Sorry about that.
PS: are you looking for more great content?
240p Test Suite
Versions of the software for a variety of consoles can be downloaded here.
Dr. Wily Visits Indonesia
The patch can be downloaded from RHDI.
Send Me To Heaven
This game is only available on Android. Why could that be?
Pokémon Bank
YOU'RE OUTTA LUCK, CHUMP.
The Reddit Game 2: All users are equal...
Play The Reddit Game 2 here.
Play The Reddit Game (1) here.
Play Twilight Sparkle Pregnant here.
Court of Madness
You can play the game and watch the accompanying video presentation on the co-creator’s website.
Dave's Challenge
Play Dave’s Challenge here.
Play Equus Magnum here.
Play The Caverns (or don’t) here.
None of these games have any audio because they were made in a computer lab without headphones.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
you can just buy this one at the store
Cross|word
Play it here. Puzzles refresh at midnight Central Time.