Super AiG Screenshots of the Year: 2017

It's been a while, but I'm back with a brand new post for you, filled with old content you've already seen! It's the seventh annual Super Adventures Screenshots Animated GIFs of the Year, featuring some of the very best images from the last 12 10 or so months of my site.

I have to be honest, this is going to be a much shorter post than it's been in years past because I just didn't have many games to pick from. I've only made 32 posts this year and one of them was a message reassuring people that the site wasn't dead, followed by a list of games I promised I was going to write about and then never did. Well, to be fair I did manage to get around to half of them.

Speaking of things I'm not going to be writing about in the future, there'll be an important announcement at the end of this article and it's not good news. So be sure to stick around for that... or just scroll down and read it now and then scroll back for the screenshots afterwards, either's fine. All game links will take you back to the original Super Adventures game article, so don't worry about ending up on Amazon or something. Wait... I could've had Amazon affiliate links all over my site this whole time and made 3% on every sale! Oh no!

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~ JANUARY ~

The first screenshot I've got for you is this fantastic portrait of Tales of Symphonia hero Lloyd Irving. I think it really captures his steely determination and absence of deep thought.

This is a bit of a long scene from Spy Fox in Dry Cereal, but when I've got a GIF featuring a fox doing backflips I've got to use it. Though I should point out that I edited it a little to remove the cow's long descent to reduce the filesize. This was by no means an attempt to undermine or misrepresent the original developer's artistic vision.

(Though I totally think it's funnier this way).

Carmageddon's not the prettiest game to come out of the late 90s, but I love Max Damage's expression in the top left as I Death Race 2000'd this gentleman with my spiky automobile. He's got some great faces that guy.

Here's some Super Adventures trivia for you: I actually started this 'Screenshots of the Year' post way back in January because I needed to be absolutely sure that this picture ended up in the list. Not that I was ever likely to forget it. Occasional Super Adventures commenter Kelvin Green described this gentleman as being like "Vince McMahon, off of the wrestling," and I see what he means.

I could go on showing screenshots from Zelda wannabe Legends, because the art in it is incredible (for many reasons), but that wouldn't be fair on all the other games.

I will show one more though, because I saw this loading screen about 300 bloody times and it's only fair that you see it a few times too.

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~ FEBRUARY ~

I only played one game in February, so here's a GIF of my fluky escape in Psycho Fox on the Master System. I guess that second pogoing mushroom must have been overlapping the pillar by a pixel, saving me from instant doom. Yay for 80s collision detection.

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~ MARCH ~

Here's a GIF of Alucard learning that confession isn't always good for the soul in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PlayStation. Because I had to include a Symphony of the Night shot; the game looks amazing. Though in retrospect it seems possible that I didn't have to write quite so many thousands of words about the game in my article...

Nah that was totally justified, the game's a legend!

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~ APRIL ~

Demolition Man on the Mega Drive/Genesis is a fantastic looking platformer with some top quality pixel art. Mostly.

(The SNES version of the screen's just as bad if you're wondering).

I love the chicken's expression as he no-sold all my apples in James Pond 3: Operation Starfish on the SNES. I just wish I actually liked playing the game as well.

I finally played Day of the Tentacle this year, so I get to show Bernard losing a fight against a clown. It's not the funniest moment in the game, but it works so well in a GIF.

Speaking of things that work better in motion...

....here's a few seconds from the new Doom. It's an immensely pretty game but screenshots don't do it justice. Neither does crappy low res video to be honest, but I try to be considerate with the filesize of my autoplaying clips.

I'm just going to sit and watch this loop for a little longer.

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~ MAY ~

It was tough just choosing one GIF from the anime-inspired intro to Wolfchild on the Amiga, so I went for the one that came with 12 other screens.

If there's one thing I appreciate about Star Wars: Rebel Assault II, it's that it treats the source material with absolute respect and reverence. Also, the guy who did the subtitles can spell good.

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~ JUNE ~

There's nothing overly hilarious about this shot, but it's got pretty artwork and there's no way I was ever going to leave out Monkey Island 2.

I couldn't leave out Rolling Ronny on the Amiga either.

In fact, this title screen belongs in an actual art gallery, so that people smarter than me can properly analyse it, and discuss its themes and what it makes them feel.

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~ AUGUST ~

I'm just going to skip right past July and move onto Ganpuru: Gunman's Proof on the SNES. It's a reasonably fun little Zelda shooter this one, though I probably would've enjoyed it more if I spoke Japanese.

On the other hand, I think I'm probably better off not being able to understand Teenagent in its native language, as the slightly-off translation just enhances the weirdness. Not that there's anything off about the dialogue in this beautiful little comedy scene. Who doesn't love the old 'you mean I went through all that effort to get you over that wall and you could've just walked around it the whole time' gag?

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~ OCTOBER ~

Secret of Mana's such a pretty game. I didn't actualy enjoy playing it all that much, to be honest, but I've no complaints about these visuals (Seiken Densetsu 3's prettier though).

I hate you Bill's Tomato Game. I hate you so much.

I hate the wizard in Bob's Bad Day as well. Bob may have been a little sarcastic with regards to the comedy value of the sorcerer's surprise appearance, but he didn't deserve to have his head torn off and thrown into 100 levels of screen spinning, maze solving, collect 'em up action in the billboard dimension.

What's a teleporting wizard doing at bus stop anyway? He can teleport!

Speaking of classic Amiga intros, the 3D rendered cutscene in the CD32 version of mascot platformer Zool 2 has some strange charm to it as well. I mean who doesn't want to watch the guy repeatedly knock himself out cold?

And I'll finish the article off with a bit of dog dunking from Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror. Mainly because it's the last game I played this year. I've got no November or December screenshots to show you I'm afraid.

Actually here's a classic 2011 screenshot of a raptor from Jurassic Park Interactive on the 3DO just for old time's sake (and so you don't have a distracting animation on screen when you read the rest of the text).


SUPER ADVENTURES 2017 CONCLUSION

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Super Adventures has never exactly gone to plan, but there's always been a plan: a spreadsheet covered in games and game categories stretching for months in advance. Even when I realised I wasn't managing to get as many posts out as I used to, I figured I could at least keep the pace going until the end of January next year so I could reach the site's next anniversary. Didn't quite work out like that though, and I'm more frustrated about that than anyone.

Before Super Adventures in Gaming, there was an Adventures in Gaming forum thread, and before that I just used to bother my friends with screenshots and dumb comments on IRC, so this site was really just supposed to be way for me to show off weird screens and interesting games. But thanks to your feedback I began to take Super Adventures more seriously and started to stick with games way longer than I ever used to. Hours even! Having a reason to play games other than my own entertainment actually helped me get more entertainment out of them and I got to whine about all the things that have been bothering me over the years too. That more than made up for the time spent getting those bloody animated GIFs looping right.

But after a few years of writing up a game every week the site stopped becoming something I was doing for fun and started becoming more of an obligation, to myself and to you readers. I felt I had to keep that momentum going and give you folks something new to scroll through each week; not that I wasn't happy to keep going with it and carry on ticking games off the list. Trouble is that when your heart's not in something it starts taking longer and longer to get it done, and I've got Sci-Fi Adventures to find time write for now as well, so all those plans and promises of mine fell apart. It's not even an issue of 'life getting in the way' I just don't have the time to keep writing something that now takes me forever to write. Plus several people have pointed out that my articles haven't been as funny as they used to be and you can tell I've been forcing it. I guess 1000 games was my limit. In conclusion: 2017 wasn't Super Adventures' best year.

But was it Super Adventures' final year?

Yeah, I'm afraid so. Well, it's the final year I'll be writing for the site regularly at least. I need to take time off and hopefully recharge my enthusiasm for video games, so that next time I reappear and write about a game it's because I want to and not because I feel like I have to. Though even if I never come back, the site's not going anywhere. All the old posts will still be there, even the ones I regret, and I'll not be letting the spam bots claim my comments section. I'm very fond of my comments and they'll not have it.

So massive thanks to everyone who's been reading and additional thanks if you've ever left me a comment as well. You're the ones that made this into a video game site instead of the ramblings of a lunatic ranting only to himself about games that are literally decades old.

You guys win the prize.

If you want to make sure you don't miss out on possible future posts you can subscribe to the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter, or just drop by every now and again. Maybe I'll have something new for you someday. Until then you can go bother VGJunk at his very similar blog. Oh and Happy New Year! Also, Merry Christmas, seeing as I missed that one.