This Slack discussion by Dane, richard-kubina and austin occurred in hackernoon's official #slogging-beta channel, and has been edited for readability.
Dane
Which video game weapon made you feel like a god? richard-kubina
the BFG, baby! richard-kubina
the BFG 9000, that is 🧐 austin
BFG for sure. and that moment in GTA V when you rob the bank in full body armor with a gatling gun with unlimited ammo and you just...destroy everything. or the gravity gun moment in Half Life 2... austin
oh! the sword in Metal Gear Solid 2 ❤ at the end, when you're just fighting off hordes of clone-soldiers... Dane
For me I'd go with Wraithverge from Hexan. As a cleric you have this medieval gun that looks like a cross. When you fire it, a horde of ghosts fly out and rip everything in sight to shreds. austin
richard-kubina
oh man, I forgot about that game.. I always mix it up with heretic austin
Dane never played that one, but it sounds incrediblerichard-kubina i think they were made by the same dev team
richard-kubina
half-life has had some great weapons.. gluon gunand tau cannon in the first one too. gauss jumping up and over everyone, raining down tau particles on unsuspecting foes was fun..
Dane
The grenade launcher in Golden Eye was also pretty insane. Every time you play deathmatch, there is a mad rush to the grenade launcher. austin
Dane oh man, goldeneye...i'm pretty sure that game has ended friendships. 😂richard-kubina i think i have to go back and actually beat the first half life now...never got to that part
richard-kubina
I felt like the rocket launcher was a bit more deadly! straight to the point and click splash damage action!i forget if the grenades blew up on contact though? or were they always on a timer
richard-kubina
the tau cannon also auto targeted foes when shot through a wall 🤔 was pretty over powered on some levels Dane
This example pales in comparison to modern games but I remember the invincible feeling of getting the fire flower for the first time in Mario Bros. richard-kubina
the redeemer from unreal was a god weapon.. first person view of a nuke you controlled.. huge radius and damage when it exploded Dane
The Lightblade in Halo was pretty insane. austin
crash bandicoot, getting the three masks and becoming literally invincible for a short time, was absolutely awesome. it was also my first playstation game, my first 3d game, so i may be looking at it through nostalgia goggles. but i think it was still objectively cool. austin
omg the lightblade Dane
The Thunder Beam in Mega Man was crazy. Too bad it used up so much energy. austin
ahhh mega man...such a great series. my personal favorite was mega man 2, with the saw blades richard-kubina
we used to play toejam and earl with a game genie using a code that allowed you to use presents without consuming them.we used to love getting to the elevator before the other player and spawning hella Earthlings to guard it from the other player.. this is a true god weapon, wielding the power of creation! 😂
game genie in general was godly like that.. poking the game's code and what not
Dane
Oh yeah, the saw blades were great. I also liked the power you got from guts man where you could pick up and throw giant blocks of rock. austin
richard-kubina ah the game genie, such a magical little device ✨ nothing like PEEKing and POKEing the game's raw memory...Dane i forgot about that one! man, i need to play mega man 2 later...
Dane
I was 100% against game genie back in the day. My little brother loved game cheats and I persuaded him not to get it. austin
oh yeah, i refused to play any of the GTA games with cheats. i was all about the missions, and cheat codes were...cheating! but i eventually got a gameshark disc so i could find the hidden areas in san andreas 👀 richard-kubina
naw, it added soo much replay value to games. in golden eye we used game shark to open up the entire facility level because I found a code that you could bind a button on the d-pad to fire a gun that could destroy anything.. even that locked door :challenge-accepted: austin
i think it made games boring, if you overused it. like once you're invincible and you can do anything...omnipotence gets old fast richard-kubina
ah i'm thinking multiplayer games. games you'd play with friends, sitting around a single television 🙂 Dane
I can see using tools like that for replayability. I was just against using those tools to beat the game the first time. That was a major ethical stance I was somehow very strict about. richard-kubina
it was like having mods on the console! at least before consoles connected to the internet Dane
What we used to do for replayability is come up with random restrictions and see if we could still beat the game.•We tried to beat Mario Bros by using our toes instead of fingers. •In various football games, we'd say touchdowns weren't allowed and we had to kick field goals. •In Final Fantasy I, we decided we wanted to beat the game by playing through with every character being a single class. I think we made it through with priests and fighters.
richard-kubina
hahaha.. how'd you do with your toes on mario bros. ? Dane
I believe we made it to level 8-1. You can warp there relatively easy but those levels just require too much dexterity. richard-kubina
I recall some codes to change joe montana's football scoring rules, so you could have enforced touchdowns being zero points 😄 richard-kubina
I tried to play the first final fantasy on the NES.. it was already hard enough for me. I was awful ☹ richard-kubina
8-1 with just your toes is very impressive... 👏 Dane
Oh yeah. We were pretty dedicated to learning to play with our toes. I think we wanted to join some kind of circus act or something. Kids have strange ideas... Dane
Oh, another "weapon" that made me feel like a god would have to be the crafting bench in Minecraft. That game in general gives you so much creative freedom. Being able to carve out and build your own world is very god-like. austin
most definitely! in minecraft, the first time i got diamond weapons and armor, i felt invincible. of course, it wears down...but still richard-kubina
Absolutely. minecraft is so good for that ability to make the world what you want it to be.. richard-kubina
Join us next time when we discuss the best 'god games' 😁 Dane
Minecraft also had the opposite of a god-like experience. Those fucking creepers that come along and blow up your shit kind of make you feel helpless. austin
speaking of godlike feelings...what about the sims 👀 richard-kubina
hahah right.. at least there's creative mode 😌 Dane
The original Sim City was fantastic. I can't say I felt a sense of power in any of the others though. richard-kubina
sims, right.. i was thinking of sim city. i never played spore but that seemed like a neat idea, guiding evolution of life forms Dane
Oh, I was so excited when they were developing Spore. I never played it though. austin
oh man, i wanted to play spore soooo bad when i first heard of it...then i promptly forgot about it when the next issue of GamePro magazine came out 😅 austin
i bet you can get it for like $2 now Dane
That was a PC game right? I doubt it would even run on modern systems. Computers would likely reject it out of pure disgust. austin
dosbox ftw 😄 or use docker or virtualbox to run windows 2000/xp haha Dane
Nice! Dane
Seeing your icon makes me a little sad nobody (to my knowledge) ever tried to create a Bob Ross game. Phthalo green would have been a god-like weapon. austin
whoa....sounds like a job for VR 👀 i'd play that Dane
I would buy my first VR headset just to paint in a setting like Bob Ross. richard-kubina
lol but would you have to use cheat codes to match bob's brush beating? richard-kubina
lol at the idea of using those hand trackers to do that Dane
Beating the devil out of your brush should trigger the cheat codes. austin
it feels like so many games are in a rut, trying to be ultra-realistic and all that, copying the blockbuster bestsellers...it would be so nice to see something different like this richard-kubina
lmaooo austin
seriously! something creative for a change austin
like i don't wanna play Call of Duty 28 or whatever. i want Happy Little Trees with Bob Ross Dane
I'd want an antagonistic Bob Ross mode. "That doesn't look like a happy little tree to me". austin
angry bob ross like that parody character in The Boondocks cartoon... 😂 Dane
"When I said anyone could do this, I had no idea someone would come along as bad as you..." richard-kubina
lol austin
ok dane's writing dialogue, that settles it. we need to get bob ross's estate to sign off on this, it needs to happen Dane
No way they'd agree to a game with an angry Bob Ross. austin
nah. but the original idea might fly austin
maybe his angry cousin Rob Boss comes in Dane
Oh yeah, it could be like that version of Madden without real NFL teams. "Bobby Ross Paints" austin
oh yeah!! NFL Blitz, was that it? such a great game austin
but yeah, could totally do a "fair use" parody sorta thing And that's a wrap. Somehow we started by talking about a weapon clerics wield that unleashes a horde of ghosts onto your enemies and nicely evolved into what it would be like to paint as Bob Ross in a VR world.
What god-like weapons did we overlook?