I was wondering what everybody's biggest look but don't touch game was.

Personally I remember thinking the games in the DarkStalkers series *looked* awesome. For years I'd see pictures of it and want to play it. Unfortunately, once I got the chance I absolutely hated it. I know it's essentially Street Fighter with horror tropes but my hopes crashed and burned so quickly with that series.

I'd also say Metal Slug, but unlike DarkStalkers Metal Slug seemed much more viable.

It would be pretty much EVERY fighting game series for me.
Not because they're bad, but because I'm just hopeless at them.

I do still like to play Street Fighter and a little bit of Mortal Kombat, but anything else tends to be too complicated for my liking. So I loooooooooove the look of the new Guilty Gear games, they're absolutely gorgeous, but when I played the tutorial in the demo, there were like 175 different systems to learn, so I turned it off and deleted it instantly.

When thinking about this, I realized the looking that I did was usually limited to the cover art of the front of the box. I typically didn't see games in action before begging someone else to buy them for me. My greatest memories of gaming are before the rise of the internet. I remember being pleased even with terrible games.

Yep, this. I love the art, music, and lore of GG but I can't for the life of me play it. I couldn't even complete the full tutorial mode on Xrd

Silent Hill series. I consider 1-4 to be masterpieces, but they get too deeply under my skin for me to be in the driving seat.

Wow, I loved Metal Slug (MS2, in particular). Fun to play, and at least it was somewhat survivable on one credit , unlike the brutally unforgiving MS3.

Also pretty funny if gore was enabled in the old arcade cabs...Often times it was turned off mostly due to the fact that there would often be so many exploding corpses that the game would slow down quite significantly.

As for myself, although I love Castlevania, I really never touched any of the modern post-SOTN handhelds. To me, it's always been meant for console.

I don't know. I'm was fine with the Metroidvania's being on handhelds but yeah, it would have been nice to have another one on a console.

It's a wasted opportunity that Konami never made a collection of the GBA/DS releases for console release, but it's Konami so good ideas are in short supply.

I think I'm agreed on the fighters (esp 2D fighters). To get to the upper-tier levels that some gamers get, it's just too much. I can't keep up. But watching it is BEAUTIFUL.

Arc System Works is my company of choice, so Guilty Gear and BlazBlue are the ones I love. I own two BB titles and on GG title, and many soundtracks. But I'm really not good at the games ... I mean, I can get through a campaign on a low-ish difficulty, but there's no point in my going online multiplayer. I just get crushed mercilessly every time.

Fighting games: mainly BlazBlue/Guilty Gear. Love the music obviously, and also adore BlazBlue's overall presentation (graphics, artwork, characters, and how it all comes together, even the menu design). But I have neither the time nor the inclination to study the game mechanics. Speaking as a jump kick/sweep repeat ad nauseam style player of the old Street Fighter II games.

Akira Yamaoka's Silent Hill games: I'm a big fan of Yamaoka's music and a big fan of listening to game music in context. However, I do to horror games what I do to horror movies: turn the volume down. Without the (loud) soundtrack, any horror media no longer scares. Granted, very few top tier horror movies can still utilise minimalism to inspire scares.

Beatmania: Overall, I quite like the various styles of bite-size music here, but again, I have neither the time/inclination to master the Beatmania controller (which I admittedly do have, gathering dust). Besides, I'd rather learn a proper instrument. Which I am.

MMORPGs: In particular FFXI and FFXIV, Immersing myself in the FF world with FF lore sounds tempting. But at the end of the day, most of my time will be spent grinding.

Culdcept series: Culdcept is basically a combination of RPG, Card Battles and Monopoly with music mostly by Kenji Ito. It is potentially addictive but the CPU basically cheats (making you land on their "property" so you are forced to pay them "rent", while they skip over your own "property"). So with knowledge that the CPU uses "loaded dice", it sometimes saps my willpower to play.

To this day the only online game I've played is Diablo II. Great game, kind of sucked that I was limited to a 56k modem back in the day. I think I got the whole thing out of me with that game because I don't want to be tethered to a game that never really ends like that.

I totally hear people on the fighting games thing. Even as an experienced player, I have trouble wrapping my head around just how much goes into playing them at a high level, especially the anime fighters. That is where I am with Smash Brothers Melee...Still a beautiful game to look at, but I lack the hands to play it with any type of pinache. Similarly, the two newer ones are fun to look at, but I don't care to play them unless it's like 4 players and Smash Balls on...one on one Brawl/Smash 4 puts me to sleep.

I've never cared for survivor horror, but I like watching other people play the Resident Evil games.

Nights never quite did it for me in the gameplay department, but the graphics/sound were always top of the line.

Watching people go nuts on a Pop'N Music machine is a guilty pleasure. Mind. Blown.

And I'll offer one outside-the-box pick...Magic the Gathering. I enjoyed my time with the game many moons ago, but the barrage of new expansions and the cost to keep up with the game is extremely offputting nowadays. But even so...the artwork makes it worth glancing into from time to time. I tend to especially enjoy flipping through blue cards and artifacts online, just for the artwork. The few cards I decided to keep were solely for the artwork.

A lot of my friends are into Magic. However, this is one hobby that I don't believe will ever rub off on me.

This is how I shoot down the idea of collecting magic:

Me: "Is it cheaper to just by the cards you want/need?"

Friend: "Pretty much."

That's all I need to know. I like the idea of opening packs for the "thrill of the hunt" but in all honesty I'm never going to become competitive by opening packs. The idea that I should instead look up a deck I have interest in (which I don't know how you'd gauge interest in this case) and just buy those cards. At least with Pokemon (in the early days) opening packs felt like viable option.

Can't speak to FFXI but XIV is really a game that you can put as much or as little time you want to put into it.  I'm the kind that dumps a lot of my time into it because i've got a great group of people I've met while playing.  It's really all about what you want out of it.

Another look but don't touch game: SHMUPs (shoot 'em ups). I suck at even the non-bullet hell games. Shame because like fighting games, they often have good presentation (graphics, art etc). Is it a coincidence that Japan has always been the leaders of both of those genres?

Don't know exactly what you mean by "Look But Don't Touch," but a couple of games that I pined over, but didn't get to play until years later when I discovered emulation were Totally Rad (NES) and Act Raiser (SNES) - and actually, Act Raiser I got on Wii Virtual Console.

Act Raiser, I loved more than I thought I would. Totally Rad, I was glad I played, but when it looked like Mega Man (and played) as much as it did, I wanted a less linear progression to the game, preferably with a stage select. I remember the boss monster designs being pretty cool, and that's what attracted me to the game.

Fighting games, all I ever played was Street Fighter II, and much later, Guilty Gear; have to be the 2D side-scrolling fighters. I thought I was pretty good at Super Smash Bros., until I tried to start playing it competitively, and got, well, smashed.

I like the concept of the Shmup, but I can't think of any right off the top of my head that I actually liked or owned. Some non-shmup games feature shmup mini-games that I enjoy, though.