My 50 Favorite Video Games of All Time: #50-41
Nov 06 '05
The Bottom Line The first list on my countdown of the 50 best games of all time (going way back to the prehistoric age of games)
50. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out
I doubt they could make this game today (I can just see it now, players would have to avoid Mike Tyson's devestating ear bite attack). But this boxing classic didn't need to rely on a celebrity name to win over fans. It featured a bunch of absurd opponents, such as the overweight King Hippo (who was tough to knock down until you figured out the strategy, but once he fell, he couldn't get back up) or Great Tiger, who could teleport around while fighting. The challenge came in figuring out when to attack and when to block by memorizing each opponent's unique mannerisms (such as a raised eyebrow) to tip you off as to when they were about to strike. It was great fun, even though I never could manage to beat Tyson at the end.
49. Arkanoid
This game doesn't make the list because it was a pioneer among video games, and incredibly innovative (if that was the reason, you would also see Pac-Man, Centipede, and Asteroids on the countdown). Rather, Arkanoid finds a place here because it's still fun today in any of its many imitated forms (and there are so many Arkanoid spin-offs that Arkanoid is practically its own genre of video game). It's also an incredibly addicting game, despite the apparent simplicity of just bouncing a ball to break bricks.
48. Bionic Commando
This lesser-known game for the Nintendo Entertainment System has got its own cult following of dedicated fans who swear by it. While I'm not in that category, and the games I'm truly obsessed over are saved for much later on this countdown, I do appreciate how innovative this game way. In fact, I've never seen another game quite like it. It's a side-scrolling adventure, but it doesn't enable you to jump in the way you'd expect. Instead, you've got to master the use of a bionic arm that enables you swing over pits or reach higher platforms. This made for an extreme challenging game, even by the standards of games on the NES (back when you had to be a master at video games just to beat half of the titles that they released). And the game is worth its place on this list for the ending alone, in which you kill Hitler (seriously, check out http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/nes/a/bionic.htm to see the ending).
47. Balloon Kid
I just wouldn't feel right making a list of the 50 best games of all time, and not including something for the original Game Boy (which was a great system for the time even despite the lack of color). This was my personal favorite title for the Game Boy, and as with "Bionic Commando," it had a very innovative way of presenting a side-scrolling adventure. Using two balloons, your character flies along, and you have to avoid having enemies hit the balloons, since you can no longer stay in the air when both of them are popped. So you've got to make sure the balloons don't get popped unless you're over some ground. A pretty challenging game overall, but very fun nonetheless.
46. Sim Tower
An unusual twist on the Sim City formula, which I found fairly boring in many of its forms (Sim Ant springs to mind, as speaking personally, I never really wondered or cared what it would be like to run an ant colony). But this was an interesting twist, taking a vertical, rather than horizontal perspective, as you build the floors of your tower from the ground up, placing apartments for people to live, office space, elevators, underground subways, and even movie theaters. By today's standards, it's pretty simplistic for a simulation game, but for its time, was remarkably innovative and addicting.
45. Donkey Kong Country
This game doesn't win any points for originality, as it was basically your standard side-scrolling Mario-esque adventure game (collecting bananas instead of coins). Yet it was a nice twist to be able to switch off between Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong in the game, as well as to use animal friends like a rhino that could bash through things while running, and the graphics were way ahead of their time for the Super Nintendo. But the reason it makes the list is because it simply followed the formula so well as to make for an undeniably enjoyable game from start to finish (not to mention it was fun to see Mario's prior nemesis brought to the forefront as the hero of the game).
44. X-Men Legends
If nothing else, this game earns points for being the first X-Men game that was actually good (and if you want to see how bad an X-Men game could be, look at my review for Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge to see a train-wreck of a video game). But what was truly incredible about this game is the way it took old-fashioned multi-player side-scrolling fighting games from the aracde, and brought that feel into the home, making a fun beat 'em up and break everything in sight game even for those who know nothing about the comic books. If only I could say the sequel was as good, but you won't see "X-Men Legends 2" on this list, because it suffers from far too many programming glitches and adds next to nothing new to the original.
43. Blaster Master
This is actually two games in one making for a very unique playing experience. You control a tank-like vehicle that you can equip with different weapons (such as homing missiles), and that will be your main method of getting around (the vehicle can jump and even be taken underwater). But the game goes further and allows you to at any point get out of your tank and control a little character with a much less powerful weapon. Why, you ask, would you want to do that? Because there are certain areas that you cannot get into without getting out of your vehicle, and that's where the second mode of playing comes in. You get a totally different perspective when entering levels with your character outside the vehicle, and in fact, fight the boss of each stage that way (those parts of the game in which you cannot play with the vehicle are often the most difficult). I'm going to be honest, I was never able to get even close to the end of this extremely difficult game, but I always had fun trying to save my pet frog (yes, that was the plot of the game, but we can let that slip considering how fun it was).
42. Tekken 3 Tag Tournament
It wasn't easy to decide which Tekken game to put on the list, because they are all fairly similar, generally changing around the characters and updating the graphics each time. But for me, this is where Tekken really came together and I got hooked. In this one, you can switch off between two characters on your team during the fight if one is low on health (so there's an incentive to master more than just one character). If you know nothing about the Tekken series, I would say its best selling point (beyond the 3D graphics in a street fighting game, which has been done to death by now) is the unique fighting styles possessed by each character that make for powerful multi-hit combos. It's very different from Street Fighter II, because it's not really about memorizing button combinations to perform special moves, so much as button patterns to maximize the number of hits done before your opponent can recover. The only problem with this game is the way that total amateurs can have this way of easily winning against seasoned pros just by mashing random buttons.
41. Zork
To end off my first list on the countdown, I'm going back as far as I can remember to the game that got me interested in games in the first place. It had no graphics at all, playing out like a story where you had to use your imagination, but somehow it was still easy to get lost in the world described, and forget you were just looking at words on a black screen. In this game, you had to solve puzzles often by using items in your inventory, much like what later became known as the "graphic adventure" genre (which I have been sad to see die away in recent years). As a result, it was an entirely different kind of challenge from practically every other game on this list, requiring you to think your way out of problems with imaginative solutions, not quite knowing what to expect and where the next secret passage might lie. The only shame was how dissapointing it was when they finally made a Zork title with graphics, sort of like when you spoil a good book by turning it into a movie and cast lousy actors that don't feel like the characters you previously read.
Hope I've captured your interest, there's much more to come...
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
duke101
|
|
Member: Adam
Reviews written: 174
Trusted by: 16 members
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.