The Captain's Top 100 Games of All Time - Part Two
Nov 02 '06 (Updated Aug 25 '08)
The Bottom Line Part two of my Top 100 Computer / Video Games of All Time (games 21-50)
CAPTAIND’S TOP 100 GAMES OF ALL TIME
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PART TWO (games 21-50)
Remember, these aren't in order of preference, the numbers are merely there so I can keep track of how many games I've included in the list!
21. Carrier Command (Atari ST)
Real-time strategy and action in a 3D environment combined to make one of the definitive games of the 16-bit era. It provided one of the most engrossing games ever, though I have to admit I was never much good at it! A very tasty-looking remake is being developed for PC, take a look at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martingbell/projects/ to see the development diary. A timeless classic.
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22. Feud (Commodore 16) Mastertronic
Ah, one of the best 2-player games ever, this one! You play a wizard who has a grudge against the other wizard, and on a split-screen display the two of you went around finding ingredients, going back to your cauldron to mix the spell and then attacking the other wizard with it! It’s impossible to describe just how much fun this game was to those who haven’t played it. Several remakes are in the making but I’ve yet to see a completed one that truly captures the spirit of the original.
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23. TRON 2.0 (PC) Buena Vista Entertainment
This game carries on from the plot of the film, with you taking the part of Alan Bradley’s son Jet. You must enter the electronic world to save your father, who has got himself trapped inside. Moody graphics and an excellent soundtrack, a great levelling up system, and atmospheric gameplay make this one of the best film tie-ins ever. A few stages feature light cycle races, which can also be played as an independent game. I’m playing through this again at the moment (with better graphics because of my new graphics card :-D) and am loving it just as much as the first time. When I’ve completed it again, you never know, maybe I’ll even try the higher difficulty levels…
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24. Stunt Car Racer (Atari ST) Microprose
Revs programmer Geoff Crammond entered the 16-bit arena with this cracking game that featured some insane stunt tracks for you to wreck your car on (or, once you got good at it, not!). Four division and the prospect of a super-powered car to play through them all again once you won the first division, tracks that were tough to master but fun to race, and some great visuals (for the time) made this a real winner. The Speccy version wasn’t up to much but I don’t think the 8-bits were built to cope with this kind of game!
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25. Formula One Grand Prix (Atari ST) Microprose
Geoff Crammond hit the 16-bit scene again with this superb racing sim, with track details so detailed that I remember a report of a Formula 3 driver using the game to help him prepare for a race! Though the simulation was superbly accurate, the game remained a lot of fun while being extremely challenging. Of course if you really got fed up when you had a bad race you could always turn on the indestructible car option, turn around and zoom around the track backwards taking out all of the opposition!
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26. Outrun (Coin-op, Spectrum 2, Atari ST) US Gold
Ah, the definitive coin-op racing game. Featuring a Ferrari F40, this had great visuals for the time along with nice music and a sit-in hydraulic machine with steering wheel etc for an authentic gaming experience. The ST version was okay but did leave something to be desired, and the original coin-op music came on tape! The Spectrum version looked a bit sad but played okay. Still, you can’t beat the coin-op – even today I’d probably choose this over newer racing games (not that I really get near the coin-grabbing coin-ops these days, which is just as well!!)
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27. Super Hang On (Coin-op)
The motor racing equivalent to Outrun and in arcades during the same time period, this featured a bike you clambered on and, if you were any good, got a bit of a sore bum playing. I remember when I was a kid getting so involved with this game that I physically ducked when I went under the checkpoint signs! (Stupid child…) Even with the lack of a decent 3D engine, this game gave a real impression of speed and was very addictive.
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28. The Secret of Monkey Island (Atari ST) LucasArts
I very much doubt that anyone who likes adventure games won’t have played this game – and I doubt even more that anyone can have played this game without having very fond memories of it. A true adventure classic, it set the standards for all other adventure games to follow for about half a decade. Great story, great humour, great puzzles. Still plays really well today, even if the graphics and sound are old-fashioned. Hilarious and brilliant. The second game in the series was tricky to the point of near impossibility and it’s ending was very disappointing. (In the first game, the puzzle involving cups of grog and a jail cell is pure genius and ranks as one of my all-time favourite adventure game moments, along with finally beating the Sword Master in the same game - who can forget insult sword-fighting?!?!)
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29. The Curse of Monkey Island (Atari ST) LucasArts
Marginally my favourite of all the Monkey Island games, this third one sported higher resolution, cartoon-style graphics, a new interface (verb coin), a great storyline involving everyone’s favourite evil zombie pirate Le Chuck, and even more humour than in the first game. Some great puzzles again and very funny characters, along with quite a few min-games to keep things interesting.
---The first three Monkey Island games can be bought together in the Monkey Island Archives (released in the UK as the Monkey Island Bounty Pack)---
The fourth game, Escape from Monkey Island is also a good game, but just not quite as enjoyable as the first or third games.
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30. Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror (Atari ST) Rebellion software
I really enjoyed the first game and the third game in the Broken Sword series (the fourth game isn't quite as good, though it's still worth playing), but overall I think the second adventure starring George and Nico was the best. I’ll be getting the fourth game but after playing the demo, it just doesn’t look as good. Ancient artefacts and secret societies abound in the games and there’s plenty of intrigue and humour to go along with the puzzle-solving. Broken Sword 2 also has a superb soundtrack. In this case you control George or Nico alternately in different scenes, and track down the clues leading to South America and a fiendishp plot - with some equally fiendish puzzles along the way!
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31. Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders (Atari ST) LucasArts
One of my favourite adventure games ever, the combination of whacky storyline, lots of humour and some great puzzles and four different playable characters across many countries and even planets made for a wonderful game. Very challenging, too – in the days before online hints it took my sister and I about 2 years to complete! Only trouble was that there was a terrible feeling of anti-climax when we finished it – we wouldn’t be playing it anymore, it was awful! On the plus side Zak’s adventures have continued in some fan-made freeware adventure games such as “The New Adventures of Zak McKraken” - http://www.bigbluecup.com/games.php?action=detail&id=40 - and there are various other Zak 2 projects, though it remains to be seen whether any of them will actually be completed this century! (Or if LucasArts legal team closes them down? - hey LucasArts, how about a new Zak game from you guys?!?!)
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32. Indian Jones and the Last Crusade (Graphical Adventure) (Atari ST) LucasArts
There were in fact two official games of the film, the graphical adventure and the arcade game (which was okay but nothing great). The graphical adventure was a great game, carrying on in the fine tradition of Maniac Mansion / Zak McKraken / Monkey Island. It tied in very nicely with the film, and had a few extra features that earlier games didn’t like mini-games. The fighting sequences were rather difficult to get to grips with, but at least you could mostly skip them by solving problems with your brain rather than brawn!
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33. Timeslip (Commodore 16)
How about a three-way split screen on a low-res computer? That’s what you had in Timeslip, an action-adventure across three time zones. I seem to remember you had to collect orbs or something to prevent the collapse of the space-time continuum – or something… a great game, whatever the plot was!
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34. Rolling Thunder (Coin-op, Atari ST)
A special agent against the Klu Klux Klan, or perhaps aliens? I never really was sure about that, but this platform shooter sure was addictive. The animation was great for the time, too – it would look very poor by today’s standards of course, but the fairly smooth crouching / rolling / firing was pretty impressive at the time.
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35. Altered Beast (Coin-op, Sega Megadrive)
A much-maligned port to the Megadrive admittedly, but I still enjoyed this silly beat-em’-up nearly as much as the coin-op. A side-scrolling beat-em-up that would probably have been rather ordinary if it wasn’t for the fact that you could collect things to make you turn into a powerful beast. Of course if you lost that ability and became a puny man with a feeble punch at a difficult stage of the game, you were toast, but it was still great fun. A guilty pleasure! :-D
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36. Streets of Rage (Sega Megadrive)
Another beat-em’-up I really enjoyed (despite not being a great fan of the genre), for some reason I always ended up playing the girl in two-player because one of the chaps was completely useless and my mate, who owned the Megadrive and thus had dibs, always bagged the decent male character. Some interesting moves and funny animations helped this to be one of the more enjoyable games of its genre, and still one of the few Megadrive games that I really remember. (I remember Sonic and Spiderman as well, but not with fondness!)
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37. The Chaos Engine (Amiga 1200) – Bitmap Brothers
One of the very few games I played no this system, it was so much better than the Atari STe version (of which I only played the demo, which was the first level). A truly great top-down shoot-‘em-up with terrific graphics and, on the Amiga 1200, a brilliant soundtrack. The different characters that forced you to genuinely alter your style of gameplay was another nice touch. Proof as if it were ever needed that The Bitmap Brothers we still among the best game designers of the era.
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38. Sleepwalker (Atari STe) - ?Ocean
I can’t remember the year, but it was released in aid of Comic Relief and was one of the very, very few commercial games ever released specifically for the STe. You played a dog with the thankless task of keeping your owner, a sleepwalking boy, out of trouble… sort of like Lemmings but with big sprites and only one character to keep alive, this was a really nice game with great graphics and sound. If only more games had utilised the STe’s capabilities it would have been far more popular.
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39. Saboteur (Commodore 16 / 16+4 / Speccy)
This was a platform / action game, where you played the part of a … wait for it … saboteur. The C16 version was okay, but the C16 4 version had what seemed amazing graphics for the time, with big sprites instead of really tiny ones. A game that is fondly remembered by many people from many 8-bit systems, and much remade on the freeware scene.
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40. Where Time Stood Still (Spectrum ”) Ocean –
Based loosely on the film “The Land That Time Forgot”, this isometric adventure plunged a group of travellers on a remote location after their plane had crashed. Controlling them by turn, you had to their skills and the items available to survive, and possibly escape… but there be dinosaurs and suchlike afoot, so it wasn’t easy. (I also seem to remember that the characters not in your immediate character used to go off and do their own thing, often making things more difficult for you!) Not a game I was particularly good at, but a very enjoyable one and quite ambitious for the time it was released.
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41. Advanced Ski Simulator (Atari ST) Codemasters
With reversed controls (left=right, right=left!), you might think this game was very difficult to control. In fact it only took a little while to get used to it, but this aesthetically impressive simulator was very easy to play. Not very easy to beat, however – it was a very challenging game, but very rewarding with it.
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42. Footballer of the Year (Commodore 16) Gremlin Graphics
Mainly a simple strategy game but with action sequences where you tried to actually score the goals (you got the opportunity to score from “goal cards” that you attained along the way), I would probably find this game good only for a quick mindless game nowadays, but at the time as a little lad I really loved it. Somehow the somewhat limited gameplay never stopped it being enjoyable.
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43. Dungeon Master (Atari ST) Imageworks FTL
The all-time top selling game on the Atari ST (as far as I know, anyway!), this is a game that is still played, emulated, and has been remade over and over again. Clever graphical effects for the day (mapping 2D graphics onto 3D shapes), atmospheric sound effects, and brilliant levelling up system, some tricky riddles, an intensive spell system, and enemies unbounded added up to a game that was immediately playable but almost impenetrably complex at the same time.
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44. Super Sprint (Atari ST)
This top-down racer was again very simple to play, but difficult to master. The tracks repeated as you went along but got progressively more difficult with oil slicks and extra hazards, while the computer-controlled drivers got steadily better. To compensate for this you could collect spanners in races, and when you had enough could increase your speed, traction, or acceleration. It supported up to 3 players which was great, though it meant that I had to use the keyboard as no-one else would! (Of course, I still beat them most of the time!) The sequel, “Championship Sprint”, also had a track editor. Great stuff.
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45. HERO 2 (Atari STe)
The only STe game ever to require a whole 4Mb of memory (it may sound like chicken feed now but believe me, at the time 4Mb was a lot of RAM!), this freeware arcade-adventure was one of the best freeware games ever released for the ST. It came on a fairly whopping (at the time) 4 floppy disks, had great graphics and sound, and extremely challenging gameplay – oh yeah, and a huge game world to explore (if you could find all the pass keys, time your jumps right, avoid being killed, etc etc…) Also featured some of the best animation seen on the 16-bits, freeware or otherwise.
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46. Interphase (Atari ST)
A dream of a game, in which you enter someone’s dream to… do something, I can’t really remember exactly what the overall objective was (probably something cliché like rescuing your girlfriend, I expect) – but the 3D environment and intriguing, complex gameplay made this a truly absorbing experience.
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47. Winter Events (Commodore 16)
One of the first games of its type that I ever played, and still fixed in my memory s one of the best. Race downhill, do the slalom, ski jump, biathlon… this game really scored points in the gameplay and replayability factors, and the multi-player mode was great fun. A real family favourite at the time.
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48. Trailblazer (Commodore 16 / 16 4, Spectrum 2, Atari ST, PC [Freeware remake])
The only game that I remember owning on every system I’ve ever owned (well okay, apart from the ZX81!), this puts you in the role of a ball going down a causeway. Different coloured floor tiles have different effects on you, for instance make you go faster / slower, make you bounce, slip, reverse, or the ultimate nightmare – reversing your controls! All this against a time limit, or against an opponent in a split screen display. It’s one of those games whose elegant simplicity ensures that it will never get old.
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49. 720° (Coin-op, Spectrum 2)
Skateboarding across a park with different areas including a slalom and ramps, earning money to get upgrades, avoiding killer bees (really), and trying to perform the elusive 720° jump may not sound like much fun, but trust me this was a really enjoyable game, whether the original coin-op or the Speccy conversion.
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50. Knights of the Old Republic (PC) LucasArts
While this game had one or two drawbacks, mainly its slight lack of stability (one or two crashes), it deserves to be on this list simply because it has probably the best storyline of any computer game I’ve ever played. Take control of a young soldier who turns out to have an affinity with the Force, and whose Jedi training will take him / her on a journey beyond their wildest dreams and nightmares – but will you play the Light Side or give in to the Dark Side of the Force? Haven’t played the sequal yet, but have been informed by a relatively reliable source (well okay it was Carl, not a reliable source at all) that the storyline isn’t a patch on the first game.
[UPDATE] - yup, Carl was (for once) right - the sequel ("Sith Lords") didn't have as good a storyline, but I still really enjoyed the game. Read the review.
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Read Part One (Introduction and games 1-20)
Read Part Three (Games 51-80)
Read Part Four (Games 81-100 and conclusion)
See also: My Top Ten Freeware Adventure Games (September 2007 Edition)
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