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190: Medal of Honor
Year: 1999
System: PS1
I got a copy of the Official PlayStation Magazine. There was a center story that was an interview with
Spielberg where he talked about how exciting videogames as a medium was.
He talked about how he could have symphony quality soundtracks with the disks and that technology has come far enough along to where the AI could react to what you were doing rather than just running at you. He talked about how they were programming the enemies to jump on grenades or take cover.
I honestly didn't believe anything he was saying and expected the game to never exist.
But we got it. Mission 2 especially stuck with me, the spy mission in the train station. You could hear some vague french music in the background that seemed to echo off the walls. The tension and anxiety built as you presented your papers to more and more German officers.
System: PC
Just the most brutal of dice rolls with every move you did. Would fording the river end with broken legs and lost supplies? Probably. Would half of your wagon party die of terrible disease, odds are in favor of it. And at some point would you spend too much time hunting and have to just discard a bunch of meat on the side of the road like white people actually did... you betcha!
But you know what, it was the only game on those somehow already outdated Apple II/DOS machines in your computer lab and you were happy to have it. Bang out your Mavis Beacon assignment and then switch over to the "learning" game.
And when you inevitably died before reaching the west coast, you got to leave a curse word filled tombstone on the road, your semi-permanent mark on this game.
188: Pokemon Red/Blue
Year: 1996
System: Gameboy
I came to Pokemon late. Long ago did the school yard stop talking of Red vs Blue vs Yellow. Everyone was looking to the next generation.
My little brother bought a Gameboy Color fairly late in it's life and that's when I caught up on the classics.
Pokemon Blue passed the time on a 4 hour car ride to the Ozarks in what felt like minutes. And that first game gave birth to my tradition of spending too much time trying to catch every Pokemon in the first grassy area and grinding up until I have a Pidgey maxed out with mega-pecs.
187: Wii Sports
Year: 2006
System: Wii
Wii's were in such short supply that I spent roughly $100 more than face value and that was considered a good deal. After I got another Wii-mote and Twilight Princess, I legit could not afford another game for months.
So you bet your ass I was playing bowling and baseball every weekend. I threw my arm out the first weekend I had this thing, throwing spicy fast balls before I realized you could cheese the hell of the controls.
Wii Sports permeated the culture so much that even my grandma still has a Wii hooked up in her basement for the grand kids. She has two games, Wii Sports and a dancing game.
186: Clock Tower
Year: 1995
System: PS1
The horror boom of the Saturn/PS1 era had it's hooks in me. After Resident Evil, I search for every 
horror game I could find.
This game had me staring at the PS1 mouse weekly at the local Babbages. The controls were dog shit. It was one of those move the cursor around the screen using the controller as if you had a mouse.
But everything else around this game was great. The story had twists, the puzzles were hard but do-able, there were like eight endings, and anytime scissor man showed up, the music changed and you had seconds to figure out where to hide or fight.
More than any other horror game of this time, Clock Tower force situational awareness on you. You needed to case a room as soon as you entered or else end up as a teenager chopped in half by a guy wielding giant scissors. You needed to know where you could hide or what could be used as a weapon.
185: The Simpsons Arcade Game
System: Arcade
One of my fondest memories of my childhood was the day at Showbiz Pizza, for a buddies birthday, where each kid got a fist full of tokens, and four of us crowded around the Simpson Arcade cabinet.
None of us had ever made it past the second mission. A third level was a schoolyard myth. "I heard it's in a blimp." "I heard it's at the Nuclear Power Plant."
It was this day, armed with the power of capitalism, that we all got to experience Springfield's Discount Graveyard for the first time together. And this would also be the first time we experienced what became a 90's beat-em-up staple, the elevator level.
Xbox live released this briefly on their service and it wasn't until I had the power of unlimited continues that I realized this entire game is only about 35 minutes long. The magic of an arcade game you only could play a few times before you ran out of quarters was gone. You started seeing the seams of how they ripped money from unsuspecting kids allowances. Had I not played that version of the game, this likely would've been comfortably in the 80 range.
184: Spider-man and Venom in Maximum Carnage
Year: 1994
System: Genesis
Roughly 14,000 beat-em-ups came out in the mid-90s era and only about 10 of them were actually any good. This was a gem.
The sprites were maybe a little blurry looking, but if you crossed your eyes and just paid attention to the bright colors, this game looked great.
It was fast, the combos felt good, and it was one of the first good comic book games we got. It was precious. Do you remember how cool it was when the first Xmen movie came out? You know, before we got 36 Avengers films? It was special like that.
I couldn't afford comics and the internet was in it's infancy, so I had no clue why the hell Spider-man and Venom were teaming up... or what Carnage was, but I knew he was bad and I knew we had to punch him.
183: Street Fighter 2
System: SNES
My cousin got Street Fighter 2 for his birthday. Our only fighting game experience at this point was Mortal Kombat, but there started to be murmurs of a "superior" fighting game on the playground.
Well, my cousin took the hit for us. He asked for and received Street Fighter 2, eating $80 of his birthday budget.
Like everyone, we discovered jamming buttons to make Ehonda do his fast punches and Blanka do the electricity early. Then we tried to figure out how we were jumping off the walls with Vega and Chun-li. And eventually one of us would accidentally throw a fireball with Ryu and spend the rest of the night trying to recreate it.
I never got good at these style of fighting games where all of the moves required half or quarter circles. I want to be good at it so bad, but it's just not a thing that clicked.
I'll still pop a quarter into a faded arcade machine, quickly beat Blanka, and then lose to Ken with a smile on my face.
182: Super Mario 2
Year: 1988
System: NES
There's nothing worse than the ending to Super Mario 2. To find out your entire adventure was nothing but Mario's dream... get bent. That's creative writing 101. Don't kill the protagonist for a cheap emotional reaction and don't do dream sequences.
The main reason it sucks is because Mario 2 (Doki Doki Panic) is actually a really good game. The level design is varied, the puzzle aspects clever, and it has some of the all time best Mario boss fights. Throwing bombs at Mouser, the classic Birdo fights that end ever level, and Triclyde who tested your dodging skills.
I'd usually play it safe and use the Princess hover power, not realizing there was some benefit to being able to pick items up and dig fast with Toad or jump incredibly high with Luigi.
It's a shame Nintendo has decided to distance themselves as much as they can from this world. I would love a New Super Mario 2 on the Switch.
181: Simpsons Hit and Run
System: Gamecube
Crazy Taxi is an incredibly addictive game. Now what if you opened Crazy Taxi up to a larger world and dropped a Simpson's coat of paint on it.
That's basically Hit and Run. This is by far the best Simpson's game ever released. The driving physics felt great, the mission structure was chaotic and had a great balance of barely beating it, but feeling like you accomplished a great feat. And the voice acting was top notch, something you would hope for with a Simpson's game.
It was a blast to drive around Springfield and see where all the set pieces actually fit into the city.
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