100: Zack and Wiki: The Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
- Year: 2007
- System: Wii
Zack and Wiki was an interesting puzzle game. You would be introduced to a situation such as your plane crashing and you jumping out and having to find a way to slow your decent. Or a volcano with a locked door. And using the Wiimote, you would have to open an umbrella to slow your fall or grab a key and actually use it to unlock a door.
This game does what most of those phone game advertisements promise. There's an order of operations to solve the puzzles and when you do it, it's incredibly satisfying.
99: Mariokart: Double Dash
- Year: 2003
- System: GameCube
Anyone that has been to college, has that college dorm game they talk about. Double Dash was that 
game for my. My roommates would crowd around my 200 lb 27" tube TV, shouting at each other, cursing the blue shell user.
We played this game so much that we could play 150 CC mirror tracks at random while giving the computer a 30 second headstart.
Even now, I boot up Double Dash every other year or so and I know the exact bumps in DK Island, I know exactly how to dodge the dinosaurs stomping down on Dino Dino Island, and I know the most efficient path through the traffic in Mushroom city.
98: Doom 2
- Year: 1996
- System: PC
id Software took what they learned with Doom 1 and perfected it. Each map has it's own feel. You can randomize which level loads up and I can tell you all about it.
The enemy design was much more detailed. The music much more metal. To this day, only Mario 2 has a more dejecting ending.
But wait... even after you saw the end credits, you could download an infinity amount of WAD files to expand Doom forever.
97: Jet Moto 2
- Year: 1998
- System: PS1
Bring back hover bikes! Wave Race 64, Jet Moto, we need this again. I want to go at insanely fast 
speeds, on insanely un-natural tracks, and hit insane air. INSANE!
There seriously was few things as fun as hitting a giant hill going full turbo and pulling off a quadruple barrel roll. Or using the the tether poles to send you around a sharp hair pin turn at top speeds.
And even though it's a bit cheesy and Capitalistic nowadays, having the sponsors like Mountain Dew played into the legitimacy of this fake racing league.
I want these sort of games to come back. Ones where you can throw out the normal rules of racing and physics and just make a fun, fast, and competitive racing game.
96: Rogue Legacy
- Year: 2013
- System: PC
But that's the thing, even when you got a weak generation, they served a purpose. You could still send them into the castle to explore a little further. Send them on a suicide mission to see if you could clear that gap. Or at least get a peek at what the boss fight was going to look like.
And now that it's on my Switch, I'm thinking about buying it again so I can do it on an airplane and hotel when the world returns to normal.
95: Donkey Kong Country
- Year: 1994
- System: SNES
There was a brief period when the world collectively had brain rot and we thought digitized graphics 
looked good. Donkey Kong Country is one of those games. It sort of looks like it could've been done with clay, but because things are so fuzzy you can't really tell.
Donkey needed a face lift. No one wanted to climb a construction site again. But what does Donkey Kong 10 years later look like?
Well, like everything else at the time, turn it into a complicated platformer. Make sure you include secrets. Tossing objects at enemies. Maybe a kick or a pound move. Probably solid to include a mine cart level. And add in boss fights.
The best thing Donkey Kong Country gave us was Cranky Kong.
94: Diablo 2
- Year: 2000
- System: PC
Yeah, we did that, cause we were obsessed with Diablo 2. At the time, it felt like we would never have to move on to another game. This was it. Shut it down.
Diablo 2 was a simpler time, where Blizzard was known as a relatively ethical company, not looking to skim some off the top or releasing half hearted remasters. This was the top of Blizzard's game. Diablo 2, Star Carft, and Warcraft 3 were all within a few years of each other and largely Blizzard is still running off good will from those games.
93: Tomb Raider
- Year: 1996
- System: PS1
Tomb Raider was the first PS1 game that I understood "why 3D." Entering that first tomb, the sound 
reverberated off of the empty walls, you could splash through the water, and then climb the wall of rocks, jump across the cavern, only to crawl through a hole to reveal a large hidden ancient village. Long abandoned by human, but populated with wolves and bears.
Tomb Raider took the idea of the Indiana Jones trap and brought it to the next level. You had classics like the razor pendulum, but you also had Damocles swords raining from the ceiling.
Tomb Raider was clunky, but magical. We didn't know the controls were bad because we had never interacted with a world in 3D before. And with each iteration, the controls got better, the graphics sharper, the maps more complex.
92: Dr. Mario
- Year: 1990
- System: NES
I liked a lot about Dr. Mario over Tetris. I liked that all the pieces falling were the same shape and size. It gave you a better chance of planning and getting larger combos. I liked the idea that Mario was both a doctor and a plumber.
I liked that the viruses were characters (bring them to Smash) with a few frames of animation. They stood out against the medicine that you were dropping on them.
91: Bases Loaded 2: The Next Season
- Year: 1988
- System: NES
"Baseball games are too complicated now" says old man shaking fist toward heaven and screaming at 
the clouds.
Bases Loaded 2 struck a really nice balance between arcade and simulation. Yeah, having some idea of what an ERA is helps you choose the best player for the circumstance, but generally, you can play this game without knowledge and do ok.
When pitching, you have choices to go fast, medium, or slow speed, and then you pick a direction you want the ball to go. Batting was more or less just as easy, and staying with NES tradition, generally the fat guys hit the hardest and the skinny guys ran the bases the fastest.
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