I didn't understand Warlords II for a long time. I had the Shareware version, so a lot of maps and characters were locked and if you clicked on them, you would get the "send a check or money order to this address." But I kept at it because what else was I going to do. I was getting like $5 in allowance, I couldn't exactly afford games. I survived mostly on shareware.
I'd play until inevitably, I would run out of units and die. I couldn't figure out how I was expected to win because the instructions were so obtuse.
And then I discovered Gamefaqs.
And then I started realizing checking out the ruins would get you treasure and maybe allies. And then I figured out how to make more units. And eventually I got really good at the game.
Dead Rising 2 and 3 sort of leaned into more mainstream story telling and video gaming. They lost a little of that weird from Dead Rising 1.
It's a miracle that Dead Rising 4 exists at all. The game was almost finished when they decided to basically scrap it and start over. Not only does it exist, but Dead Rising 4 recaptures that weird from the original perfectly and is able to give you the greatest hits of the good things from DR2 and DR3.
You start in a mall, which is better designed than the mall in the first one. Weapons crafting sort of took away from DR2, but DR4 finds a way to make it fun. You move through a military encampment, which then opens out into a full realized town, which is better than DR3. There's plenty of opportunity to drive over zombies, make wacky weapons, take the story seriously, or just mess around for a few hours.
I didn't know I needed Shovel Knight when I finally played Shovel Knight. I had just come off of a marathon Persona 4: Golden play through and had played through Uncharted 4 and COD Advance Warfare on the PS4. I was sort of exhausted from big experiences.
Then Shovel Knight won my heart.
The levels and enemies were a perfect combo to feel challenging, but totally do-able. You have a sense that you did something special, but obviously the game is built to allow you to win. I'm not that great at platformers and I made it far in Shovel Knight.
It captured the feel of a NES game without any of the frame rate issues, cartridge limitations, a Nintendo seal of approval.
169: Sonic Spinball
Year: 1993
System: Genesis
The frame rate was dogshit. I just need to get that out of way. Like single frames per second. But it was the early days of the 16 bit consoles. This was a common occurrence. So you adapted. You learned that the top right of the Spinball board had too much going on and things would crawl.
There was a ton to do in this game. Lot's of objectives to complete to unlock chaos emeralds and boss fights.
This was one of the first games I had for the Genesis, so I grew a fondness for it because I didn't have anything else. Even today, I dream of a rerelease where they redo the phsycis and give us the pinball game we deserve.
Microsoft introduced Space Cadet with Windows 95. This is the pinball game most people remember. But Sonic Spinball was there first, and bette.... well not better... but FIRST!
168: Guerrilla War
Year: 1987
System: NES
Guerrilla War was one of those games that just sort of appeared in everyone's entertainment center during the NES reign. No one ever bought it, but everyone owned it somehow, and it was a go-to multiplayer game no matter which friend's house you went to.
I owned both Ikari Warriors and Guerrilla War to fill my top-down co-op combat games library. Guerrilla War was vastly superior.
Large sprites, the characters moved quickly, and it felt innovative. One thing that Ikari Warriors was missing was the map being used to actually create varied and interesting scenarios. GW would have you rush through a wide open jungle where you could maneuver around. Then you would reach a village that had houses to hide behind, but you also had to be careful because the enemy could spwan from behind them. You'd get pinched between two high walls with machine gun nests on top and would have to throw grenades while dodging.
167: Gekido
Year: 2000
System: PS1
I honestly had too much money when I was 14. I was paid something like $60 a week to babysit my brothers, which meant every other week I would go to the mall and blow it all on video games and paraphernalia. And on one of those trips, I bought the flour player multitap for the PS1 thinking, "Finally, every brother can play at the same time."
And then I had a multitap and no games. So I did an internet search, "Hey Jeeves, what are the PS1 games that support the use of this $40 thing I bought."
Gekido Urban Fighters was on the very short list and was only $30. So I bought it and was surprised to find it was a really fun brawler that had a chaotic fighting arena mode that was Powerstone before Powerstone was Powerstone.
166: Cool Spot
Year: 1993
System: SNES
I was a dumb kid. I never knew with the hands of well placed marketing were massaging my brain subtlety. McKids... collecting those golden arches and cheeseburgers... didn't put it together.
Cool Spot... literally the logo for 7Up, jumping around in platforming action, collecting more 7Up logos, title screen has him surfing on a bottle of 7Up... yeah, didn't think about it.
In a way, I'm sort of glad. This was actually a really fun platformer. It ditched the normally rigid right angles of the platforms and instead the definitely rigid right angles into what looked like hand drawn backgrounds. And you'd flip around, spitting what I now know is Sprite, at all your enemies.
165: Diddy Kong Racing
Year: 1997
System: N64
Why the hell haven't we had another Diddy Kong Racing game? Seriously, you ask people about this game and they get a far off look in their eyes and a smirk. Is it rights issues with all of Rare's characters? Does Nintendo hold the rights to a game from a studio that is a Microsoft shop now?
When you think of the third person games where you flew, it was this, Rogue Squadron, and Star Fox. The air races were great, they literally brought another dimension to the races we knew from Mariokart.
And, probably it's greatest accomplishment, this was one of the few games where the N64 controller actually felt natural.
164: Kagero: Deception II
Year: 1998
System: PS1
This is such an unique premise to a game. Soldiers come to your castle to kill you, some sort of witch/demon. You passively kill them by setting traps around your castle and luring them into it.
I was first introduced to Deception II via a PS1 demo disk. The demo allowed you to kill three enemies and you had access to four or so traps.
There were so many ways to set the traps and lure the guys into them. And then I accidentally discovered combos when my swinging ceiling axe knocked a guy into an electric chair. I played the demo for hours but could never find a copy of the game in the wild.
Then as a college kid, just casually strolling through a second hand shop in town, I found a copy for like $45. A hefty price for a game that was 7 years old at the time, but I bought it, and to my pleasure found that it was as fun as I remember.
163: Castlevania
Year: 1986
System: NES
Castlevania seemed so cool in the 80s. To have an adventure that had branching paths and secrets everywhere was unheard of. I really loved Simon's Quest and didn't know which one to put on this list. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized how unfair Simon's Quest was.
I had all the time in the world to come up against obtuse puzzles and to whip every brick in every wall looking for a secret.
I fell off this series hard. I don't have the patience for any Metroidvania game anymore, but there was a solid few years where I would blow into the Castlevania cartridge and play for hours.
162: Super Mario World 3D
Year: 2013
System: Wii-U
The Wii-U had some great games on it. It's just too bad the controller sucked and had to be within 10 feet of the console and collected fingerprints like crazy.
Super Mario World 3D was one of the best Mario games since Galaxy. This was an obvious throw ideas on a white board game. Nintendo would introduce a new mechanic in a level... and then just throw that shit away for a new mechanic in the next level and the next level.
And damn if I don't love running around in the cat suit.
If the rumors are true and this is coming to Switch next year for the Mario anniversary, everyone should pick this up. The game has so much charm, so many interesting ideas, and it just really light hearted.
161: Demon Sword
Year: 1989
System: NES
By now you've probably seen a theme with NES games that I like. They are all fast. Games on the
Nintendo tended to be very stiff and slow movements. (Fester's Quest anyone)
Demon Sword was fast. You'd quickly jump from tree to tree at breakneck speeds, tossing ninja stars, swinging your sword, and eventually fighting a boss.
The objective was to rebuild your broken sword. So you start the game with a blade about as large as your forearm. And as you collect pieces, this shit gets wild. You think Cloud's buster sword is huge, this thing can get to be like 3 times the size of your sprite.
And as an added bonus, the American cover art was that semi-homoerotic late 80s like buff shirtless dude with a sword.
Walking past a skate park had my thinking about extreme sports video games this weekend. It's the first time in a long time I've thought of these games. The last time I considered them was SSX for the PS3.
The X-games inspired sports games really hit their stride and peaked during the PS1 era. You had the ESPN Xtreme trilogy (that wasn't super great), Tony Hawk (and all of its Razor Scooter and Dave Mira clones), and Cool Boarders.
But there was a generation of games before that on the NES. They were games that promised the action of these extreme sports, but you sort of had to squint a little and pretend that it felt super extreme.
Skate or Die - 1988
Skate or Die was one of those NES games that just sort of showed up in your best friend's collection. He doesn't remember buying it. His parents don't know how it showed up. If you asked around, no one but everyone somehow had it. It was like this invisible game in your collection that only friends could pull out and play.
Despite the ever extreme conundrum of skating or die, the game never clicked with me. It felt sluggish and unresponsive. The music felt more suited for a beat-em-up like Ninja Turtles. And I always had a hard time figuring out what the hell the game wanted me to do.
The one thing I did like was the art. For a Nintendo / ZX Spectrum game, Skate or Die looks great. Lot's of clean lines, large distinguished sprites, and a sense of a large city.
California Games - 1987
Unlike Skate or Die, everyone owned California Games. This was the ultimate package of 6 very distinct events that could be played with multiple people.
California Games had a nice rhythm to the events that once it clicked, you would be able to win the event for the rest of your life. I'm serious, haven't played in 15 years, go ahead and try foot bag, bet you can still score a ridiculously high score. I bet you can still knock that bird out of the sky.
The half pipe was one of those events where people either didn't know how to do it and would just beat their knees up with the skate board until out of lives, or they could go forever.
Roller skating had you zooming down the beachfront on your best quad skates, but this was also the most littered beach front in the world. You had to dodge everything from puddles to ice cream cones, while doing tricks, and try to get to the end.
Like skating, the BMX course was a treacherous affair where after dodging a whole mess of holes in the ground, barrels, and puddles, you were expected to stop on a platform at the end, despite for the entire 5 minute course, never using your brakes. This usually ended with me pressing every button desperately trying to stop as I fell off the other side of the peer.
And inevitably, one of your friends would realize that you got points for ever jump you did, so they would just bounce down the track until they crashed away all their lives.
And then there was surfing, which arguably was actually a better half pipe game than half pipe, and featured a shark that would menacingly eat your character randomly.
Then the least extreme games, foot bag (hacky sack) and disk throw rounded out the package. (I guess the possibility of bear attacks in disk throw was pretty extreme)
T&C Surf Design - 1988
T&C Surf Design was fast and responsive, challenging but not impossible, and so colorful.
It featured characters from the actual T&C Surf Design shop like tiki man, some cool surfing gorilla who I believe was named Joe Cool, and a fucking terrifying humanoid cat in tights. Actually, I don't know what the hell was going on, but I liked it.
The skate boarding felt great and was by and far the best on the NES. You could gather tons of speed, get so much air, and actually perform simple tricks like Ollies to dodge obstacles.
There were things to jump over and ramps to go off of. There are still a few ramps over holes that I've never managed to land and to this day believe it was a sick way to take health on an impossible jump.
The surfing took a lot more to figure out. It was some balance of gaining speed going down the wave, but then turning around and ramping up to score points. You had to dodge birds and some dude on a raft, and if you did right, the wave wouldn't crash down on you and you would end in the pier and get scored.
I remember sitting there listening to the waves crashing on the title screen for long periods of time. Sometimes starting the game while I ate a snack, just so I could listen.
There isn't a ton of money in these sort of games anymore. Tony Hawk poisoned the well with too many lack-luster outings. The X-games in general have lost some steam.
I'll admit, I was burned out on these games for a while. I almost picked up the ever so broken Tony Hawk 5 just to get a taste, but my senses screamed otherwise. I'm putting a ton of stock into Ubisoft's Steep. It looks incredible. A nice combination of actual mountain ranges mixed with team Red Bull like sensibilities.
