Posted on October 18, 2012
My Top 100: #65 – Donkey Kong Country
1994 – Rare (Super NES, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console)
In the last post, I mentioned that I loved snowy levels in video games. After looking at my “super-secret” top 100 list to see which game I’d be writing about next, I found it funny that it was a snowy level that really made me think this game was something special.
In the 8-and-16-bit eras, I can’t recall many games having more hype than Donkey Kong Country. Of course, I may have been a little over-exposed to it, having a subscription to Nintendo Power and all. Where Sega had “blast processing”, Nintendo would tout “ACM (Advanced Computer Modelling)” as the future of video games. Pre-rendered 3D graphics on a 16-bit console was a big deal, and they made sure all us readers knew it!
Issue after issue, I was buying into the hype. I was convinced that I would love this game, and even though someone would always beat us to Blockbuster after its release in November of ’94, I got it for Christmas that year without having played a minute of it beforehand.
As with other games in this list, I spent most of the holidays playing it, and pretty much had it beat by the time I went back to school. I found that the platforming was quite fun, what with the slick controls and bouncy jumping mechanics. It was pretty fun to jump onto to one baddie, bounce off, land on another, into a barrell, or whatever. It flowed nicely, and it felt a bit more acrobatic than Mario’s usual stunts. Diddy could also do a cartwheel off a ledge, then jump in mid-air. It’s weird, and I’m still not sure if it was designed that way on purpose, but it adds to the experience rather than taking away from it.
Saul Goodman!
As usual, we made the trip up north to my grandmother’s like we did every Christmas. Blizzards in the Baie area tend to be pretty nasty, and though our drive up was clear, the day after was far from it. We didn’t have to go anywhere, so we stayed in, put some wood in the stove and laid low. Of course, I played DKC all day.
I had already made some progress through the game, and found that a lot of the levels were quite memorable indeed. That one with the suspended walkways, the one with the red light\green light enemies, and awww man, the mine cart level?? They were so good, and looked fantastic on screen.
The day of that storm in Baie Sainte-Anne, I got to the level shown in the video above. Not only did the trees in the background remind me of the massive pine trees in our front yard at home, but the way the clouds gather and the snow slowly picks up… I could look out the window, and it looked pretty much the same as what was going on in the game. Amazing! It was such a blast.
Even to this day, I find there’s something really cozy and relaxing about a crazy Winter storm…
So long as I don’t have to drive very far in it…
Posted on October 17, 2012
My Top 100: #66 – Die Hard Trilogy
1996 – Fox Interactive (PC, PlayStation, Saturn)
As a kid, it wasn’t very often that I had to be prevented from seeing violent movies. I was never into guns, tanks or other “macho” things that others my age tended to be interested in. The furthest I ever got to it was playing “war” with friends in the woods behind our house. It was fun as hell playing with pretend guns, but it never made me want to watch violent action movies – it wasn’t a question of not wanting to see violence on screen, but a question of interest!
Screw TimeCop – I wanted to see Kindergarten Cop whenever it got to The Movie Network! That stuff was hilarious!
Anyway, my point is that I only really started to watch action movies once I hit my teens. Mission: Impossible, Twister, Independence Day… 1996 was a great year to turn (PG-) 13, but I had quite a bit of catching up to do.
Also released in ’96 was Die Hard Trilogy for PlayStation.
To me, this console was going to be a flash in the pan – why wouldn’t it be? Panasonic’s 3DO and Phillips’ CDi were both busts, and Sega’s Saturn wasn’t exactly flying off store shelves, either. Why should Sony’s attempt be any different?
My friend Abba would often rent various consoles, and we’d hang out quite a bit and critique the latest titles. He rented the Saturn with Sega Rally one winter, and I felt that that was just a glorified Genesis – it even had pretty much the same controller! When he rented a PlayStation with Die Hard Trilogy (good ol’ reliable Blockbuster Video), I was prepared to be unimpressed.
I was way, wayyyy wrong about that one.
It’s essentially three games on one disc, one for each Die Hard movie released up to that point. The first game is a third-person shooter where John McClane fights through hordes of terrorists in Nakatomi Plaza. There were about 24 levels (I think), one for each floor of the building that had hostages. It was pretty tough, but you could approach every room with captives in more than one way, which made it oh-so-satisfying to beat every level.
The Die Harder game was by far my favourite of the three. Though you could use a light gun and play it Time Crisis-style, the normal controller was all we had, and it actually worked really well! I haven’t played it recently to see how the controls have aged – this game was released before the Dual Shock controllers were available – but I know the atmosphere in the first few levels was quite awesome.
I guess I just love levels set in the Winter. Doesn’t matter what game it is, if it’s snowing, I’ll love it. Strange!
The game based on With a Vengeance is an arcade racer, something along the lines of Crazy Taxi. Instead of picking up fares, you’re driving through various parts of New York City to detonate bombs by running into them. If the timer runs out before you get to your next target, the whole city blows up. Negotiating traffic was the name of the game, and various scripted events would happen to switch it up a bit.
Nothing says “ownage” quite like an ambulance running ahead of you, clearing a path by ramming all the cars out of the way!
So, yeah. Not only is it quite a fun game, but it brings back so many memories from that awkward period in gaming. It wasn’t looking too good there, for a while, until Sony and Nintendo really allowed us to believe that 3D games could work, if done right.
With a Vengeance might be my favourite, but I believe there’s a Die Hard for every mood.
Posted on October 16, 2012
My Top 100: #67 – Katamari Damacy
2004 – Namco (PlayStation 2)
In late 2004, I was in my first year back to University after taking a one year break to work, make some cash and clear my head. Something had gone terribly wrong somewhere in the re-application process, and I was stuck with nothing but introduction classes or fillers completely unrelated to my intended major, Journalism. I was discouraged and uninterested, and I didn’t see myself doing anything but dropping out.
As glad as I am now that I did that, I was pretty bummed out about it at the time.
Fall was in full swing by the time I started thinking I should bow out gracefully, and I knew that skipping class at that point was probably not that big a deal. Once my friends Greg and Mitch were done their classes for the day, it was off to Greg’s to play a variety of games. NHL 2005 and Mortal Kombat: Deception got played the most in those days… ahhhh good times.
Eventually, I was out of school, but kept hanging out at the Student Union Building on campus. My parking pass was still good for a few months, so why not??
The gaming sessions continued into the Wintertime, and Greg eventually introduced me to this game that seemed to be an import… there’s no way a North American release would have Japanese lounge music… would it??
The plot for Katamari Damacy goes like this; the King of all Cosmos has accidentally wiped every star and constellation out of the sky. He has tasked the Prince to go to Earth with his trusty Katamari, a super-adhesive ball that picks up anything in its path, to rebuild the sky with any and all items he comes in contact with. It’s similar to rolling a snowball, except instead of snow, it’s a bunch of random junk. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but in the context of playing the game……. well, it still doesn’t make much sense.
Anyhow, every level has a time limit, and the King asks the Prince to roll the ball to a certain size before the timer expires. It might seem simple, but there are a few things that can make the Prince’s job quite challenging.
To begin with, the Katamari can only pick up proportionately-sized items. The smaller the Katamari, the smaller the number of items that can be picked up. As the ball’s diameter expands, bigger items can get sucked into it. If you’re moving along, picking up a bunch of (for example) eraser-sized objects, you might come into contact with a pencil, and it can stick to the Katamari as well. If it sticks out of your rolled-up work of art at a weird angle, it can make for some not-so-smooth sailing for the Prince.
That’s pretty much all there is to Katamari Damacy. The only way to truly appreciate this game is to play it, and feel that strange sense of accomplishment that comes with being able to pick up newer and bigger things (“I just picked up an ISLAND!! Whoo!!”). Thanks for thinking way, WAY out of the box, Namco!
If only.
Posted on October 15, 2012
My Top 100: #68 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game
1990 – Ultra and Konami (Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Arcade, Commodore 64, NES, PC, ZX Spectrum, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network)
My childhood was defined by four things; video games, baseball, ocean liners, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon.
I could get pretty obsessive about whatever really struck me as fascinating. Games were obviously fun to learn about because I had so much fun playing them, and baseball was cool because I played it, had a few stats books and tried to learn everything about every MLB player and team. As for ocean liners, seeing those black and white images of the floating architectural marvels, and reading up on the various stories they all had, was quite haunting to me at the time.
I was still just a kid, however. I needed that link to other kids in the playground, something I could actually talk about, or to play along with friends. I couldn’t play with other kids and say “I’LL BE THE EMPRESS OF IRELAND, YOU CAN BE THE LUSITANIA!!! BOOOOOMMMM! CRASSHHHH!”
Enter TMNT. I never missed an episode, I had a ton of action figures, and so many recesses were spent pretending to be Raphael… everyone wanted to be Leonardo, but I always wanted to be Raphael. I just thought he was the cooler turtle.
The Turtles had already tested the video game waters with the first TMNT released by Ultra in 1989. My good buddy Josh had it, and though it was a pretty fun game, it wasn’t based on the show. The mood was a bit too dark, and very few characters from the cartoon made an appearance. I had played The Arcade Game on a ferry ride to Newfoundland, and THAT was a blast… why couldn’t we have that one on the NES?
Finally! The Turtles theme in glorious 8-bit form! Don’t get me wrong; the music from the first game is classic in its own right. Still, hearing that familiar tune coming from the game was just… well, it was quite literally music to my ears.
Though the graphics were a bit of a downgrade from the arcade version, we were just glad to be killing actual Foot Soldiers. Gone were the bikers with chainsaws, dudes made of fire, and purple pyjama-wearing people. We could also both play at the same time, which definitely upped the replay value of it.
Instead of going on and on about why it’s on my list, I’ll just say that it was an incredibly fun and simple beat ’em up with great music. Done. The end. That’s it!
Also, go here for a slightly more epic TMNT II story.
Me and Josh as Ninja Turtles one Halloween, with me karate chopping the Easter Bunny (Josh’s sister) out of the picture.
Posted on October 12, 2012
My Top 100: #69 – Batman: Arkham Asylum
2009 – Warner Bros Interactive (PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3)
I feel somewhat odd including more recent titles on my list, since I haven’t really been on-the-spot with playing new releases. If a game is critically praised, or if friends urge me to try it out, I *might* get around to trying it a year or two after it’s released. I’m never in any rush to do so, however.
With Batman: Arkham Asylum, I was in the process of getting psyched for The Dark Knight Rises when I got the Game of the Year Edition for Christmas last year. If there was ever a time for me to be in the mood to play a dark and gritty superhero game, then this was it.
The only “problem” I can see with having the Game of the Year Edition, is that I’m not aware of what was DLC and what was included on the disc itself. All I know is this; at its core, the single player story mode from this game is one of the most fun experiences to come around gaming for quite some time.
Right off the bat, Batman is lured into a fist fight with four inmates at once. It’s only a tutorial, but you immediately get a feel of how well the combat system flows. I wouldn’t say you can button-mash your way through the game, since doing so will probably get you killed later on, but stringing together nice “flow-ey” combos isn’t terribly difficult. Seeing Batman effortlessly pull off so many moves made me vocalize a few times with my own Kung Fu noises……… don’t pretend like you don’t know what I mean!! You’ve done it, too. Admit it!
Stealth is also one of Batman’s more useful tools. If a few guards in an area happen to have guns on them, it’s up to Bats to dispose of them in a much quieter fashion. Hang them from a gargoyle, or perhaps sneak through an air vent to do a silent takedown from behind.
It’s like Splinter Cell – just infinitely more badass.
Arkham is made up of caves and dwellings that are all inter-connected in really cool ways, and it kinda gives you that feeling that you’re part of a living, breathing environment. There’s even a “backup” Bat Cave in the middle of it, and it’s tucked away quite nicely; to get bonuses I had missed the first time through there, I had to Google how to get back into it!
The story is your somewhat typical Dark Knight fare; Joker takes control of Arkham, setting its denizens free to make life a living nightmare for Batman (or, at least that’s Scarecrow’s job). You get to throw down in fisticuffs with the likes of Bane, Zsasz, Killer Croc and one of Poison Ivy’s agricultural abominations, before the epic confrontation with Luke Skywalker – er, I mean, the Joker – at the end of the game.
Little additions like the Riddler Challenges, Joker Teeth (gotta find ’em all!) and Chronicles of Arkham… they all added up to an addictive experience I enjoyed tremendously.
Bane-talking is much more fun than Batman-talking. MUAAHHH.
Posted on October 11, 2012
My Top 100: #70 – Kyle Petty’s No Fear Racing
1995 – Williams Entertainment (Super NES)
Believe it or not, I wasn’t always a NASCAR fan. My sister had been to a race at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania in ’95, and it piqued my curiosity. I watched a few races here and there, but it wasn’t until a year later when I attended my very own first race that I was truly hooked.
Until then, my knowledge of the sport was pretty limited. I had heard the names Davey Allison and Alan Kulwicki before, two of the sport’s biggest stars (Kulwicki being the champion in ’92) that were killed in separate aviation accidents a couple years earlier. I also knew that NASCAR race cars were full-bodied, unlike the “canoe with wheels” approach by Indy Cars and Formula One. That was about the extent of it, however.
Kyle Petty’s No Fear Racing was my introduction to the sport, and it pretty much couldn’t have been further from the real thing.
This game didn’t have NASCAR’s license to go ahead and use real track layouts, or even real driver names to race as or against. You could choose to race with a batch of familiar styled numbers, from Rusty Wallace’s #2 to Richard Petty’s famous #43. Beyond that, it had nothing to do with the sport I’ve come to love so much.
The gameplay itself is not unlike that of your typical arcade racer; you could pick up on-track items (Mario Kart-style) like nitro-boosters for a quick burst of speed, or stacks of tires for better grip. There were also mufflers or cans of oil that, if touched, could hinder your progress instead of help you out.
Tracks pretty much all looked identical from behind the wheel, except for their layouts. Contrary to real-life stock car racing, races could be run in the rain or snow, changing the handling characteristics considerably. You also had to take pit strategy into consideration, since running out of gas was a real (and really embarrassing) possibility.
As with other games on my list, this game was not technically special, or ground-breaking in any other way. Still, it was my first experience in playing a racing game based on a real sport, and it has gotten quite a few hours of gameplay since then.
This would never happen in the game, but it happened last Sunday in real life. Go figure!
Posted on October 10, 2012
My Top 100: #71 – Triple Play ’98
1997 – EA Sports (PC, PlayStation)
When it comes to stick-and-ball sports, my preferences don’t stray too far from hockey and baseball. It seems like everyone but me is into either football or basketball, but I can’t stand one or the other. I’ve played a few Madden NFL games, as well as Midway’s arcade b-baller NBA Jam, but my interest in them was always fleeting.
With hockey and baseball, I always knew I’d get more long-term enjoyment out of career modes, and whatever special feature the games happened to have. I also knew the athletes a heck of a lot better, which certainly didn’t hurt. This was the case with Triple Play ’98 for PS1.
The summer of ’98 was a pretty damn fun one for me. Mike and Brian from across the street were probably not going to live there much longer, so we lived it up. We played street hockey all day, rode Mike’s dirt bike around his yard (the Baby Lisa, we called it), and hung out in the fifth wheel camper that was parked in their driveway. There was a small TV hooked up in there with the help of extension cords, with a PS1 and Super NES hooked up to it for good measure. There was a set of “bunny ears” on it as well, but it didn’t really pick up anything interesting beyond the end of the Stanley Cup Finals on CBC…
Anyway, of the two games we played the most all summer, Triple Play ’98 was the all around more popular one among us friends.
My interest in baseball was at its peak, what with the Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa home run record chase being in full swing. It was the first fully 3D baseball game that I had ever played, and even though it looks somewhat blocky looking at it today, I thought it was fantastic. On top of that, Jim Hughson and Buck Martinez, longtime announcers for Jays’ games on TSN, did the in-game play-by-play. Every stadium I knew so well was carefully re-created in magnificent 32-bit glory, and each of them had their own CG-animated intro before games. The controls for pitching were simple, the batting scheme didn’t re-invent the wheel and kept it simple, while controls in the outfield were pretty easy to handle as well.
It seemed like this game just begged for me to love it… and I did.
The Triple Play is much less common than the Double Play, seen in progress here. Giggity.
Posted on October 9, 2012
My Top 100: #72 – Mortal Kombat (1992)
1992 – Midway (Arcade, Amiga, Super NES, Game Boy, Genesis, SMS, Game Gear, Sega CD, PC)
I know this version of the game was mostly known as the weakest due to censorship, but let’s face the facts – in terms of sound and graphics, the Super NES port of Mortal Kombat was the best one out there. I’ll let the video below do the talking, but even without the blood and gore, the animation and sound effects from this version is head and shoulders above the rest.
Even the Sega CD port looked terrible in comparison!
I’ve mentioned it before, but I never really paid attention to the hype surrounding Mortal Kombat until a couple of my friends got it the Christmas after it came out. Josh seemed to know all the moves, probably having memorized them from a prior issue of EGM. They were so simple to pull off, and the controls were so much… lighter? I’m still not sure how to describe it, but MK characters seemed to be much more flexible and easy to control, compared to the slow and laboured movements in Street Fighter II.
It’s all a matter of preference, I guess.
Anyway, I wasn’t really aware that you could actually pull off special “finishing moves”. Yeah, it said “Finish Him!”, but I thought it was just so that it gave you time to end the round in whatever show-off kind of way you wanted to, using moves you already knew. Using Scorpion, Josh held Block and pressed Up twice, and my view of gaming changed forever.
That blank stare… creepy.
The way Scorpion TOOK OFF HIS FACE (!!!) and left his opponent as a pile o’ bones… it quite honestly freaked me out. I loved it!
Josh then showed me a few other finishing moves, the coolest being Raiden’s electrocution into a pile of ashes, and Sub-Zero’s freeze-and-shatter. These were absolutely brutal, and I thought about them a lot. I wouldn’t say I had nightmares about them, but I definitely had a dream or two about stuff I had seen in Mortal Kombat.
As I came to find out one of those times I borrowed my cousin’s Sega Genesis, there was a whole level of brutality that I had been completely unaware of. I’m not sure if it was an issue of GamePro or EGM, but I was aware of a “DULLARD” code (Down, Up, Left, Left, A, Right, Down) that would unlock a few things, including blood. That was somewhat of a big deal! If this code worked, I was in for many more messed up dreams.
It did work, and I got to witness that pivotal moment in gaming history; the one move that single-handedly caused the creation of a video game ratings system…
This kinda helped me learn about bones in the human body. No joke!
Yeah, it was violent, more violent than most of what we’d seen up until then; but that’s not what keeps me coming back to the Mortal Kombat series today. There’s always something to see that you’re not quite expecting – some random character appearing in the background, or perhaps a hilarious glitch that just might have been done on purpose – and it all stems from the mystery and sheer messed up-edness of that first game.
Posted on October 5, 2012
My Top 100: #73 – Star Wars: Battlefront II
2005 – LucasArts (PlayStation 2, Xbox, PC, PSP)
I’m not sure if Star Wars: Battlefront was rushed before its release in 2004 to coincide with the DVD release of the original trilogy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. While it was a fantastic game in the spirit of EA’s Battlefield series, I couldn’t help but feel they left out a few little things that would have made the game much better.
The campaign modes weren’t all that different than your typical online or multiplayer match, and only showed short video clips from the movies to help move it along. There were cameos from main Star Wars characters, such as Darth Vader or Mace Windu, but you couldn’t play as any of them. I still enjoyed it, and played it quite a bit, but couldn’t help but think “what if”…
Of course, with the release of Revenge of the Sith only a few months later, LucasArts figured they’d release a new Battlefront game with new settings and characters from the new movie. It came out a few months after Episode III was released, hitting shelves in October of ’05 – almost exactly one year after the release of the first one. Not only were all the RotS goodies incorporated this time around, but there was a ton of extra features thrown in for good measure.
The most obvious and most hyped addition was the space battles. Instead of hopping into an X-Wing or Droid Starfighter to do strafing runs on ground targets (which I always found to be a bit useless in the first game), the fight was brought to outer space. You could get into dogfights worthy of a Rogue Squadron title, or if you felt ballsy enough, you could land on the opposing capital ship, get out of your shuttle and do some damage from the inside out. It was a welcome addition, and really helped the flow of the brand new campaign mode.
Temuera Morrison, the actor who played Jango Fett and his clones in the prequels, narrates cutscenes for a campaign that follows his perspective of the 501st Legion of Clone Troopers. From the early days in the Battle of Geonosis to the supposed end of the Rebellion at the Battle of Hoth, it’s quite interesting to see these seemingly lifeless Clones develop into fighting machines, and their unique perspective on the conflicts from the movies. There were also special objectives to complete, aside from the usual command post capturing. That spiced things up a bit!
Finally, once every battle, the game would prompt you to play as a special character for a limited time. You got to mow through enemies as Ki-Adi Mundi, or get a bird’s eye view with Boba Fett and his trusty jetpack.
This game was a playground for Star Wars fanatics like myself, and I can’t wait to see what they can come up with for the third one…
While we impatiently await Battlefront III, we’re getting Star Wars: 1313. I suppose I am OK with this… “POW RIGHT IN THE KISSAH!”
Posted on October 4, 2012
My Top 100: #74 – Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30
2005 – GearBox Software (PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox)
Not long before the World War II shooter genre got stale, GearBox managed to squeeze a little bit of innovation into the formula. Take some elements from co-developer UbiSoft’s Rainbow Six, mash it together with Medal of Honor’s European WW2 setting, and what do you get? One of the most critically acclaimed titles in the relatively short history of the genre.
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 adds a strategic element to the already hectic battles fought in previous World War II games. If you play like your character is Superman and feel like taking on the entire Nazi occupation by yourself, then this game is probably not for you.
This probably goes without saying, but the war was not won by a handful of people acting independently from one another. This is the point Road to Hill 30 hammers home, and the game will kick your ass for not going about it the right way… enemy soldiers entrenched on the other side of the road? Get your squad mates to lay down suppressing fire, while you find a way to flank the enemy. Going into a barn? You might want to take a quick peek before casually strolling in there like you own the place.
This game ups the difficulty without being too unforgiving, and I actually found it to be one of the more genuine World War II experiences in a video game… not that I’d know anything about that, but it just felt more real, and I actually cared for my in-game squadmates.
Play it!
Here’s the sequel, released in late 2005. Pretty much the same game, but it actually follows a squad with characters that are referenced and seen many times in the original.