Posted on September 4, 2012
My Top 100: #93: Tiny Toon Adventures
1991 – NES (Konami)
When you were young, those last few days leading up to Christmas were pretty damn exciting. Once school was out for the holiday break, the only true hurdle left was Christmas Eve mass. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the reasons I was brought to church, but doing it on the single most exciting night of the year?? I always had a rough time paying attention on a normal Sunday, so on Christmas Eve, forget about it.
On the last day of school (a half-day!) before Christmas of ’91, it was sunny and abnormally warm. I rented the brand new Tiny Toons NES game, ate some Pizza Delight with my mom and her friend, then went home and started my break with lots of gaming. We had to bring it back to Blockbuster before going to church a couple days later, but I was thrilled to find it laying under our tree the next morning.
Tiny Toon Adventures isn’t exactly one of the first games you’d think of when looking at some of the best platformers on the NES. With a name like Konami behind it, they were actually able to crank out a few quality games for the Genesis and Super NES as well.
Hmm… a “Pow” meter, lives, carrots… looks pretty familiar, right down to the colour.
They were obviously trying to imitate another smash hit – Super Mario Bros. 3 – to the point where the on-screen display was pretty much identical. It wasn’t quite as addictive in terms of power-ups and hidden secrets, but it did set itself apart by having the fun ability to switch characters. Before each level, you could choose between Plucky Duck, Dizzy Devil and Furball as alternate playable characters with special abilities.
How did you know which one was best-suited for each level? You just had to know. That’s it.
Fun platforming, fun graphics, fun music, fun game!
Posted on September 2, 2012
My Top 100: #94 – Kid Icarus
1986 – NES (Nintendo)
To me, nothing about the 8-bit era gets me more nostalgic than looking at this box art. Whether it was silver or black (or blue, with Ice Hockey), it was plain and simple, and still managed to tell you everything you needed to know.
“Password Pak”. There. Get a pen, pad, and piece of paper, because you’re gonna need it.
I got to rent Kid Icarus a few times early on in my love affair with my NES, but it wasn’t until our neighbours had a yard sale that I managed to own it and give it a serious shot. The kids mostly stayed inside and watched the tube that day, but I perked right up when someone peeked into the house and asked “How much did you want for Kid Ick-ray-cuss?”
This was my good friend’s yard sale, and here he was, selling his Nintendo games without telling me? Pfft. Some friend. (/sarcasm)
I rushed out to see what few games were left, since it looked like most of them had been sold. I knew he didn’t own many that I was interested in anyway, Strider being one of them, and the only one I kinda wanted was Kid Icarus. I have this fuzzy memory of convincing the person who wanted to buy it that I wanted it more, and somehow, they relented.
I didn’t have cash on me, since carrying cash wasn’t commonplace at 8 or 9 years old. I took the game into my friend’s house, and eventually brought it home, but here’s the funny part – I don’t recall rushing to my house to wrangle money from my mom. Did I take it without telling her, or did I just not pay for the game?
Hmm. I still have it, so… I dunno. Maybe I’m the one who’s a crummy friend.
I think what drew me to Kid Icarus so often was the atmosphere and music. At about 1:52 in the video above, an enemy I always called Death (actually called “Reaper” – makes sense) started flipping out when you got close. It scared the crap out of me when I was younger, and that weird music that started playing just made it worse.
I’d always get to one of the dungeon levels, get lost, and barely make it through the level alive. I liked a challenge, though, and there was never a time with this game that I threw the controller in rage or frustration. That’s more than I can say for even the greatest Mario or Mega Man games. I was able to use the magazine below to cheat my way through to the final level and beat the game, even though it still wasn’t a walk in the park to do that.
It didn’t get nearly as much love through the years as its “sister game” Metroid, but of those two, I actually enjoyed Kid Icarus much more.
Like the internet, only before the internet.
Posted on September 1, 2012
My Top 100: #95 – Blades of Steel
1988 – NES (Konami)
It’s perfectly fine to enjoy a game tremendously, while being pretty damn terrible at it at the same time.
On the surface, Blades of Steel is your typical bare-bones hockey game. Choose your city, play against a differently-colored team, try to score goals. However, if you were to assume that’s all there was to it and never played it, you’d be missing out on one of the best sports titles to ever hit the NES.
None of the teams are associated with their NHL counterparts, so you really only chose them for the colour of their jerseys. There was no competitive advantage to choosing the yellow and red (Montreal) over green (Edmonton), though I’m sure some seasoned veterans of the game would say otherwise.
Moving the puck around was easy enough, but it was bumping into other players and causing an on-ice fracas that everyone loved doing. A heavily-digitized speech said “FIGHT!”, and the battle was on from there! “High punch! Low punch! Block! Watch your health you’re losin-awwww…”
And with that, the winner of the fight picks up right where he left off, all while the loser is dragged off the ice and to the penalty box. Sweet justice! You could also trigger a Penalty Shot by fighting, but I so rarely managed to do that, that I’m not even sure how to do it!
On top of the crazy competition, Konami thought it would be a great idea to show off fun animations or even promote other games in-between periods. You could even play a quick (and tiny) version of Gradius! That was video game magic, right there. Rent one game, get lucky and manage to play another one while you were at it.
Oh, and the music is absolutely perfect.
It’s the simple pleasures like that that make me a retro gamer at heart. Good times!
Perfect for any kitchen!
Posted on August 31, 2012
My Top 100: #96 – Professor Layton and the Curious Village
2008 – Nintendo DS (Level-5)
Once again, a game on my countdown makes an appearance simply because it is the first in its series and best of its kind.
In any case, Professor Layton and the Curious Village isn’t just a ton of puzzles thrown together without reason – it’s a ton of puzzles all wrapped up in one fancy little package with a great presentation that’ll have you hooked before you know it.
After borrowing the game from a friend of hers, my wife is actually the one who played this game first and then suggested it to me. We were in the back seat of my sister’s car, leaving the Hollywood Casino in Bangor, ME, when I decided to see what it was all about. After all, I was on a lengthy road trip to Connecticut, which (to me) is a prime time to occupy the mind with puzzles.
Moments before taking the DS from my wife to play Layton, I snapped this picture of a sign in Bangor. I imagine a machine that prints bacon. I’d be down with that!
Professor Layton and his trusty young assistant Luke travel to the town of St. Mystere , where quirky characters they meet along the way seem to have nothing better to do than to present them with various puzzles. The stories behind the puzzles all relate to the characters somehow, and the challenge ramps up with every one you complete. You can look around the map and find Hint Coins to use if you really get stumped, but I did my best to save them all for the latter parts of the game when it gets pretty tough.
The animated cutscenes are great, and there are plenty of secrets to those who look thoroughly enough. For that reason, Professor Layton and the Curious Village separates itself from the rest of the puzzle pack enough to get the only spot for such a game on my countdown.
Posted on August 30, 2012
My Top 100: #97 – Guitar Hero
2005 – PlayStation 2 (RedOctane)
As Dance Dance Revolution became one of the fastest-growing franchises in gaming, I wasn’t buying into any of it. It just seemed like a gimmick to me, and something that you actually had to put effort into. I wanted to play my games sitting down and being lazy, and there was no convincing me otherwise.
In late ’05, a friend of a friend brought Guitar Hero over with him for a gaming sesh. He had a guitar controller that had a clicky-bar instead of strings, five buttons on the fretboard, and a whammy bar to give it a bit of attitude. It reminded me of a Fisher Price toy my little niece might play with.
I rolled my eyes and thought “oh boy, here we go”. I don’t like to be rude or judgemental in front of new people, so I gave it a shot anyway… I’m quite glad I did.
Songs in the game were actually all covers of the originals, which was fairly impressive, since I couldn’t really tell the difference at first.
I didn’t read this until a few years after its release, but Guitar Hero was intended as a tool for people to discover new music. I already knew a few of the songs in the game, but a bunch of new artists really only hit my playlist after playing along with them in GH.
I had heard of The Exies and Helmet, and thought I knew all about Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie without having to really dig their music. But here I was, bobbing my head to “Unsung”, and having a blast playing “Spanish Castle Music”. It was a challenge, but I couldn’t stop playing!
Sure, many other Guitar Hero titles have come along since the original, and pretty much all of them had better (and more numerous) songs on them than this one did. Though they slapped a new coat of paint for each one of its many sequels, none of them could really duplicate that same “wow” feeling that the first one did.
An actual hero of guitars.
Posted on August 30, 2012
My Top 100: #98 – Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
2012 – Xbox 360 (Mojang)
To call Minecraft a game in the traditional sense wouldn’t be doing it justice.
To begin with, just take a look at it; everything looks like it’s made of giant, textured pixels. It’s played from a first-person perspective, yet it isn’t a first-person shooter. The music is more likely to make you fall asleep than to get you pumped for action, and there aren’t all that many enemies, at least until nightfall… so what exactly do you do in Minecraft?
It’s pretty much all in the title – you mine, you craft, explore and survive. It’s not the “why” you do it that’s fun – it’s the “how”, and that part is entirely up to you.
When I downloaded the trial version for Xbox 360 and gave it a try, my character was plopped into the middle of a forest with nothing but his bare hands. I walked around to check and see what blocks I could mine, which ones I couldn’t, how to place them, etc. I quickly decided that in order for me to enjoy this game, I had to be a creative person.
Now, I’ve always been self-conscious and overly critical about my ability to come up with original things, be it writing a song on guitar or a poem on paper. It’s just one of those things, I guess. Anyhow, I almost gave up on the game right then and there.
For some unknown reason, I splurged and bought the full version not long afterwards. I was skeptical at first, but with a push in the right direction from my friend Jordan, my first actual world started taking shape. A “naturally formed” (randomly generated) mound of dirt on the edge of a beach became a narrow stairway. A tiny underground room was built after a few steps, complete with a crafting table (to make stuffs!) and a stove (to smelt stuffs!).
On the upside of the stairway, I was building some semblance of a beach house when the sun started to set on the first day. It was time to get moving and take cover, because in Minecraft, the Zombies and Creepers that show up aren’t simply a quick melee attack away from extermination. In fact, you’d be lucky to get in enough whacks with a stone shovel to do in a Zombie, and Creepers… well, you don’t attack Creepers. You just run.
This poor fella was just tending to his garden when a Creeper dropped in from a cliff above!
After a few sessions of seriously stressful night-time mining expeditions, I chose to establish my block kingdom in Peaceful mode. That way, I was free to explore the vast landscape, without the constant threat of losing any equipment in a freak Creeper attack. It’s a strangely satisfying experience to take a world that’s been given to you, and to mould it, shape it however you see fit.
Like Lego, only on steroids.
Here are some of the creations I’m proudest of!
The little room that began the level has expanded… slightly, to say the least.
That first house I built at the top of those stairs, plus a few friends you may see on the countdown.
Samus (left) supervising an Excite-biker.
Bridge fightin’.
Aw man, now I wanna play.
*Note: I’ve spent several hours playing this game, but I’ve only ever treated it as a “crafting simulator”. In that same vein, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season is another game I’ve spent countless hours playing, but neglected to include on the countdown altogether, since I’ve always seen it as a racing simulator instead of a game.*
Posted on August 29, 2012
My Top 100: #99 – Donkey Kong Classics
1988 – NES (Nintendo)
Before I delve too deep into the legend that is Donkey Kong, let it be noted that this is the only game on my countdown that is *technically* a compilation. A game is a game, and a game with a bunch of games on it is not the same. Right? Right.
Anyway, who knows where gaming would be now if Donkey Kong never saw the light of day. Nintendo’s original plans were to have a game based on the Popeye franchise, a pretty decent game that was eventually released… but would it have launched Shigeru Miyamoto’s career the way the “big, stupid ape” ended up doing? Would he still have come up with those same iconic characters some other way, destined to change the industry forever? I guess we’ll never know for sure, but by some stroke of genius, Hiroshi Yamauchi gave Miyamoto the go ahead for his idea to use original characters.
I never quite got a grip on how popular DK really was until we rented Donkey Kong Classics at a local grocery store, a little while after Super Mario Bros. 2 had come out. I knew the game had something to do with a giant ape, but what the heck was Mario doing on the cover?
It was a bit of a step back from the platforming genius that was Super Mario Bros., but I liked it. Where Donkey Kong focused on well-timed jumps through a construction site, Junior‘s jungle-inspired themes had the little ape climbing vines to rescue his pop from imprisonment by an evil Mario.
It was simple fun, and even though both games lasted no more than a few minutes each, I always like going back for a quick game or two. To me, the original DK games (even Donkey Kong 3, to a certain extent) are the pinnacle of early arcade gaming. The Virtual Console split them up, but I’ll always remember going back to that original Orange Box as a kid.
Got shelves?
Posted on August 28, 2012
My Top 100: #100 – Halo 3
2007 – Xbox 360 (Microsoft Game Studios)
My old friend Josh and I started University in September of 2001. About two months later, many hours probably intended for studying were instead lost thanks to two games; one was a third-person shooter by the name of Brute Force (which we thought was awesome, but totally ended up forgetting about), and the other was the sci-fi shooter Halo.
It was the perfect evolution of Goldeneye 007, an FPS with endless hours of multiplayer fun, perfect for smack-talking your friends. We were lucky enough to have more than one Xbox, so we’d split up into groups at his house and spend hours just shootin’ and blowing each other up. It was fantastic!
The single player campaign, however, I found bland and repetitive. Enter room, kill all enemies. Travel down a hall to next (very similar) room, repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Oh, there’s the Flood! They’re gross. Repeat. Repeat. Nothing special. The sequel tried to give the formula a good kick in the rear-end, but despite a few major twists to the plot and gameplay, it all felt quite familiar.
Along with the new generation of consoles came the clamoring for a Halo sequel. When we finally got it, almost two years had gone by since the Xbox 360 was released… would it really live up to the astonishing amount of hype?
Well, it kinda did, actually. Controls didn’t feel as clunky (they always did to me, anyway; maybe it was the controller), the graphics – more specifically, the lighting – made it feel like it was truly a next-gen experience, and the action… ohhhhh the action.
It was that first battle with a “Scarab” tank (not the one shown above) that had me thinking Halo 3 was taking me for a hell of a ride.
“Bust those knees out from under it! Avoid its main cannon! It’s down!! HOOOLY, OK, HURRY AND JUMP ONTO IT. Shoot everyone on board!!! What the hell now???”
Then, the tank starts to move again, lurching with every step it takes. It almost made me queasy, but that just added to the fun. I found the heart of the beast, slayed it, did my best Lando and got the heck out of there before the boom.
I knew the series had promise, so I tried to keep an open mind while playing through the first two games. No, the gameplay wasn’t anything special, but the characters and atmosphere (accompanied by a great score) had me hoping for a grand finale to the trilogy. An epic sci-fi saga coming to a close, unique open environments, next-gen graphics, cool weapons, great vehicle combat, instense gunfights with enemies bigger than I could have possibly imagined… that’s what we got. It was a far cry from the Halo I was so sick of hearing so much praise for, and I was quite glad for it.
Hail to the Chief. Finally.
Posted on August 27, 2012
Top 100 Games of MY Time!!
In discussing my top 10 favourite games with a friend last week, we both realized that 10 was a number far too small to encompass our lives in gaming. After thinking up a quick list of ten games each of us would never be able to live without, it was quickly followed by several exclamations of “OHHHHH, I forgot about so-and-so!! Dammit!” It was suggested that it would make more sense to have a top 100, instead of only showing love to a measly ten games.
Would that even be possible, though? I mean, I know I own upwards of 550 games, and I still have a couple hundred more on my wishlist… I don’t own these games merely for show – I’ve played them all, and had enough time to go through and finish most of them at some point. Still, would I actually be able to narrow it down to a hundred, then sort from there?
After that little chat with Greg, I thought I’d challenge myself to come up with such a list! One that I’d put my heart and soul into, and one I could complete and say “Yeah… that looks about right.”
As with other top-whatever lists, this one will undoubtedly stir some debate. Mine is especially odd to the casual observer; you’ll notice that very few RPG’s made my list, and a handful of critically panned titles will show up from time to time… this *is* my list, however, and for one reason or another, in my 29 years, I’ve spent more time on the games in my next hundred posts than I have on the others in my collection. I was able to find that special something about them that I couldn’t help but fall in love with.
I’m not exactly going out on a limb in saying this, but I’m pretty sure some of these folks will make an appearance.
The Top 100 Games of MY Time!!! Whoo!! Stay tuned!
Posted on June 15, 2012
Gun.Smoke (NES) and Adventures of Dino Riki (NES)
As evidenced by my prior posts, turning the stories video games tell us into “films” (if they can even be called that) has been a hobby of mine since I was in my early teens. With the advent of affordable technology I could actually use at home, it became a good way to switch my brain off after a long day’s work.
More recently, I began posting my edits to YouTube, but a “strike” against my account prevents me from posting clips longer than 15 minutes. I was initially disappointed, but it’s almost a blessing in disguise. Instead of focusing on games I play through for my cutscene movie-making, I can talk about whatever, whenever. It’s a good feeling!
Moving on…
The story behind these two games is similar to many others I’ve shared, except this one doesn’t end particularly well for one of them.
It was Grade 1. I just had an incredibly long week of Phys. Ed., recess, and early math. Life was rough, but somehow, I’d find ways to get through it all. (/sarcasm)
One of the best ways to get down on Friday was to rent a game, which was a nice treat. We had a few spots around town that rented NES games, like Major Video right next to my school (later replaced by Blockbuster Video), Video King downtown, and our local Co-Op store.
On one trip to the Co-Op for groceries, I was allowed to rent Gun.Smoke.
1988 – NES (Capcom)
“Gun Dot Smoke” was a familiar title to my mom, who said it was probably based on a old western TV show that aired when she was younger. Even though that ended up not being the case, I knew I’d enjoy it simply by looking at the box art. I could tell it was a somewhat Galag-ian game, what with the scrolling upwards, shooting enemies and gathering power-ups along the way.
Well, we got home, popped it in, and the game wouldn’t get past the title screen. We tried swapping controllers, resetting, doing a bunch of other things, and nothing would work. I seem to recall my mom fiddling with the NES for a good hour or so before finally giving up, but it was probably closer to 15 minutes. Time has a way of dragging on when you’re little, with an unplayable game dangled in front of you like that.
To this day, I have still yet to play Gun.Smoke!
In any case, she ended up calling the Co-Op back, and we had to make the 20 minute trip back to exchange it for something that worked.
1989 – NES (Hudson Soft)
I’m not sure how other kids did it, but the game with the coolest box art usually won out. I picked this one out of the crowd, not really realizing that this game was pretty similar to the one I had just returned.
The Adventures of Dino Riki has the titular character shooting fireballs and all kinds of other projectiles at the prehistoric creatures attacking him. It added some platforming elements where you had to jump to avoid obstacles, which was a nice change of pace for the shooter genre. I remember enjoying it quite a bit, especially coupled with the Game Genie I had also borrowed from a friend for the weekend…
A day after renting it, my mom had some friends over. They had a younger child, about 2-3 years old at the time. Whenever I was in the living room “being social” (as social as a six-year old can be with adults), he’d be playing with my NES. No, not playing games, but flipping the cover up and down repeatedly, pressing Reset and Power like it was going out of style. It drove me insane, but I was a good kid. I kept my mouth shut, and patiently waited for them to leave as I played with the toys in my bedroom.
Patience is a trait I still pride myself in having lots of. Patience for waiting, patience with learning, patience with myself and my abilities when playing games, or anything else. It wasn’t always that way – playing a game could be a frustrating thing, especially when you take into consideration the kinds of games we grew up playing.
Screw this – worst part of the worst level, ever. Also, the only time I ever used Raph!
I can recall several instances during the “Nintendo Parties” my mom and I would have at my grandmother’s, where we’d eat snacks and she’d watch me play games. I’d get aggravated when I couldn’t get past something, growl at the TV, twist my controller in anger, and she just kept telling me to be patient through it all. I eventually listened, and adopted an almost Zen-like approach when playing.
She displayed an incredible amount of patience with me over the years, as well, something I can only hope to match whenever we have kids of our own.
In playing Rock Band with my little niece, my trials have begun…