Top 10 Favorite Video Games

This is an article I submitted to some cheap video game website back in 2004.  Obviously, there’s been tons of amazing games in the last 7 years so this list isn’t accurate anymore but it’s still an interesting look back in time (for me) to see where my head was at in 2004. Pay no heed to the poor grammar (the webmaster certainly didn’t)!

10. GoldenEye 007 (N64): I was trying to think of some N64 games that could be on this list and this was the game in my collection I went back to more than any other. Who doesn’t want to be James Bond? The game is challenging, but not impossible. The soundtrack gives it that classic 007 feel and it’s a great multiplayer game. This game resurrected the FPS genre and made people think about what a shooter game could be. Just thinking about this game wants me to break out my N64 again! Much like Shining Force was reason to buy a Genesis, this was reason to buy a N64.

9. Final Fantasy II (SNES): It’s Final Fantasy! Now I like RPGs, but I’m nowhere near to being any good at playing them. But, along with FFIII and FFVII, I think FFII is one of the true classics and my friend and I spent many hours playing this thing. It has a great storyline and it made me want to keep going just to see what happened next. Now that’s a great RPG.

8. Age of Empires (PC): Although this game appeared courtesy of Microsoft after the dawn of Civilization (the *other* historical strategy game), this was the one that the spawned countless $20 cheap knock offs you’d see at Kay-Bee Toys or Software Etc. AoE is a real time strategy game involving many of the old world civilizations such as Greek, Babylonian, Persian, and Egyptian to name a few. Includes campaigns where certain goals must be completed, or you can pretty much just duke it out with the computer or another person online until you’ve killed all their people or captured the Wonder for a certain amount of time. You get to forage for food, chop wood, mine, kill antelopes and elephants, build and upgrade your armies and crush your opponent! What fun! Followed up by Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, and Age of Mythology. Someday, I’ll actually get around to buying a new computer so I can play the copy of AoM my girlfriend bought me last year for my birthday…

7. Grand Theft Auto III (PS2): Ah, the game that sparked a new age of gaming. After the imitators have come along and tried to cash in, the GTA series still rules the roost. But we’re talking about GTA III specifically, so stop getting off subject! This is another game that made a HUGE leap in terms of change and quality when compared to the first two sucky GTAs on PS1. I was tempted to try them out just for the sake of seeing where this great game came from, but take it from me, don’t play them! It’s amazing there *was* a part three considering the poor quality of GTA 1 & 2! It’s even more amazing that an instant classic such as GTA III came from them. Playing the story is just an added bonus to this huge city you get to run around in. Steal cars, shoot people, blow things up, fiddle with the radio, have sex with prostitutes… Man, this is my life put onto a game disc! If you haven’t played this game, you’re really behind on your gaming.

6. Thief: The Dark Project (PC): Yes, it’s a PC game, but it’s still a video game to me! You might say this sneak ’n’ steal classic was the precursor to stealth genre that gave the world games like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid 2… But then you’d be plagiarizing. Garrett is one of the coolest video game characters, in my opinion, of course, and the types of weapons are cool: a blackjack to knock’em out (sometimes it’s best not to kill), moss arrows (to creep around silently on metal/gravel surfaces) and water arrows (to TURN OUT THAT LIGHT!!!) among others. It also features a great storyline that continues in Thief II: The Metal Age and the awesome Thief: Deadly Shadows

5. Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES): A vast departure (although a fun look) from the original Super Mario Bros. game. This can all be attributed to the fact that SMB2 wasn’t a originally a Mario game at all and was retooled from a Japanese game called Dream Factory: Doki Doki Panic, whereas Japan got the “real” Super Mario Bros. 2. The gaming industry is weird like that. Bowser and the usual enemies are nowhere to be found; instead you get the evil frog king, Wart, and some cool new enemies, all of which live in the Dream World (aka Subcon). Heck, I’d love to see a direct sequel starring the Dream World gang, but since this game is viewed as an anomaly in the Super Mario timeline, I’m sure it will never happen. Did I mention you get to play as Mario, Luigi, OR Princess and Toad? Each character has pros & cons, choose wisely!

4. Shining Force (SG): What a treasure I found when I traded a kid my sucky Genesis Superman game for this! To be honest, I’ve never defeated it because my friend used a cheap cartridge cleaner and it wiped out the ability for my cartridge to save, but what times I had while I could! An RPG-strategy game, you start with one set character and from there you meet others who will join your Shining Force. And once you get going, the amount of teammates to choose from is huge. And they are all waiting at the Shining Force HQ for you to pick’em. And there is a lot of strategy involved in the battles. The battles are overhead view, and you can only move your characters a certain amount of spaces. So picking the right guys for your team and moving them into the right positions is crucial. This game was a good enough reason to own a Sega Genesis and is also available as a part of Sega Smash Pack Vol. 1 for PC.

3. Contra (NES): Do you remember what buttons to press for the 30 Lives code? I know I don’t, and I could never do it either. Always had to have my friends type it in. But you’d need a code like that for this game; one shot from the enemy and you’re toast. And you only start with three! But man, how fun was it running through the jungle in that first stage decked out like Rambo and blasting away with your spread gun? Then it all gets crazy when you gotta fight aliens! The “boss” of the game is pretty sick and cool.

2. (Mike Tyson’s) Punch-Out (NES): With or without Mike Tyson? Nintendo released a Mike Tyson-less version of Punch-Out in what I seem to remember being in 1989 or 1990. Either version is a great game that can be played over, and over, and over and over again… The only difference between both versions of Punch-Out is you’ll either fight Mike Tyson at the end or Mr. Dream. Mr. Dream fights exactly like Mike Tyson, but with lighter skin color and a different head. I, myself, own the “NES Classic Series” version (Mr. Dream) and still dust it off time to time to help Little Mac conquer the boxing world! Try it with the Game Genie to become a killing machine– never lose hearts and stars (or moons and clovers)! Awesome!

1. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES): The best Mario game ever! After the different look of SMB2, the third installment got back to the franchise’s roots. And it excels, I’ll even occasionally pull out my beat up NES to this day just to play this game. Who can resist the wonders of Raccoon Mario? Fly, fly away!

CVC GameLink

I’m still amazed at just how forward thinking the video game industry was in the early ’80s. Intellivision had PlayCable (a video game channel that would rotate a selection of games to play each month) and for multiple consoles there was the GameLine.

GameLine was produced by the Control Video Corporation and allowed for game downloads through the use of a special dial-up modem for “about 10¢ a play or less” according to this print ad. As you can read, for $59.95 + $15 membership fee you got not only the GameLine Master Module modem but also a monthly magazine called GameLiner which I imagine would be really interesting to flip through. GameLiner featured info on new GameLine games, tips & tricks and a list of all games offered on GameLine. Users were given a pin to log into CVC’s computer to download games. You would pay the small fee to download the game but the catch to this service is that after about a week or so you would have to log back into CVC and pay again to continue playing the game. I wonder if you could download multiple games at a time or were stuck just playing the one until you were locked out of it?

Though the service offered a decent amount of games, all of the GameLine games were third-party (CVC couldn’t even get the Atari game license) and featured none of the major publishers of the day like Activision, Mattel, Parker Brothers or Coleco. A lack of support from the majors coupled with the video game crash of ’83 means GameLine didn’t last long but I have to give them credit for such a cool product. I have no doubt if I were old enough at the time, I would’ve been begging for my parents to get me GameLink for my birthday or Christmas.

CVC’s vision did not stop with GameLine. There were a number of other “Lines” they had planned: NewsLine, StockLine, SportsLine, MailLine (YES — email), BankLine, OpinionLine (message boards!) and InfoLine. None of these services came to pass due to the company going out of business but it still boggles my mind to think of something like this taking place in 1982 or 1983.

Overall, a pretty cool piece of video game history.

How The Extra-Terrestrial Stole The Video Game Industry

Much has been said about about the E.T. video game for the Atari 2600. So much in fact I really have had no desire to say anything about it until I came across this:

“Just in time for Christmas” is right! Famously, the game’s designer Howard Scott Warshaw was only given six weeks to hand in a full game in order for it to be on the shelves in time for Christmas of  ’82. Even more (in)famous, the game is regarded as one of the worst video games of all time. No one blames Warshaw though. He did the best he could (we hope) given the circumstances. The hate is directed towards the greedy execs at Atari for forcing such poor working conditions upon him and being more interested in making a buck with a poor product than making a buck with a good product.

Problem is — they didn’t make a buck at all! The game was so bad it was returned by many, not bought by even more, relegated to clearance bins for 99 cents and unsold copies were dumped in a landfill! A loss of millions and millions for Atari who came out of this with much egg on their face after fumbling what should’ve been a no-brainer “make easy money” licensing deal based one of the most popular movies of all time. They financially stumbled their way through 1983 and 1984, losing $536 million in 1983 alone. The blow to Atari was not Atari’s alone to absorb though. Being a powerhouse in the industry at the time, when they suffered, EVERYONE suffered and this whole E.T. debacle contributed to The Video Game Crash of 1983.

The face of evil?

 

Intellivision PlayCable

Recently I found myself reading about the history of the Sega Channel (which was introduced in 1994). Although I never had it, I remember there being some buzz about it (between me and my friend at least). It really was an idea that was ahead of its time. The technology just wasn’t there yet to make it a successful venture and Sega has never had the best marketing for their products anyway, so of course it was going to start fading out fairly quickly.

These days we have the incredibly successful Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Wii Channels but dating back even way before the Sega Channel there was the Intellivision PlayCable. There was also the CVC GameLine for Atari but more on that in a future post.

Introduced in 1981, the PlayCable was basically a premium cable channel much like HBO or Showtime. You had to have a special converter — the PlayCable Adapter — to gain access to the channel (along with the monthly subscription fee of course). $12 a month with a monthly rotating cast of 20 games? Not a bad deal really and it’s still just so amazing to me how forward thinking these companies were way before a venture like this would prove popular.

Alas, the PlayCable was discontinued in 1983. With the release of Intellivision games that required more memory, the 4K of RAM that the PlayCable adapter stored was not enough to support any of these 8K and 16K games for the channel thus the PlayCable looked a lot less attractive to consumers. Not that it would have mattered much anyway because 1983 was the year that nearly killed video games.

For more information about Intellivision, be sure to check out www.intellivisionlives.com.

Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle (an arcade quality video game)

Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle (1982, Coleco)

Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle is a pretty notorious game. At least, this is what I surmise by the fact that there are so many reviews and demonstrations posted on YouTube. It has been said that this game is awful and frustrating yet easy to beat… if only you can avoid those tall tufts of killer grass. On the surface, this game does indeed look easy. It’s a simple side-scroller where you just keep walking and jumping until you get to Smurfette in Gargamel’s castle.

And yes, while the game may be in “high resolution”, this commercial is not:

SMURF’EM ALL !!!

I could’ve sworn Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed this at one point but I couldn’t find it, so if you want a better idea of what the game is about, simply watch this demonstration:

To be honest, I’ve never played a single Smurf video game in my life which is surprising because I was a huge Smurf fan. I watched the Smurfs cartoon (even the lame Grandpa Smurf/Baby Smurf era), ate the Smurf cookies, Smurf cereals & Smurf marshmallows, had a Smurf plush toy, Smurf sleeping bag and Smurf Colorforms yet I never got my hands on a smurfin’ Smurf video game!

Looking back, that’s not my fault. The Smurfs just didn’t know what the kids liked. Sure, they were on Atari and ColecoVision in the early ’80s but they didn’t make an appearance on the NES until 1994! Who was playing NES in 1994 and publicly admitting it? By that point, I wouldn’t have wanted to play a Smurf video game even if I knew it existed. Had they cashed-in during the glory days of the NES, I assure you I would have played the game.

Surprisingly, Smurf games were slowly but surely being released up until 2001 when Smurf Racing debuted for the PlayStation. Oops, looks like they jumped the gun on the kart racing craze. How cool does a kart racing Smurf game sound though? I love Mario Kart knockoffs. I think even a platformer would work quite well on Wii. All the developers would have to do is take direction from any of the recent Mario games (Paper, New and Galaxy series) or something like Klonoa. Almost as exciting as a new Smurf kart game is the idea of home brewed Commodore 64 games like Castle Smurfenstein and G.I. Joe II: The Smurf Massacre. Those games sound like they need an update as well.