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100 Favorite Video Games
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| [email protected] AIM: destinys2ndkid |
20. Captain America and the Avengers (Arcade, 1991)
I find more and more that my childhood memories of the arcade aren't in the tactile joy of gameplay or the sights and sounds you may remember; the abrupt carpet, the smell of fresh plastic and metal, your sweaty grip on the red ball and the fractured stress on your fingertips. No, my most important memories are the dumb voice clips games started to have right before everything switched over to CD. The joy of unique computerized speech that rings true even in this age of Michelle Rodriguez making "fuck" come out of a polygon cop.
It's the most fantastic thing. You put in the quarter and this voice from inside screams FINE. Like an indignant ex-girlfriend. Three more quarters. FINE. FINE. FINE. Then you hit start. OKAAAAY GOOOOOO. Suddenly your girlfriend is back in your arms wearing a football helmet and she's pushing you into characters like The Grim Reaper (YOU CAME HERE TO DIE) and Mandarin (SEEEEEEE MYYYYY POW-AAAAAAAAH). You get the thankful Captain (THANK YOU ((pause)) QUICKSILVER) as though he's almost forgotten the B-team Avenger who got the prop jobs. You get the mildly retarded Captain (WHY SHOULD IT GO WELL?) who was once Japanese but is now English and about two seconds from having no chance make your time.
I'm jealous that Mike put Sunset Riders on his list, because that game's ME IN HEAP BIG TROUBLE and BURY ME WITH MY MONEY go hand-in-hand with Data East's dissertation on mistranslated thanks and affirmation. Captain America and the Avengers sat in my arcade (Jolly Time, which became Coin Exchange, which became an empty hole in the mall) until it died. It became surrounded by Dance Dance Revolution and "throw the football through the hole" games and grabby token quarter-sliding traps, but I always made sure to get one or two FINEs and an OKAAAAY GOOOO before it had to say goodbye. They left it in the closed down shop for a week, and I could see it when I passed through the mesh metal mall-walls. I like to think they left it there on purpose.
19. Tetris Attack (SNES, 1996)
I wanted to rent "Uniracers" when I went into Blockbuster that day. They were running a special: "Rent the new SNES game 'Tetris Attack' and get a free rental!" I figured I may as well get two games if I still only had to pay for one. I didn't expect much. It looked like Yoshi had fallen into Columns. I never loved Tetris, really. Nobody HATES Tetris. It helps you get good at bagging groceries. But I never loved it.
About twenty seconds into Uniracers I went "hat" and cut it off. I put in Tetris Attack because I didn't have anything better to do. I didn't stop playing it, and I mean not even for a sandwich or a nap, until minutes before it was returned two days later. It's a combination of sensory excitement (matching up rows of colors and making them fall onto other rows of other colors is for the color wheel epileptic in me) and out-right FUCK FUCK OH YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING OH OH LOOK AT THAT EAT ME, EAT ME adrenaline. When I first put in the game Lakitu dropped some blocks on me and beat me at level one. Yesterday (yes, yesterday) I beat Bowser on the final level with an 8-chain. Again it's the sounds that I remember. When you score you hear your character shout. Yoshi makes his tongue noise. So it's like
wee-woo
wee-woo
wee-woo
wee-woo wee-woo wee-woo
DUNNADA DUNNADA DUNNADA DAAAA!!!!!!
THOMP THOMP THOMP
I've never been a fan of puzzle games or animal cruelty, but only hot sex and a fantastic wrestling match ranks higher on my boner scale than dropping a 10 or 12-chain on that fucking duckbilled dog.
18. OutNumbered! (PC, 1990)
Hahaha, why is OutNumbered! on my list?
This game is middle school to me. Yeah, I know, "6 - 2 = ?" isn't exactly pondering the meaning of life, but when you're stuck in computer lab with a bunch of blossoming girls and fat, short boys who want to knock your books in the floor whatever gets you away from typing lass had a jak on loop seems like an oasis made out of chocolate whores in the desert.
There is a villain chillin' in the television station. You must direct the Super Solver (who may or may not be the lost, white Cosby Kid) around the station collecting clues that will reveal the room in which "Master of Mischief" is hiding. How do you find the clues? You look for math problems and solve them before a walking television murders you. Have you ever wondered why your local newsman always looks terrified? It's because he works in a place where you can't enter a room without performing a complex educational process and everything he appears on wants to hurt him. I'm proud he can tell me about my local girls J.V. softball team without shitting himself.
OutNumbered! is pretty hardcore, combining the anti-media propaganda of George Orwell's prophetic classic 1984 with those Sesame Street games where the Cookie Monster stares blankly at you while numbers fall.
17. Kingdom Hearts (PS2, 2002)
I can't remember about a month of my life because of Kingdom Hearts. I was living in Florida and in the middle of writing my first novel when it was released, and immediately I turned the corner onto obsessive sycophant avenue off of regular person who enjoys productive activities boulevard. I had a girlfriend and a dog. I left my dog outside barking and my girlfriend on the couch reading the same book she'd read a dozen times before just to pass the time. I don't remember the romantic details. But I can tell you in-detail about the first time I ended up on the deck of Captain Hook's pirate ship.
The battle system takes some getting used to. It's somewhere between Final Fantasy and Zelda. You're Haley Joel Osment with Dragonball hair using a key to beat up Disney characters. It's a bizarrely dumb idea and it shouldn't be fun. I held that opinion even into that twentieth or so day when I first gained the ability of flight, and zipped around in the night sky beating the good God damn out of Hook. The music is so iconic that it's annoying and repetitive even before you hear it. The Little Mermaid level is the opening bars of "Under the Sea." That's ALL. Under the Sea starting up about a thousand times. And when Donald gets that potion to you just before Ursula kills you and you get your second wind, those forsaken steel drums become a battle cry. They become this part of you that puts your hand through the controller and into the game. You're one badly-drawn CGI guy grabbing you away from shooting at the Eggplant Wizard with a zapper.
Kingdom Hearts did for me what Disney has failed to do about 15 times since my childhood: Make me feel like a kid. And I was a pretty dumb kid sometimes, too. I didn't have a dog or a girlfriend.
16. Baseball Stars (NES, 1989)
One of the major disappointments when I was done with Seven Hill City is the direct reaction from the very few people for whom I specifically wrote. The girl (that infinite girl) reacted the way I expected, which was the opposite of the way I'd hoped. She thought it was "awesome!" and "really good!" and outside of making the conscious effort to not look too deeply into the details she accepted it and shrugged. It means a lot to her in her empty way, the way that makes The Unicorns mean a lot to her. It's not a big deal. She's getting uglier as she gets older anyway.
The major disappointment was my father. I could write an entire book about him. About how he never draws but is a great artist. About how he never plays music but is a great musician. About how much he loves to read and how infrequently he does so. I am if nothing else a fractured shard of my father lifted by my mother and inserted into action. I didn't want to write too much about him there because writing about your father and the problems you've had is like writing about a dark and stormy night or how the rain fell. I mentioned that he and I used to wrestle. We'd pull a mattress downstairs (to soften bumps), strip down to our "wrestling gear" (usually shorts or underwear) and we'd play wrestle. He'd sell my fake punches, I'd lay under him while he Boston crabbed me out of my little gourd and cry. He taught me about fortitude and spirit. He taught me to love something that so many more despise from the inside out, and I will forever be thankful to him for that. Forever.
The other large part of my childhood with my father was video games. When I was a tiny baby one of the things that contributed to my hyper growth mentally was the Intellivision, and the Atari, and the Nintendo. I had the high score in Centipede when I was a year and a half old, not because of some kind of dumb cohesive luck but because I was taught to understand what it meant. They didn't sit me down and say "play this now." My dad showed me how to play. He taught me the tricks. He showed me when I should shoot and when I should move.
One thing my Dad and I love equally is baseball. So it makes sense that we'd gravitate towards baseball games when they got more impressive than the NES's "BASEBALL." Baseball Stars was the first game I ever played where you could MAKE TEAMS. And then you can keep track of their stats in a league. It was amazing to me. I made Ryan Klesko because he was fat and I liked him. I made Cal Ripken Jr. and learned to make the 8-bit, faceless version of him dive just like the original. My Dad and I battled for a never-ending season that stopped randomly when the game erased our stats (about every two weeks) and restarted when we remade all of the players. He almost always won. He played with the American Dreams, the all-star team made up of legendary players renamed without a license. Babe. Lou. Lefty. They kicked my little ass. It was my goal to beat him fair and square, without "looking at his hand" to see where he would pitch, without blaming the controller or saying I hit a button when I didn't.
That day came, but only once. As the Ninja Black Sox I beat the American Dreams 12-11. I'll remember it until the day I die. I danced around for an hour shouting hilarious child things like "IN YOUR FACE." My Dad tried to play it off like he let me win. I think we turned it into a wrestling angle.
15. Oregon Trail (PC, 1985)
The Organ Trail. Someone had their belly cut open and now there are intestines leading you along your path.
I don't know what else I can write. But I think it says something for the game when I can't begin to write about a twenty year old educational computer game without firing up the Apple emulator to manipulate out a bunch of topical jokes.
14. Tecmo Super Bowl (Multiplatform, 1992)
I don't really have the hands to play the Madden games. When I type "Madden games" I mean basically every football game made since Joe Montana's Sports Talk Football. That to-everyone-else-it's-better behind the quarterback camera does something to my brain. It puts a sheet of cloth down in front of my eyes and I react to it like an old person trying to figure out the Internet.
Quarterback: HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT
Me: *hits the X button*
Quarterback: HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT
Me: Oh, wait. *hits the O button*
Quarterback: *gets the hike, takes two steps to the left, throws the ball 30 yards out of bounds*
Quarterback: *is clobbered by the defense and has 12 points fall out of him*
Me: WAIT I THOUGHT TRIANGLE WAS THE "THROW IT TO THE GUY WITH TRIANGLE OVER HIS HEAD" BUTTON.
Me: *consults Gamefaqs*
Gamefaqs: The B button passes the football.
Me: THIS CONTROLLER DOESN'T HAVE A B BUTTON
Quarterback: HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUTTecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl, its superior sequel, allow my love of football to prosper in a completely unrealistic setting where Dan Marino can drop back into his own endzone and lob the ball 100 yards to Mark Clayton for a touchdown. It gives me the suspension of disbelief and the benefit of the doubt to go far enough in letting me play and win the game happily without being a real-life simulator or thinking I want it to be EXTREME with GUYS ON FIRE tackling GRIZZLY BEARS COVERED IN CHROME.
When I want a fun football game to play with my friends and I don't want to just go outside and play real football, Tecmo Super Bowl is the champ. AND THE CHAMP IS HERE. THE CHAMP IS HERE. THE CHAMP IS INSIDE OF HERE.
13. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1, 1997)
WELCOME to castleVANIA! Yahoo! Yaaahoo!
You all know about the "Jill Sandwich." You all know that all of our bases belong to Cats. Navi wants you to LISTEN~! and on and on, but the most underappreciated and possibly greatest comedy voice acting job of the modern era is Castlevania Symphony of the Night, a game where the actors are somewhere between sure and oversized unsure about the level of seriousness this game demands.
Alucard is the son of Dracula. That's why his name is Alucard. It's Dracula backwards. If I named my kid that way he'd be named Nodnarb. So Nodnarb's job is to infiltrate Dracula's castle, find the room where he has the hamster, put the hamster in the microwave, find gas for the chainsaw and use it to kill all sorts of things that looked a lot worse in Van Helsing. I'm guessing they went up to the guy who did his voice on the English dub and said "Okay, he's the son of Dracula, and I want him to sound like Sulu from Star Trek but also kind of skeezy." So we get Nodnarb rocking the suave sophistication ("I'm INTERESTED in this.") and the incredulously confrontational yelling ("You're NOT MY MOTH-er!!!"). It's lost amongst fan-fickian lore and those commercials where accident victims are recounting what happened to them and how much help the received henceforth.
What emerges is one of the finest looking and playing games made for the Playstation. And in a time where the PS1 games are aging like badly colored geometry experiments, that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing.
12. Super Metroid (SNES, 1994)
I bet Jose Canseco's favorite video game is MET ROID.
When I was compiling this list I realized that about twenty-five of my twenty favorite games ever have "Super" in the title. Maybe I've got a particular subconscious love for the Super Nintendo. Maybe that level of technology and game focus was ideal for me. Maybe it was the last system that came out before boobs became more important than save points. Whatever it is, I'm so enchanted with Super that I could live in a sexy apartment building!
Metroid games teach you that backtracking is the only way to get through life without being exploded. The Tommy Tallericos of the world feel as though each rock should be rendered photo-realistic and you should only see it ONCE, because otherwise the game takes you through the SAME LEVELS and is BORING. Metroid games give you the feeling much like Castlevania above that you aren't in a video game full of levels; you're in a place, or you're on a planet, and it's your mission to find out what the Dory Funk is going on. It's a world. A WORLD. You sit in it forever. I sat in it forever. I spent about two weeks of my life real-time just running from one side of the map to the other trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do next. It drove me insane and I wanted to scream. And you know what?
I didn't. I beat the game. And you know what it gave me? A sense of accomplishment. When you kill the Mother Brain and you've got to escape back through the entire game before the planet explodes you step into that yellow ship that looks like ugly binoculars and you are proud. Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe the boobs and the save points aren't on the same plane anymore. Maybe I'll never really know the love of a true save point again. But as the feeling of accomplishment fades alongside the newer games I beat in a week or a day I will cherish these memories as if they were my own repetitive, backtracking, unnecessarily arranged children.
11. River City Ransom (NES, 1989)
What do you think's IN THE BURGERS?
In a city where generalized midgets cause and affect relationship strife, Alex and Ryan must use their martial arts, shopping prowess, and ability to lift and throw tires to defeat River City's various gangs and rescue the prerequisite kidnapped girlfriend. It's really just Bad Dudes, but it's Bad Dudes crafted by small children. It's just Final Fight, but Final Fight in primary colors. They taunt you when you kill them, but do they really? River City Ransom writers set out to collect the most non-threatening threats developed since the days of Hammurabi calling some Sumarian a Faggoraut, including:
"Is this fun yet?"
"Oooo, that smarts!"
"You win, but the Twins will fix your wagon!"It's a simple, slow moving family car that purrs like a Vette. It also introduces you to a world of punching your friend until he falls down and then throwing him into a pit. If you've never played River City Ransom do yourself a favor and download it, or pick up an old cartridge and experience the bliss of white men going balls out for yourself. A used Nintendo may cost you twenty bucks, but the smiles at Merv's Burger Joint are always free.
And there's one part where you can see your little guy's bare ass.
Also,
Photos link to player info.
Visit the Dugout Archives
10. Street Fighter II (Arcade, 1994)
YAH-PAN
My feelings on Street Fighter II, as written for my article "Street Fighter: The Movie" 7/5/01:
"...after a while the arcade scene really started to change. It really hit me when I sauntered in one day to beat some poor kid to death on the old Karate Champ machine and saw two lines from the back of the arcade and out into the mall. One for each joystick. Quarters being slammed and propped up against the screen to hold places. Teenagers, swearing about God knows what and casting an evil, possibly urine filled eye at Karate Champ. Winning at Karate Champ is NOTHING...winning at Street Fighter takes SKILL! They've got hidden special moves! They've all got at least thirty different moves! Combo glitches! There's a sumo guy and I think you can see his nuts when he does his victory pose! It's the best thing since sliced Jesus!
A few weeks later they trashed the old Karate Champ machine. So it was my mission.
I was going to destroy Street Fighter.
My cousin worked at the arcade so I would spend countless hours there, perfecting every combo, mastering every special move, observing every sumo nut until I felt I was ready to take on the world. That's when the path of rage started. With Chun Li, this timid eleven year-old with a gleam in his eye and too many Swiss Miss cake rolls in his belly single-handedly punked every local Danville video game player the fuck out. She was fast, she was quick, she could jump high and make the teenagers go "FUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKK" to an eleven year old every time they got the head-stomp."And it continues today. I own you as Chun Li.
Shut up. NO, SHUT UP. SHUT IT UP.
I own you as Chun Li.
I will now begin a graphic presentation featuring images of a fat boy being punched by a masturbated kitten to express the level of owning that I possess in regard to you and your relationship to Chun Li.
9. Super Mario Kart (SNES, 1992)
Super Mario Kart 64, to me, is in every way greater than its SNES predecessor. The graphics are better, the control is better, it's cleaner, brighter, faster, and stronger. But it's not on my list.
If Zach Braff was writing my 100 Favorite Video Games this is where he would include a girl written specifically for me to fall in love with and then TWIST ME by giving her a fatal disease. As I said earlier, the time spent playing video games with my Dad is important to me. We'd alternate between laughing at Contra (including doing exaggerated "augh, you've got to go on....without me!" death rattles when we were shot) and bickering after Tecmo Bowl interceptions about who looked at who's hands. Mario Kart was the last of these games. The very last.
You see, my Father died the year this was released.
I'm just kidding. This was just the first game where I could beat him on a regular basis. The bickering began to overtake the laughing. I (always Toad) perfected the slide around corners and used it fluently to edge out my Dad (always Koopa Troopa) on every track. He started using shortcuts. Learning to jump the gap on the Ghost House track with a feather. Using mushrooms to cross rocky terrain. For the first time I saw this and adapted. I used his tricks against him. I learned to jump the Ghost House gap without a feather. I'd leave green turtle shells there for him. I'd throw banana peels into the rocky terrain. He would wreck, progressively curse more elaborately, and stop playing with me. I was cheating! he cried.
A few months later when I'd moved on from playing the game constantly he began playing with my Mom, who was honestly pretty good for a Mom but nowhere near the skill needed to beat my Dad. Eventually she gave up because she didn't have a chance, and my Dad put away the SNES controller for good. We picked back up briefly for Mario Kart 64, but he could never get the hang of the controller. I guess not everybody can make Koopa Troopa stay on the track using a big black bird foot. When that experiment ended so did our games. We haven't played video games together since. We put Mario Kart into the ground.
And then goddamn Luigi came out of nowhere with a star and wrecked up the ground.
8. Super Dodge Ball (NES, 1989)
You can kill a man with a gun. It's easy. You just pull the trigger and he's gone, no more. People kill for passion, they kill for greed, they kill for hatred and ignorance and it's always this easy way out. The gun. Kill a man with a gun because you can't kill him another way. No patience. No skill. Just a machine.
Killing a man with a dodge ball is the way a man does it. I hit a man with a dodgeball in Reno, just to watch him die!
...
He turned into a little angel and floated away.
7. Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain (PS2, 2003)
Well.
Here comes the pain.
You know the kind of boner some guys get from watching a Lindsay Lohan music video?
I get that kind of a boner making Ultimo Dragon escape a tombstone piledriver, thrust kick the Undertaker in his gut, taunt, hit an Asai DDT and lock on a Dragon Sleeper for a bloody submission victory.
Oh ho ho ho yeah. And I like for it to look REAL. Which is not necessarily comparable to Lindsay Lohan.
When I bought Smackdown I played it until my eyeball started twitching. My eyeball has never twitched but after calling in sick to work and sitting on a couch playing this for two and a half days without sleep my brain stopped making my motor functions function and now my eyelid flaps up and down without control. I look like the Fresh Prince trying to teach Ashley how to fight. Thanks a lot, Smackdown Here Comes the Pain.
Oh, you know what else gives me a boner? Making my girlfriend gore Kyle Farnsworth.
6. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2, 2004)
Dear Dr. Ted George,
i am respecting him opion on playing grand theft auto gta san andreas but i in realty think you have a rudimentary penis and should be shiped off to the inarnational school for excalence in the feild of faggotry!!! no whare in your message to children and familys do you mention that gta andrase takes all that was good about the first four gta games and improves on that, giving you the free-roaming experience of GTA 3 with the stylized Americana of GTA Vice City. You hear a lot of people condescend on the game because of its graphics. Some people don't like the main characters because they're black. Some people, on both accounts, are fucking morons.
When I started playing San Andreas I was riding away on a bike as quickly as possible so I wouldn't get shot by a rival gang member. When I stopped playing San Andreas I'd stolen a jet pack, used it to fly over a military base, unlatch myself and dive before said pack is blown up by surface-to-air missiles, parachuted down into said military base, gunned down about a dozen soldiers, stole a tank, and drove it out of the front door. The game is like living someone else's gloriously decadent life. The little things make it so enjoyable. The cops who get hit by a trolley because they aren't looking. Stopping short on a dirtbike just before you hit the cliff side and watching the SUVs that were chasing you go flying off into the ocean. The hyperbolic voices telling me that the yay is leaving San Fierro, that a bitch has fucked whatever with a ho and a weed and the magnificently specific experience.
To suggest that children would be swayed by this game is to be correct. I'm twenty-five years old and I'm swayed by this game. When I drive past a parked motorcycle now my first instinct is to bail out of my car and steal it. When I see an old lady walking across the street I want to Ram-man into her and send her sailing. The things called conscience and impulse control keep me from doing these things. Sometimes when I'm on a long car trip I want to drive off the side of the bridge I'm crossing and see what happens. I don't. And I learned neither the positive nor the negative from playing Gran Turismo. Although I shouldn't care, because my car won't take any damage.
The larger point is that the most obvious sign of ignorance and stupidity in a person is their lack of context. Have you ever argued with someone only to have them reiterate the same point continuously, regardless of what you said to them in response the first time? That's the kind of person who might steal because of Grand Theft Auto. Have you had someone pick a fight with you for no reason other than that you might be the wrong person at the wrong time? That's the kind of person who might kill because of Grand Theft Auto. These people have no context. They exist outside the playing field. It is the players who are remembered. The players on the field obtain victory and respect. The people in the crowd who turn over a car whether their team wins or loses is the kind of unmitigated numbfuck that would commit a crime because they could get away with it in the video game.
Also, your a lowlife lyk who takes this shite seriousley?
xOxO B-Pboii OxOx
5. Chrono Trigger (SNES, 1995)
There is a moment there on the brink of time where you start to wonder if all the things you've done are for a reason.
Thank you to the people who made Chrono Trigger, specifically "The Dream Team."
Hironobu Sakaguchi, producer of the Final Fantasy series. Thank you for your standards of creativity and your influence on how games are created and played. The Final Fantasy series has always been my favorite and if this list wasn't trying to be moderately objective it'd just be Square and maybe Dodge Ball.
Thank you Yuji Horii, for your scenario designer skills. You did a great job with Dragon Quest and you certainly outdid yourself here. Thank you Akira Toriyama for your character designs, especially important since this is the first time I was able to enjoy your work without having to sit through 50 22-minute episodes of somebody trying to run down a hallway screaming. A big thank you to Yasunori Mitsuda for your amazing score. People throw around "amazing" on the Internet. OH YOUR AN AMAZING WRITER. YOU'RE WEBPAGE IS AMAZING. GARDEN STATE IS AN AMAZING MOVIE. Mitsuda, your score is amazing. You've done it a dozen times now. You deserve to have Braff show up and write you a love scene where you get to run through the airport making life decisions.
And as an aside, my biggest personal thank you goes to Nobuo Uematsu. I tend to get a little verbose sometimes so I'll just nod my head as I type this and say that you're one of my favorite people alive, you and your little keyboard are out of my realm of understanding, and I hope you live to be a thousand years old.
You guys made pretty much the best game ever.
4. WWF No Mercy (N64, 2000)
There's nothing like a good old wrestlin' match between Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage.
Especially when the good old wrestlin' is simulator perfect, giving you some of the intangible aspects of professional wrestling (fighting spirit, timing, luck) and allowing you to reenact to the letter what you think those two old, orange, deteriorating motherfuckers should be wrestling. The Smackdown series is a graphic revelation. They can make the fabric on Triple H's tights look like it does in real life. They can make The Rock have a functioning sardonic eyebrow and they can measure the exact distance between Trish Stratus' boobs and chin (3 inches) and render it perfectly. What they can not do, however, is top WWF No Mercy.
Visit a wrestling game message board six months before a new game comes out. Visit a board a year before a new game comes out. Have it be the most promising wrestling title made. Give it a roster of 60 guys. Articulated blood flow. 30 match types. Costume selection. Custom entrances and videos. A create-a-wrestler that will allow you to make one of the emo guys from your website wrestle a Japanese guy in holographic tights.
Give it everything you can think of. There will, inevitably, be two broad statements.
1) WILL THIS BE THE GAME THAT FINALLY KILLS NO MERCY?
And
2) There is no way this will be better than No Mercy!
No Mercy, honestly, is just about as good as a wrestling title is going to be for someone like me. The Smackdown series improved on presentation. Like, Ultimo Dragon's cape flaps when he walks. But No Mercy gives me moments I can barely describe. Smackdown tries, but misunderstands. Smackdown gives you a KO if you hit your finisher at the right time. No Mercy gives you the MOMENT of the KO finish. You've fought for 22 minutes. You're both bleeding and holding your arms and legs. Out of desperation you get a wind and lariat your opponent. His body goes limp and his head wobbles. He collapses. But before victory is certain he rolls over and climbs to his knees, and then his feet. Not knowing what to do in this moment of lost victory you strike him again. Clothesline. Buckle and wobble. Again he turns, and again he rises. And in that final moment you realize what must be done. You bounce off the ropes and hit him as hard as you can. The animation is the same, but the rumble is different. Your arms shake and this time it has to be enough to keep him down.
No Mercy makes wrestling what wrestling should be. A show of intense competition and spectacle. No bra and panties matches. The gimmick matches are barely even functional at this point. But when it's time to go man to man you want more than an elaborate control system: you want control.
This will not be the game that finally kills No Mercy, and no, there is no way that this will be better.
3. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES, 1992)
I can barely play this game on the emulator or my SNES because it feels like a part of me. And not that "it's in my heart!" kind of a part of me, I'm talking about my arm. Zelda is like my arm. When a new Zelda game comes out I don't anticipate it like a new wrestling game, or a new Final Fantasy game even. It's just the natural order of things. The new Zelda comes out and I get, I don't know, a new finger.
One of our most popular features is Mike and I writing socially and hyper-obviously about Zelda. So when it comes time for me to take the gloves off it all comes out wrong, 'cause it just doesn't sound right without a pun. I remember getting this game for my birthday but I don't remember going out to buy it. I remember crying profusely during the game's beautifully orchestrated ending sequence but I don't remember why. The story isn't really...personal? It's Zelda. He hits bad guys with a sword until he gets enough equipment from here and there to kill the evil pig. And I'm crying. I'm sitting there in my room crying, and I can't remember whether it was from the reason or the feeling.
I can't remember the layouts of the dungeons but I can beat the game from beginning to end with my eyes closed. I remember what every townsperson says but only if I'm standing in the exact position I should be to talk to them. I know where the rupees are and I know what the trees give. I'm Leonard Shelby. I've got this condition. It's just a part of me. It's just a part of my arm. Right here.
2. Final Fantasy II (IV) (SNES, 1990)
Bill said it best. Sometimes you just need something more.
"With it's bright colors and simple graphics it looks like a dinosaur to the people who discovered the series with the Playstation entries. It's really almost grown into a piece of art -- beautiful in it's simplicity, so complex that you don't realize the emotions it's evoking from you until long after you've felt them. For me, Squaresoft came along during a time when I really needed something to make me feel better." - Final Fantasy II, 2001
It makes me out to look like a "hardcore gamer," but nothing is farther from the truth. I'm not a gamer. The only reason I play video games is because I don't smoke, or drink to excess, or use my time constructively. Video games are different to me.
Okay. I've got a degenerative lung disease. There, I typed it.
I'll probably end up writing my second book about it but I've been in the hospital a lot. Mostly when I was a kid. My lungs just don't work. They're like an old man's lungs. It makes it hard for me to run, or exercise to the extent I'd like. It kept me from getting serious about wrestling school. It keeps me from sleeping sometimes. I try not to think of it more than I have to. The doctor told me I "might even live to be fifty!" I was five.
There were three things that made me happy when I was in the hospital. My parents let me try Mountain Dew for the first time because the vending machines were out of Dr. Pepper. All I'd drank for two and a half weeks was water. The Mountain Dew in a little white Dixie cup that I'll never forget tasted so sweet, so perfect and new. It's just citrus soda. It makes you have to pee when you shouldn't. It's still my favorite.
The second thing were thumb wrestlers. Little plastic molds of Hulk Hogan, Iron Sheik, Junkyard Dog, and Rowdy Roddy Piper that fit on your thumbs. They were awful for thumb wrestling because they were just action figures that had holes for your fingers in them, but I loved them. I build a "Piper's Pit" out of the things on my hospital nightstand. I created storylines and booked matches. Hogan did a lot of big legs. Wrestling is just a fake TV show. I guess you know where I stand on that.
The third thing was a Galaga mini-arcade game. It looked just like the big machine but it sat on a table or in my lap. It was the first time I'd played video games in a year. It was something to do besides watch the three channels that all seemed to play Sally Jesse Raphael or lay motionless. It gave me a goal. It gave me something to work toward. I played it until the joysticks broke. That was four years later. I've never given up on games since then.
And that's the feeling I got when I first played Final Fantasy II for the SNES. I'd been playing games forever but it felt like the first time in years. They created a storyline and let me play the roles. I played it until the controllers broke. And sometimes I had to pee when I really didn't want to. It's just a game. The graphics are old and they've improved the series so much since then. But it's still my favorite.
1. The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64, 1998)
And this is the only game that is better to me than the games that have saved my life.
When I first met Emily our friendship was strong, but I'm sure it would've been stronger without Ocarina of Time. See, I didn't own Ocarina of Time in any format until I pre-ordered Wind Waker for the Gamecube (which gets an honorable mention spot on my list but doesn't make the top 20 because Nintendo now only makes games that are four seconds long). The game is on the pre-order disk you get for paying early. It was the first time I called it mine. But it wasn't my first time.
The first time was the day it was released in 1998. Aaron Yost had pre-ordered the game and was wearing the free T-shirt. I was so jealous. I was intimate with the game long before I controlled it. It was like sex. Sex to me. That kind of feeling where you KNOW what it's going to be like and you KNOW you want to do it, but when you're there in the middle of it your body turns into a physical W, T, and F and you change. Zelda meant more to me than Mario. Mario was my friend. The Legend of Zelda was, well, it was my arm. We've already gone over this.
I beat the game to death (figuratively by finishing the entire game, sidequests and all, and literally by crushing the N64 and its controllers with my hands). The game beat me to death. The story involved me. The action captivated me. The Water Temple gave me my first serious thoughts about suicide. It was like Mario 64 amped up out of the world. It's like I was playing a Nintendo 400 and 64. I knew then that it was the best game I was going to ever play. Ever.
When my friends and I had a falling out I moved on. I played other games. Some of them are listed here. I love them. They mean a lot to me. And then Zelda came back to me. I was [ ] this close to drumming for Def Leppard.
Emily's roommate Elise had an N64 and a copy of Ocarina of Time. So when any other boy would be enjoying college girls and their whimsically romanticized pot parties and DRIVE ME HEREs I was sitting on a futon, ignoring the breasts and their admirers alike, beating the Water Temple again just to prove to myself that I could. I didn't need sex there. Zelda was sex there. In retrospect that was probably a poor choice of judgment BUT I CAN DO PUSH-UPS USING ONLY THIS ARM. THIS ARM CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS. IT CAN SHIT THUNDER AND FLUSH THE TOILET USING LIGHTNING. Like A Link the Past I can barely remember how much I played, where I played, or what I did. I can't remember much about Emily's dorm room now. The vague impression of posters and wooden bed frames, and Zelda, there in the center.
Mr. Miyamoto, I make a lot of fun of the things in your game. Hell, I didn't know I had that many jokes about Crows in me. I don't know if you'll ever read this or if you'll even get anything the way it's intended here besides maybe knowing the jokes about what Ichiro says in the Dugout, but something you made is a part of me. A real, open, bleeding part of me. Your continuing efforts give me a good reason to look forward to days I might otherwise depress. You've been called a "genius" and sometimes I forget what that means, but I know you're my friend, because nothing else in the world makes more sense than that. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
And thank you to everyone else on this list. I hope anything I can do will mean as much to another human being as the things you've done for me.
