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100 Favorite Video Games
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| Mike |
| mike @ progressiveboink.com AIM: mike fireball 0 |
20. Aladdin (Genesis, 1993)
I didn't even own a Genesis, but when I was growing up, that didn't matter. If your friend down the street had a game you liked, you didn't bother buying it yourself, you'd just go down to his house & play it. Especially if you were of above average skill. As the reigning video game champion of Antietam Drive, I was casually invited over on the condition that I be the organ grinder's monkey for the afternoon & beat a game.
Aladdin was one such game. Which didn't really make much sense, because they could've just put in that ABBAABBA code to skip levels if they wanted to see the stupid ending so badly. As much as I love playing this game, it has one of the most unsatisfying video game endings of all time, for two reasons. (#1.) It involved a 3-second scene of Aladdin & Jasmine flying into the night on the magic carpet, & then kissing on an all-black screen that said THE END. Roll credits. THAT'S IT. (#2.) If you wanted to see it, all you had to do was pause the game at any point during each level, spell out the name of your favorite Swedish disco pop group twice on the controller, & hit Start again. Rinse & repeat for 8 or 9 levels, & congratulations, you've just beaten Aladdin for your Sega Genesis! YOU ARE NOW THE BEST VIDEA GAME PLAYER IN THE WORLD!
Still, there was something about Aladdin that made me determined to play it the long way. It's nothing more than a side-scrolling action game, where you swing your sword & throw apples at palace guards & wisecracking parrots for a couple of movie-themed levels until you reach Jafar & save the princess from him... but it's one of the most fun games I've ever played. It's very rare that a movie-based game (and vice-versa, for that matter) can truly capture the overall enjoyment of the original film. Capcom couldn't even do it for their much different SNES version of Aladdin... but Virgin Games did it here, & it's mostly due to the wonderful character animation. Even the bad guys were very bumbling & animated. Jon reminded me my favorite one, where Aladdin will push against a wall when he tries to move "into" it. I'm pretty certain that he never has to push anything in the game, so the animation has no purpose whatsoever other than I guess to say AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I WILL MOVE THIS BUILDING!
19. Sunsetriders (Arcade, 1992)
I went to a Catholic high school in a rather well-to-do neighborhood. Not caviar & time share well-to-do, but well-to-do enough to have arcade games in the frigging cafeteria. Thanks to that, Konami's Sunsetriders is the proud owner of about 80 dollars' worth of my lunch money.
There was a small bit of plot to Sunsetriders. These guys are some group of bounty hunters in the old west, going from town to town & shooting every mean-looking face on a Wanted poster, a few of whom enjoy kidnapping those dancing girls in the big, frilly dresses & cowgirl boots, until you get to the British criminal mastermind, Sir Richard Rose, in his southern style mansion. The gameplay is basically like Contra if it got hit by lightning & sent back to the year 1885. So you choose one of four cowboys & shoot everything that moves. Most people opted for Billy, the blue clad James Dean of the bunch... or Cormano, the red-clad Mexican hombre. I was a fan of playing as Bob, myself. He's the one with the green pants & blonde mullet. Not only did he have a shotgun rifle like Cormano's, but he was also in a more comfortable spot on the arcade table, 3rd from the left. Cormano was Player 4, so he was on the far right, & you had to turn your neck to see the screen properly. Ergonomics be damned.
Konami put out a string of 4-player arcade games like this in the late '80s & early '90s (two more are on this very list), & they were among the first to make good use of digitized speech. Sunsetriders was one of the few like these that didn't include close-captioning, which would be fine if arcades & high school cafeterias weren't exceptionally loud places. So when someone in the game was talking, you'd suddenly see the 4 kids playing move their heads in closer & try to listen to the speakers over the monitor. It rarely worked.
B's comments: MARRY ME WITH MY MONEY!
I won't lie. The best part about Sunsetriders, at least for a 15-year-old boy on the brink of puberty, is the fact that you can run into a brothel & get power-ups from hookers. Upon reading that last sentence, the Miller-Boyett sitcom studio audience just went "WOOOOOO!" in unison. Except for that idiot in the back who did the whistle thing.
18. Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire (N64, 1996)
I'm pretty sure that this game came out at the same time as the book & I think a graphic novel of the same name that explained the story a little better, but like I read Star Wars books. I was always just a moderate fan... never huge, but enough to love the movies like a good friend that you're bad at keeping touch with. So I'm only sort of sure that this is the first appearance of the game's protagonist, bounty hunter Dash Rendar. On the timeline, the events of Shadows Of The Empire fall in between those of the Empire Strikes Back & Return Of The Jedi. Dash fights alongside of the Rebellion as they search for Han Solo's frozen body, but his top priority is going after the Dark Prince Xizor, who wants both Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader dead.
You control Dash through ten levels of varied gameplay, but the first level is easily the most fun, which is a bit of a letdown. Dash shows up in a snow speeder the midst of a battle on the ice planet Hoth. You spend most of the level trying to down the giant metal AT-AT walkers with a tripwire cable. Most of the other levels are of the "first-person adventure" variety. I just can't get into first person shooting games. I don't like them, & I'm not good at them. Shadows Of The Empire was one of the first to give you the option of panning out to play more like a third-person adventure game. There was also a stupid "tripod" option, where the camera would stay in one spot & give you free website hosting. The idea was novel in theory, but it was virtually useless in practice, thanks to all the pop-ups & ad banners, & the "up is always forward" control scheme of the game. While I'm at it, that's the same reason why I want to kick Silent Hill in the throat, hurl it over a high cliff & watch it hit the ground in a cloud of dust. Yeah, I said it. You want to get into fight about it over the Internet?
The control scheme is the game's one big downfall. The Star Wars universe is big & beautiful, with all sorts of tiny ledges to walk across & narrow canyons to drive 80 miles an hour through. You can take a wrong turn off or into a cliff more easily than you'd like, & the likeliness of throwing the controller at the TV is about 89%... but I didn't care. I picked the controller right back up again & was determined to finish. Though it only has ten levels, the game is fairly large & breathtakingly gorgeous, both in visuals and in the actual digitized music of John Williams & Joel McNeely. I couldn't help but want to continue exploring the Star Wars world inside my Nintendo, even though I fell off that same stupid cliff 9 times in a row, & then Boba Fett in his jetpack killed me & sent me back to the beginning of the level. Yes, I broke a few controllers because of Shadows Of The Empire... but I never once said I HATE THIS FUCKING GAME! I loved it. I loved it with a fiery passion to succeed & make it to the end. And the dorky Monty Python-esque credits made it well worth all the trouble.
17. Super Castlevania IV (SNES, 1991)
To most of the rest of the world, this game has little business on any list of the all time top whatever. I'll freely admit that, especially since we're splitting this post up five ways & I could have easily traded some of these in for a few the other picks on all four of the other guys' lists, but I didn't want to hog all the great ones. Still, that's not what this post is about. It's about the games I played the living crap out of... the ones that I've felt the most passionate about, & have shaped me into the Mike Fireball I am today.
During the first year or two of the Super Nintendo's reign as king of the 16-bit world, most people were pretty much just looking forward to prettier sequels of their favorite game series. That being said, I spent quite a lot of time with Castlevania IV... oh, I'm sorry, SUPER Castlevania IV, because in the beginning every new game needed the word Super in front of it, just like every new game for Nintendo's follow-up console needed the number 64 on the end of it.
This was the first SNES game I owned that wasn't the console's freebie, Super Mario World, so during the 8 months in between the time I finished that game, & the time I got the new Zelda, I controlled the every move of Simon Belmont, who...
...ok, according to the game's introduction scene, Simon should be about 125 years old. Boy, he sure gets around pretty quickly for a supercentenarian in a miniskirt & go-go boots. He's even learned some new tricks since his last trek up to Castlevania. He can use his whip as a grappling hook & swing over gaps, & after 100 years, Simon has finally learned how to crack his whip in more than 2 directions.
Oh yeah, & Medusa was naked from the waist up, so I spent way to much time pointing at her boobs, & not enough time remembering that she was trying to kill me, or that she was A SNAKE from the waist down.
16. Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Genesis, 1994)
As far as my teenaged self was concerned, the Sega Genesis was only good for three things: Aladdin, Mortal Kombat 1, & Sonic the Hedgehog. I may have laughed in Sega's face at the whole blast processing farce, but I still recognized that the Sonic games were great fun to play, whether you like looking for all the secrets, or just like speeding through all the levels as fast as possible. Or, if you're like me, you stay up all night & do both with each of the 3 characters.
By the end of 1993, Sonic fans were begging for another sequel. I mean, they totally hadn't had one for like, a whole year, man! So the Sonic team released a short, unfinished game as Sonic 3 in January of '94. Our hero & his buddy Tails follow their egg-shaped nemesis, Dr. Robotnik, to Angel Island, where an angry pink echidna named Knuckles confronts them, thinks they're on Robotnik's side, & steals their chaos emeralds, the source of Sonic's super powers. We didn't get the rest of the story until the end of 1994, when Sega released Sonic & Knuckles, a special expansion cart that, by itself, was the second half of the Sonic 3 game. You could also plug Sonic 2 into the top of the cart, & play the game in a whole new way as Knuckles, who could glide in the air & climb up walls. But plugging Sonic 3 into the expansion cart completed the experience Sega had originally intended, thus creating the biggest, prettiest & fastest Sonic game of its time.
Technically, if you're enough of a stubborn idiot, you can plug any Genesis game into the top of Sonic & Knuckles, & be treated to a sort of error screen with the scrolling message NO WAY? NO WAY! NO WAY? NO WAY! NO WAY? NO WAY! NO WAY? NO WAY! NO WAY? NO WAor you could get that screen by plugging in Sonic 1, put in some code, & play thousands of random chaos emerald bonus levels from the Sonic 3 game.
15. Ninja Gaiden (NES, 1989)
TECMO PRESENTS 1989, the game proclaimed when you turned the power on your little grey box. After a failed arcade version of the game that was little more than Double Dragon with a bright blue ninja suit & a knowledge of gymnastics, Tecmo tried again, & presented 1989 with a vision. A vision of a game that was a little something like a feature film. Ninja Gaiden for the NES was one of the first games to feature these short cinema scenes to move the plot ahead, or in the greater case of the games at the time, to actually have a plot.
The story of Ryu Hayabusa's trip to America to avenge the murder of his father drew me in. The game is pretty hard, & a friend & I spent our first night with it trying to get past Level 2 until four in the morning. We weren't very good at Ninja Gaiden when we first played it. We can't all be lovable, autistic dream children who are instantly awesome at video games & go on adventures through the Midwest while listening to hit singles by Real Life, ok? What's important is that I spent months playing Ninja Gaiden, engulfing myself in it, nearly breaking my precious NES Adventage (which I always preferred to the regular controller) when a bird flew at my face, hit me harder than the guy that just shot me in the chest a few screens back, & knocked me into a ditch. Fucking birds.
14. Dragon Warrior (NES, 1989)
Before Dragon Warrior, there weren't really any successful attempts to bring all the fun of reading off cards & rolling six-sided dice with your friends in your parents' basement with helmets, robes & elf ears to the rest of the video game playing audience. So this game was sort of an anomaly at the time, & Nintendo really wanted people to play it, so much that they mailed free copies to anyone who renewed their subscription to the magazine. I was one such valued costumer.
The story was simpler than most RPGs today. You play the poor descendent of a famed dragon slayer, called upon the King of Alefgard to save his daughter & the powerful Ball of Light from the mighty Dragonlord. You were only one guy, equipped with nothing but some stuff you could gank from the king's throne room, & then you spent the rest of the game beating up monsters, stealing their money, & using it to buy new stuff. This went on until you were powerful enough to make it to the Dragonlord's castle, find your ancestor's magic sword within, & stab the guy until he turns into a dragon & eventually to death.
And by "beating up monsters," I really mean playing Gotcha Last with them until one of you falls over dead. I hate the RPG fighting system like Roger Ebert hates the movie North. Sorry, but standing in the middle of a field & waiting for my stopwatch to go off to tell me when to hit somebody back who's been busy punching me in the face with lightning & magic is not my idea of fun. But since Nintendo Power really wanted me to like this game, I make this exception, for the only RPG I loved enough to play for more than 5 minutes, let alone finish. Or maybe I just can't help liking a game that talks in broken Olde English to me, even when I'm unconscious.
13. The Simpsons (Arcade, 1991)
By the early '90s, Konami had discovered its talent for taking pop culture icons & making them beat up street thugs for bonus points. So not long after the highly successful first season of the Simpsons, they got to work on a game involving beating up hundreds of Mr. Burns' hired goons in matching purple business suits, & ultimately saving Maggie from an evil & otherwise out-of-character Smithers.
I'd played other arcade games before, but none sucked my quarters down like the Simpsons first did. One time, after making it about 75% of the way through & desperate to finish, marked the first time I fed a 5 dollar bill into a change machine. Then I got in trouble, because I was on a day field trip to Wildwater Kingdom, & was supposed to use that 5 to help pay for dinner. But I shrugged it off. I just helped Homer Simpson save his daughter from his insane boss. That was important to me. I just changed lives in a video game. Don't frigging yell at me.
My extended comments on the Simpsons Arcade Game, along with about a hundred more screen shots, can be read here.
12. Double Dragon (NES, 1988)
Double Dragon enjoyed a mild popularity in arcades, but it wasn't until Technos brought it to the NES that I truly learned to appreciate it. I always felt that the arcade game, while a bit nicer looking, had rather terrible controls. The Nintendo port still great looking, especially for its time, & the background music was louder, faster, & more aggressive than the arcades faint keyboard tunes. Most importantly, the NES version's controls were simplified a great deal, making it a lot more playable. Only now, a player had to build up points in order to gain new fighting skills. I love Nintendo logic. Only after you kick a group of thugs in the stomach enough times will you magically learn to jump & kick at the same time, or grab bad guys by their hair & fling them over your shoulder like a bag of crumpled office paper wads.
Even the plot of the NES version was deeper than that of the arcade. Not only has your girlfriend been nabbed by a gang of "Shadow Warriors," but the gang is led by your twin brother gone bad! It would've been a nicer surprise if the instruction manual didn't spoil the end of the game for me, though I'm glad that it taught me not to bother reading it if you want to enjoy the game the way it was meant to be enjoyed, by just turning it on & getting lost in it.
Then, at the end of 1989, we were presented with a new challenge...
Fifty thousand?50,000 points. Was it possible? Everyone tried, & many succeeded, forgetting that they were competing against a traumatized nine-year-old who never played a video game before in his life, & apparently did it in like 10 minutes... which really is impossible, but lots of things they spouted out in the Wizard were bullshit. Fred Savage said that the chick from Rilo Kiley's search for a home is like the Adventure Of Link, where he has to find Zelda. Idiot, Zelda's asleep right in front of you at the beginning of the game.
BONUS: Click here to listen to the band Incubus sing about their favorite character in Double Dragon!
(Hint: He's green.)11. Pitfall! (Intellivision, 1982)
My family never had an Atari. Instead, we listened to the sage advice of George Plimpton & got an Intellivision instead. I don't remember when my parents got it, or how long we had it, but up until we replaced it with the NES in 1988, this was the console of the house.
Pitfall! wasn't the first game I ever played. That title goes to either Donkey Kong or Pac-Man. I don't really remember that far back. But Pitfall! brought about a very important first in Mike Fireball's gaming history... it was the first game ever to cause me to throw a controller in a fit of rage. The first time I blamed the game for not being fair, even though I knew, deep down, that it was my own human imperfections that caused poor Pitfall! Harry to jump into that crocodile's mouth. Now that I'm a grown-up, I realize that I was responsible for this guy's life, & it was my fault that he caught the edge of that scorpion's tail, not his. He just wanted to run around & collect money people dropped in a jungle held above ground by a series of underground brick pillars.
Shigeru Miyamoto may have perfected the platform genre, but Pitfall! set the stage & laid the initial ground work. And it was also one of the first to give you the freedom to choose to go left.
10. Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Dreamcast, 2000)
Capcom's original 2-D fighter was a horrible mess, but by the time they perfected it in the sequel, they single-handedly perfected the genre & extended the then dying video arcade's shelf life for another decade. By the time Street Fighter Alpha 3 came out, most people had moved on to the third dimension, so this game went rather unnoticed. But as far as 2-D fighters goes, it's one of the biggest & best, & the Dreamcast version of the game is the most complete, re-introducing older characters like Guile & Thunder Hawk to the mix.
The Alpha games, which falls in between Street Fighters 1 & 2 in the timeline, brought a much stronger sense of plot to the series, & this third installment boasts Capcom's best use of the story mode to date. Each of 32 characters (33 if you count "Evil Ryu") are out to find something, be it fortune, justice, or a higher sense of self. You fight a schedule of ten opponents, your fifth & ninth battles being against a sort of "miniboss," who is either a foe or an ally inviting you to a challenge. Then you're up against a powered-up M. Bison (or Ryu if you've chosen to play as the Bison, himself), whose psycho crusher move drains your power down to about 20%. He's a cheap bastard, but the ending sequences in this game are worth it quite a bit more than they were in past fighting games. A few are still rather shallow, but for the most part, & especially in cases like Cammy, Charlie & Cody, you really get what you play for.
9. F-Zero X (N64, 1998)
I'm normally not very good at racing games. I'd waste quarters on that one crappy 3-D polygon one in the arcade that showed you how you crashed in instant replay every time you died, just to laugh at myself. But F-Zero X was different. It was easy to maneuver your cute little space vehicle, & I got very comfortable with it very quickly.
The game pits your favorite future guy against 29 opponents in extremely fast-paced races, most of which are high above the ground in spots where it's not that hard to jump the track & die. Most players pick a favorite racer & stick with them. I preferred to mix things up. For months, I was glued to F-Zero X, taking every vehicle to victory on all 4 difficulty settings... getting my Death Race time to under 2 minutes... only to learn years later that Jon did it like a minute faster.
Jon's time for this is like, among the top 10 fastest ever, as far as we know. So I must take the time to applaud his achievements. I know how hard this game can be, & I know how much you have to play it to even consider yourself decent at it, so as far as I'm concerned, this may not be the fastest time ever, but it's a worthy accomplishment.
8. Mega Man II (NES, 1989)
The first Mega Man game went largely unnoticed, but the few people who did play it knew they found a small treasure. Among other things, it introduced the "You pick what level you want to play first" scheme to a wide audience. By the time this second installment came out, people found out what they had missed in the first one, & the hype of the Mega Man series skyrocketed. This was the game that introduced myself & many others to the little blue robot boy on a mission to stop the maniacal Dr. Wily & his band of evil robots with specially themed powers. Wood Man lived in a metallic forest, Air Man lived in the sky, Bubble Man lived under water, & Quick Man... lived in a... um, building... thingy... with little fire people... and lasers... that were quick!
While the Mega Man games gradually improved in playing mechanics up until the 9th & final installment, as well as the spin-offs like Mega Man X & Battle Network, #2 is the one I constantly find myself going back to. In most of the games after it, there's a set pattern that it's understood that you go through as far as the order in which you play the levels goes. YOU REALLY OUGHT TO PLAY THIS GUY FIRST & THEN GO IN THIS ORDER UNTIL YOU REACH DOCTOR WILY. Mega Man 2 was the one game that nobody could really agree on the order for. Mega Man players are largely split into the "Start with Bubble Man & end with Heat Man" camp, & the "Start with Air Man & end with Quick Man" camp. As for me, I did both of those, & by the time I considered myself good, I went back to try different orders every time. I eventually did this with the other games, too... but Mega Man 2's the one that got me hooked. Nobody in their right mind would choose Heat Man first. I did, & in a pretty decent time, too.
7. Contra (NES, 1988)
UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A START!!11
Take this code & shove it.
I ain't usin' it no more.
Those 30 lives ain't needed
Like I needed 'em before.
You better not try to stand in my way,
As I shoot the blinking dot on the door.
Take this code & shove it.
I ain't usin' it no more.6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade, 1989)
My video arcade experiences can easily be divided into two periods... the time before I played Ninja Turtles, & the time after I played Ninja Turtles. Before this game, I'd occasionally beg my mother for a single quarter to play. When this came out, I found myself asking to go to the arcade for the specific purpose of playing the Ninja Turtle game for as long as I could last. Konami's arcade games before this were pretty big, but this one was HUGE. It successfully cashed in on a pop culture craze that kids were going nuts over, & if I said I was an exception, it would be the biggest lie I've ever told.
Konami attempted to port this game to the NES, & while it was a lot of fun, & even had a few extra levels, it didn't quite capture the overall beauty of the original. I never even bought the "TMNT 2" NES cart. I always held out for my next trip to an arcade, or I'd go over a friend's house to play it. That's how much I appreciated the work of art that was the original arcade game. The colors were brighter, the sound was bigger, & the Turtles & their enemies had more dorky catch phrases. Not only did it immortalize Shredder's line "Tonight I dine on turtle soup," but as you can see in the first picture above, a ceramic vase apparently wants our heroes to know God personally.
5. The Black Cauldron (PC, 1987)
In 1987, I hadn't gotten an NES yet, or realized how popular it was. And the Intellivision market was slowly becoming extinct. So, our family turned to our Tandy PC for video gaming entertainment. The Black Cauldron was made by Sierra, the makers of the King's Quest series. This game played a lot like the first couple of King's Quest games, only less text-based, & starring characters from the latest Disney movie. In retrospect, the movie wasn't even that great, but in between the time I got bored with the Intellivision, & the time I discovered Nintendo, this was the game that constantly got me in trouble for staying up past my bedtime to play.
In the Black Cauldron, you played Tarin, a stable boy who's been sent by his master to deliver his magical pig, Hen Wen, to a safe haven of fairy people. But while you're roaming around the countryside, trying to figure out where the hell exactly you're supposed to bring your pig, the Horned King has sent his pet gwythaints (flying purple dragons) to nab the pig for his own. You see, Hen Wen can make visions appear that can be used as clues to the whereabouts of the legendary Black Cauldron, a vat cursed with dark power.
This is the first game of its kind that I ever played, where it just dumped me into a world without a clue as to what exactly I'm supposed to do next. So I found myself wandering around a lot. In some spots, if you keep walking up or down, you'll find yourself going in circles. It seems that the Black Cauldron is set on a very tiny planet. Maybe after I'm done delivering my pig to the fairies, I can go clean some volcanoes & take care of my talking rose girl.
I didn't even properly finish the game until over a decade after I stopped playing it. That's how much freedom it gave you. You could end it in a number of different ways, but different actions throughout the game scored you higher points, & a "best ending" awaited those who got the maximum.
4. Ken Griffey, Jr. Presents Major League Baseball (SNES, 1994)
The problem with sports games is that they're dated after a year. Instead of going for the longetivity option, game developers just keep making sequel after sequel. But as far as baseball video games go, I have yet to play one I felt more comfortable playing than Nintendo's team-up with a then healthy Ken Griffey, Jr.
My friends & I set up a tournament to this game. We each picked a team that we'd always use, played against each other, & kept track of our wins, losses & stats. I was reigning champion of the tournament for most of its duration... partially because the game used stats from the end of the 1993 season, & I chose the NL Champion Philadelphia Phillies as my team... & partially because I had the home field advantage, meaning that all tournament games were played at my house, on my SNES. It wasn't particularly fair, but nobody complained to much... not to my face, at least.
The game, itself, was a brilliant experience. The background music featured a mix of ballpark organs & lead guitars. The umpire's voice was recorded from that of an actual Major League Baseball ump. The players had colorful animations, especially when they struck out... even if it was clearly a strike THAT THEY SWUNG AT, some of they would still yell "AWW COME OOOOOON!" or break their bats in twine.
One of my favorite features was the Team Edit mode, which let you change the names of the players. The game wasn't licensed by the MLB Players' Association, so Nintendo had to give all the players fictional names. Sometimes the default names were rather humorous. The Phillies had R.Balboa & a white A.Creed in the middle of their lineup. The Milwaukee Brewers had names like C.Kent, B.Wayne & P.Parker, & the Kansas City Royals' bullpen included B.Clinton, R.Reagan & G.Bush. NOT MY STARTING PITCHER! This gave you the option to edit the real players' names in, or give them the names of your friends, or...
3. Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link (NES, 1988)
Don't roll your eyes at me. This was the first NES game I got after the Mario/Duck Hunt freebie, & my introduction to the Zelda series. So I hold it in much higher regard than I probably should, but I don't care.
People don't like this game because it's different from the others. The fighting scenes play out like side-scrolling games as opposed to the overhead layout of the original. It's different from the first game, but back in the day, that's all you had to compare it to, so I don't see how it was that much of a disappointment when it first came out... and oh yeah, by the way. It wasn't. Go look in your back issues of Nintendo Power & see if Zelda II has ever left the Top 30. It hasn't.
Zelda II is more important than you think. The first game didn't have a lot of back story... boy saves old lady from monsters, old lady sends him on a quest to save princess from evil pig guy by collecting Triforce pieces. This game, however, hinted at the fact that we've only scratched the surface. First off, it introduced the fact that Link is a chosen hero. A mark appears on his hand on his 16th birthday, indicating that his character is one worthy of taking up the quest of finding the Triforce of Courage & restoring the golden power to its original form, thereby breaking a sleeping spell on the ancient Princess Zelda. That's the other big thing... this game brings in a second Princess Zelda, who has been cursed into an eternal sleeping state for centuries. We're still not sure if she's the same one from the future installments of the Legend of Zelda (this game is believed to be last in the overall timeline of the series, or one of the last, depending on your source), but this game brought up the notion that there's a lot more going on here than just "save the world, get the girl." There was a much deeper story behind the kingdom of Hyrule, waiting for us to discover it.
2. Super Mario Bros. (NES, 1985)
You know the story. You've read it in every "best video games ever" list out there. I don't need to tell you what you already know about how this is the Jesus Christ of the video game market, which was considered all but dead until the NES came over & blew everybody away. But I'll say this... it's all true, & you know it.
It wasn't necessary to have an in-depth plot in a video game back then. All you needed to fully enjoy a video game in 1985 was a general objective & a few ground rules to get you started. Then you were off. It never really mattered to me that the "story" behind Mario 1 never made much sense. The whole mushrooms & koopa* turtles thing was just WTF enough to get us all interested, & that's all Miyamoto really wanted at the time. To love his creation.
* FUN FACT: The word "koopa" is a play on the Japanese "kappa," a mythical river creature with the shell of a turtle & the beak of a bird that, if I remember correctly, was supposed to bring good or bad luck, depending on your behavior. Ever see the 3rd Ninja Turtle movie, when they're in ancient Japan? That's what they think the Turtles are. Kappa.
But did I ever love his creation. I loved it so much, that I studied it like a science. I played it until I could finish it the long way. I played it the short way again to the point where I can now beat it in under 6 minutes. I did the six minute thing while drunk at a party, & a bunch of people I didn't even know were watching cheered behind me, scaring the living shit out of me. That's the kind of joy Super Mario Bros. brings to people.
1. The Legend Of Zelda (NES, 1987)
When he was a boy, Shigeru Miyamoto loved to explore caves on the mountainside near his village. The Legend Of Zelda is his representation of that sense of wonder. It is a tribute to his own childhood & nostalgia, combined with the creative fantasy of his adulthood. That's why it's my favorite game of all time... because it's filled with all the awe & adventurous spirit of youth. It drops you off next to a cave with nothing but a shield. The rest is up to you, kid. The instruction manual helped you a tiny bit of the way, & left the rest of the map empty to let you figure it out for yourself.
The more recent ones have a fairy or a talking hat grab you by the hand & walk you through them the whole way, but I sort of lost the excitement of having to figure out where to go next by myself. The Water Temple wasn't hard, you fucking baby. Trying to figure out where the hell they moved everything in the 2nd quest of this game without a guide book in front of you because you wanted to play the game the way it was meant to be played... THAT was hard. I know I sound like an old fart right about now, but that's how they made 'em. You didn't have friendly villagers telling you "Hey you can see your map by pressing select. What the hell does 'pressing select' mean? How should I know! I'm just a kid!" You had an old man randomly show up & blather some crap about a "penninsula." You had an old hag behind a waterfall demand money for information. This game doesn't yell HEY LISTEN in my ear & tell me where to go next. It just wants me to play & be happy. It's the giving tree of Zelda games.
I ultimately long to one day create my equivalent to Miyamoto's Legend Of Zelda, & I can only hope it touches as many lives as this game did. For now, I suppose I can settle with making fun of his pride & joy by turning his characters into internet hipsters. Yes, I make fun of the things I love the most, but not without a follow-up hug. And nothing deserves a follow-up hug like SPRAYPAINTING YOUR CARTRIDGE GOLD.
Opening this game's box for the first time is a glorious sight. You know a game is going to be brilliant when it shines like the Holy Grail of video games. Even Nintendo's hardware division knew that. Whoever the genius was who sat down at the staff meeting & said "We need to make this game look like a magical experience from the minute you open the damn box," deserves my eternal affirmation & this free consultation internet handshake.
Of course, the Zelda series has gradually gotten bigger & more beautiful with time, but after exploring & conquering them all, I keep finding myself coming back to this game... coming back to the boy in the cave. The gold cart still shines as bright as the day I opened it, welcoming me home. That familiar place I know & play in, that reminds me that IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE. TAKE THIS
But I'm not alone. There are millions out there like me. Some are a little weird & like to fight over which girl Link's in love with, & which one of them drew the best anime picture of them making out... but when you take away all that, when you get back to the basics, they're just like me... just a kid who wants to go explore the caves. My love for the Legend of Zelda is the closest video game equivalent I can get to the kind of love I want to have for my wife of 50 years. I know it by heart, but I'll never get tired of it.
It's a magical world out there in Hyrule...
Let's go exploring!
