Day 16: Make your own top 10 or top 20 best video games of all time!
[Sandcastles, a daily writing exercise]
I have to say that this has been the most fun topic I've sat down to research so far. I began to consider some my favourite games, starting with the obvious, and slowly more and more came to mind, connecting further and further back into memory. Childhood memories.
Fearing I might miss very significant games of my childhood, I began looking up lists of classic games; PC games, Nintendo, Atari, C64. Top lists of the best games of the 2000's, 90's, 80's, even 70's.
It never really hit me how much of the world of computers was shared so far and wide. We're spoiled today by the ease of connectivity with people via the internet. Many of the games I played I thought were simple little things downloaded from local BBS's; there was no world beyond the local network of computer nerds. And these were small, tiny, simple games!
And yet, wow. It's amazing to be reminded of how far-reaching and influential some of these games were back in the day, how vastly they seem to have spread, and how many people share the very same nostalgic feelings as I about the games we adored in youth.
There are just too many to list!
I thought finding 10 would be difficult. But limiting the list to 20 was hard! So I'll just focus on 20, and just give the rest props as honourable mentions (at least, the ones I can remember! I know there a few I've missed, memories buried away)
Pacman (that table-top arcade version)
As a child, my parents often went out to a little cafe called the Hayloft. They loved the coffee there, and for a few years that was their place for evening coffee. Quite often I went with them, and I remember that the place had this table top game. That was my hangout while my parents relaxed each night. And we always left the 'loft drenched in the smell of cigarette smoke (this was long before any public smoking laws).
So many colours! Logical and predictable action! Except for those pesky floating enemies... Power ups! This game would keep me engaged for so long (I want to say hours, but I don't think time translates properly from childhood memories).
Doh!
Legends of Murder: Volume 1 - Stonedale Castle (DOS)
You have NO IDEA how hard it was to recall this game! This was such an obscure title, and I spent much of the night trying to remember the name. Googling and search classic game sites, looking for phrases like investigator, murder, mansion, house, mystery. Then "castle" came to mind - something was clicking. But still no name hits (I had to forcefully put out of mind "Castle Wolfenstein"). But soon, another click - "stone". I was actually getting excited, I felt so close! Stone..Stone..Stoned..d..dall...dale? STONEDALE! Castle Stonedale!
BOOM! Suddenly the world opened up and the game was everywhere. Finding this CGA classic prompted me to download the latest DOSBox emulator and the (now abandonware) game.
You see, this game was, as far as I can remember, the first real 'adult' style overhead mystery game I played. It had riddles, trivia, exploration, secrets, traps, monsters. And it is still a game I have not beaten. If I recall, there was a spelling mistake in one of the riddle answers. This, ironically, also taught me a thing or two about 'hacking' game executables. I fixed the mistake, but became fascinated with the file's contents. I think I peeked at other answers, I can't remember. But at that point I'd moved on. Thus, it remains an incomplete game.
I will finish it now. Oh yes, I will!
Super Mario Land (Gameboy)
There was a brief period of time shortly after the Gameboy was released where I repeatedly asked to borrow a friend's Gameboy. And there was always one go-to game for me (not Tetris) - Super Mario Land. I could play on long trips, and the gameplay was simple and fun, many neat environments and strategies. I was eventually able to complete the game in one sitting. The most memorable thing I take away from this game is the music from the final scene and credits. For a Gameboy, the musical theme was an epic finale score. I'd just listen and let it loop endlessly. I still love it!
One of the must-have games for the original Xbox, never updated for later generations. Apart from another game mentioned below, this was one game that my friend Jon and I kept returning to. Dagnabbit, it was just good clean hysterical fun! There was one arena mini-game we couldn't get enough of, and that was the spiral ramp shown to the right. It spins faster and faster and you have you jump and duck to avoid the obstacles and to be the last one standing. It's frantic and the sounds of tripping and getting knocked in the head by hollow poles were absolutely hilarious! We had one session where we couldn't stop laughing, and that distraction made the sounds that much more entertaining, it was a vicious cycle! Totally unforgettable. Fuzion Frenzy 2 just couldn't compare.
In another youth phase, I occasionally frequented a local arcade. And it had a Golden Axe box. I don't know why it was so addictive, but the game drew me in. Friends and I would go with pockets of quarters and do our best to beat the game, regularly. We got good. There's something about the collecting of the potions and food, the kicking of thieves, the riding of dragons, and the dodging of giant swords and axes that was impossible to get away from.
Ah, high school memories. A bunch of us computer nerds would often stick around after school and make use of the network to link up and play some LAN games. Warcraft 2 was one of those games. Peasants and Peons, of course, are by far the most entertaining characters with the best voice overs.
"Ooo-kaay" "Daah-bu!" "Ready to work" "Job's done!"
Man, I've got to load that one up again. Anyone want to play?
Yet another incomplete game. One of those screen-clicking mystery and puzzle solvers; perhaps a sort of ancestor to the room escape game concept, only working your way in. While looking this one up again, I also discovered that there is a modern remake! Updated graphics, and mostly identical gameplay. I watched a bit of a review video, and there were some elements of the update that weren't positive, but for the most part quite respectful to the original. This would be another that I should sit down and solve to completion at some points!
When the era of first person 3D games was blasting open, System Shock made a name for itself. There were games like Wolfenstein 3D, but SS combined elements of RPG, puzzlers, and FPS's into a sci-fi horror action thriller, and it actually worked. It was complicated, but it was engrossing, and tense. I don't remember if I completed it, but I know I spent a very long time playing it!
Halo 3: ODST
Halo 2
Halo 3
Halo 4
Halo: Reach
Was there any doubt that Halos would make this list?
It's not easy for me to rate individual games in the franchise, so I've grouped them together and just ordered them incrementally up to my favourite of these five.
It's odd that I put Halo 3: ODST first - I tend to praise the game for going against the flow, and trying something new in the franchise. With 1, 2 and 3 each being far more action oriented, in ODST you played an average Joe. Well, relatively speaking. Not a Spartan. Half the game was low-key, slow-paced, set in a very noire style environment. Rain, night, quiet, jazzy soundtrack. You don't run and gun, you conserve, hide, and sneak. It had more of an open map for exploration, while making your way to target waypoints to progress the plot. the other half occurred in flashbacks, event that occurred in the past through other characters - in daylight, with classic Halo action. Throughout, you were attempting to unravel the mystery of what was happening at the city, and why the Covenant were interested in the location. Additionally, there were hidden bits of a side story you could seek out and piece together, if you wanted.
It was a bold move trying something different, as an interim release between major games. I praise it for its storytelling and creativity, in comparison to other releases. But the gameplay itself wasn't my favourite.
Halo 2 was another release that had a significant game mechanic difference - in this game there were some weapons of which you could wield two simultaneously. This was a love it / hate it feature. I was on the fence. Its difficulty was also dramatically increased compared to its predecessor. And of course, its infamous cliff-hanger ending didn't do it any favours. I wasn't all that into online multiplayer, but Halo 2 set the bar for console-based FPS online multiplayer. And many still stand by it as the standard to beat, having mourned the day Microsoft powered down its dedicated gaming servers.
Halo 2 is dear to me, however, for another reason - that is because of the promotional campaign that led up to its release, which began almost 6 months prior: I Love Bees.
Halo 3 was fun, but to me doesn't really stand out from the rest. My interest was certainly in the rounding out of the Chief's story through the trilogy. And the graphics boost from being the first native Xbox 360 Halo game was wonderful.
I have to say that Halo 4 may well be my favourite major Halo release centered on the Master Chief, behind the one I mention later. The music, graphics, story, online components, and addition of Spartan Ops as an ongoing episodic story arc playing out as a multiplayer co-op arena pull it ahead of the rest.
Halo: Reach, however, just barely pulled ahead in this Halo list. The gameplay to me felt rounded out, and it told a story on its own, not including the Chief, but made heroes out of another team of Spartans while dropping you into another faceless character and a set of fresh Mjolnir armour. Its ending I will say may well be the best so far in my opinion, of any current Halo game.
And - you get to fly a Sabre fighter in space. In Halo.
Throughout each Halo iteration, however, one common thread remains strong and tight - and that was the soundtrack. Marty O'Donnell did a fantastic job discovering a theme for the franchise that would flavour the entire series of games. A style, theme, a set of instruments, and the iconic Halo monk vocals. I have each soundtrack, all loaded in a playlist, and the orchestral compositions are perfect for brain-inspiring background music. Great to work to, to walk to, to sleep to. Just great all around.
And even with Halo 4, when Marty was no longer working on the Halo franchise, Neil Davidge took over and still managed to follow in Marty's footsteps to provide a soundtrack that remained "Halo" at its core.
My brother fanatically loved the Star Trek universe and franchise. Halo is my Star Trek!
Rolling back to the classic RPG era, Dragon Wars is a little recognized game from Interplay released follow on the coat tails of the Bard's Tale Trilogy. A grid-based dungeon crawler with a very similar structure, battling foes with a dynamic team of characters as you level up and increase stats, explore, try to survive, and beat the bad guys, saving the land. I still have my graph paper pad with all the maps drawn out for each level. I even spent time seeing if I could sketch what the maps might look like realistically from above. Tents, castle walls, trees, shorelines. Imagination at work!
I still can't believe that id Software created Commander Keen. Those were some different days! The Keen series was a cute, cuddly, space-based side-scrolling arcade platformer, with cute aliens, cartoon blasters, strange colourful levels and lands, and it was just an amazingly fun series! These were released during the shareware craze - limited games released for free, prompting you to buy the full game to get the rest of it. So it was always frustrating downloading the latest free shareware release from a BBS, playing through, and getting to that road block. Nooooooo! Keen had six (plus one) episodes in all. The first three formed a trilogy, with an interim release "Keen Dreams", and then the other three were published.
The series progressed in technical and graphical quality, and each one had a slightly different style to it.
What satisfied me most in the series, however, was discovering secret areas in the game, and seeking out encoded messages hidden throughout all the levels, in the alien alphabet (which of course translated as English).
This. This was the series that had most everything I loved about games. I was young, impressionable, and Bard's Tale provided a empty slate of discovery. An epic story you unravel as you play. Simplistic characters you can name, equip, and build up as you explore the local town. An environment that was geometrical - a grid navigation system that was easy to copy down on to paper. Explore and map! Discover buildings with secrets, mysterious creatures, traps. An Indiana Jones-like delve into dangerous caverns. Solve puzzles and riddles, figure out tricks and strategies to not get your characters killed. It was wonderful.
But it was the mapping that I loved the most. Visually uncovering a story and a history. The ability to navigate complex locations by using real-world material. It was new to me and amazingly fun. Bard's Tale 2 and 3 were subsequently released, and each improved over the other.
In BT1, Tales of the Unknown, you were freeing the city of Skara Brae from evil, constantly returning to the Adventurer's Guild for restoration, and the Bard was the star of the show. In BT2, The Destiny Knight, evil had spread across the realm, over seven cities, and the Knight was the star of the show. In BT3, The Thief of Fate, the story was most epic as you returned to the ruins of Skara Brae, soon discovering that multiple dimensions are in trouble and you must retrieve artifacts from each, and of course the Thief is the star of this show. It ends in an epic battle showdown.
I cite this series as a bar-raising standard for grid-based dungeon crawler RPGs. It's spawned numerous other offshoots and inspired other games, and a similar release from Interplay shortly after BT3 was Dragon Wars, which I mentioned earlier. A modern version of Bard's Tale was also created in recent years, called The Bard's Tale; but in a very very different style to the original trilogy, as a bird's eye 3D action RPG. To its credit though, it was designed to be humorous, tongue-in-cheek, and quirky entertainment.
The Bard's Tale classic trilogy led me to launch a fan site, and has a special place in my heart :)
The next generation in first person 3D shooters! Back in the days when graphics were merely sufficient to put you into a bland, simplistic environment, your imagination would light up filling in the gaps, bridging the void between flat polygons, textures and sprites, and a realistic environment that you existed in, fighting to survive. Doom was a huge technological marvel, a leap beyond Castle Wolfenstein 3D, because suddenly there were angled walls! Multi-level floors! Outdoor spaces! Vast, enormous rooms! You were crawling around cramped space outposts and running out on the planet surface, fighting monsters and creatures and eventually diving into the (supposed) pits of hell fighting demons and evil baddies. It was scary, it was freaky, it was frantic and fun.
It was also released during the growth of LAN gaming, and this was another after-school special for us. Fast-paced running and gunning. You could also download maps, or create your own maps. There were add-ons and expansions people had made. Typing IDSPISPOPD would let you pass through walls and still fight. IDDQD gave you "god" mode invincibility so you could run up to those ginormous monsters and blast away at their knees while being sprayed with rockets, until you inevitably won.
This game required at minimum a whopping 4 MEGABYTES of RAM! This was a demanding game. Everyone just had to upgrade if they had the money to do so.
It also spawned a novel series, where the first was a literal description of your character making his way through Doom 1's levels and mazes. You were reading the game being played, and could even attempt to follow along in the game while reading. Fascinating. The books that followed started being a little less restrained to video gameplay content, and more like a regular videogame-inspired book.
Oh the memories with this game. Suffice to say, Doom (and its followups) from id Software was a groundbreaker on multiple fronts.
Remember that grid-based gaming style I mentioned earlier? SimCity was another strategy jackpot. The original in Maxis' Sims franchise, this game gave you a grid-based open land with some very basic environmental and construction options in a complex sandbox with a simple UI, and let you build a city to your heart's content, trying to figure out how to keep up a steady growth and combat typical city problems - such as crime, fires, traffic congestion, population growth and decline, earthquakes, tornadoes, and gigantic monsters.
Its grid format was perfect for my growing stack of graph paper pads, so in my SimCity phase, when I wasn't at a computer playing the game, I was pre-planning my next city on graph paper. Drawing out those R, C, and I squares, attempting to pre-balance all the pollution, entertainment and park land with nice residence areas and commercial plazas; attempting to begin with Nuclear power, far away from town so there wouldn't be nuclear fallout if it became overstressed. I'd begin a new map, pause right away, and lay out the entire map trying to keep within budget. Without giving the people and community a chance to grow naturally, I hit Play and watch the result unfold in fast forward, watching the years tick by.
If I ever managed to build a relatively stable city, I'd let it run overnight. I'd watch centuries roll on just to see what happened. The budget would end up unbelievably in the red, roads would fall into disrepair, towers and buildings would grow and disappear in a flash.
And then, of course, you can't play SimCity and not purposefully unleash every catastrophic disaster on the people, just for the fun of destruction.
It's a classic, well-balanced resource management game at its core for its time. Now, if only it were as easy to receive money as typing Shift+F-U-N-D (without causing earthquakes).
Pong HALO: Combat Evolved
Was there any question what would be #1?
It's no secret that Halo is my all time favourite video game. It launched my foray into console gaming, around the same time I first moved into my own place. There was a console war heating up in the 21st century consoles - between the PS2 and Microsoft's Xbox. It was Halo that stayed my wallet for an extra year past PS2's release, waiting and saving for Xbox. Halo promised what to me was a truly next-generation gaming experience, in a unique sci-fi universe. MS was hyping their product above and beyond in order to compete with gaming giant Sony, as well as Nintendo.
Suffice to say, they delivered. When I got the Xbox, I endured the typical jabs and taunts from the Sony PS2 'fanboys', and played Halo to my heart's content. Then a friend started playing, and we played together. Then others started playing. Other friends bought an Xbox and bought Halo. Then we had Halo parties. Then LAN parties. And then my skill started to wane as others became more passionate and focused on improving their game. I slowly went to the wayside, but continued to enjoy my Halo campaign and story. I was never that good in multiplayer, especially online.
From there though, the rest is history.
When you put me and video games together in the same thought, Halo should be the first thing that comes to mind!
There were FAR more than 20 games in this collection of memorable experiences throughout life. As I was digging through lists of classics, more and more memories came flooding back. And so I absolutely must add a little list of a bunch of other games that I noted before tearing myself away from the research - whether classics, or modern which didn't quite make the top 20 cut!
There are so... many... games...
In no particular order:
Halflife // StarCraft // Turrican // Moon Patrol // Donkey Kong Jr. // Battle Chess // Dune 2000 // Hero's Quest // Moonbase // Captain Comic // Shadow Warrior // Myst // Unreal // Unreal Tournament // Night Mission Pinball // Pharaoh's Tomb // Alley Cat // Enclave // Zaxxon // Descent // Rockford // Duke Nukem // Crystal Caves // Bubble Bobble (that song!) // Styx // Qix // Dino Balls // Populous // Raptor: Call of the Shadows // Impossible Mission // Dangerous Dave! // The Lion King // Dark Ages // Ghost 'n Goblins // Terminal Velocity // Prehistorik // Sopwith // Q-bert // Rainbow Islands // Scorched Earth // The Adventures of Captain Comic // Galaga // Silent Service // Quest For Glory // Missile Command // Centipede // Crazy Climber // Joust // Crystal Castles // Mille Bornes // Arctic Adventures // Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure // Kung Fu Master // Final Fantasy I // Monuments of Mars // Laser Chess // Zeliard // Quake // Galactix // Bouncing Babies // Rampage // Hexen // Marble Madness // Alone in the Dark // (and so much more)
It's clear that I'm not as much of a gamer as I used to be. And my list isn't composed of what most people would consider "best" games. But they are the games inspired some of the floor patterns in my sandcastle. I Mean hey, why not decorate?
Thanks for the topic, Jared!
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: Main screen turn on.
CATS: All your base are belong to us.
CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Captain: Move 'ZIG'.
Captain: For great justice.
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