Minecraft

PC, Mojang, 2011

Minecraft is a pretty new game, and I kind of struggled with the decision to put it on the list, much less in the top 10. Minecraft sounds really basic on paper: explore an open world and use resources to build things while trying to survive. It’s fun in single player, and I certainly had a good time with it. My perspective of the game totally changed when I started a PK Bloggin’! multiplayer server, though. The game is so much more fun with friends, and I’ve had an absolute blast seeing what everyone’s building, exploring caves with my wife and watching our little civilization grow organically. It makes it feel more like a living, breathing world, and now that we have the server going I can’t get enough. Minecraft might not be in the top 10 next time I make one of these lists, but at this point in time, it deserves a spot here.

EarthBound

Super Nintendo Entertainment System, APE Studios, 1995

The game that named this blog, EarthBound is simply a masterpiece and no game will ever be like it ever again. The game has the most dedicated, devoted and loyal fanbase the gaming world has ever seen, and for good reason: it’s a masterpiece. Offbeat visuals and funny writing belie a much deeper, darker, more emotional story than most RPGs at the time had even dreamed of. Nintendo of America has pretty much disowned the series (called Mother in Japan; EarthBound is actually Mother 2), which is a criminal act – Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance (due in large part to the PHENOMENAL fan translation) was an absolute knockout as well. With secondhand prices regularly hitting the triple digits on eBay for old cartridges, this is the ONLY game that I condone downloading a ROM of, because everyone should play it.

Phantasy Star Online

Sega Dreamcast, Sonic Team, 2001

I don’t know why I wanted Phantasy Star Online so bad when it came out, but I remember trading in about seven games to be able to afford it. It was my first foray into online gaming, and despite the cheating, hacks and insults, I had fun. There wasn’t a lot of variety in the gameplay, but the different classes and co-op aspects made it a ton of fun to play. Sadly, there hasn’t been anything like it since, though Phantasy Star Online 2 is on the way. I’ve got my fingers crossed it can fill the Mag-shaped hole in my heart.

Gunstar Heroes

Sega Genesis, Treasure, 1993

I rented this game over and over and over as a kid. Now I own it on the Genesis as well as Wii’s Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade, and when I get an iPhone I’ll probably snag it on there too. No one makes action games like Treasure, and Gunstar Heroes is straight up balls-to-the-wall action from start to finish. It’s a rush in single-player, but if you have a buddy to pick up the second controller you have one of the best co-op experiences gaming has ever seen. The music, the explosions, the weirdo bosses, the weapon customization… Gunstar Heroes has it all. You have no excuse to not play this.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Sega Genesis, Sonic Team, 1992

I went back and forth quite a bit over which Sonic game to include here, 2 or 3, but I ultimately went with 2. It was the first game I ever played on my new Sega Genesis and I fell in love with it immediately. Sonic 3 is also one of the best games ever made, but I prefer the music, graphics and level design of 2. It’s just Sonic and Tails takin’ on Robotnik, before Sonic had a zillion other friends. Like many of the other games on this list, I own multiple versions of it and I never feel stupid spending more money on it. With all the time I spent with it as a kid, and as a result of that how much Sonic and Sega have come to mean to me, a couple of bucks every few years is of little consequence.

Chrono Trigger

Super Nintendo Entertainment System, SquareSoft, 1995

This game, you guys. Hoo boy. When Sakaguchi, Toriyama, Horii and Mitsuda team up you know they’re makin’ magic. Chrono Trigger is nothing short of an experience. Fantastic writing, characters you genuinely care about and an unforgettable story about saving the world through time travel, backed with a solid battle system and mesmerizing graphics and music make one of the finest JRPGs to ever grace the world. I don’t know how many times I’ve played through it already, but I can say that number will continue to go up.

Final Fantasy VII

Sony PlayStation, SquareSoft, 1997

I can still remember, clear as day, the first time I hooked up my new PlayStation and watched the opening to this game. It used to give me chills; these days, I’m not ashamed to admit, I tend to “have something in my eye.” This game opened so many doors for me I can’t even begin to explain it. I felt so awesome playing as Cloud. I was thrilled with the adventures he faced. I cried like a baby when Aerith died, my vision blurred with tears as I battled Jenova immediately afterward. I was blown away when it was revealed that Cloud’s experiences weren’t ones that could necessarily be trusted. Final Fantasy VII gets a bad rap for being the most popular game in the series and getting so many spin-offs, but I don’t care about those things. Final Fantasy VII changed my life and left a mark on me that will always remain.

Pokémon Sapphire

Nintendo Game Boy Advance, Game Freak, 2003

I could have put any game from the main Pokémon series here and it would be just as good a fit. I love the entire series; in fact, it’s my favorite franchise in all of gaming. Did you notice that I had a Pokémon game on all four entries? While Red/Blue started it all, Gold/Silver had the largest world, Diamond/Pearl added online play and the physical/special split and Black and White had the best story, I ultimately went with Ruby & Sapphire because of where I was at in my life when it came out. It actually came out on my birthday in 2003, which was a blast, but I had a lot of other friends who were into the series at the time and we spent MONTHS comparing strategies and things like that. It linked up to Pokémon Colosseum, which you’ll remember from yesterday, which made it even more awesome. Hoenn was a really cool region and added lots of neat new Pokémon, and the addition of Natures and Abilities deepened the battle system by a large amount. The transition from Game Boy Color to Game Boy Advance also made the series feel like it had taken on a new life. It’s got the best soundtrack of the series. Geez, I can sit here all day and talk about why Generation III was awesome, but I have two more games to talk about, so I won’t.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Nintendo 64, Nintendo, 1998

There’s really not much I can say about Ocarina of Time that hasn’t already been said. The gaming community collectively refers to it as the Greatest Game of All Time, and it isn’t hard to see why. Ocarina of Time influenced so many games, an influence that lasts to this day, with its innovations like Z-Targeting. The geniuses at Nintendo (of course helmed by the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto) crafted such an enthralling, enigmatic world that was irresistible to all who entered it. I never wanted to put the controller down. I always wanted to know what was lurking behind the next corner or hidden behind the next wall. Every nook and cranny of Hyrule was chock full of mystery and wonder. The 3DS remake is good, but to me, nothing will ever hold a candle to the Nintendo 64 original.

Super Mario 64

Nintendo 64, Nintendo, 1996

Super Mario 64 is always going to be my favorite game of all time. I’ve grown up playing video games and they’ve always been one of the most important things to me, one of the greatest parts of who I am, and yet I cannot remember a single game taking me by surprise the way Super Mario 64 did. I’m a game reviewer, and I don’t believe that there is such a thing as a “perfect game,” but I firmly believe that Super Mario 64 is the closest anything will ever come. It’s almost a shame; I’ve loved all the Mario games since Mario 64, but in the back of my mind I know that no game will ever hit me like it did. I still play through this, from start to finish, every year or so and it always makes me feel the same way. To this day, the File Select theme is my favorite video game song of all time. Super Mario 64 always makes me smile. It’s my favorite game.

* * *

And that’s it! My top 40 favorite games of all-time list has come to a close. I’ve gotten lots of great feedback on Twitter and Facebook, so thank you to everyone who took the time to read this and tell me what you think.

I’m a bit worn out from writing so much, because this turned out to be far more exhausting than I thought it would be, so I’m postponing Friday’s post until Monday. Come back after the weekend to see which games ALMOST made the cut, as well as some other neat facts!

Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout

Sony PlayStation, TOSE, 1997

This is another instance of a game that is NOT good making it on this list. Final Bout is everything a fighting game isn’t supposed to be: clunky, unresponsive and sluggish with poor hit detection and frustrating controls. I like it anyway, though. I had been wanting an easily-obtainable Dragon Ball game for years, and right as FUNimation was kicking things off with the Z portion of the series, this game was released domestically (although they oddly added the “GT” which wasn’t present in the title of the Japanese version) and I was just happy to be able to rent it over and over again from Blockbuster. Sure, it played poorly. Sure, it features SIX playable versions of Gokuu (seven if you count Vegetto). Sure, the final boss is frustrating even by fighting game standards. Still, it had characters the dub wouldn’t see for years (which made ME feel pretty cool with my raw Japanese Dragon Ball GT VHS tapes!), awesome music and the Dragon Ball name on the cover. That’s all I needed, and I still love it to this day for those reasons.

Final Fantasy Tactics

Sony PlayStation, SquareSoft, 1998

This one ALMOST squeaked into the top 10, and I’m still not quite sure leaving it out was the right call. I love this game so, so much. My mom gave it to me as a present for graduating middle school, even though we didn’t have a lot of money at the time, because she knew how much I would like it. Ever since I first played Tactics, Ivalice has been one of my favorite things about Final Fantasy. Akihiko Yoshida’s character designs and Hitoshi Sakimoto’s music cast some kind of spell over me and I’m completely enthralled with the world laid out in front of me. The English translation of Tactics is notoriously awful, so I’m still not 100% sure what the plot’s actually about, but the solid tactical gameplay and wide array of iconic Final Fantasy character classes to choose from more than make up for it.

Kingdom Hearts

Sony PlayStation 2, SquareSoft, 2002

Disney is the chocolate and Final Fantasy is the peanut butter in this delicious mashup of storied franchises. In what should have been, by all accounts, nothing more than a brand exercise, Square created a surprisingly heavy story that managed to incorporate bits from so many different universes but unify them in a way that didn’t feel forced or awkward. The sheer amount of cameos and famous worlds to explore is almost overwhelming at first. The series has gone to some weird places since the franchise was born, with all kinds of characters in dumb trenchcoats and philosophical psychobabble about the heart, so the first game gets the nod here as it’s the only one to even bother trying to make a lick of sense.

Mario Kart 64

Nintendo 64, Nintendo, 1997

Okay, let me just get this out of the way now so I don’t have to hear anyone whining: I don’t like Mario Kart on the SNES. The half-screen garbage is too much for me, and while I think Mode 7 is some pretty rad shit I don’t think it worked well for that game. Put away your torches and pitchforks, because SMART people all know that Mario Kart 64 is the highlight of the series. Stellar track design and the fact that YOU CAN USE THE ENTIRE SCREEN TO SEE WHAT IS GOING ON made it a huge leap over the original. There isn’t a track in this game I don’t like (well, except maybe Yoshi Valley, but NO ONE likes Yoshi Valley), and to this day Choco Mountain remains my favorite course in the entire series. If you had four controllers and three friends, you were in for a good freakin’ time with this game.

Pokémon Colosseum

Nintendo GameCube, Genius Sonority, 2004

This game was the bomb diggidy. For starters, preordering it got you a sweet bonus disc that let you download Jirachi into your copy of Pokémon Ruby or Sapphire on Game Boy Advance. Continuing the tradition of the Stadium games, Colosseum let you play with the monsters you raised on your handheld in full 3D on your TV screen. As if that weren’t rad enough, Colosseum also featured an entire RPG mode, the first time any kind of Pokémon story  had moved away from a portable system. Set in the dusty, harsh region of Orre, the story was much darker and meaner than the main series, featuring things like kidnapping, theft of Pokémon and a former criminal as the protagonist. It didn’t let you do EVERYTHING the main series did (you couldn’t catch any Pokémon you wanted, you could only Snatch pre-determined “Shadow Pokémon” away from the game’s villains and every battle was a Double Battle for some reason) but it was a really fresh take on what some were already calling a stale franchise. The game was quickly forgotten by all but the most dedicated fans, but the game was a total blast, even if Nintendo could never spell “coliseum” correctly.

Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure

Microsoft Xbox 360, Toys for Bob, 2011

Skylanders is the COOLEST SHIT you guys. You buy these rad figures, right? Then you put them on this cool portal, then you PLAY AS THEM IN THE GAME. And their experience points and money don’t stay on the save game, no. They stay ON THE FIGURE so you can go play at someone else’s house, regardless of what system they have it for, and play with YOUR Skylander, just as you left them. Stupid jerks like to go on message boards and whine “WAH WAH THIS IS NOT SPYRO MY CHILDHOOD HAS BEEN RAPED” but those people are dumb because 1) I HATE that phrase and 2) the game is awesome. It’s an incredibly well put-together top-down action RPG with phenomenal production values (Hans Zimmer did the theme music!) that is an absolute HOOT in co-op. Christina and I have had so much fun buying new figures and leveling them up together. Really, there’s no excuse to NOT like this game, except for the fact that until recently it was impossible to find figures in stores and people were selling them on eBay with 500% markups. But yeah, incredible game.

Super Smash Bros. Melee

Nintendo GameCube, HAL Labs, 2001

I really had to think about which Smash Bros game would make the list. I like them all for different reasons, but ultimately I had to go with Melee. The idea of a giant all-star Nintendo cast was still pretty new (since the original only had 12 characters), the graphics and music did a bang-up job demonstrating what the GameCube was capable of, and it had MEWTWO. This game had everything going for it: it was fun to play, easy to learn but difficult to master, nostalgia out the wazoo, and of course the giant assortment of in-game trophies from Nintendo’s long and storied past. A lot of losers like Melee because of all the glitches and Wavedashing and all that nonsense that gets their pimples all tingly, but I don’t play that way. I play on moving stages, with items ON, because I am a MAN and that is how MEN play Smash Bros.

Street Fighter IV

Microsoft Xbox 360, Capcom, 2009

It almost felt blasphemous to put this over Street Fighter II, but Street Fighter IV single-handedly revived the fighting game genre, and I had a TON of fun with it, so I picked the newer installment. It managed to take everything that was great about Street Fighter II and add more great stuff. I can’t really think of much else to say, because if you don’t like Street Fighter there’s something wrong with you. Oh, and if you’re one of the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers who complained that the awesome theme song was “too gay” and had them take it out of the later game updates, I will punch you in the throat when I see you.

Streets of Rage 3

Sega Genesis, Sega, 1994

Everyone else likes Streets of Rage 2 and says that 3 is terrible. I disagree! I had a great time with third iteration of the side-scrolling beat ‘em up series and am, in fact, rather fond of it. C’mon, you could unlock a fighting kangaroo to play as. That’s awesome. For the longest time it was my Unicorn Game until my good buddy Tim gave it to me as a going away present when I moved to Boston. It’s a solid punch-fest with repetitive enemies, weapons to pick up and turkey to eat. Who doesn’t want that in a video game?

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Microsoft Xbox, BioWare, 2003

BioWare is the best thing to happen to Star Wars in a long time. A long time. Take some of the best storytellers in gaming and set them loose in one of the world’s most beloved franchises, thousands of years before they have existing canon to worry about, and you get one hell of a ride. A fantastic Western RPG that featured an endearing cast and a plot twist that is ALMOST as good as “I am your father” was the greatest gift to Star Wars fans since the old giant AT-AT figure. I didn’t play the sequel, although I still own a shrink-wrapped copy, because the first one was so good that I didn’t want to sully it with a sequel that couldn’t possibly live up to its predecessor. The new MMO, The Old Republic, is pretty good though.

Check back tomorrow for the top 10! Are you excited? YOU SHOULD BE BECAUSE I SURE AM

Blue Dragon

Microsoft Xbox 360, Mistwalker, 2007

Blue Dragon was a big reason that I purchased the Xbox 360. When I heard that Hironobu Sakaguchi, Akira Toriyama and Nobuo Uematsu were teaming up to make a traditional JRPG with gorgeous HD graphics I went into a coma for two days. The combination of the legendary pedigrees of two of Final Fantasy’s biggest contributors and my favorite artist of all time was like candy to me. It turned out to be a solid, traditional RPG that turned many people off, but I loved it. It just had so much heart and soul (plus all the shōnen crap about not giving up and believing in yourself that I just eat up) that I had a smile on my face the entire time. You can get it for just a couple dollars now, which is worth it even if just to hear the greatest boss battle theme ever.

The Bouncer

Sony PlayStation 2, Dream Factory, 2001

I think I’m one of only about ten people in the world who liked The Bouncer. Squaresoft, known for sweeping role-playing games, hyped up this beat’em up as a movie just as much as a game. It was short, but the gameplay was solid, the characters had amazing designs and the cutscenes were jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The story even had branching paths, allowing you to select which character to follow during different parts of the story, enhancing replay value. Hell, it even had a leveling system, allowing you to beef your fighters up and learn new moves. This game convinced me that a PlayStation 2 needed to be a part of my life. To this day, Sion remains my favorite character design in all video gamedom.

Castlevania

Nintendo Entertainment System, Konami, 1987

If I need to explain to you why Castlevania is awesome then I honestly have no idea why you’re reading a video game blog. The game that launched a franchise, Castlevania is full of white-knuckle, no-nonsense action that will have you simultaneously wanting to snap your controller in half while begging for more. This game is tough as nails and does not make excuses. I’ve still never seen the end of it, and I probably never will. Regardless of my lack of skill, I’m always up to pick up the Vampire Killer (while listening to Vampire Killer) and whip it good.

Jet Grind Radio

Sega Dreamcast, Smilebit, 2000

This game has MILES AND MILES of style. Jet Grind Radio is probably the COOLEST game ever made. The first game to utilize cel-shaded graphics, Jet Grind Radio combined a dazzling visual style with catchy Japanese rock to form a Megazord of awesome. Seriously, playing this game makes you feel like a cooler person. Throw in magnetic rollerblades and graffiti and it’s almost TOO much awesome. It’s being remastered in HD for modern consoles, so if you missed it the first time around you’ll get your chance to experience it soon.

Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes

Sega Dreamcast, Capcom, 2000

I present both of these videos without comment, other than “NSFW.”

But yeah, everyone loves Marvel vs Capcom 2. The roster was ASTRONOMICAL, filled to the brim with the biggest starts (and some obscure roundabouts) of the best innovators in comic books and fighting games. Marvel vs Capcom 2 is one of those games that I played alone so much that I thought that I was pretty good at it, only to later play with people who actually knew what they were doing and get my ass handed to me. I really like Marvel vs Capcom 3, but the second series installment gets the edge here.

Pokémon Puzzle League

Nintendo 64, NST/Intelligent Systems, 2000

Sure, it’s just a reskinned version of Tetris Attack, but putting ANYTHING in a Pokémon wrapper makes it better. One of the few Pokémon games to be based solely on the anime series, Puzzle League was never even released in Japan. The music was MIDI versions of the 2.B.A. Master CD and all the voice actors from the show voiced their respective characters, adding a lot of interesting aural flair to the addictive puzzle gameplay. If you liked the Pokémon anime, the game was awesome. If you didn’t, the game was still awesome, who are you trying to kid?

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

Nintendo 64, LucasArts, 1996

Remember how I said that not every game on my list was necessarily a good game? I was talking specifically about Shadows of the Empire. This game has aged about as gracefully as milk but I can’t help but love it. It’s based on a book that bridged the gap between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and since Han Solo was frozen in carbonite at the time, b-string smuggler Dash Rendar fills the scruffy-looking void. The controls aren’t great, the camera is a joke and there’s so much in-game fog you’d think that they replaced Tatooine with San Francisco. Despite these (large) shortcomings, the level design was great, the sound design was incredible and it’s still fun to play. Pretty much everyone will agree that it’s not a well-designed game, but everyone will still say they love it.

Shining Force II

Sega Genesis, Camelot Software Planning, 1994

I got Shining Force II because my friends all had PlayStations and Final Fantasy VII, and I was jealous and wanted an RPG to play too. Shining Force II was my first foray into role-playing games, much less strategy games, and I was in over my head the entire time but I still enjoyed myself. I’m running out of ways to say “the graphics and music are good,” so let me just say that the graphics and music are really good. The cast of playable characters is huge, and although some skillsets overlap they all feel unique. Adding to the variety, characters can be “promoted” at a certain level to become a brand new class. I may have been late to Cloud’s party, but I got to make a pretty awesome pit stop along the way.

Trog!

Nintendo Entertainment System, Visual Concepts, 1991

Trog! is a pretty unique take on the Pac-Man formula, replacing the yellow glutton with a pair of dinosaurs and the ghosts with cavemen. Every few levels, they’ll get some new weapon to use against you, like stone wheels or spring shoes, but your power-up arsenal will expand as well, with things like tamales to let you shoot fireballs and pineapples that turn you into an unstoppable T-Rex. It’s a fantastic co-op game, as I’ve documented before. I’ve never met anyone else who’s played this, so if you ever see it at a yard sale or something, be sure to pick it up.

The World Ends With You

Nintendo DS, Jupiter Corporation, 2008

Oh man, talk about stylish games. The World Ends With You (or TWEWY as the cool kids call it) is like inhabiting J-Pop. A weird, otherworldy story provided the framework for a really cool action RPG battle system that involved BOTH of the DS’s screens at the same time, which is fun and all, but this game DESTROYS touch screens. It’s one of the best and most original games to bear Square Enix’s name in years, so of course it got no promotion and a limited run. The characters are getting another shot as cameos in Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance on 3DS, so hopefully a sequel (Wii U?) will be on the way soon. One of the best soundtracks of all time.

I wanted to do another top games list, but I didn’t want to do another top 10 because 1) I’ve already done it and B) that doesn’t give me a whole lot of room to talk about all the awesome games that I like. So I sat down and just started writing down games that I like and decided 40 was a good number. Before we get started, though, just a couple of things I need to say:

-This is NOT a definitive “THESE ARE THE BEST GAMES EVAR” list.

These are just MY personal favorites. I’ll be honest, some of these aren’t even that good, but I still like them or they mean a lot to me for a variety of reasons. When I was thinking about what games would go on this list, I’d sit and think really hard about how the game made me feel. It’s something I can’t really articulate or quantify, but there’s just a mystical “something” that these games all share. You will not agree with me, and you’re not even supposed to. This is my list.

-I am only including one game from a given series, with some loopholes.

I am only allowing multiple games if they only share themes but are not technically related. Not every Star Wars game is really in the same series, y’know? Pokémon Snap isn’t really part of the Pokémon series proper, so why shouldn’t I include it? Besides, my list, my rules. Them’s the breaks.

However, on Friday I’ll be posting games that would have made it in were it not for other games in their series.

- Only the top 10 games will be numbered.

It was hard enough coming up with this list, numbering it would have been a nightmare. I would have had too many “x is better than y, y is better than z, but z is better than x” conundrums to ever hope to sort through. As such, they are in random order until Thursday.

- Multiplatform games will be attributed to the console I played them on.

That should be self-explanatory. I’ve never been much of a PC gamer, so if I have a console version of a PC game I don’t want to hear about how the PC version is better. I played the console version, and that’s the one I like.

I think that’s it for right now! ON TO THE LIST

Animal Crossing

Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo EAD, 2002

I really shouldn’t need to go into detail about why Animal Crossing is so important to me, so instead I’ll talk about the game proper. Simply put, Animal Crossing was unlike anything I had ever played before and I was completely enchanted by it. A game with no set goals, no time limits, and no stress was exactly what I needed in 2002. I had just graduated high school and started college, the relationship I was in was strained because she was still in high school and I wasn’t and my friends all had their own issues. Animal Crossing was the greatest comfort I could have hoped for at the time, and while I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into each successive release, the GameCube original is still my favorite. I still remember the trip to the mall when I wound up buying this; I had money burning a hole in my pocket and I wanted a new GameCube game, and while I didn’t really know anything about Animal Crossing I had heard it was fun. Thanks to that trip to the mall, I wound up on a message board with wonderful people and met my future wife. Thanks, Nintendo.

Costume Quest

Microsoft Xbox 360, Double Fine, 2010

Costume Quest is incredible. Somehow this modern video game manages to recreate the feelings I had as a kid when fall rolled around, I’d come home from school on a gray autumn day and my dad would be hanging Halloween decorations on the outside of the house. It’s a classic Halloween special vibe turned into a video game, where a ragtag group of tick-or-treaters use the powers of their costumes to save the world. It’s a very basic, straightforward RPG (RPG Lite, even) but it’s filled to the brim with Double Fine charm. The graphics are stupendous, the writing is laugh-out-loud funny and the music is catchy and atmospheric. This game is a yearly tradition in the Walker house, and it really should be in yours too.

Mega Man 2

Nintendo Entertainment System, Capcom, 1989

 Dr. Wily’s castle in Mega Man 2 is one of my favorite video game songs ever. Aside from that, the game kicks ass too. It was the first Mega Man game I played and remains my favorite of the series (although 3 and 5 both come close) because it’s just so damn solid. It’s kick-your-ass hard to this day, but never frustratingly so. Crash Man is my favorite Robot Master as well, even though he’s impossible to beat without the Air Shooter.

NBA Jam

Sega Genesis, Iguana Entertainment, 1993

I don’t even know how many hours I dumped into NBA Jam as a kid despite not even really liking basketball at the time. The game was just so fun and inviting it didn’t even matter if the actual sport wasn’t my thing. Besides, the highlight of the game was dunking a flaming basketball from half court, so it’s not like you really needed any legitimate hoops knowledge to enjoy yourself. I’ve played the recent remakes (NBA Jam on Wii and NBA Jam: On Fire Edition on the Xbox 360) and while they’re fun, they don’t really capture the magic of the classic. Boomshakalaka!

Paperboy

Nintendo Entertainment System, Tengen, 1988

 I wasn’t even really aware of how much I liked this game until I sat down to write this list. One of my favorite memories as a kid was when my sister and I would stay over at my grandparents and my cousin would bring over his NES, with Paperboy being one of the games he always brought. For some reason my nana loved the game, and even when she wasn’t the one playing. She’d still sit back in her big comfy chair, yelling for us to watch out for skateboarders, twisters and the grim reaper. I’ve still never been able to make it through a full week in the game (and the obstacle course? Forget about it), but whenever I boot it up I can almost hear nana’s warnings behind me.

Pokémon Snap

Nintendo 64, HAL Laboratories, 1999

 Is there anyone who DOESN’T like Pokémon Snap? If someone says they don’t like Pokémon Snap, they’re either lying or an idiot and not worth your time either way. C’mon, how rad was it to ride around in the Zero-One and take pictures of all those Pokémon in their natural habitat? Then you’d unlock some cool new thing, like Pester Balls or the Poké Flute, and then you could go back and find even MORE Pokémon to take pictures of. Then, if you were one of the lucky kids (like me) who had a Blockbuster near them with the special kiosk, you could take your cartridge in and print your photos out as stickers! I still have mine (you could print four at a time, and without having seen them in years I can still clearly remember my shots of Bulbasaur, Jigglypuff, Pikachu and Mew), and while the Virtual Console version let you post your shots to the Wii Message Board, that’s not nearly as cool as stickers. If they don’t make a new Pokémon Snap for Wii U, I may wind up holding Nintendo executives hostage. Just sayin’.

Portal

Xbox 360, Valve Software, 2007 (as part of The Orange Box)

 Has a game ever come out of nowhere and kicked your brain’s ass as much as Portal? Good lord, this game took the world by STORM. I was lucky enough to get into it while people were still discovering it so I got to experience it without having anything spoiled. I haven’t played the sequel, and honestly, I don’t have much of a desire to. Portal, to me, was a once-in-a-lifetime game, and I’d rather not risk muddying my feelings for it. I’m weird like that.

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 2

Nintendo Super Famicom, TOSE Software, 1993

 Okay, time to try to talk about Dragon Ball without sounding like a prick. Ahem.  Super Butōden 2 never came out in America, but my best friend at the time had taken a trip to Hawaii shortly after it was released and bought it at an import game store there. Long before Dragon Ball was a gleam in FUNimation’s eye, we were watching the series in raw Japanese from tapes we acquired from a friend of his brother’s friend. We had no idea what the story was and only a vague grasp of who the characters were, but we loved it all the same. It’s not a great fighting game by any stretch of the imagination; it’s slow and clunky, the controls are too stiff and the amount of distance you can put between you and your opponent kills any hope of a well-paced fight. It’s still fun, though, and the graphics and music are awesome. Besides, until recent Dragon Ball games started boasting rosters in the triple digits, how many other games let you play as Bojack and Zangya? Fun fact: Not only is this Broli’s first appearance in a video game, Gokuu isn’t even playable without the use of a code, since he was dead in the storyline at the time!

Wii Sports

Nintendo Wii, Nintendo, 2006

I bet you can still remember the first time you played Wii Sports. The first time you held that Wii Remote in your hand, swung your arm and sent a virtual bowling ball careening into the pins and thought to yourself “video games will never be the same.” The bane of many jerks who call themselves “teh hardcores,” Wii Sports single-handedly ushered in the “casual” wave, which, again, is a title that I think is stupid. Wii Sports did what no other game had done before and made a game easy to control for everyone, regardless of skill level, and invited them all to play together. I still love Wii Sports, and I always will. Not just for being a super fun game, but for making video games as a whole more than what they were.

X-Men

Sega Genesis, Western Technologies, 1993

 This was one of the games I got with my Sega Genesis for my 10^th birthday, along with Sonic the Hedgehog 2. My mom had told me that I could have a Genesis as a present if I did chores and paid for half of it, which I was all too happy to agree to. We put the system and two games on Layaway at K-Mart (who else remembers THAT?) and made payments every week as I held up my end of the bargain. I was a total X-Men fiend in elementary school, watching the cartoon religiously and trying desperately to keep up with the comics that too often went over my head. This game was a total blast, letting you control Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Gambit and Wolverine each with their own attacks and mutant powers. The level designs were awesome and the music ruled, but the coolest thing about this game was right after the boss fight against Mojo. You see, the game was about the Danger Room going out of control and making simulations that were actually trying to kill the X-Men, and after defeating Mojo, the X-Men got a message from Professor X to reset the computer. I never knew what to do, so time always ran out and I died. One day after beating Mojo I decided I wanted to keep playing, so I hit Reset on my Genesis, and I got a cutscene advancing the story. By “reset the computer,” the game was actually telling me to reset my console. Outside of Sonic & Knuckle’s “Lock-On” technology, that little bit of fourth-wall breaking was the coolest thing I think the Genesis ever did.

As I’ve mentioned before, Wii U will be my only console going into the next round. There are still a lot of unknown variables concerning the system and how it works, so it’s a very exciting time to speculate and daydream. I could go on for days about things that I want to see implemented, but there’s one thing that I absolutely don’t want to see: Achievements.

That might seem strange, as I’ve professed my fondness for Achievements before (and, in fact, my Gamerscore and Trophy List are displayed just to the right of this post), but to me Achievements kind of defined the Xbox 360. It was a new thing, a new mechanic to play with and experience and I’ve certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of it. It’s just not something I want to see on a Nintendo console.

I don’t know about you, but Achievements change how I play games. It’s not a conscious thing; I’ve kinda got OCD about them. If I know that playing a certain way or doing a specific thing is going to earn me an achievement, that’s what I do when I play the game. For example, in Mirror’s Edge there’s an Achievement for never firing a gun the entire game. That was all fine and good until I got to a room full of armed guards and couldn’t disarm them fast enough. I died so many times I just hung the game up.

I’m not saying that what I’m doing is an acceptable way to play games, because it’s not. I just can’t help it. If I know that I’m going to miss something it drives me insane. I don’t 100% every game I play, but I try to get as many Achievements as I can with a reasonable amount of effort. So if there’s an Achievement like “kill 1000 enemies” you can bet your ass I’m going to grind away until I get it.

And that’s why I don’t want Achievements on Wii U. For me, the Wii has been a safe haven from them. I get to play games in a much more relaxed way, without this metagame hanging over my head the entire time. I’m playing Xenoblade Chronicles right now and it’s so freeing being able to play an RPG where I know I won’t need to grind a bunch for an Achievement at endgame.

As I mentioned in my Wii U post, I want to get back to when games were treasured and rather than playing everything that comes out, I just want to put time into what I have. You’d think Achievements would help me reach that goal, but in fact they’re the antithesis: I’ll want to play more games to keep that score going up.

“But Joe,” you’ll say, “Why not just ignore Achievements and play games the way you want to?” Oh, I wish it were that easy. I’ve tried, believe me. Every time, though, I’ll wind up scrolling through that list, deciding what I can earn and cursing what I missed. I can’t separate the two. They just make them so satisfying, with the sound and the flashing icon… bah.

I’m pretty sure Achievements WON’T be implemented, because if they were part of Nintendo’s plan going forward I think they would have been part of the 3DS, so I’m breathing a little easier. Still, until Nintendo’s conference at E3, I’ll have my fingers crossed.

I have the HTC Droid Incredible and it’s a piece of garbage. It worked really well for the first few months, but since then it’s just been a constant pain in the ass. Things started going downhill about a half year after we got them (Christina and I both got one at the same time) when our phones starting giving notifications that the memory was full when it, in fact, wasn’t even close. The only solution? Reboot the phone to factory settings. So, yeah. That was fun.

THEN it started doing a thing where after you took a picture, you could only look at it right after you took it. Otherwise loading the Gallery showed nothing. Plugging the phone into the PC and reading the SD card showed they were still there, so it was a mild inconvenience. It sucked, for sure, but not enough to make me curse the device.

Now, the photos from one of the most amazing stretches of my life are half gone. I don’t know if it’s HTC or the Android platform but to be safe I’m boycotting both.

I’ll scrape together what photos I can and try to write something tomorrow, but tonight I’m just too devastated to even bother.

The Razer Naga is the mouse God used when he created the world.

I’ve been lusting after the Naga for a long time now, and thanks to some birthday money I was finally able to justify the $80 price of admission. Oh man am I glad I got this thing.

Part of why I got so tired of playing Star Wars: The Old Republic was that I just couldn’t do well in combat. There’s so many abilities to use and I don’t have the dexterity to keep moving my hand around the keyboard to hit my number keys. What it boiled down to was that if it was on a key further down the line than “5″ I just couldn’t really use it. The Naga fixes this problem with its divine keypad that is easily reachable with your thumb. Really, this thing is a miracle. I had absolutely NO learning curve with it. As soon as I plugged it in and moved some of my in-game abilities around it became second nature.

It looks slick as hell, too. A nice clean black with gorgeous blue LEDs on the scroll wheel and keypad are awesome enough, but the pulsing blue logo where your palm rests is the sexy icing on the cake made of sex. Of course, you don’t see if often because your hand is over it, but I just like knowing it’s there.

I wish you could customize the color of the LED, but only the Naga Epic can do that, and I didn’t want to spend another $40 just so I can make the LEDs match my in-game lightsaber.

I immediately noticed that the mouse itself was more accurate than whatever Logitech mouse we had plugged in before. It glides like butter and makes the whole thing feel like an extension of your arm. It’s even made playing Minecraft more fun, which kinda makes no sense. Maybe I just like the mouse too much.

But yeah this mouse is seriously a no-brainer for MMO gamers. $80 seems steep for a mouse but it’s absolutely going to increase your enjoyment of the game. For someone like me, who was so hyped for SWTOR before it released then stopped playing because I couldn’t get the hang of the combat, it’s definitely a worthwhile investment.

The song this week is “Good Luck My Way” by legendary J-Rock band L’Arc~en~Ciel. If you follow me on Twitter then you know last week Christina and I made a last-minute trip to New York City because she won tickets to see L’Arc play at Madison Square Garden (which I’ll write about more in-depth later). Now, I fully admit that I wasn’t very familiar with L’Arc before the concert aside from their song “Ready Steady Go!” from Fullmetal Alchemist and just knowing how popular they were. Well, the concert made me a believer.

(It apparently made Christina a believer too, because all she seems to do now is post pictures of lead singer hyde on her tumblr.)

These guys are not just a good Japanese band. They are a phenomenal band. Period. “Good Luck My Way” is off their new album Butterfly. It’s available on iTunes, and I definitely recommend purchasing it. It’s a fantastic album and there’s not a bad song in the bunch.

While the main Pokémon games have rigidly stuck to their tried-and-true formula, the spin-offs have gone into some pretty interesting territory. Rather than focus on the life and tribulations of being a Pokémon trainer, PokéPark 2: Wonders Beyond once again lets you step into the shoes of the franchise’s lovable mascot Pikachu, and this time he’s brought some friends.

The story begins with an oddly serious scene of Reshiram and Zekrom discussing an ever-growing darkness which serves as an odd contrast with the series’ usual bright, cheerful tone. After some very cute scenes with Pikachu and his best friend Piplup, players are again blindsided with more drama as Pikachu must find a way to rescue the ‘mon being hypnotised and held captive in the mysterious Wish Park.

Read the rest at Nintendo Life

It’s been a long time coming, but Commander Shepard’s battle with the Reapers is at a boiling point. The entire galaxy prepares for a war that could quite easily mean the extinction of all sentient life. Do you have what it takes to take back Earth?

Mass Effect 3, the final instalment in BioWare’s sci-fi trilogy, takes every thread that’s been spun in the previous two games and runs with it. Every decision that’s been made so far has led up to this point and how it will affect the final battle. Which allies have survived? What have you sacrificed? Just how much of a chance to you have to claim victory?

Read the rest at KINECTaku