My Life, in Video Games (Part 2)
- By
Ray_Whitney
It’s all too easy to make a list of the ten technically best video games of all time, or the best sellers, but that’s not what this is. This is a list of games that I have not only spent too much time with, but they have actually used voodoo powers to absorb life energy from my very soul and merged with my physical form. I love these games, despite their faults or age. Therefore, you might not understand, you probably won’t agree, but I hope you enjoy. We've done the first five. Now let's do the second. Ladies and gentlementals, my top five favourite bloody games in the whole friggin' worlds!
05. Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold (Sony PlayStation)
It was never a question whether or not Street Fighter was going to appear in this list, merely a case of which version it was going to be. I’ve been playing Street Fighter since I was a wee child, bashing little red buttons in my local kebab shop in a desperate attempt to fend off my older Hadouken-throwing brother’s incessant attacks. It would be inaccurate to place the original Street Fighter II: The World Warrior into my top ten though, as playing it nowadays is like fighting in slow motion. Your mouth is yelling “Oh man, this game has always been so cool, I’m loving it right now!” but your heart knows that, as sad as the fact is to admit, this isn’t the finest moment this series saw.
But wasn’t it an experience? A joyous, wonderful folly, the excitement and passion of a generation of males. I feel horrible, like a traitor to my childhood self, for not putting it at number one of this list and then swanning off to play it through July. What about those days when I begged and pleaded for silver coins to push into the arcade machines, be they the tweaked bootleg editions or the originals, and played not for the joy of unlocking characters or scoring big but because there was a machine, in the holiday camp or chip shop I had wandered into, and it needed to be played.
But alas, I’ve followed it all – I moaned along with Mean Machines magazine as Capcom pushed out endless updates for the SNES and Mega Drive, I saw the Alpha series come and go, I saw the 3D attempts and the puzzle games, I tried to like Street Fighter III but found that I couldn’t fall in love with it, despite shelling out £40 for an old Dreamcast copy – and so I pride myself on knowing my Fighter. So it’s Alpha 2 that I choose to hold to my chest, just in case I’m fired into space, marooned on a desert island or forced at gunpoint to write an article about my favourite games please help me call the police you are my only h
Why Alpha 2? Because I believe that, out of all of the Street Fighters, this one has the coolest character roster. I know, as a fan, I should be caring about which one's got the best combos, the better balance between fighters or the best remix of the original soundtrack, but screw all that – this one has brawlers from the original Street Fighter (yes!), three from Final Fight (awesome!) plus the legend that is Akuma.
It’s just that superficial.
04. Super Mario Land (Nintendo Game Boy)
Another one where I’ve had to pick from a world of fantastic titles to best represent a franchise. You see, to use a metaphor that stinks of appealing to the lowest common denominator, Mario is ice cream. Sometimes people like cake (Halo), and some people prefer cheese and crackers (Gran Turismo), but everybody always loves ice cream. The question is though, as infamously asked by Craig David – what’s your flava?
I’m more than willing to admit that Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World are fantastic games and I love them to bits, and technically they’re so much better than Land, but this isn’t about what’s better – this is about my favourites. And I love this one. I loved it when it was all I played on the Game Boy, I loved it when I bought a second copy ten years later and played it on my Game Boy Advance.
Why do I love it so? Let me count the ways. Super Ball weapons that bounce off the environment, requiring an extra twist of strategy from the player. Koopa shells that don’t bounce, but explode. Bouncing Easter Island heads as enemies. My favourite video game villain of all-time, the freaky-looking Tatanga the Mysterious Spaceman. Mario can fly a ‘plane and drive a submarine. Plus, you get to bop along to the best Mario soundtrack ever composed.
So, it might lack the ingenious touches of Shigeru Miyamoto, and it may take a mere half hour to complete, but no other Mario game offers you any of the above elements. Despite their undoubted quality, the recent Mario games have lacked real creative energy. In a series that has grown repetitious and samey – the residents of the Mushroom Kingdom are so used to each other that all they seem to do is go go-karting, rather than actually fighting – it was great, and remains great, to see Mario in a different world. A more exotic world, where he lacks the same old supporting characters, weapons and conventions. Super Mario Land is just a little bit stranger, a little bit kookier, a little bit darker, and just a little bit better.
03. Final Fantasy VII (Sony PlayStation)
I’m not even going to risk offending this game by justifying it. If you don’t know why it’s here, just go and buy it.
02. Dungeons & Dragons:
Warriors of the Eternal Sun (Sega Mega Drive)
My uncle bought me this game. I think it was a Christmas present. He took me and my brother to Solo Games down the high street (which is now an odd little café) and gave us £20 each to spend. As a geeky fantasy-fascinated little boy, and with the big blockbuster titles out of bounds due to budget constraints, I opted for Warriors of the Eternal Sun simply because that, out of all the RPGs on the shelf, this one looked the most likely to include dragons.
Based on the old school Dungeons & Dragons tabletop rules, Warriors put you in charge of a fully customisable party of four characters, transported to a mysterious and dangerous world. The plot, simple yet intelligent, grows over the course of your adventure, fleshing out the eerie dramatic atmosphere. On the surface, it’s just an RPG – you level up, you attack, you die, you come back again. But, for me, it was so much more. It was the first game that I truly thought about. I developed strategies for my warriors. tactics and battle formations, and I made the most of my party’s stats, spent hours arranging their inventories, and talked to them under my breath.
It is a little slow, and dangerously hard near the beginning, but there is a great story here, which managed to disturb me when I was younger and impress me when I was older. It really makes you feel like your four adventurers are alone and vulnerable, and never has this lack of NPCs improved a game so much. It’s a cold world, and you must fight hard to survive.
The same approach to game buying (picking up any RPG I could afford) had previously worked for Ultima IV (which didn’t have any dragons, but was still good), and it worked wonders for me here too. Same may say it’s uninspired and dull, and others may not even know it exists, but I love this lesser-known RPG with all of my nerd heart. So much so that I’ve even heavily edited its Wikipedia article. That’s true love!
01. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Sega Mega Drive)
I will never stop playing this game.
I’ve owned five versions of it.
It was released on my 9th birthday, a day dubbed ‘Sonic 2’s-day’. My mum took me to Woolworths after school to buy it on the Master System, as I didn’t have a Mega Drive back then.
It was the first game I received with my Mega Drive and the game I spent the most time on throughout the entire lifespan of the console.
It had a soundtrack that I still hum. Heck, I’ve even downloaded the MP3s.
It has some of the coolest bosses ever, including the 80s style robot Sonic (before he was redesigned and got all metallic and sleek and lost his soul) and the massive Robotnik monster at the end.
The Level Customisation cheat added fifty hours of gameplay.
The Special Stage was pseudo-3D and pretty eggin' awesome.
It had Super Sonic in it! Super Sonic is my favourite games character ever.
The ending is touching and so much better than those lame Mario “endings”.
It has Tails in it! Tails is the biggest loser in video game history, but at the time it was cool because he could fly.
The release of Sonic & Knuckles allowed you to play as Knuckles, who is also very cool and once again made me play the whole game to death. I played Sonic 2 with Knuckles more than I player Sonic & Knuckles.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is my favourite game of all-time.
What’s yours?
