Top 50 Console Games: Part II

[VideoGameCritic]

It's posted! Let the debating begin!

http://videogamecritic.com/extras/themes/best50-2.htm

[ActRaiser]

What, no ActRaiser?

For shame, Critic, for shame...



Fun choices. IMHO the Game Boy Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is a better game than A Link to the Past. The story seemed to be better and more difficult. The only thing missing was color but it's hard to fault the game for something the system itself lacked. And lastly in my humble opinion the best of the Zelda series was actually Ocarina of Time.

Good stuff and always interesting to read. Thanks for taking the time to come up with your list.

[matmico399]

Great read Critic! Enjoyed it immensely. Hey my fave game of all time came in at number 4. Liking that!

I see a top 50 of the worst is coming. I'd bet money Karate on the 2600 takes the prize.

[matmico399]

Btw Dave, I agree if I only could have two 2600 games it would be Adventure and Warlords!

[jon]

It was nice seeing Metal Slug on the list. I think there's several Metal Slug games that are great games and I'm glad one made the list. I think it'd be nice to see more lists. I'd love to see a list of best manic arcade games, or something along those lines.

[Rev]

Great read! The one that really surprised me was Streets of Rage 1 beating out SoR2 on your favorites list. I was expecting SoR2 right towards the top of the list. Still, very interesting read. Thanks for the article.

[Retro STrife]

Great read. I really enjoyed this. My prediction was a little off... if you recall, I had a feeling SMB3 and LttP were your top 2, but I went off the beaten path and predicted Warlords as your #1, but I was off by 10 spots.

It's impossible to put together any type of list like this and satisfy everybody, but I like that you made this a very personalized list rather than trying to please everyone with the usual choices. But I like to give feedback, so here's my thoughts on Part II:

Thumbs up: I love that Tony Hawk 2 and Guitar Hero made the list. While the series were sequeled to death over time, they were veritable phenomenons during their heyday, and ever bit deserving of it. They belong on any top 50, but thanks to the monotonous sequels, so many people have forgotten how great those games were when they were fresh. I'm also glad to see Sonic 2 at #3, since Sonic has also taken quite a hit in public perception over the years, but the Genesis games shouldn't be punished for that (I know you never have, but many other critics have). It's also great that you've shown love to the often-overlooked sports games too, especially NBA Jam and NHL '94.

Thumbs down: #1 - On one hand, I want to praise you for all the sports games making the top 50...on the other hand, the lack of Tecmo Super Bowl is killing me on the inside. I believe it's the best football game and best sports game ever made--in fact, it's in my personal top 3 of best games ever--and I was sad to see it lose out to lesser titles. #2 - Oh, Critic, you and that Vandal Hearts game!! With all due respect: Your love of Vandal Hearts has nothing to do with Vandal Hearts, and everything to do with the fact that you don't play many RPGs! In other words, you don't love Vandal Hearts-- you love tactical RPGs-- but you haven't played through enough tactical RPGs to realize that yet, and thus you've immensely overrated Vandal Hearts. Don't get me wrong, it's a very good game, but if we gave you a stack of 10 of the best tactical-RPGs ever made, you would rank them all higher than Vandal Hearts and you'd drop Vandal Hearts down to a B.

(Next step, review Final Fantasy VII, so that you can add it to the 2.0 version of the list.)


All that being said, way more thumbs up than thumbs down here. I really enjoyed the feature and hope you do more "Best of" lists down the road.

[C64_Critic]

You already gave me a heads up that no C64 games would be included in this list due to it rightly being a computer vice a true console, but I still feel the need to whinge about the lack of these great (and pretty unique) C64 games:
1) Castles of Dr. Creep
2) Raid on Bungeling Bay
3) Jumpman
4) Space Taxi
5) Sword of Fargoal

I'd' rather perish on my desert island than face 40+ years of existence alone without access to gems like these.

[ThePixelatedGenocide]

You make a good argument for a more inclusive list. After all, what list of classic retro games would be complete without 3D Death Chase, or 3D Ant Attack? And can the NES - or even the C64, for that matter, give me a framerate anywhere near as smooth as 3D Star Strike?

The ZX Spectrum was so 3D that it was like playing the Virtual Boy of the 80's, only with slightly more color, and no eye strain. And it had load times. Long, long load times, while you prayed it didn't eat the casette. And then there was that soundchip...

But it was still better than wasting the same amount of time, while waiting on an overpriced and overrated C64! I'd rather play Double Dragon on any other system, including the Tiger handheld, and can anyone even beat your version of Robocop? I'm not trying to insult the C64, but whatever happened to Chase HQ was clearly hardware related - your processor is just too slow to keep up all that high speed action, built-in hardware sprites be damned.

Unfortunately, the only way we're going to settle this, once and for all, is if we can persuade the critic to play through the best of both libraries. Think he'd go for it?

[C64_Critic]

You make a good argument for a more inclusive list. After all, what list of classic retro games would be complete without 3D Death Chase, or 3D Ant Attack? And can the NES - or even the C64, for that matter, give me a framerate anywhere near as smooth as 3D Star Strike?

The ZX Spectrum was so 3D that it was like playing the Virtual Boy of the 80's, only with slightly more color, and no eye strain. And it had load times. Long, long load times, while you prayed it didn't eat the casette. And then there was that soundchip...

But it was still better than wasting the same amount of time, while waiting on an overpriced and overrated C64! I'd rather play Double Dragon on any other system, including the Tiger handheld, and can anyone even beat your version of Robocop? I'm not trying to insult the C64, but whatever happened to Chase HQ was clearly hardware related - your processor is just too slow to keep up all that high speed action, built-in hardware sprites be damned.

Unfortunately, the only way we're going to settle this, once and for all, is if we can persuade the critic to play through the best of both libraries. Think he'd go for it?

This probably isn't the best forum to get into a C64 vs. ZX Spectrum debate since neither machine is going to have anything on the list in question. In addition, since I've never personally owned or spent much time with the ZX I can't really compare and contrast them from personal experience.

However, I did find a comparison someone else did of both machines to include hardware specs and technical reasons why some games might play better on one platform as opposed to the other and it can be found at http://c64vsspectrum.com/.

Bottom line, at least to this persons satisfaction the C64 is the superior platform for experiencing most games.