Best Pack-in Game?
That got me to thinking: what was the greatest pack-in game ever? I think it's an interesting topic, and I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Independent reviews since 1999.
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Easily Super Mario World. Its the greatest Mario sidescroller and no other packins come anywhere close. OK, Maybe the Super Mario Allstars + World cartridge that came packed in with some of the later Snes's.
I agree, easily Super Mario World.
Have you even played it right yet with a second player?
Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt. God, Duck Hunt was amazing...Oh, and Super Mario wasn't bad either.
The writer thought that Wii Sports was the best pack in ever? Good game but would choose this over the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet cartridge for the NES, Tetris for the Gameboy, or the XBOX Halo Bundle?
Nintendo in 1994 included Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario World combo cartridge as a pack-in for the SNES. This, in my opinion, that was the best pack-in ever.
Well, I don't think you can count some of the later bundles as true pack ins, at least I tend to think of a true pack in game as the games that came with the system originally.
That said, Super Mario Brothers for the NES absolutely has to be the king here. I mean, the freakin' game absolutely invented a new genre and was one of the first non-computer games to actually take advantage of the differences between home hardware and the arcade (even though SMB was a coin-op first).
Up until that point, most home video games were still designed with the "one quarter per play" gameplay rules, which meant short bursts of gaming followed by frequent "Game Over" screens. There were not many games that made you want to just mess around and EXPLORE the game world. Truly, SMB had some of the first "sandbox" elements and "open world" aspects that games like Oblivion and Grand Theft Auto are celebrated for.
My wife is now basically a non-gamer but she can still remember where the warp pipes are, and the secret passages and Easter Eggs... to try to draw a comparison here, if SMB were a guitarist, he would be Jimi Hendrix.
-Rob