The Next 30: Abe's Top Video Games of All Time #62-#33

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

Man, Warcraft's graphics seem shockingly dated to me.

Hard to believe that game is almost 15 years old.

Yeah, it didn;t wear well.


Interesting tidbit about the final top five games. Four are console, one PC. Each is from a different system. Here's your hint:

One console from the Second Gen
One from the Third
One from the Fourth
One from the Sixth

Which games and consoles will they be?

[Abe Sargent]

Top Five, here we come

37. Metal Gear
Konami
Nintendo Entertainment System
1987
GameSpot Review – None (8.5 User)
Action/Adventure – Stealth




This is the highest charting NES game on this countdown, and the third highest charting one over all, behind Final Fantasy and Zelda on my first countdown. That’s how much I enjoy Metal Gear.

This game popularized the stealth action genre, and began another successful franchise, just like many other games on the list. It played differently on the NES than any other game, and for that, it gets a lot of credit to my mind.

You are Solid Snake, a covert operative who is given the mission to infiltrate an enemy base, and then destroy the Metal Gear, a walking nuclear missile platform that could be deployed anywhere in the world.

Metal Gear has some similarities with the early adventure games like King’s Quest and Shadowgate. You have to do things in a certain order so that you may advance through the game, but it is also open-ended. Anywhere in the base that you can go, you can go.

Solid Snake must stay undercover for the journey, trying to stay out of the sight of guards and cameras. As he ventures through the enemy base, he will find items like mines, keys, armor, and various weapons. You have to use your collection of items to try to get past the next area. A remote controlled missile might be used to blow up a keypad, thus turning off the electric floor, as one example.



You had this radio that you would use to radio back to HQ. As you progressed, you would find other stations as well. This could be used to level you up, and get you the capacity to carry more and get more health.

Stealth plus cool items plus interesting enough story plus new gameplay equals a lot of fun for this cartridge.

I gotta tell ya, that this ad on the back of comics intrigued me more than any other ad for its time. It was sheer brilliance.




And with that, the number five game on this countdown is knocked off. Four games to go.

[Neon_Chaos]

I loved Mechwarrior 2.

[Abe Sargent]

Let’s hit up the number four game on my countdown right now.

36. Utopia
Mattel Electronics
Intellivision
1981
GameSpot Review – None (8.4 User)
Strategy/Simulation – Real Time, God Game



Why are Intellivision games on my list in several other places, when other contemporary games do not make the cut? I’ve played plenty of Atari, Coleco, Fairchild, Pong, and Odyssey2 games. The truly inventive ones were being made for Intellivision.

When Atari came out, they knocked the Fairchild off its perch as the top selling console system. They became the mammoth gorilla in the room, with a focus on getting popular arcade titles. They rushed the Atari 2600 to production before it was ready as a system, because they were afraid that if the Fairchild was out too long without any competition, it they would be unable to fight it in the market. Thus they focused on titles, not substance, it part because their first system wasn’t that good.

How many Atari games would be in an honest Top 50? Perhaps Adventure. Not Combat!. Not Pitfall. Not Yar’s Revenge. Not Asteroids. How many truly inventive games were being made?

When Colecovision came out years later, it concentrated on being the Xbox of its generation – the top shelf system with the best graphics, and a top selling cartridge to sell the console – Donkey Kong.

In between was the debut of many other systems, like the Vectrex and Odyssey2 with not a splash to be seen in the market. Only the Intellivision punched a chunk out of the market, and they did it by having better tech than Atari, and better games to boot. If they could not score the major arcade games, they tried to have the best games, and the best licenses. They licensed everything, like Dungeons and Dragons, and the Winter Olympics.

Thus, the Intellivision carts were the ones that featured games like Sea Battle (my highest charting cart), NFL Football, Triple Action, and much, much more.

Enter the most creative, innovative, and interesting game of its generation. This was a game so unique, so special, so creative, that today it lies in many websites as one of the best games of all time, and has been put in a lot of Hall of Fames, such as GameSpy and GameSpot.

Eight years before SimCity, the game that has gotten the nickname of Civilization 0.5 debuted for the Intellivision. Creating the simulation, god game, and real time strategy genres in one fell swoop, Utopia drew up the map for the genres to follow.

You might remember a game from my original countdown called Tropico. In Tropico, you have an island in the Caribbean that you try to build up, using a real time game. There are rebels, an economy, and natural disasters to contend with.

Here is the Utopia book:

Originally Posted by Utopia Rulebook Cover

If you've ever muttered, "I'd certainly do better if I ruled that country," then this game is for you. UTOPIA puts you in charge of your own island state. You control the treasury, agriculture, industry, housing, education, hospitals and military. You allocate funds to create revenue and improve life on your island. If your decisions are wise and the people are happy, you rack up points. If not, rebels begin to infiltrate your paradise. Chances are, you'll find that running a country is every bit as complicated as it seems.

Interested? Intrigued?

It’s important to point out that this is the list of the best games, not the most influential. Otherwise, I’d have Grand Theft Auto III and not Bully, SimCity, and not SC4, Dune II and not Warcraft, and other examples on my list. However, Utopia was fun to play as well as monumentally influential. Frankly, Utopia could easily be considered one of the ten most influential electronic games of all time.

Let’s take a look under the hood.

As mentioned before, Utopia is a real time strategy. The game is divided into a number of years that you set yourself, with each years being between 60 and 120 seconds (again, you set yourself). During that time, you have several tasks with which to make your people happy.

Firstly, you need to build things for your people. Housing Units are good to give them shelter. Schools are good for education. Factories will make you a bit of income, but the increased pollution will increase your death rate. You’ll need to plant crops to feed your people. When it rains on your crops, you make money. There’s hospitals for the sick and forts to guards your buildings.

You can also buy PT Boats and Fishing Boats. Control your Fishing Boat and move it over a school of fish (which is moving around on the map). While there, you can fish and make money. PT Boats can kill other Fishing Boats and can also protect you from Pirates.

On the map are two pirate ships which move around, and they can kill your fishing boat, so beware!

This person has just started out, plating some crops, and building a housing project, and now I suspect a Fishing Boat will follow.



In this game, you can also purchase Rebels. A Rebel will appear randomly on an opposing island, but not in any square next to a fort. If it appears on a building or crops, those are destroyed. They will leave after an amount of time based on the happiness of your people, and they can appear randomly if your people are not happy enough, so be careful.

The game has a great weather engine as well. Hurricanes, rain storms, and tropical storms can ravage across your lands. Rain from rain storms and tropical storms will feed your crops, but crops and building scan be destroyed by tropical storms, especially slow ones. Hurricanes will not make you money, and will destroy boats, crops and buildings that are in their wake, leaving little erect, unless it is a fast hurricane.

There are weather patterns, and if you learn the game, you’ll know where the storms tend to be. Any storm has a chance of going in any direction, but it is more likely to follow a certain path, to represent the weather patterns. Knowing that, you can set your crops in places where rain is more likely.

At the end of each turn, some crops may die, and you’ll get an update of how you are doing. How many people does your island now have? How happy are they? What’s your score?

The major flaw of the game was that it was designed to be played against another player, and there is no one player mode. In fact, this was a design flaw of much of the Intellivision carts, and ultimately one of its downfalls.

Still, this is a classic game with influences in the genre that cannot be overstated. I am happy to have Utopia on the four spot on my second countdown.

[Abe Sargent]

Let’s Just Move Right Through This. Number Three on the Countdown and Number One In Your Hearts:


35. Katamari Damacy
Namco
PlayStation 2
2004
GameSpot Review – 8.7
Action




Sometimes a game hits you, and it is so new, so fresh, so intriguing, that it is a blast to play and a joy to own. That is Katamari Damacy. At a time when consoles were weighted down by the Xth iteration of various games, and a variety of clones of GTA3, FP shooters, fighting games, and other expected games, Katamari Damacy broke through with a giant King of All Cosmos finger.

When other games are stuffy, full of themselves, or expensive, along came this budget 19.99 game to show everyone how to make and sell a quality game.

Katamari Damacy is a simple game with a simple concept. Using your controller like tank controls, you guide a sticky ball through a world, rolling up ever increasingly large things, causing your ball to grow in size, until time expires or your ball is big enough.

That’s it. So simple. So elegant.

The tank controls are difficult at first. You control both sticks, and have to push both forward to go forward, move one forward and one back to turn, and so forth. You’ll eventually get it after fifteen or twenty minutes of play.

You are the Prince, the son of the King of All Cosmos. One night he goes on a bender and destroys all of the stars while drunk. Now he needs you to go to Earth, which is full of stuff, and roll the stuff, into new stars and constellations.

When you arrive an Earth, you’ll note that some things move around, and if they hit you, could send you flying and a few items will break off your Katamari. Don’t worry, because you can roll up these birds, people, cats, etc when you are big enough. In fact, you can eventually roll up everything, like cars, houses, people, and islands themselves (and then clouds, rainbows, etc).

There are a few levels with different goals. For example, to make Cancer, you have to roll up a certain number of crabs, so the goal is not to get big, per se, but to roll up a lot of tasty crab meat.

Similarly, when you are rolling up a lot of cattle for Taurus, things like milk and leather coats count as cows.

The game has a physics engine, so if you roll up an item with an awkward size, such as a long narrow pole or tube shaped object, your ball will roll awkwardly. Imagine taping a pair of chopsticks to a rubber ball and then trying to roll it lengthwise, and you’ll get the idea.

The game has the niftiest soundtrack from a while, and singing the song can get under your skin. Very good.

Looks like this time a lot of stuff has been rolled up!



The game has a very light hearted J-pop feel to it. Bouncing cattle, mushrooms, rainbows, shining smiles, art deco blocky people, and more will all speak to a different take on games than the norm. This is a game that will never take itself too seriously.

It’s a blast to play, but there’s maybe 10 hours of the campaign before it is done. Don’t worry though, because you can get into a roll off against the other player.

As I mentioned above, they went with a simple 19.99 price point in America to sell the game, not expecting it to be a hit in the states. It was a great game and at a great price to boot! If you haven’t been rolling your Katamari, there’s no reason not to start!

[Abe Sargent]

Just one game after this. Will it be the last remaining PC game, or will a console game be tops this time?










And so, I present












34. Super Mario Kart
Nintendo
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
1992
GameSpot Review – None (9.5 User)
Action/Sports – Racing



15th on IGN’s list of the Top 100 Games of All Time
35th on GameInformer’s list of Top 100 Games of All Time

Third Best Selling Cartridge for SNES, behind only Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario World, with eight million carts sold, almost double the number of Zelda III carts sold.

Is that criteria worthy of my own 34 spot? I think so. I played it.

This game defines classic in the same way that Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda define it.

Even if you have never played Super Mario Kart, I’m sure you have played one of the many later iterations, up through the Wii game.

If you haven’t allow me to present the game of Mario Kart.

In this racing game, you select a character from the Super Mario Bros series, such as Mario or Luigi or Princess Peach or Bowser, and then you drive a go kart in a variety of tracks. As you journey around the tracks, you pick up boxes of items, and get a random item, which can be used against the other drivers.

If you are playing the game in single player mode, then you have a front view and a back view at the same time, on different screens.

The game has 20 levels, four cups with five levels each. This gives the game a lot of variety.

This is a two player screen:



Of course, you can play multiplayer, and roll with two players as well, launching shells at each other while racing. You can also play multiplayer one on one, with just you and another with no computer karts. You can even play a battle where each player has a number of balloons and you want to pop them with the various items. Winner is the last one with a balloon.

Different drivers have different stats, like speed and steering. There is some strategy involved in getting and using the right driver.

The game plays smoothly for its time, although in retrospect, it could have used better handling. It can be a bit sluggish sometimes at top speeds around curves. Still, for my money, this is a blast to play, and easily the second most fun game on this countdown (although number one blows it away for sheer fun factor).

Fun karts, fun weapons, fun characters, and multiplayer. These all make a delicious combo. The result is a fun game that is still driving strong at consoles everywhere. Enjoy!

[Abe Sargent]

The final game, and here we go. What will it be?




















33. RollerCoaster Tycoon
Infogrames
PC
1999
GameSpot Review – 8.6
Simulation – Economic



Not getting this on my previous list was tough. I really wanted to give it a spot and I was sad when it got cut in the numbers. Today, I get to rectify that.

This is a game that revolutionized and popularized the economic sim genre. It took a decently popular genre that had been the realm of games like Railroad Tycoon and Transport Tycoon and turned it into one of the default genres of the PC. Go into any store, and you will see a lot of PC FPS games, a lot of RTS games, a lot of MMORPGs, and a lot of Tycoon games.

Railroad Tycoon didn’t have this impact. None of the other subsequent economic sims had this effect. This was pure RCT.

People picked up and loved RCT who were not normal gamers. Mothers, kids, older people. They picked up and loved this game, and why not? Playing this game is a joy.

This was not the first tycoon game, and it wasn’t even the first amusement park sim. A little Transport Tycoon, a little Theme Park, a little railroad Tycoon, and a bit of new allowed Chris Sawyer to create this amazing game.

For those of you who may be hiding under a rock, nine years ago, RollerCoaster Tycoon debuted. It had issues that have been discussed in numerous places, such as the lack of a sandbox mode. The sequel was the same game, with barely any changes, and expansion packs added nothing but the old rides given new names, new scenarios, and new art. Another issue was that all of the guests were boys, disallowing a lot of diversity of interest among your customer base.

In RollerCoaster Tycoon, you select a scenario where you are given a challenge. Perhaps, you might have to build a park with 1200 guests in it in two years. Or, you might need a certain amount of money, or to pay back your loan, or certain happiness restrictions on your guests. Also, individual scenarios might have certain restrictions - such as the type of ride, or maximum height, or scenery that cannot be torn down.

Within this structure, your goal is to build an amusement park. You can place a ride, then drag a path to the exit and a queue to the entrance. Then place another ride, and do the same.

Expand your park by laying paths, benches, lights and trashcans. You’ll also need to provide services for your guests, such as bathrooms, food and drink stands, ATM machine, Info Booth, and various souvenir stands.

Some rides are easy to place A merry-go-round is a simple 3x3 square ride with an exit and entrance placed in any adjacent square of your choice. However, some rides are tracked. Hen you want to build a tracked ride, such as a roller coaster or go karts, then you have the option of building it yourself, or choosing a pre-built option in the game and placing that.




You’ll need to staff your park, so hire mechanics, security guards, entertainers and handymen. You’ll also want to unlock new rides, shops and decorations, so you need to fund research. Be careful, however, because you don’t want to drive your park into debt by having too many staff, too much interest on loans, too much research, and not enough coming back in.

Thematic elements include various signs, special benches, and decorations. For example, the Wild West decorations includes a mine shaft. You can theme up your Mine Train Coaster with a few Wild West decorations like barrels and such, place barrels for trash cans along the path, drop a wooden sign across the path announcing your ride, and then you can even change the land type from grass to dirt, to resemble the Wild West. Your entertainers can have their costumes changed to sheriff so that they fit your new place.

Your guests act reasonably. If they ride a ride with a high nausea rating, they may get sick when they get off. A sick boy might go to the bathroom and clean up, or sit on a bench for a while, or he might just throw up on the street. Eating food just before going on a major ride like that increases the chance of sickness. Learning the game and how the people act and react is very rewarding.

When you built a coaster of your own, the game’s physics engine took your design into account. You might build it too fast, or have hills too high up, and so forth. Hopefully you won’t smash something. Your coaster will come back with ratings in nausea, intensity and excitement.



The game had some clever additions. For example, some coasters could be built to race each other, which gave customers a fun experience. Others could be built with lock brakes, stopping the car during the ride and waiting until all cars are at brakes, before releasing them all.

Cars on coasters can crash, which is a Very Bad Thing ™. Drastic reduction in coaster attendance, overall park guest happiness, and so forth will occur. You’ll likely need to scrap the ride and start over. So, if you build your own coaster, be careful.

This game is a bit derivative, I admit. I love innovate games, and this game often stands on the shoulders of giants. However, for just pure sheer fun, this game is really high, and at the end of the day, a game should be fun. It was also revolutionary in the people it sold to, and the way it changed the genre. Here’s to RCT!



And now, the dynasty is complete. Expect some statistical compilations to follow.

[duff88]

How about 63-100?

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by duff88

How about 63-100?

Heh. I don;t think so. The participation for this dynasty was far below my anticipations compared to the other dynasty. It takes between 30 minutes to a full hour to do those write ups, and I don;t want to take on that sort of project for a diminished audience. Sorry

[Abe Sargent]

Okay, some analysis. Let's begin with developers. What developers came out on Top?

1). MicroProse - Tied with Nintendo for four games (XCom, Civ, Colon, Magic: TG), MP also published the two SimTek games and a subsidiary published Sea Rogue. All four of their games were in my first list, and were in the top 20. Three were in the top 10. No one else was close.

2). Nintendo - With four games as well (Zelda, Metroid, Mario Bros, and Mario Kart) they have a lot of games too. Published games include Mario Party 5 and Pokemon. Their own games are not as high as the Microprose games, and three of their four were on my second list, not the first. However, there can be no denial that Nintendo made some quality games that are on my list.

3). APh Technological Consulting - Only one developer, APh, has exactly three games on my countdown - Sea Battle, NFL Football and Triple Action. APh developed a lot of Intellivision games before Mattel Electronics began their own in house development, and did the occasional game afterwards. Their games on this list are powerful and unique games including new things like physics engines and made the only second generation game that is still playable today (Sea Battle) of those I have played.

4. Paradox - With just two games on teh Paradox, the high rating for EU2 and CK at 11 and 4, respectively, pushes their company on top of the heap of publishers with two games each.

5. SimTek - Developing the 28 and 6 games on my first list, SimTek sent their games to MicroProse for publishing. Note that, like Paradox, there are similarities between Master of Magic and Master of Orion 2, and CK and EU2.

6. Origin - With Ultima Online, they hit my 3 spot, and with Wing Commander, they hit my 23 spot. Although each is higher than the SimTek charts, Origin made a lot of games, and was one of the top developers and publishers out there, so to only have two games make the chart isn;t as good as SimTek with its two games.

7. New World Computing - With two games charting at 26 and 21 in two distinct genres, (HOMM2, and Might and Magic VI), NWC proved versatility, with a small number of games, the SimTek factor helps to push them over competitors.

8. PopTop Games - With a underground hit in Tropico and RailRoad Tycoon 3, PopTop Games had some serious impact on my list and gaming. I still have both installed and play them occasionally. Note that both of these games chart lower than the two games Maxis has, below, but I knocked Maxis down.

9. Maxis - As a specialist in sim games, it should be no surprise to see SimGolf and SimCity 4 here. I dinged it a bit past the above charting PopTop Games because they only have developed Sid Meier's Sim Golf.

10. BioWare - Another studio like SimTek, with an obvious cash cow that they kept milking, BioWare made some of the best RPGs for years on end. I felt Fallout and Baldur's gate were good enough to chart and so here ius some credit for BioWare.

11. EA Sports - I know that they don;t get some love because of some of the dumb things they have done more recently, but Madden and Lakers vs Celtics were both top notch games and they have released a lot of other top games as well.

12. Namco - With Katamari Damacy and Pac-Man, Namco is traditionally an arcade system developer, with many hits to their name. katamari was among my top hitters in the Next 30, and have to give credit to the developer of Pac-Man.

13. Capcom - With a score in Street Fighter II and another with Mega Man II, Capcom has had several powerful franchises over the years, and these two were among the best developed for their time.

14. Konami - Another game that made a lot of top notch games with two popular franchises (Metal Gear and Castlevania II), it also made some nice quality games over the years.

15. Hudson Soft - Hudson Soft has made only a few games over the years, but you might also know them as the developers of Bomberman. They develop few games, but they are fun to play and so two games, Military Madness and Mario Party 5, made my list.

[Swaggs]

I got a Wii and a couple of games for my birthday in March and this was one of them. I didn't really get a chance to get into it, as I didn't want to get too distracted during the end of my semester, but I have been playing this one a ton in the last week or so, and really enjoying it.

I can now appreciate what you mean about this being a much better use of the engine. Great game.

Originally Posted by Anxiety

Welcome to the top 50. This next choice may be controversial, not for the engine it details, but because it was not the first, and therefore the obvious choice by this company in this genre.

50. Bully
Rockstar Vancouver
PS2
2006
GameSpot Review - 8.7
Action/Adventure - Thug



My little personal name for the Grand Theft Auto 3 games and clones is the Thug subgenre, in case anyone has difficulty understanding my subgenre comment above.

Grand Theft Auto 3 had this spot in my original version of this list. In order to create this list, I spent two weeks jotting down video games I've played, and then taking them off if they were not of sufficient quality. I browsed game lists for various consoles, to make sure I hadn't missed any games I thought were truly great.

And this spot, #50, was GTA3, which is a respectable place for one of the few unique games of the last generation of consoles, creating a minor but popular subgenre.

However, I let the list lay for a few days before coming back to it. That way I could look at it with a new eye. I saw GTA3 and asked myself why it made the list when Bully was more fun, and a better version of the engine and ideas.

So I replaced it with Bully and am happy to have done so. There are times when I think the first game in an engine is the best, most iconic, and it made the list (such as Baldur's Gate). Then there are times when I feel that another game really was the realization of the engine, and that game should get the nod (like this).

I looked at my list, and tried to see if GTA3 fit anywhere. Since I have a rule that no other game from a series can chart, and not a game engine, I looked to see if the newly replaced GTA3 would replace any of the other games, but it didn't, so it dropped off.

And that brings us to Bully. In Bully, you are the part of a student newly brought into a boarding school. You have to survive and then thrive in the harsh surroundings of the school, with the intent to slowly ally yourself with the various cliques such as jocks and nerds.

Like other entires in the Thug genre, you can go anywhere and do anything, (after you've unlocked the town, it is available as well). You can scour the campus for items, and investigate various areas,m get into fights, and whatnot.

The game has a campus element to it. If you want to, you can go to class in the academic building, which starts at a certain time. While there, you participate in a mini-game, and if you win, you unlock an item or skill for your character. The games get harder as you progress through the class, and you learn more and more.



There are other mini-games as well. When you find an old homeless war veteran, you can bring him certain items and in return he'll teach you moves you can use in combat. If you take a job as a newspaper boy, you can drive around on a bike and throw papers into people's boxes. There are boxing mini-games when you try to get in with the preps. Getting into a locked locker is also a mini-game, if I remember correctly. Get caught and you have to mow a lawn at the school as punishment, which is also a mini-game.

When you are in the academic building and you are not wearing official school attire, you are chased as a violation of school rules. You also cannot be in the building during class sessions, or outside in the school grounds, or you'll be chased again for truancy. You also cannot be in the academic building after 6 pm or outside of your room after curfew. You cannot go to the girls dorm at all. This gives the game a nice organic feel to it as you learn where to go when, and how to dodge and escape the people chasing you.

He got caught.



The items in this game reflect the nature of the game, and include your trusty slingshot, eggs, stink bombs, and so forth. The deadliest weapon in the game is the bottle rocket launcher, and it can knock a person down. Or perhaps it is the spud cannon. Not sure which is more powerful.

The game has a known number of people who act in a known number of ways. Every person has a name, a unique look, an affiliation, and a view of you. After a while, you will learn the various students at the school, and many have their own personalities. You can woo the ladies with gifts and missions, and eventually you can kiss a girl, and that will restore your health. You can eventually develop various islands of ladies around the school (and one boy as well, if you want to go that route) that you can kiss whenever you want because you have successfully wooed them.

You can craft your own outfit from about four stores, and get a look you want. However, you need certain looks for certain missions. And, like I said before, you have to wear an official Bullworth Academy outfit when in the academic building.

There are various arcade machines around, and you can play them, buy putting in a quarter, and then a min-game pops up you can play. It has no purpose other than being pure fun. When you love your game enough to put things like that in, I love you back by putting your game on my list.

Once you open up the town around you, you can get more hideouts from the various cliques, such as the basement of a gaming shop or a lakehouse by the waterfront. You can also steal bikes and ride them around town, doing normal GTA3 things by running off ramps for tricks and points, or collecting various items, if that's your style. You can also tag if you have a bottle of spray paint. There are also races and such, just like normal GTA3 type games.

During the mission, you gain a lot of interesting things. Some of the typical GTA3 type missions. Go here, observe this, destroy that. Of course, no one dies or is seriously wounded, and this allows Rockstar to create some innovate quests. My favorite is when you are on the football field during a game and you have to hit passes, and you cannot leave the field until you hit the receivers and score (you come in after you sabotage the starting QB).

The missions really flesh out the game world. Another favorite is when two teachers want to go out on a date but know that students will come to harass them, so you climb up a tree and with your slingshot, you have to hit students who are coming up to the teachers during their date, and you can hear the date from your vantage point. There are a lot of clever quests and missions like that, and thus the game is more realistic and more interesting as a result.



Thus, I feel that Bully is simply a better game. Individual and unique NPCs, clever mission design, a ton of mini-games, tension between attending class, doing missions, and all of the rules that are enforced on a kid at boarding school, more realism, and an absolute love for the game by designers give me an opportunity to shower it with praise here.

[MJ4H]

I think Mario Party is hated because it is basically the same concept with little innovation being rehashed over and over AND the fact that the winner is often just chosen essentially randomly. No lead is safe even on the final turn, winning every mini-game will net you if you are lucky enough to have it be a bonus star at most one star. I think the ruffles a lot of reviewers' feathers. Me? I say eff em. We bust out Mario Party regularly at my place.

Some A+ inclusions on your list that a lot of people wouldn't consider:

Sim Golf
Mario Bros (arcade)
Mario Party X

I didn't expect to see those games in your list, yet there they were. Surprised a Super Mario game didn't enter your list anywhere along the way, though, unless you consider it part of the Mario Bros. series (you shouldn't).

Fun read. Thanks for taking the time.

[twothree]

Originally Posted by Abe Sargent

60. Serf City
Blue Byte Software
PC
1993
GameSpot Review: None (8.0 User)
Simulation - Economic

Then, in closing, we have a great game, inventing the RTS City Builder sub-genre near but not hitting SimCity and Populous. It has character, and uniqueness, but ultimately fails to be one of the true greats because of a flawed military system and slooow play. Still, it is #60 on my countdown.

SimCity 4 was #18 on your list. So, why didn't Populous make your top 62?

[Abe Sargent]

Populous might be on the next list, with 100 to this list. It's not a bad game, but it does not stand the test of time very well and there were better games with ideas running around. Where Serf City gets higher is in its appeal, cuteness, well rounded engine, smart ideas, and so forth. Where Populous gets higher marks is innovation and influence. In my statement I am comparing Serf City to other builders or God games that had more influence, and Serf City is no Populous or Sim City in that regard. That's what my statement meant.

[Abe Sargent]

Bumping for Radii

[Abe Sargent]

Added the links mentioned elsewhere here to other sites for playing and downloading