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

[Abe Sargent]

Hello all and welcome back to another fun filled dynasty. This dynasty is a direct sequel to a previous dynasty of mine, which you can find linked here:

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...ad.php?t=51381

In that dynasty, I count down my top 30 video games of all time. I also give an honorable mention. Then, later, when I come across a game that charted high enough to make my top 30, I added it to the list, bringing my Top 30 to 32.

In this dynasty, I want to count down the next 30 games. These are number 62-33. In a similar manner to last time, I intend to spend a lot of time on each game, exploring the game, and why I like it. As before, you are encouraged to speak up about why you do or do not like the game, and I hope there are a few gems in here you have never played. I believe this list, in combination with the previous one, will give you a better view of my gaming habits.

Before we begin, allow me to reap the Top 32 from the first dynasty:

32. Sea Battle - Intellivision - Strategy/Action
31. Baldur's Gate - PC - RPG
30. Guild Wars - PC - MMORPG/RPG
29. Monster Rancher 3 - PS2 - Strategy/Action
28. Master of Orion 2 - PC - Strategy/Simulation 4x
27. Madden '99 - Nintendo 64 - Sports/Action
26. Might and Magic VI - PC - RPG
25. TradeWars 2002 - BBS Door Game - Simulation
24. Star Chamber - PC - Strategy
23. Wing Commander - PC - Flight Simulation
22. Tropico - PC - Simulation
21. Heroes of Might and Magic II - PC - Strategy 4x
20. Final Fantasy - NES - RPG
19. Colonization - PC - Strategy/Simulation 4x
18. SimCity 4 - PC - Simulation
17. Pokemon: Ruby & Sapphire - GameBoy Advance - RPG/Adventure
16. Star Control II - PC - Strategy/Adventure
15. The Legend of Zelda - NES - RPG/Adventure
14. Half-Life - PC - First Person Shooter
13. Front Office Football 2001 - PC - Sports/Simulation
12. Wasteland - PC - RPG
11. Europa Universalis II - PC - Strategy/Simulation
10. Civilization - PC - Strategy/Simulation 4x
9. X-Com: UFO Defense - PC - Strategy
8. Angband - Unix - RPG
7. Magic: the Gathering - PC - Strategy/Adventure
6. Master of Magic - PC - Strategy/Simulation 4x
5. Culdcept - Saturn - Strategy
4. Crusader Kings - PC - Strategy/Simulation
3. Ultima Online - PC - MMORPG
2. The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind - PC - RPG
1. Football Manager 2006 - PC - Sports/Simulation


Alright, with that list done, let's begin. Do you think this list might also start with an Honorable Mention?


-Abe

[Abe Sargent]

Honorable Mention - Pool of Radiance
Strategic Simulations Inc.
PC
1988
GameSpot Review - None (8.3 User Score)
RPG - Fantasy




Yes, apparently there will be an Honorable Mention here as well

The classics. The SSI RPGs were known for their gold boxes and similar play, and Pool of Radiance began it all. Just as TSR was kicking off their Forgotten Realms intellectual property, this game was released (1987 saw the realease of the Forgotten realms boxed set).

Pool of Radiance was considered by most to be the best RPG yet developed. It was deep, and yet characters only went to level 6 (or 8 for fighters or 9 for thieves).

Because it was rooted in the elemental D&D system, it was easy for many to understand, however, it was also limited. For example, the landmark RPG Wasteland (which came out the same year) did not have classes, and had a better role-playing environment, fleshed out.

Pool of Radiance was the little brother to Wasteland, and it is dinged a lot for it. It lacks the storyline, the epicness, the fleshed out world, the detail or the game design, but Wasteland is a classic of the PC and one of the best RPGs ever made.

Pool of Radiance is still a good game. You begin as a group of heroes in the town of Phlan which is largely in ruins and taken over by a possessed Bronze Dragon and its hordes of evil creatures.

New Phlan has been carved out of the ruins, and the city council has charged you with the elimination of the rabble in the rubble. (my phrase, but I like it).





Like many RPGs, the New Phlan is the base of operations, and has shops, a temple, a tavern and so forth. Then the slums have weak monsters which get tougher the farther out you go.

As you venture, you'll get missions and win treasure. You'll also get experience and slowly begin the climb to higher levels and more power, in typical RPG fashion.

Fighting takes place in an isometric physical representation of the actual combat. It's a pretty poor system, with turn based actions given and then carried out, and Ultima did it better. However, it suffices.



Where Pool of Radiance shines (excuse the joke) is in Phlan and the areas. as you get quests, you can actually see the change on Phlan, and the residents, from your actions. Clear out Sokol Keep (which is on an island that overlooks the harbor), and trade routes to Phlan are opened, which has an impact on the game. Meet with the Zhentarim camping outside, and it has an impact on the game. It's very organic, and very enjoyable.

I also like how the game doesn't enter serious power creep. The most powerful your wizard can get is level 6, not level 16 or 20 or something ridiculous. As such, you have to treat most encounters as serious. Perhaps you'll want to avoid these orcs:



In fact, the game was not that easy because of the lack of power creep, and the wandering encounters were notorious for their difficulty. You always had to be on your toes.

Therefore, although I;d say Pool of Radiance was a good game, and a lot of fun to play, it was overshadowed by Wasteland and has several design flaws. It was good enough to begin the "Gold Box" series of games from SSI and launch the Forgotten Realms franchise on computer (which would be in later games like Baldur's Gate). It was also a faithful interpretation of the D&D game that gave players an easy entrance.


-Abe

[Abe Sargent]

62. Wolfenstein 3D
id Software
PC
1992
GameSpot Review - None (8.6 User Score)
Action - FPS


http://store.steampowered.com/app/2270/



Welcome to the first official game of the countdown through The Next 30. This is the game that popularized the First-Person Shooter genre, and frankly, it was great game too, with just a few issues.

If you have never played 3D, then where were you? Perhaps you weren't born yet? This thing was ported to a variety of systems, available as shareware and downloaded from BBSs, and distributed by a large variety of companies.

Wolfsenstein 3D throws you back to World War II where you play an uber-powerful and often pissed off commando rummaging through the Wolfenstein stronghold. In doing this, you find guns and then fight down nazis of various types.

Now, Wolfenstein 3D was hardly the first FPS. There were previous games as far back as 1973. What Wolfenstein 3D did was twofold. It put FPS games back on the map (along with Doom), and it created many of the mechanics of FPSs that exist through today. (Or would exist until half-Life, which is the other revolution in FPS games)




For example, this game allowed you to run around, find various guns, ammunition, and first aid kits. You also had a melee weapon, the knife. It even created the ExMx format for naming levels so you know where you are in the game. (ExMx is where the E stands for Episode and the M is for Mission, so you are on Episode 2, Mission 4, for example).

The SNES version of Wolfsenstein 3D was famous for removing nazi symbols, changing blood to sweat and the dogs to giant mutant rats. Why offend when you have a great game on your hands? The Nintendo Way.


The game also has secret doors, secret floors, and special bosses at the end of each episode. It is famous for having Hitler as the bad guy boss at the end of the third episode, complete with full battle armor, until you blow it off:



At the end of each level, you would get a kill page. How many of your shots fell home? How many of the baddies did you kill? This became a technique of FPSs until half-Life came along and removed them in order to amp up the realism.

Now, despite a kicking good game, there were some issues with Wolfy.

First of all, there was little AI on the part of the baddies. They just turned and shot. This was easy to abuse.

Secondly, there was not a lot of depth here. You just had three guns, only a handful of enemies, and only a few decorations for the entire game. (Later episodes would add mutants but that would not be until you had finished 30 levels from the first three episodes.)

Thirdly, like many other previous games, in this game you mad multiple lives and could restart a level after dying. Although that might work for Pac-Man or Joust, it's not as good in the FPS genre.

The game had some serious nazi-love going on. The game played the Horst Wessel Song as its music, and had levels made of swatiskas. It was banned in Germany because of this. It probably went overboard in portraying nazism, but of course it is just a game after all, not social commentary (or is it?). Here is an example of it going overboard. One level seen from above in a level editor:



It was a great game, and very innovative, but the lack of depth caught up with it, and it became very boring and repetitive after a while due to that. As such, it ranks lower than it might have otherwise. Still, we are talking about one of the classics here, and its place on my list needs no justification to those who have played it.

Even my dad, the ordained Baptist Minister loved it!

-Abe


EDIT; Changed the pics because two of the old ones I used were not working, and had to change the text to reflect the new pics.

[BYU 14]

Interesting list Abe, kind of surprised none of the fallout franchise made your top 32...

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by BYU 14

Interesting list Abe, kind of surprised none of the fallout franchise made your top 32...

Thanks! It did have Wasteland though, which is like Fallout 0.5 (or Fallout is like Wasteland 2.0).

[Abe Sargent]

61. Military Madness
Hudson Soft
TurboGrafx16
1989
GameSpot rating - None (8.7 User); 7.8 on the Wii Virtual Console
Strategy - Wargame



The TurboGraphix16 was the victim of a high price point, competition against another new guy (Genesis) that was much cooler and doing better in sales, and woeful advertising (remember Johnny Turbo?).

As a result, it was never a hit in America like the PC Engine was in Japan. Therefore, a lot of this console's games never really hit the market well and are not known. In the case of Military Madness, that is sad.

I was introduced to Military Madness when I was over at a friend's house in high school His family was rich, and thus able to afford a TurboGraphix. He played the game while I watched. Then I got a chance. This was a real wargame on the console, and I knew it was a revolution in gaming.

Frankly, aside from the occasional Final Fantasy Tactics or Advance Wars, this is a genre that is still woefully underdeveloped on the console. Even real time wargames like Kessen are pretty rare (especially good ones).

Military Madness, despite the dumb name, had a very deep game underneath. It was a turn-based wargame using a hexgrid.



You are on the Moon far in the future and you have to fight off the evil Axis (yes, there are Axis powers again, and you are the Allied forces).

Instead of this being a traditional 4x or RTS type game, you only had the forces you started with, and had to make do. (Although you could occasionally capture opposing forces in certain circumstances, for the most part, you just blasted your opponent).

While playing the wargame, you can move troops, carry troops, or attack directly or indirectly (like artillery).

If you direct attack, or are direct attacked, then the game moves to a combat screen, with the units in question lined up on each side to resolve the attack. Like this:



Obviously, the game is not as simple as that. There are Zones of Control, and support, and a surrounding effect that you need to understand and master. There are various terrain, and units have various stats, such as differing movement, attack power and defense power.

What do you need in a game like this? Good AI. Frankly, the opponent here is better than the one in later wargames like Kessen. It's not super great or anything, but its solid. (Although you do get an advantage. Going first is very strong, and gives you a solid footing.)

The game was best selling enough in Japan (where it went by the name Nectaris) that it spawned a series. Just in America, with a dead system and therefore poor sales despite critical success, it could go no farther.

You will note from one of the earlier images above that Military Madness is available on the Wii Virtual Console. This dead game has been given new life, for a little while at least. If you are so inclined to play an old school wargame, give it a shot.

And if you don't believe me, check out the GameSpot review of it on the Wii:

Originally Posted by GameSpot

Now that the TurboGrafx-16 version of Military Madness is available for the Wii's Virtual Console, today's strategy buffs have the chance to discover what a few TG-16 owners already know: Military Madness was ahead of its time. The game offers the same sort of complex turn-based combat as Advance Wars but also does enough differently from Nintendo's franchise that it hasn't been rendered obsolete in the intervening years.

-Abe

[Abe Sargent]

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



Say hello to one of the earliest real time strategy games. Named Die Siedler, (The Settlers), this game was the origin for The Settlers series of games that would follow in its path, and it brought together game mechanics for the first time.

The Settlers is a medieval economic simulation, with a real time strategy goal. For example, you have to log lumber, just like in a more traditional RTS game. You have to mine ore, but this is not a traditional RTS game.

If you want pork, then you have to grow wheat on a farm, then use the wheat to feed the pigs at a pig farm, then take a pig to the butcher and finally you have pork in your area.

Your wheat can also go to a miller, and then to a bakery, before becoming bread for your little kingdom.

You needed to develop a lot of "industry" for your game, and Serf City is ultimately an economic simulator. At some point in time, your economy would take over, and run itself. That was a beautiful thing.

The Types of Serfs

There were a large number of specialists like lumberjacks, geologists, fishermen, and so forth operating in your lands. Then you could send them out to prospect, fish, or whatever.

In the mountains, you can mine iron ore, gold ore, stones or coal. Coal and iron ore were necessary to make iron, and stones were a vital building material. Gold, once smelted, was used to pay your military serfs.



You would have to place buildings, build roads, and hire serfs. You planned out a transportation network, warehouses, and such in order to keep things moving smoothly.

Then, there was a military component. You expanded your territory by building military buildings. Each building would expand your territory by a little and house military serfs as well. You could only build in your territory, so expanding quickly to cut off supplies was important. If you expanded well, you could literally cut off your opponent's territory from its castle, causing the cut off buildings to burn down. Watch out, because they could do the same to you.



You could also send your military minions out to fight and take military buildings. Your military has five ranks, depending on pay and experience. The higher ranked soldiers are much, much better. Fighting takes a while, since everybody fights solo. Be prepared for a siege-like offense based on the time it takes.

The game is completed animated, and you can just watch your serfs go about their business. I still have most of the animations in my head, such as they wheat farmer sowing, the lumberjack cutting, and more. The animations were so intricate at times.

This is the game that started the RTS genre of city builders like Rome and Olympus and Tropico.

To be fair, the game was hardly perfect. The military aspect was hard to control and just unwieldy. The game speed was very slooow and there was n way to speed it up. Simply adding a 2x speed button and rehashing the military aspect would make the game much better.

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.

[Abe Sargent]

59. Moraff's World
MoraffWare
PC
1991
No GameSpot Listing. 8.43 on UnderDogs
RPG - Fantasy

http://www.softwarediversions.com/ca...x.php?cPath=28



Moraff's World shares some similarities to two other games on my countdown. First of all, like Wolfenstein 3D, Moraff's World came out in an area where shareware was a major selling point for games, and numerous small game designers knew they could write a good game and get it published on BBSs and diskettes. Moraff's World was one of the many games to emerge from this era as a quality game. In fact, MoraffWare still exists, and you can still purchase Moraff's World from them to this day.

It also bares some similarity to game #8 on my previous countdown - Angband. Both are Roguelike games, so let's talk about that. Rogue was a game released in 1980 with an ASCII character descending in a dungeon of ASCII characters, all of which represent monsters, treasure and so forth. It is an RPG and a dungeon crawl. That's a roguelike game.

Moraff's World is the sequel to Moraff's Revenge and followed up by Moraff's Dungeons of the Unforgiven.

This was the best of the lot. It is your typical roguelike game, only with graphics. With a first person perspective, you travel through the dungeon, fighting monsters and gathering items, getting experience. Then you rise back to the top and sell and convert and head back down again.



Like normal games of this ilk, you can choose from a lot of races (eight total, including imp, ogre, etc). You can also choose from a large number of classes (seven, large for the time). Each comes with its own powers and restrictions. I loved being a magic-user.

Mages had access to a lot of spells if they could find them on spellbooks. You could not wield the best armor and weapons, but that was little matter when you have great spells.

With around 40 types of monsters, and many variations on those types, you could come across an impressive array of baddies For example, you could find the normal scorpion, or the poisonous scorpion. Different colored dragonflies are buzzing around as well, and so forth.

The game has a strong sense of quirkiness and humor, almost resembling first edition AD&D with its oddness. Walking Swords, Glowing Balls, Puffballs, and Garbage Can Men are all enemies, while you can wield the dangerous Holy Hand Grenade, the most powerful item in the game.

While adventuring, you would not find currency, but ore of various types. Then you had to go back to town and turn your ore into jewel pieces. Various ores had different weights, and this built in a mechanic that forced you back to town occasionally. Here you could visit a variety of shops and stores and temples before heading back down.


Here's an expanded map of one town level.




The dungeon is saved after its first random generation, so once you clear out an area, it stays cleared out. You can also learn the transportation network quickly. Some stairs up or down are more than one level, and you will learn where these stairs are so you can ascend and descend with some degree of speed (although if you have the right spells, you can do it instantly.)

The goal of the game was to penetrate to level 200 and kill teh Red Dragon King that resides here.



Here you can see the Red Dragon King, the radar map on the left, all four directions, and a variety of options at the top.

The game has a way better score than Moraff's Revenge, with a deeper dungeon, more creatures, and a world with other dungeons on it that you can go to. It also has more charm, elegance, and interface than the later Dungeons of the Unforgiven. I've played them both, and MW is by far the best entry here.

The game can get bogged down by the same issues that Wolfenstein 3D had. Although it has more items and more monsters than Wolf-3D, it still starts to feel redundant after you've killed your 50th kobold or ape. You realize that there is only so much under the hood.

-Abe

[rjolley]

Man, I played Serf City for hours back in the day. A x2/x5 speed button would've been really nice.

[Abe Sargent]

I did some quick checking, and this is the final game from the Shareware Revolution to chart. What will it be?

58. Scorched Earth
Microstar
PC
1991
GameSpot Score - None (9.2 User)
Strategy - Tank

http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/scorched-earth/




The artillery genre is one of the oldest games for computers and consoles, but it has never been at the top of my list for good games. The genre is pretty stale. There's only so many things you can do with Combat and Armor Battle.

Then Scorched Earth came along and changed the entire genre. Overnight, it turned artillery games into something fun and cool, and today it stands as the single best game of its genre; a light in the darkness of crappy artillery games.

Scorched Earth has up to ten tanks all participating at once, on a 2D grid with a side angle instead of the normal top down approach. It is a turn based game where you choose your angle and power, and then launch a weapon on your choice. Then the computers go in a row, then you go again, and so forth.

However, this game had a lot of detail. For instance, there was a randomly generated wind, which would have various effects on your weapons based on trajectory and power. Gravity would pull the weapon you fire down and you had to account for that as well. You could also set an air viscosity, which you would have to account for, if you wanted to hit an opponent.

There was also weather to account for. A storm caused random lightning bolts to hit, and they could hit your tank. There were also meteors that would occasionally fall, hitting the ground, taking out some land, and taking a tank occasionally as well.



Then there were the walls. You could set (or randomly determine) what the walls were. You could have concrete walls that would cause the explosion of the item that hit it, or wraparound walls that would allow weapons to fire around. Normal bounce walls were available, plus rubber walls that would add to the bounce of a weapon. Knowing your walls would allow you to change your shot.

You could set the personality and accuracy of your opponents, in order to give yourself more competition, and some AIs were really smart.

There were also different types of tanks, from stationary ones to ones that you could buy fuel for and move, although moving was often overrated, and rarely used.

You began the game with money, and then you bought various weapons, defensive items and equipment. You could activate a defensive item and then fire a weapon of your choice. Some weapons were really damaging, while others served specific purposes. Your base weapon was a small missile, which you had an unlimited number of.

The fun part of the game is that the dirt of the world was destructible. Destroying the dirt could cause it to fall, and tanks could fall with it. Launching a big weaponed at a mountain could kill half of the tanks on top on fall unless they bought parachutes. If you had a parachute, you would use one up in falling lightly, instead of taking damage, and possibly dying.

In fact, some weapons dug through the ground with missiles on the end, like Diggers. Other weapons cleared out sections of dirt. A few weapons even added dirt to the map, in order to erect a hasty defense for your tank.



For defensive items, your could purchase and use a variety of shields and fields to help avoid damage to your tank. As these shields took damage, they got weaker and weaker. Some weapons were really good and dealing a lot of damage to the shield, like a triple missile, which was three hits, and napalm around the tank.

From MIRVs to Nukes, you had a ton of choices when buying your weapons and equipment.

You gained money after each round for your kills. The player with the most kills in a round went first the following round, and that was a big bonus, as you had the first chance to kill a tank before it erected a defense.

Here are the things you could customize:

Tanks used
Walls
Number of Players (and yes, you could play multiplayer)
The AI used for each tank
How much money you began the game with
Number of turns
Wind
Air Viscosity
Minor things like explosion effects, what an AI says when they die, and so forth.



Now, this game charts lower because of several issues. First, despite how good it is, it is still just an artillery game, and that's only going to get you so far. Imagine a list of the best board games of all time. Being a game for Kindergarten children might get you praise, and even get you on the list, but you won't be close to the top.

The second issue was after you died, the computer AI's kept playing each other until someone won. This could take a while if you gave the game stupid AIs, such as the random one (although that one would occasionally kill itself often enough to finish up the game).

While Scorched Earth was the highest charting game I have from the Shareware Revolution, and it was the single best game in its genre, it still has the disadvantages of the genre - namely pointing and shooting, with nothing else going on. No matter how complex you make that, it's just pointing and shooting. Still, it was a great effort for a classic game.


-Abe

[BYU 14]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

Thanks! It did have Wasteland though, which is like Fallout 0.5 (or Fallout is like Wasteland 2.0).

Wasteland is definitely worthy, hell I would play that today if I could find it

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by BYU 14

Wasteland is definitely worthy, hell I would play that today if I could find it

Say hello to Underdogs:

hxxp://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?gameid=2425

[Abe Sargent]

57. Metroid
Nintendo
NES
1986
GameSpot Review - None (User 8.7)
Action/Adventure - Platform



Ah, the classics. Platform games dominated the Nintendo era like no genre has ever dominated an era before or sense. Not even today's PC landscape full of First-Person Shooters and Real-Time Strategies has as many games in one genre as Nintendo had platform games.

They were all following Mario's success, obviously. In retrospect, jumping and attacking (in some games) was pretty boring, but as a kid, you didn't care. However, even as a kid, I knew Metroid was different.

Sure, Metroid was a platform game, no question.But it played differently. As you gained more weapons and equipment, you could do things that other platform games could not.

In Metroid, you are playing a generic bounty hunter in armor (later revealed to be a woman, but I don;t think anyone knew at the time that it was a she). You begin in an alien world, and you have to fight your way through the various levels to find objects, and ultimately kill Mother Brain.

Sure, there are mini-bosses, and a lot of exploring to do. That's what makes the game so much fun!

This is a game created in a non-linear fashion. Although some areas are closed off because you do not have the right equipment to go there, you can travel to any place in the world that is opened up, no matter how hard the monsters there are to fight. This results in your criss-crossing the world in search of various items that will help you in your quest.

For example, this place is closed off until you get the ability to curl into a ball and get bombs.



When I say the game was open ended I mean it. Before killing Mother Brain, you needed to kill two mini-bosses, which would open up her area. That's it. You don;t even need all of the equipment to get to and kill Mother Brain.

With this open-ended play, and a platform game that played different with the rolling up and dropping of bombs, you had a very interesting game from the get go.

You also had no chance of getting corrupted data from the game, since it (along with Kid Icarus) debuted the password system that countless games seemed to copy.

Compared to the other platformers, Metroid was high quality, and that results in a rating here. I loved freezing the bad guys, then blowing them up with Bombs.



Was Metroid perfect? Hardly. The non-linear play could result in you spending hours pouring over every single wall, trying to find out where to go next, only to find some minor wall in some section was destructible when you shot it, and that's where you were supposed to go. Or you would have to ask a friend or read a spoiler in order to move on. The non-linear play also resulted in a ton of backtracking, which could become tedious quickly.

Despite all of that, this is the first of two games which are solely scrolling platformers to make my list. What will the other be? Who knows?

-Abe

[Abe Sargent]

I decided to go through and add the genre of the game to the first bolded list. I'll do the same for future games as well.

[Abe Sargent]

56. MarioParty 5
Hudson Soft
GameCube
2003
GameSpot Review - 6.9
Strategy/Action - Party Game



Hello all and welcome to a series that may not need much introduction to you. Just in case it does, let's talk about what Mario party is, and what it is not.

Nintendo (prior to the next gen with Wii) moved from being the best selling system with the most games (NES) that it used to be to being the system with the best quality games but the smallest game market. (GC) Their strategy changed completely, but Nintendo has continued to focus on putting out high quality games.

Mario Party is another example of that long line of high quality games released under the Nintendo banner for the under appreciated GameCube (which had a higher ratio of quality games: crap games than the other systems)

In fact, you'll find more franchises on my list with an entry on the GC than on the PS2. (I believe, after doing a quick count of this list and the other one).

Now, let's look at Mario Party.

Mario Party, as a genre, has never gotten a lot of love from the critics. No console version of the game ever got a score higher than 7.8 (for 2), so it should be no surprise that 5 scored lower than many other games on this list. For a similarly dinged game to make my list, take a gander at #3 Ultima Online.

What is Mario Party?

Mario Party is a party game designed for multiple players (up to four0 who play on a electronic board game. They take turns rolling dice and moving around the grid, with various spaces and things happening as they do so. Then, between rounds, (or when called on by a space), players play various random mini-games, with teh winner getting certain prizes.

Here's a sample board:



In each game, there are several different boards that you can play on, which gives the game some replayability. Also, with the randomness of the boards and the games, each game can play very differently.

The players select a character from the Mario franchise to play, and then gain gold coins as the currency of the game. Who wins? The one with the most stars wins at the end of the game. You can collect stars by landing on a star space, and then paying 50 coins for a star. (if you have it). Then the star is moved to a random space on the board. You also get starts at the end of the game for being the player with the most wins in mini-games, most coins collected, and so forth.

Since this is a Mario game, you can collect items, or purchase them from stores you pass by, for coins. Some are mushrooms of various types, and some are items that can steal items, coins or even stars from opponents. Then there are various random spaces. Somewill give you coins, some cause you to lose coins, and others have various effects. A few spaces, for example, will start a Bowser min-game which is an elimination game you play until one dies, and then that players loses all of their items or coins.

Here's a sample mini-game. Who can pop all of the balloons of their opponent first?



The game will assign you to a team based on the color of space you land. You might also get assigned to a team of 3 vs 1, which is a lot of fun when you are the one. The mini games for 3v1 are usually heavily favored to the one, and it feels great to be the underdog and win.

So, you have these mini-games, board play, acquisition of coins, items and stars all going on. This is the Mario Party formula.

You can also play the unlocked mini-games in various non-board game ways, using other games with the game, in addition to the classic board game formula. One was a two way Reversi type game where you flipped a tile if you won, and you lost, your opponent got the tile. Then tiles flipped based on Reversi rules.

Some consider 5 to be a bit of a departure from the normal formula, and fans of the series might choose a different entry. I think 5 is the best, and let me tell you why.

5 adds the concept of duels. As you can see from the game above, there are duel games in addition to the normal four way player games. You can challenge other players or be forced to defend your coins. Here is what a 4-way game might look like:



Who can catch the most fish in the time given?

All of the games were new, and some players did not like that a few games were purely random, like the cannon game (you had four cannons and three players chose one of the four cannons to hide in. Then the one player chose one cannon after another to launch, and if after three tries, he did not launch all three opponents, he lost. Some thought this was too random and did not reward skill).

Alright, so Mario Party had duels. Did it add anything else? Oh yes, it did.

Mario Party is about having fun with your friends, so they added some clever side games that you could just play.

What about a combat game where you built a machine and played it against the computer or your enemies in tournaments and stadiums? As you won and got more money, you could afford better parts, and you could unlock great parts in the normal board game campaign. Sound like fun to drive these machines around and try to kill each other?

How about a brilliant board game featuring classic pieces and a bunch of unrevealed tiles. As you move, you can reveal tiles, and then gain stars. It played very well and was a real blast. Does an alternate, simpler but very strategic game sound like fun?

There's also an ice hockey game thrown in for fun, and you can get about an hour on enjoyment with it until you are done and move on. The controls are a bit sluggish.

But wait, there's one more game that made this a must-buy. This extra feature is worth 10 bucks on its own, easy. Beach Volleyball. Choose a Mario character and grab a partner. You two take on an AI, which you can set the difficulty. You could even play with an AI teammate if you had no one to play with. You could also play all four in, playing mad beach volleyball against each other. The controls took about 15-20 minutes to master, and then you has a blast. I always played Toad. It looks funny when he goes up for a spike! This game was so fun on its own, that we played hours of Beach Volleyball on its own.



Beach Volleyball, the cool board game, the normal game, the Reversi extra game, playing the mini-games on their own, ice hockey, the fighting tanks, and that was just one ginormous package.

Okay, so it sounds good, what could have made it better? Well, the actual board game part of the game was a bit better in 4 than it was in 5. In 5, it was very difficult to steal a star, whereas those mecahnics were more common in 4. Thus, once someone got ahead, it was harder to pull them back. Also, I'd love to see a MarioParty keep the best minigame from the previous franchises, plus add a bunch more, instead of adding more without the oldies. 4 had some great minigames that were tossed out. You don;t always need to reinvent the kitchen sink here folks. I'd be happy to see them reuse some of the graphics for the mini-games or elements of them in order to fit more games on the disc.

Still, there was no question that you get your money's worth from this disc.

-Abe



EDIT: Oh and for Beach Volleyball you could play with a real ball, or a bomb, or a counter on your ball to make things more interesting. I forgot to mention that

[Abe Sargent]

To back up my claim that I think the top critics have an axe to grind against MarioParty, allow me to quote from a GameInformer review of the game:

Originally Posted by GameInformer

We all have those undesirable yet mandatory moments in our lives...As a video game journalist, my cross to bear is having to play Mario Party sequel after Mario Party sequel. At least this time, I get to try to warn you against doing the same thing. Don’t play this game. Even at its most basic level, Mario Party is flawed.

These critics and reviewer read like they just don't like the concept of the game. I honestly don;t know what's so antagonistic about the game or the series that gets their dander up, but its obvious that they have a serious problem with the series as a whole, and are hardly objective about the quality as a result.

Another GameInformer Critic:

Originally Posted by GameInformer

How bad is Mario Party 5? Well, spending just a measly hour with this miserable, cancer-of-the-brain-inducing game is like going naked hot-tubbing with Rush Limbaugh as your parents cheer you on and snap photos. I didn’t think that it was humanly possible for this series to get any worse than it was, but this entry wailed on my unmentionables until they were well past black and blue.

They gave it 2.5 and 2 out of 10 from each reviewer.

The User Score on GameSpot is 7.8

MetaCritic has its aggregate score at 69. That ranges from a 95 (Nintendophiles) to a 20 (GameInformer). 11 Critics have it in the 80s. 11 have it at 60 or less, but only 3 at less than 50. 33 critics were weighed. As you can see, there's quite a range of opinions there. I'm in the 80's group, along with the 11 (+1 for the 95 rating) of the critics.

[Abe Sargent]

55. Deathtrack
Dynamix (Activision)
PC
1989
No GameSpot Listing. MobyGames User 3.6/5
Action/Simulation - Racing




This is a classic PC game in the genre of racing classics. Like the name says, Death Track is a racing game that combines the fighting with the driving. This is hardly a new idea.

The fighting + driving genre goes back as far as Spy Hunter in 1983, and continues to this day through various franchises and games both popular and unknown.

I believe this is the best game in this subgenre of driving sims. Why this 1989 driving game, when others are around and much better? Ah, you'll see.

Like a few other driving games, in this game, you begin with a certain amount of money. You begin a campaign, with $10,000 and you can spend this equipment on amping up things like your transmission, tires, and so forth. As youplace, you get more money, and you can use your winning to upgrade your car with a batter airfoils or engine etc. Or, you can repair damaged systems, allowing your ride to once again be ready for the road.

Big deal, you say. There was a game for the NES that did that.

True, but I mentioned there was fighting in this game as well, right?

You begin the campaign by picking on of three chassis, and it begins equipped with a selection of weapons and equipment already. Then you can use your money to upgrade immediately, and hope you do well enough to fix what you damage, or keep some in reserve in case you do poorly in the first race.




You can also buy weapons. You can buy lasers, machine guns, beam weapons, mines, caltrops, missiles, and guided weapons called terminators. There are three versions of each of these, so you can have cheaper or more expensive, or none at all. You'll need to restock your ammo, mines, caltrops, missiles and terminators at the end of each race.

You can also upgrade your armor, purchase three types of ram spikes or wheel spikes.

The result is an actual campaign where your car slowly gets better over time. If you can;t win the race outright, kill those who can. You get money for winning, not for blowing up cars, so it behooves you to upgrade your car just as much as your weapons.



Then you drive like a normal driving game, only this time, you can take a pitstop to refuel, recharge your laser and reload your ammo, and even fix your armor. That obviously takes time and money.

You also fight on the race track. Perhaps you'll blow up an opposing car like this driver just did.



As you can see, the car keeps track of speed,weapon, mini map, fuel, tracking, damage taken, and more.

As you advance through this cyberpunk game, you'll move on to new tracks, each one with different challenges. You can go into an autopilot if you need to concentrate on hammering a foe, or finding the right weapon, but don;t run the race on autopilot, because it's good enough, but not great. It won;t dodge mines or caltrops, for instance.

As parts of your car take damage, things decrease. Your top speed can slow, your turning rate can drop, and your acceleration can vanish. When this happens, hit the pitstop or blow up the other cars and win by default.

There is a nice balance with the weapons, and a good driver uses them all. Lasers are quick with a lot of power, but they will run out of shots until you recharge in a pitstop or the game ends. Beams do not use ammo and do not run out of energy, but there is a slow reload time between blasts. Chain guns fire very quickly, and go through a lot of bullets. Missiles can be deadly, but can be stopped with careful driving and application of the brakes. Terminators are also deadly, and can also be blocked by dropping a mine or caltrop in the path.

I love games like this that have a plot and a campaign to them. I love feeling a sense of accomplishment as the game moves on, and I get more money.

The driving isn't perfect or anything. The road just goes, with little up and down or very sharp turns. The most you'll occasionally get is a bridge or an overpass or a gentle hill. This is a game you pick up for campaign, not for the driving alone.

It's weird that this clever combination of guns + wheels and campaign is not better known. However, there is a Deathtrack: Resurrection coming out in Q2 2k8, which should be in a few months. Perhaps more will know of it then.


-Abe

[Abe Sargent]

54. Dungeon Keeper
Bullfrog Productions
PC
1997
GameSpot Review - 9.0
Strategy




Evil is Good.

This was Bullfrog's final game of note. They followed it up with a clunky DK2, a few minor games, but this was their swan song. The company that Populous built's last hurrah.

But what a hurrah it is.

In Dungeon Keeper, the script is turned upside down. Instead of being the good guy wanting to investigate an evil dungeon and secure the treasure, you are now the evil overlord building the dungeon and trying to kill the good and noble adventurers that will inevitably come looking for evil to squish and gold to steal.

Thus, DK turns the classic fantasy around, and that is already a formula for success to my mind.

You will craft a dungeon out of rock, and then repeat again and again with new rooms and adventures as the campaign continues. The formula i simple enough.

Using a selection of imps, you will craft various rooms, such as graveyards, torture chambers, libraries and so forth. Various rooms will have various impacts upon your minions, and some rooms will create all new minions.

This is a game that plays out in real time, and it is a strategy game, but to apply the title "Real-Time Strategy" to it is akin to applying that name to Europa Universalis II or Crusader Kings. You can be a strategy in real time without being an RTS, and this is a great example (for another in the DK genre, see Evil Genius).



Above is a treasure room, as an example.

The mouse pointer is a hand, and you can do a lot with your hand. You can pick up items or creatures, and pick up several. Then you can drop them one at a time or a lot. I loved grabbing a bunch of monsters and then flinging them into the breach all at once. Here come some warlocks and bile demons and maybe a few dark mistresses all at once. Rar!



You could also slap with the hand. Slapping a minion could make them go faster, or you could torture a prisoner or kill things like chickens.

Just like other games, Dungeon keeper has a resource than you have to get, in this case, gold. Adventurers like it, and your dungeon requires it.

This is a fully fleshed out 3D game, so you can change the camera angle, or even possess one of your minions.



Like other strategy games that cam before, Dungeon Keeper requires that you research tech in order to build certain rooms.

The enemy Ai in this game is pretty good, but the combat system is weak, so there is not enough to use the AI. The game has a learning AI, and within a scenario, it will learn how you defeated it, but without a more complex combat system, there is simply not enough for the AI to exploit it.

The game has a vibrant ecology, with various minions demanding certain things, and some minions do NOT get on well. Dragons has different demands than the uber-Horned Demon.

Many minions will kill each other on sight, like skeletons and bile demons, so you have to keep these guys away from each other. This gives you dungeons an amazing organic feel to it. If your warlocks get bored, they starts blowing stuff up, Horned Demons will start eating your minions, and so forth. You have to keep the enemies separated, make sure everybody has what they need, and keep the more powerful minions from getting bored.

DK can be tedious sometimes. There are some scenarios that play with the formula too much where you have to go exploring with your imps, and fight bad guys in order to advance. I don't like that. Also, the combat system is flawed, as I mentioned above.

However, this is one of the classics of the PC, and you have to respect that it did something no other game had done, with a little Populous and a little Warcraft and a lot of its own thing, Dungeon Keeper is a great game that truly stood the test of time.

-Abe

[Abe Sargent]

Huh, looking at the DT rating from a new computer, looks like i need new pics. Hold on.


EDIT: Okay, new pics are up for DT. I found this neat double pic that moves from one to the other. Does it do that for y'all as well?

[rjolley]

Does for me.

[Abe Sargent]

Thanks! I have a few minutes so let's drop the next item in the list.

53. Triple Action
APh Technological Consulting
Intellivision
1981
GameSpot Review - None (7.6 User - Just 18 Votes Though)
Action




The Intellivision developed a reputation early for high quality games, including multiplayer games. From early on, you could find some serious multiplayer fun on the Intellivision, which led to #32 on the previous countdown (among others).

Triple Action was a cartridge released with three different games attached, with each designed to be played with another. Let's start with the worst.

Racing Cars was a game where each player had a straight track of road to drive. Once you accelerated up to your maximum speed, you were to dodge cars that came your way on various sides of the road. The only action was left/right, and it was slooooooow. This game sucked. You played it once or twice, to see what it was like, and then you never touched it again.

Then there was Battle Tanks. Battle Tanks was a bit like an upgraded Combat (for Atari). It has tanks that even look like the com,bat tanks, only there's terrain, the picture is a bit sharper, and you have some serious reflective shot action (remember, the Intellivision could handle up to eight sprites, allowing you more bullets.)

Battle Tanks, like all tank games of the era, is not that great after a few replays. Heaven knows how people played so much of Combat. Even this upgraded game lasts you a few tries at best before boredom sets.

Thus, this game is not included for the first two games. In Mario Party 5, the cumulative weight of the main game, the mini games, ice hockey, the board/card game, the battle game and beach volleyball gave it extra weight. In this cartridge, the third game stands alone.

Say hello to Biplanes.



Each player begins the game as one of the two planes you see here. The object of the game is to score 15 points. When you crash, your opponent scores one. When you shoot your opponent's plane, you score one. Also, occasionally the balloon will lift off, and when it does you can shoot the balloon for a point.

And that's it. Elegant. Simple. Perfect. Of all of the early games, this one used simplicity the best.

Well, there was a few other things. If you hit the metal tower, you crash, so there is a bit of terrain there. Also, you can fly behind the clouds and make a move while there, so your opponent will not know where you are or what your new heading is.

See, the Intellivision disk could sense 16 directions and had a 16 bit graphics processor. The games for it ran smoothly, allowing for elegance upon occasion.

This gave enough space for the programmers to design a physics engine for the game. There is some debate that the Biplanes game actually constitutes a full graphical game physics engine (which would make it the first) or if it just simulates a physics engine.

I don;t care what the debate says, the game feels like it has a graphics engine. You have to pull up to go down, pull own to go up, understand momentum, top speed, maximum velocity, and more.

You can twist your plane, make a loop, stall out, and use these maneuvers against your opponents. You learn how to come out of a stall, how to use momentum against your opponent, and so forth. Eventually, you are both high flying players, flying and shooting like aces.

The cartridge was entitled Some of Theirs in development and also included a Breakout game and a Pong like game. The idea was to show how Atari games could be made better on Intellivision, but the Biplanes game really was a monumental game.. The .lawyers forced Mattel Electronics to drop breakout and Pong for legal reasons, and the title was changed to Triple Action.

Even the developers at Mattel Electronics loved this game. Here is some info from the developers:

Originally Posted by Blue Sky Rangers

More hours were spent in the programming cubicles playing Biplanes than any other Intellivision game. Although it's one of the simplest, many programmers felt it was the most challenging and fun of the two-person games. The first time you deliberately stall, go into a free fall, then pull out with a backward loop at the last second to blast your opponent at pointblank range is a joy!...So many hours were wasted on Biplanes, that when a memo was circulated April 1, 1982, ordering Triple Action deleted from programmers' hard disks, Biplanes-addict Steve Montero ( Night Stalker ) didn't argue; sheepishly, he erased it, only later discovering that the memo was an April Fool's hoax

Other games from the Intellivision are very noteworthy (and more will chart later). However, this may have been the one that was the most fun to play, for a simple, quick multiplayer game full of trash talk and shooting. I've had an Intellivision running Biplanes for two hours without anyone dropping it for another console system or a different game for Intellivision.

-Abe

[Abe Sargent]

52. Pac-Man
Namco
Coin-Operated Arcade
1980
GameSpot Review - None. (9.0 User)
Action





Everybody has played Pac-Man, so how do you account for it in a review? Along with Front Office Football at 13, it's rough to actually do an evaluation for you without bringing in biases.

This entry is for the arcade version, not for any ported console, PC, cell phone, or what have you version. What I can say is that playing the arcade Pac-Man (or Ms. Pac-Man) is one of the single defining moments in every gamer's career who is my age and older, and perhaps a little younger as well.

Pac-Man was inventive from numerous accounts. Sure, moving your icon around the maze, eating dots, escaping the ghosts, and turning the tables by grabbing a power pellet were interesting. This was a new game, not derivative like many contemporary arcade games.

It was also cleverly programmed each ghost was programmed differently, with a different style of Pac-Man hunting, giving them personalities. This was new and interesting as well, giving the game an organic feel to it.



Pac-Man was so staggeringly successful that it became one of the first franchises in gaming. Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and then more followed. It has been ported to nearly every system, and it was involved in one of the greatest legal suits in gaming history when Atari sued the Magnavox makers of Odyssey2 over the making of KC Munchkin.

Frankly, on my Odyssey2, Munchkin plays differently, and is more of an homage to Pac-Man than a clone of it. Still, on appeal, Atari won. KC Munchkin and Magnavox/Phillips lost.

Anyway, the game survived the Crash of 1983 and played well in arcades for years and years. With lunchboxes, a tv show, and more all spunoff, making Pac-man the first gaming franchise to become an icon, with marketing opportunities at every corner.

This is one of the classics of classics, at the beginning of the beginnings, and let's take a moment of silence for the Pac-Man.

[Abe Sargent]

51. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Konami
Nintendo Entertainment System
1987
GameSpot Review - None. (User 8.3)
Action/RPG - Fantasy/Platform




As I mentioned before with the Metroid review, the platformers that really stick with me are those that transcend the genre and do new things.

I can only select one game from any series, which prevents my list from having two Civilizations, three Pokemons, a bunch of Football Managers/Championship Managers, Maddens, etc. I try to come up with the game that is, for me, the most definitive of that series. Sometimes, it is the first entry. No entry has touched Final Fantasy since the original was published. No Zelda is as good compared to its contemporaries as the first, which was simply a break through in game design.

On the other hand, I believe that the latest incarnations of franchises like Pokemon and SimCity (SC4 not Societies) take the formula in new and interesting ways, so they get the nod.

Castlevania is one of the most respected platform franchises of all time, right there with Sonic, but beneath Mario. For me, this came down to two games in the franchise that could get a nomination. Simon's Quest gives you the free range, RPG-lite experience that I really enjoyed, or Symphony of the Night gives a much more dedicated RPG-platform experience, albeit two generations later on the Playstation.

I decided to give the nod to the one that stood out in a sea of platform games as a brilliant, although very difficult game. Castlevania III might be a classic platformer, but this game was more.

In Simon's Quest, you play the part of Simon Belmont, around 7 years after Castlevania The countryside is rife with rumors that Dracula's body parts have been collected and he is trying to come back from the dead.

You begin with a basic whip and a hope. You can travel in any direction, although like Metroid, there are a few areas locked off that require items.

When you kill a monster with your whip, there is a chance of a heart left. Collect this heart, because it is the currency of the game. You can buy items and whip upgrades with the money you get from killing bad guys.

Hearts are also a source of power for many items, akin to the normal Castlevania route. Thus, spending your hearts wildly is unwise, since it is also the way you buy things. Making your currency your fuel as well gives hearts a powerful tension that you have to keep up for most of the game.



Be careful, because night will fall, and the enemies will be twice as hard to kill, give hearts much better, higher experience, and the towns are taken over by zombies, ghouls, and bats.



As you journey, you may find that you gain enough experience to level up. This refills your damage meter. You take less damage from attacks, and your damage meter increases. Thus, this is an rpg-lite game. With levels, experience, currency, dungeon delving, and other classic elements, this meets my personal requirements to be considered an RPG, but barely. This isn't deep role-playing after all, its Castlevania.

You have to journey across Transylvania and find five different castles guarded by the minions of Dracula. You explore the castles, with fake walls and floors, traps, spikes of death, and many baddies. While in the castle, you have to find a person who will sell you a Stake, and then launch it at an orb when you find it. That Orb will explode and Dracula's body part will be revealed, and you an take it.



The body parts are great items. Dracula's Rib, as an example, can be used as a shield against monsters' fireballs.

As you quest, you'll find items to buy (Holy Water) or on your own (Diamond). You can destroy blocks with Holy Water, which can help you find items, clues, and new paths.

As you journey, you will come across split paths, and the world is open ended, so you can go anywhere you want (again, with certain restrictions. For example, I believe you need to see with Dracula's Eye in order to get to a certain castle.)

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest has a strong riddle component. Clues are vague, oftentimes very much so. This can lead to significant frustration as you do not know where to go next or what to do. I definitely experienced that as a child.

There was no gamefaqs at the time, and no way to get help. I don't remeber how I slogged through. I know I never called the helpline for Nintendo games, nor did I ever read a Nintendo Power. How did I figure them out? Did I get advice from someone? I doubt I figured them all out as a child.

I replayed Simon's Quest last year, and discovered that the game takes about 2 hours, 15 minutes to play through when you know where everything is and in what order to play it.

In the game, much like Wasteland, you cannot find healing items. The only way you can get healed is at a chapel (in town) and by gaining a level. This gives a much more realistic spin to the game. Danger feels very real, and even a hit from a small creature can be enough to knock you out after a long battle prior.

Also helping the realism is that there are no candles or lanterns to smash in the castle, with weird and mysterious items in those candles and lanterns. Even wonder how you find axes, hearts, holy water and more in Dracula's own castle, in the candles?

Like other Nintendo games, Simon's Quest uses a password system, so you will have to jot down your progress when you give up the session.

The game has multiple endings based on how long it takes to win.

This was not a perfect game. the RPG element could have been heavier, the clues clearer. It was as frustrating as Shadowgate, but much much more rewarding. It was truly a classic, and it would not be until SotN that the series would return to the Simon's Quest roots.

Enjoy the game!

[Abe Sargent]

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.

[Abe Sargent]

49. Lakers versus Celtics
Electronic Arts
PC
1989
No GameSpot Listing. Mobygames User - 3.4/5
Sports - Basketball




Three of the games in my top 32 involved sports, so you might be wondering where the sports games were here. Sure, Deathtrack was a racing game, but hardly a sport. Well, here is one now.

Say hello to the original NBA Live long before the series was called that. EA released a mega-hit for the PC and later ported it to consoles. That hit, was Lakers versus Celtics (sometimes called Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs)

In this game, you could choose one of eight teams, and then play basketball against the computer or a real live person. You could play through the actual NBA playoffs in a tournament setting until one team emerged victorious.




The game was instrumental as a landmark in basketball games and perhaps sports games as a whole (i was unable to find this out). It was the first basketball game to have both an NBA license and players with their actual names. I do not know what was the first sports game in general to have that, but it was certainly first for basketball.

Each player had individual stats and individual sprites. The stars even had individual moves. Jordan, Kareem, Malone, Bird are just some examples of players with their own shots. Players even had their own jerseys.



The gameplay was very smooth, allowing you all the range of normal basketball play. It can be difficult to program controls for a basketball game, especially in the passing area, but this game was fine at the passing. it was smoother than games I played on the Genesis or Super Nintendo.

The game did everything they could to make the basketball game seem real, from announcers to cheers to half-time shows to music. This was a high quality game, well designed from start to finish.

The game kept track of stats from physical characteristics to actual stats from the games you played. It was the top of the line for the PC and the ports to consoles would change a few teams, clean up the graphics (since it was a year later), and sell even more copies.

EA then released sequels with the two NBA Final teams in the title, with a selection of teams from the playoffs as the playable teams.

By the way, this is where my love of the Jazz comes from. I did not have a favorite team, so I chose the play with the Jazz, and I loved the players. To this day, I can role call the roster and how I used each player in the game.

To a great and standard creating game! Good job EA.


EDIT: EA now gets two games on my countdown as they had Madden, joining the likes of 3DO (HOMM2, M&MVI), Hudson Soft (Military Madness, Mario party 5), Paradox (Crusader Kings, EU2), and Microprose (Civ, MOM, MOO2, Colonization, X-Com, Magic: the Gathering). MOO2 and MOM were developed by SimTek, and released by Microprose, so that gives SimTek two games as well.

[Abe Sargent]

After this game, we are halfway there.

48. Street Fighter II
Capcom
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
1991
GameSpot Review - None (User 8.8)
Action - Fighting




First-person Shooters did not begin with Wolfenstein 3D, but they were popularized by it. Not only did Wolf 3D put FPS games on the map, but it also created many of the conventions of FPS games for years that would follow. This makes it a landmark game.

Similarly, Street Fighter II is a landmark game. Did it create the fighting game? No, of course not. However, it did popularize it and created a lot of conventions for it that are still in use today.

Street Fighter II was originally released as an arcade game, and revitalized the ailing industry in a way few games would. It gave arcades in shopping centers and malls around the country new breath for a few years, and a lot of new quarters. SFII was ported to a lot of systems. I am looking at the first port of the game, which was to SNES. This port was how I was introduced to the game.

In Street Fighter II, you choose one of eight characters, and then you fight the other seven. Once you have defeated them without losing, you are then assigned to the four bosses, and if you defeat the final boss, then you win. It's that simple.

What makes Street Fighter II so interesting, and so good?

You can choose eight different characters, each with their own unique style of play and unique set of moves (except for Ryu/Ken who have virtually identical moves). Each characters has various strengths, for example, Zangief is slow whereas Chun-Li is faster, but Zangief is stronger than Chun-Li.

Who are you going to be?




Then there were six buttons, a light, medium and heavy punch, and a light, medium and heavy kick. The moves were faster and harder depending on which button you pushed, which gave the game significant strategy. This was not a button mashing fest (like later fighting games often became such as Smash Bros.). Instead, it is a battle of strategy.

Street Fighter II also introduced the idea of special moves, made for your character by certain combinations of buttons and the D-Pad. This gave your characters nice development on the playing field. Finding a character who had two good moves was sometimes a chore. I liked Blanka, because both of his moves were easy, although I ultimately moved to Dhalsim, and then Chun-Li. I beat the game with all three.

Players like Guile, Ken, and Ryu were more popular. Ken and Ryu are sparring here.



The game also introduced the idea of combos, where certain combinations of moves are particularly effective. This can give you a lot of momentum as your target slows down.

I hope you can see all of the revolutionary things that Street Fighter II had going for it. The game was well balanced, with blocks and attacks relied upon to give the game a lot of strategy. There are some modern fighting games where blocking is useless, and you have to attack all out constantly. I find this boring. I prefer the strategy of SFII to those games.

[Abe Sargent]

47. Sea Rogue
MicroPlay
PC
1992
GameSpot Review - None (7.2 User, just 4 reviews)
Action/Adventure/Strategy/RPG






It is rare that you come across a game that is so unique, so individual that it defies genrefication. Action? Adventure? Strategy? RPG? Only these generic titles are able to be applied to Sea Rogue, a truly unique game.

I was not aware of Sea Rogue when it was initially released, and only a few years ago, did I come across it on an abandonware site (Underdogs). I downloaded and wow, was I impressed. I’m rarely so impressed by a game from years ago.

I don’t know why I never found Sea Rogue, because it is my kind of game, made by a sub-label of MicroProse, which is my favorite gaming company. I’m sure I saw it on the shelf at some point in time or another. This puts it in the family of games like Civilization, Master of Magic, Master of Orion 2, X-Com, and Magic: the Gathering.

In Sea Rogue, your task is to investigate clues about wrecks from throughout history in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, and other adjacent water zones like the English Channel, Irish Sea, etc. Then when you find the shipwreck, you dive it, bring the booty back to your ship, and return to harbor.

Sea Rogue was not the first game to explore the treasure hunter profession. That was probably Search for the Titanic, from 1989.

The game has a lot of elements, in a similar way to Pirates!

Let’s take a look at some of the elements.


First of all, you acquire clues in ports. There are a variety of ways that you can find out about a shipwreck. The first way is to head to a tavern, and talk to patrons until someone approaches you with a treasure map. You can purchase a map, which gives you a general idea of where a wreck is, although finding it can take some work until you buy a decoder.

You can also find clues in libraries after you do research (based on your crew’s research skill) and find clues in taverns. You can also hire researchers to find the coordinates to random wrecks, and pursue that.

Once you are at the coordinates of a wreck (or if you believe that you are but are unsure, like in treasure maps), you can search the area, which is laid out like a giant grid. As you move, your magnetoscope records various metals, and tells you if you come across something. You can scour the coordinates yourself or do so automatically.

If you find a wreck, you can assemble up to four of your crew and send them to the bottom. While down there, they have a limited amount of oxygen, based on their endurance stat. You can assign them various equipment like a trowel, spear gun, knife, magnetoscope, and sand vacuum. Crew with the magnetoscope can see if there are any metals on a square. The seafloor is divided into a grid, with five levels. The top level, and then four levels underneath. Your magnetoscope divers will detects bronze, steel, silver, gold, or iron. You can mark a square as they go over, and then hit the squares later with other divers.

Each ship falls in a pattern, and by looking at a map of the seafloor, you can often tell what that pattern is ahead of time. Treasure will fall in a designated pattern, based on the shipwreck.

As you dig through the sea floor, you can find a lot of great items. You can find chests of treasure, cannons, bronze cannons, encrusted items, as well as twisted metal, planks of wood, junk, assorted silverware, and the occasional bomb. Dig up a bomb accidentally and that character is out, removed from the game due to serious injury.

You can also get attacked by sharks or enemy divers. Sharks will leave with a spear gun attack or a knife attack. It behooves you to have a character with nice stats there underwater, ready to attack sharks or enemy divers. If a shark attacks, the game will have your characters automatically fire spear guns at the shark to drive it away. However, if enemy divers attack, you will have to control your characters in real time, and move to attack them.

If you can’t drive them off, then you can head back to your boat, and hope your guys aren’t too wounded.

Regardless of whether or not you had battle with sharks or enemy divers (which is rare to fight the divers), when you surface, you bring the items you found up with you. If you found any bronze cannon, you can appraise their value using your captain‘s appraise skill, and then sell them in harbor. You can also clear up any encrusted items, and appraise them as well. Then you’ll want to identify the wreck. Using various clues the game gives you, you will need to select a ship.

You can look at the coins, which may tell you the nationality of the ship, plus the year they were minted. The bronze cannon can tell you the same. Any encrusted items, or chests of jewels will also give you a lot of info. Then, you head to the ship database. Included with the game is a book of shipwrecks that can be found in the game, mostly historical although a few, like the Vikings ships, have fake names.

Using the book, and cross referencing the time of the wreck with the info you have and the general location, you can usually hit the ship. Ship info includes a manifest of what you can find, so you’ll know if you have an encrusted item or bronze cannon. If you correctly identify it, your treasure is worth full value in a port, but if you incorrectly identify it, it’s only worth half. You can later buy a computer that always ids a wreck accurately.

Then you can choose to redive, and hit one of three ways. You can extensively dive, where you’ll head back down. Or you can sand suck the site, which gives you 75% of the gold and silver and a few encrusted items, or you can blast it, get 50%, and piss off the nation of the ship. Blasting is quick and sucking is slower, but both happen immediately on the game interface.



Note that you have relations with various nations. Don’t blast too many of their ships, or they will send their warships to attack you. Don’t attack their ships either, which shouldn’t happen much.

As this above statement implies, there is ship to ship combat in this game. You have various rivals, and can man the guns, maneuvering the ship and firing on your opponent. You cannot attack a warship, so stay clear of them. When you buy a sub later in the game, called Sea Rogue (the title of the game), the combat changes to launching torpedoes and carefully maneuvering your sub to avoid mines and torpedoes.

When you return to port with your items, you can sell them to museums, private buyers, buy items from the black market, nautical stores, and do research.

As you progress, you can buy a better ship, with two better models available in the game. You can also buy more equipment and upgrade your ship with bigger hulls, better scopes and so forth.

You have various crew, and each has a job on the ship. At the beginning of the game, you can create the characters for your crew, and they each have various stats such as charisma and dexterity and endurance. Then you assign points to skills based on intelligence. Different crew members have different skills based on their profession, with a few skills that all characters have access to. For example, only your weapons officer has ordinance handling, only your captain has appraising, etc. As your crew gain experience, they gain the ability to level up. Head to port and find a school for that crewmember, and then level them up, applying more points to skills.



Different ports have different things, so you may not find what you are looking for in a particular harbor. Finding the right harbor is also one of the things you have to balance, as you do not want to venture beyond the reach of your fuel.

Once you upgrade to the Sea Rogue, you can buy a probe, which allows you to explore modern wrecks, which you cannot normally dive prior to Sea Rogue. Then you can send your probe into these modern wrecks, and search for safes to crack open.

There are some historically significant wrecks in the game like the Lusitania and the Titanic. Find those, and the country will give you a bounty. Good money in that.

The game has an internal difficulty. You can start at any of the three difficulties, and as the game goes, it will bump you up to the next level (unless you started at the highest) which gives you a chance to get your feet set before heading up a level.

This is an epic game. I hope you can see that from my review. It is a ton of fun, even today. I enjoyed it, and if you are a fan of MicroProse games and missed this like I did, you might want to grab yourself a copy and try it out.

[Abe Sargent]

Hmm, not many responses this time. Perhaps this just wasn't a good idea for a dynasty?

[Abe Sargent]

46. Archon: The Light and the Dark
FreeFall Associates (EA Pub)
Atari 8 Bit Computers
1983
GameSpot Review - None (8.9 User Review)
Strategy/Action




I mention the value of Sea Battle in my first review, with Sea Battle being a cartridge for the Intellivision that has an overland strategy map and then when two fleets from opposing sides hit, you can fight with them on the screen. Different ships have different stats, speed, ranges, weapon power, and there are even two ships with torpedoes instead of guns.

That game came out in 1980, three years before Archon, so I would not be surprised to discover that the Archon developers were real Sea Battle fans.

Archon began on Atari 8 Bit computers, (Like the 800XL, for example), but was quickly ported to other machines, including the NES. Brilliance travels.

Archon is a simple enough game at first glance. You are aligned on a chessboard looking structure, with pieces arrayed on each side.



That's pretty simple. Many of the pieces move in a way similar to a chess piece, so the pawns in Chess move like the knights/goblins in Archon. However, you'll note that the board is 9x9 not 8x8.

The teams pair light vs dark, and you will note several things on the board. Some spaces are completely white, and those are good spaces for the light team. Some spaces are completely black, and those are good spaces for the dark team. Other spaces begin purple, and will change first to one color, then another, as time goes by.

When two opposing pieces are on the same space, battle ensues, and you have to fight using your piece. Different piece shave different stats, and so knight/goblins are fast, but do little damage and take very little to die. They have a melee weapon so they have to run up and stab you.

On the other hand, the good guy's have unicorns. These are fast, with some serious HP, and have a ranged attack. The manticore is on the side of evil, with projectiles and some speed. Dragons, shapeshifters, and phoenixes duke it out with valkyries, trolls and djinnis.

The goal of the game is to either eliminate the opposing magic-user (Sorceress for the dark side, Wizard for the light), or to capture all five power points. There are five spaces on the edges of the board, and dead center, that are power points, and this creates a chokehold on the board and you fight over this spaces. Three power points are on purple paces, and change colors, but one each is on a white and black space.

When you fight on a space of your color, your figure gets more hit points and a more powerful attack. The result is that you are likely to win if your pieces are evenly matched.



Although the general trend is for the more powerful pieces to win the battle, a good fighter, or a lucky piece, can often bring the upset.

Your magic-user can cast spells on the chessboard when it is your turn. They have seven different spells, and they can cast each spell only once per game.

Their spells include heal (because damage rolls over from combat to combat), revive, summon elemental, teleport, shift time (reverses the day-night cyle), imprison, and exchange.

Archon spawned two sequels, Archon II and Archon Ultra, which have massively updated graphics and a smoothly game engine. It was also followed by homage games like Dark Legions. Archon was also wildly influential. For example, Star Control II, which charts as high as #16 on my list is a game with a real time combat element superimposed over a strategy game. It was also designed by the same two guys who designed Archon; they had moved to another studio.

I believe Archon was influenced by Sea Battle, and in turn, influenced many games on its own. It is a ton of fun to play, and for someone who knows chess, it is very easy to pick up.

Like many other classic games, such as X-Com, Star Control 2, and more, it appears that some people are working on a new Archon game for free online. I don;t know if it is any good, but you can find out more here:

hxxp://archon.curvenet.co.uk/

[duff88]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

Hmm, not many responses this time. Perhaps this just wasn't a good idea for a dynasty?

I'm sure a lot of people are reading, I sure am. The reason why you get fewer answer might be that some of these games are darker, less known.

I had Simon's Quest on the NES and never got to play it more than an hour or two, simply was so slow and uneventful.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by duff88

I'm sure a lot of people are reading, I sure am. The reason why you get fewer answer might be that some of these games are darker, less known.

I had Simon's Quest on the NES and never got to play it more than an hour or two, simply was so slow and uneventful.

Thanks!

That's true about games like Sea Rogue or Deathtrack or Moraff's World, but I expected more about games like Street Fighter II, Metroid, Castlevania, Mario Party, Wolfenstein 3D, and so forth.

[Abe Sargent]

45. Fallout
Black Isle Studios
PC
1997
GameSpot Review - 8.7
RPG - Post-Apocalypse


http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/fallout



Say hello to what is arguably the only hard RPG on my countdown. Simon's Quest and Sea Rogue include RPG elements, but they are hardly full fledged RPGs. Pool of Radiance was an honorable mention, and did not chart. Moraff's World is a dungeon delve and thus not a "hard" RPG.

It only makes sense. I claim to have played and loved a lot of games and genres, but you saw a very RPG heavy list in teh top 32, but now, there's just one hard RPG. No Baldur's Gate, Morrowind, Wasteland, Might of Magic VI, Guild Wars, Final Fantasy, Ultima Online here. Now RPGs in a classic sense ae missing, with Fallout the only entrant. (I like giving hints like this).

This entry gives Black Isle Studios two games (along with Baldur's Gate) and they join my esteemed group of peers along with EA, 3DO, MicroProse, and the others.

I cannot give BGII or Throne of Bhaal a pass to here. They are in the same series. So, for Fallout to chart, I have to believe that it is truly better than the other games made from Black Isle Studios. I think that's (largely) easy enough to do.

KOTOR is largely remembered as amazing because it was Star Wars done right, not because of the game engine and mechanics, which were fairly easy to abuse. Icewind Dale was less role-playing and more dungeon delving. NWN was obscured by technical problems and ordinary characters. Frankly, the only challenger to Fallout is Planescape: Torment, which is a great game, no question. It's not as good as Fallout, but it is strong. It might even be in my next ten games on my list, but it does not make this list, because it's experiment, fun as it was, often took away a lot of the tension of an RPG (death).

Fallout is the spiritual successor to Wasteland, and you know how highly I regard Wasteland. In fact, just last week I replayed through Wasteland. Took me four days to play through the game, and I know where everything is, and all of the passwords.

I cried when I finished Final Fantasy on my GBA, because I knew it might be the last time I ever play that game, and I have played through it numerous times. I was very emotional with Wasteland as well, because, again, it may be the last time I ever play that game. (To find out why, in case you are not already aware, check this post, but come back please. Revelations of an FOFC Poster - Front Office Football Central)

With that kind of love for Wasteland, you can understand why I fondly play Fallout. Although my final love will likely always be fantasy, I have a soft spot for a good post-apocalyptic yarn as well, and Fallout is pretty good at bringing that.

Fallout makes some changes from the normal D&D engine of their other games. Although it is still stat based game, they are on a scale of 1-10, and there are a bunch of things, like skills and traits that are not in the D&D game at all.

I have Fallout3 wallpaper on my desktop right now, btw.

Like normal, you can make decisions that give you experience, and you also get karma, which is a much better system than a plain alignment.

Anyway, let me back up.

In Fallout, you are the Vault Dweller. The water chip, responsible for your vault's water supply has broken, and you are charged with finding a new water chip. You have 150 days to get a water chip back to your people before the game is over.



Thus, you have to explore and discover the area around your vault, until you ultimately find the water chip and bring it back. Should you be successful, then you will be tasked with killing a bunch of mutants that are trying to take over the world. You need to gather information, supplies, experience, and then infiltrate their base and kill their leader.

You have 500 days to do everything or else the mutants take out Vault 13 and the game is over. Choices you make have an impact on the game. For example, there are some water merchants in a city called The Hub. You can pay them to bring water to Vault 13, which will give you an extra 70 days to find the water chip, but will bring attention to the Vault, so the total amount of time before the mutants take over the Vault is reduced to just 400 days.

At the end of the game, after saving the Vault twice, the Vault Dweller is exiled from the Vault upon his return, since he has changed too much in the eyes of the Overseer.



Looks like this character has recruited a pair of NPCs.

As you can tell, during the game, you can recruit NPCs, who will join your party, but attack on their own. You can give them equipment, guns, ammo and what have you. This can add significantly to your force, but I don;t like the way NPCs are handled. It's more realistic, but I prefer to see an NPCs equipment, move stuff around, and fit them out. Instead, they are true extra characters, with their own attitudes, preferences, and so forth. You have to talk to them, and then give them an item in the conversation interface, which, again, might be realistic, but could have been skipped to my mind.


Fallout has a great sense of its self with its retro-futurism. I love flavor in a game (see my review on Tropico for an example). Wasteland has a brilliant sense of this as well, and Fallout may actually have more, with specialized graphics and interface that highlight the style (Retro-futurism is the style that the future will be similar to how i was viewed in the 50's and 40's). As we know today, radiation post-fallout would not cause massive mutations and monsters to arise, but instead would just kill us, burn us, etc. However, that is also an important element of retro-futurism.

In order to demonstrate this feel, here is a map of the Vault. Where would you like to go?




There are a few oblique references to Wasteland, to suggest that this is the same world. In a reference, we have Fat Freddy and the Desert Rangers. One NPC you can recruit is an ex-Desert Ranger.

The game uses a turn based combat system, with a character having a certain amount of action points, and each action using those points. Sound familiar? Yup, the combat system is very similar to the X-Com combat system, and its obvious that Black Isle felt it was useful in this game.

Here's something from wikipedia that I pulled out from development. I really like it.

Originally Posted by wikipedia

At one point in Fallout's development, in Junktown, if the player aided local sheriff Killian Darkwater in killing the criminal Gizmo, Killian would take his pursuit of the law much too far to the point of tyranny, and force Junktown to stagnate. However, if the player killed Killian for Gizmo, then Gizmo would help Junktown prosper for his own benefit. The game's publisher did not like this bit of moral ambiguity and had the outcomes changed to an alternate state, where aiding Killian results in the "good" ending.

I love Fallout and Fallout 2, and I have high hopes for the Bathesda made Fallout 3, coming out soon. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but for its day, this was a pretty well made game, and a lot of fun to play.

[Swaggs]

No Leisure Suit Larry?

[Abe Sargent]

44. Railroad Tycoon 3
PopTop Software
PC
2003
GameSpot Review – 8.7
Strategy/Simulation – Economic


http://store.steampowered.com/app/7610/





That this franchise would chart should not be much of a surprise. That it is the non-MicroProse version might. This gives PopTop Software two entries now (along with Tropico).

Simply put, RRT3 is arguably the most fun I have ever had in an economic simulation game (well, it’s actually second most, another game in this genre will hit later on). It is tons of fun, highly replayable, and very intricate while also being captivating on different levels.

Do you like the original RRT? Sure, we all do. It was a great game. Did you like the remake a few years ago? I didn’t. Want to know why? Because all it was, was a pretty game, and not a good game. Later versions of the game advanced the concepts so much that the simple Railroads felt very poor after playing the PopTop games.

Why do I love RRT3 so much compared to other versions? Well, this is a game that has a fully actualize economic engine, which is great from a number of angles.

Let’s slow down and introduce the game to those who are unaware.

In this game, you have scenarios of various historical times and locations on earth, plus a few fantasy scenarios. Your goals may differ from scenario to scenario, but the general idea is to lay some track, build a railroad, and make the cash.

You have to lay the track exactly as you want, so be careful. Poor track laying will not only cost you more money, but could slow your trains as they have more elevation or turns to deal with.



Then you need to build a station on your track, along with service buildings for your trains. After all of that, you can buy a locomotive from a list of those historically available each with different stats. Then plot your route, and what cargo you want your train to haul, and from there it’s simple work.

Only, its not. How do you know if your track will make you money or not? You need to understand the economy. Note that the economy will change over time. When oil is first discovered, it is demanded in homes, moderately, as a fuel source, but it does not make much money. Once Oil Refinerys come along, oil is much more demanded, as it is purchased by the factory and turned into diesel.

There are a lot of economies going on at the same time Some products are made and demanded by people, without need for factories and whatnot – such as corn. Corn can help increase the production of other building, but it has no demand aside from that in industry, just in people’s homes.

Other products have only an industrial demand. No one wants logs from a logging camp, so you hip them to a lumber mill, but no one wants lumber either. Get that to a furniture factory or toy factory, and turn the lumber into end products.

Other products are desired as raw materials and as ends. A Dary Farm makes milk, which is desired by consumers, or can be taken to a Dairy Processor and turned into cheese. Fruit is the same, turning into alcohol at a distillery or being eaten outright by consumers.

Thus, these products will always be in high demand. Building track from a city with a lot of produce to one that needs it will make you money. Building track form a pair of logging camps to a city that had a lumber mill also makes you money.



You can look at a screen to see all of the demands for products, and where to make your line. You can also purchase or build industries, and this can help you find a need and fill it, or to find an industry that may be cheap now, because it is not making money, but once you run your line to it, it will make money, so buy it on the cheap, and then turn a profit.

There are scenarios where I will start with industry, and not track I do that on the Midwest where there are a bunch of wheat farms, and then I build a brewery and make the alcohol. I then spend my initial proceeds on upgrading my brewery and buying the nearby farms as they are now turning a profit as well.

Understanding industry and the in game economy is part of the charm of the game. For example, if City A wants produce, and City B makes produce, then after you deliver a few loads, the supply and demands starts to even out, and you make less and less money on each tip. On the other hand, if City B has a distillery, and uses up the alcohol quickly, then the demand will be more consistent, thus giving you more profit.

You can also ship mil and passengers, when can give you a ton of money between major cities, but you need to have connections between at least two major hubs with some distance between them in order to really make money from this.

Where do you build your first track? What towns or cities do you connect? Each scenario and economy is very different, so you have to study the map.

You are not the only person on the map, other’s will transport goods. Some will be fellow tycoons making their own railroad, and others are just people who will carry goods down rivers, shorelines, and such to places of need. If you load a map, and see that a trio of Coal Mines are far away from a Steel Mill, but are upstream, then you’ll probably see that the coal is already getting to the Mill from the people on the map, and thus a railroad will not make much money. On the other hand, if that Mill is not getting iron, then you can serve that need, carrying iron, and buy the Steel Mill, to make a lot of tasty Steel, and you only have to worry about half of the components to make steel, since the people on the map are acting as they would naturally, brining coal to your Mill. Then build a Tool and Die right beside your steel mill to take the steel and turn it into goods, demanded everywhere, and make much profit.

Steel Mill to the left:



You want more economy? You can buy stock in your company, and have a personal wealth. You can buy competitors stock, release more stock, short sell their stock, and buy on demand. This can get quite complex, as some scenarios demand you have a certain level of personal wealth. Stocks will split, drop and so forth. You can buy back stock or change the dividend in order to manipulate the market. If you get over extended, you will get a call from your broker to fix things or else you will be forced to sell stock.

You also start with access to a few countries, and in many scenarios, you have to buy access to other countries. For example, there is a scenario set in Germany where you have to build track to all of these little German states like Oldenburg and Bremen. In the Orient Express scenario, you have to decide how you will go from Vienna to Istanbul. I chose to go down to the Ottoman’s through Serbia and then go over the Balkans, which isn’t anything near the real life line, but I didn’t have to buy access to all of these extra countries, and I felt it was cheaper to go through mountains than buy all of those accesses.

There are random events like recessions, booms, and then historical events, such as new locomotives being discovered, the cost of explosives going down with the discovery of cordite, which drops tunnel costs, and so forth.

With all of this detail, this is a great game, with each time playing very differently, especially since the goals for the scenarios can be radically different. In one you mighthave to ship a lot of weapons, in another you might have to connect two cities, and in a third you might have to have a high personal net worth. Usually the goals are combination of factors such as: Make Industry profits of 20 million by 1901; have a personal net worth of 12 million by 1901; ship 100 loads of produce by 1896. That might be one scenario.

For the developers of this game, it was a passion, an art. So they released an expansion, Coast to Coast, which you can download. For free. A free expansion for their game? Excellent!

I hope that you can see that I love this game for numerous reasons, including the detail. For example, in Railroads, you could only buy stocks in giant chunks of 10% each, which is highly unrealistic and problematic. Also, Railroads felt less like an economic simulation and more like building trains on a tabletop.

[Abe Sargent]

43. Mega Man 2
Capcom
Nintendo Entertainment System
1988
GameSpot Review – None (8.8 User)
Action – Platform




This is the highest charting platformer on my countdown (probably, although some might argue that a higher game is a platform game as well. This is the final game before the top ten games in this countdown begin.

Mega Man 2 brought the Mega Man game and advanced it significantly. Gone were obscenely hard levels, the requirement to replay levels, scores, choppy jumping, and more. Instead, introduced are passwords, energy tanks and a smoother interface.

And yet, it was still a find game. Mega Man 2 was a blast to play from beginning to end, where Mega Man could often wander into tedious.

The concept of the game was simple enough. As you began, you could choose a stage, any stage. Then you entered the stage and began moving, jumping and attacking the various enemies that the game would throw at you. If you made it to the end, you would have to face a difficult boss, and then, should you defeat said boss, you gained that bosses weapon.

And that’s the gimmick of the Mega Man series right there. You now have the Boss’s weapon, and it will act differently than yours, and it may do things on screen (some weapons will destroy blocks, for example). It also takes energy from a tank of energy, that each weapon has, and some drops will allow you to refill your tank. That weapon may also help you against a Boss, because Mega Man 2 is a giant Rock-Paper-Scissors game where each bosses weapon is especially strong against another boss, creating a giant cycle. Once you break into that cycle, you can try to find out who is the weakest against your new weapon (or ask your friends, and then try to make your way through that level and kill the boss at the end.




Then, once you had defeated all of the stages, you would move through a bunch of stages at the end, until you ultimately faced the evil Dr. Wily. Defeat him, and the game ends. Yay!

They will do things to play with the physics of the game. For example, on this stage, you are underwater with death spike son the ceiling. If you jump with your normal amount of energy, underwater, you will fly up and hit a spike, dying. Thus, you have to use caution and care.



And that’s pretty much it. Like I said, it was just a platformer. There’s not much to the game. Run, shoot, jump, kill and recharge. It was a blast to play, and really smooth, with an open ended game state (initially, when you got to the end stages, you had to play them in order). There will even come a place where you have to fight all of the bosses again is a giant teleporter room at the end, and you guessed it, you can fight them in any order.

As a result, there’s not too much I can add to the review. GameSpot put it in the Hall of Fame for the best games of all time. I can add that. Nintendo Power had it on their list of the best games ever developed for any Nintendo system. That I can add too.

Here’s to a great game!

[duff88]

I love Megaman and even still occasionally play the game. That said, Megaman III is the best!

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

No Leisure Suit Larry?

10 games left, I guess we'll see.

[Abe Sargent]

In the top ten, there are just 4 PC games this time, whereas last time there were nine. One of those games is about to fall, leaving just three PC games in the back nine.

42. Sid Meier’s SimGolf
Maxis, Firaxis
PC
2002
GameSpot Review – 8.8
Action/Simulation – Sports/Economic




I bought this game for 10 bucks in the discount rack and I was very pleased with the game. To me, SimGolf is great in the way that Tropico is great. Neither game tries to do too much, and instead polishes their little corner of the gaming world until it shines.

This is Firaxis’s first game, but Maxis’s second, so they now join the annals of fame. As a combination of the studio that brings you Civ and the one that brings you SimCity, you might think that SimGolf will be this amazingly detailed game, and it certainly is in many areas.

However, at the end of the day, it is just a little economic sim with playing golf tossed in. This is not an earth shaker or mover. You do not conquer worlds, build metropolises, run a government, invent technology or any of those things. You just build a golf course. And you can play it, too.

In SimGolf you select a plot of land, which may have a different look and feel based on where it is. There are desert golf courses you can select, or oceanic ones, there is a northern one, like Canada and the UK type courses, and then there is the typical deciduous one.

Once you have purchased a plot of land somewhere in the world, you can begin building your golf course. Start out by placing your tee and hole. Then you can add a large variety of obstacles, from water hazards to sand traps to a variety of rough, green, fairway, rocks, bunkers, rivers, flowers, trees, bushes, and landmarks like a Stonehenge, statue, or a water mill.

You can probably manage one or two holes with your initial money. Perhaps three. Then you can wait while you get a little dollars for your course.

Over time, you can expand your course by adding more holes. You’ll find that your initial plot of land isn’t that great, so you’ll need to purchase more land, and occasionally your course will be golfed by a local commissioner, who will allow you to purchase one of eight adjacent plots of land for various amounts of money.



You’ll also expand by erecting buildings. You’ll want a shop for people to buy equipment, several snack bars for peoples to eat and drink around your course, putting green, and so forth. Eventually you might have luxury hotels and other major buildings on your course.

Each golf hole can be rated on a variety of characteristics. Can people play the hole in several ways, or there just one path to the hole? How hard does it look? How hard does it play? Does it reward technique? Intelligence? Creativity?

Make an extraordinarily good hole, and you can get it put in a magazine’s Top 100 golf holes in the country, or perhaps even the Top 18. This will get you more fees as people play the hole.



When Ivan Richman, a wealthy tourist, plays the course, if she is happy at the end, she’ll donate a landmark to your course. Place the landmark for free, and it opens up the landmark permanently for you to purchase. Landmarks can have various effects, like forcing golfers within range to be happy.

You’ll have people play the course and each player is an individual. Some are better golfers than others, and other time, all of your golfers will get better, making holes that were once challenging now chumps (which will decrease their happiness) so you often have to tweak your holes to make them harder. The putting green and driving range can increase their skills too.

These people have personalities, and you can pair them up with a new golf buddy. Pair them up with the right person, and they will begin a plotline, a set conversation between two people. If they are happy enough, they might finish the plotline (which usually takes several golfing trips together). If they complete the plotline, you’ll get a free landmark at that spot. Examples of plotlines include two people who might go into business together or get engaged.

You have to keep golfers happy. Good holes helps. Not too easy, and not too hard. Having benches for them to rest helps. Having snack bars for them to fulfill their hunger helps. Having a clean hole helps (so you’ll need groundskeepers to keep your holes tidy). Buying beer from a serving lady at the holes helps (so again, you’ll need to hire that staff). Talking to the golf pro helps (that’s you). Seeing pretty scenic holes and certain landmarks will increase happiness. Happy golfers are more likely to join your club, have higher green fees, or might upgrade their membership – all of which gives you money for your course.

As I mentioned before, you can play your own course. You are a golf pro with various stats in a variety of golfing skills (like driving accuracy, driving strength, etc). As the game advances, whenever the first thing happens of some sort, you can advances your golfers a bit. Examples of first things include holding your first tournament, finishing your first nine holes, winning your first tournament, etc.

You are regularly challenged by golf pros, and can golf your course by going up against your challenger. There’s money on each hole, and you might win or lose money based on how you play.

You can also hold tournaments, and while a tournament goes on, your club members cannot golf, so be careful about how often you do so. Place, or even win a tournament, and you can get some serious cash.

As you play, an especially good or bas shot will change you skill in that area. You can choose a variety of shots, and then how much power and angle you are going to give that shot, by simply moving your mouse. You’ll see an anticipated trajectory if you choose that shot, although note that some shots will go off based on terrain, bounce, and skill.

And that’s it. Again, this is just a simple little economic sim but it is so fascinating.

[rjolley]

Ok, now I want to load up SimGolf and build a course. Thanks a lot.

[JetsIn06]

SimGolf is easily in my top five games that I've played. It does what it does so well. It's challenging, fun, and makes you feel accomplished when you achieve your goals. Like rjolley said, I'm very tempted to fire it up again tonight now.

[Swaggs]

SimGolf is an all-time great.

I might have to fish around for my copy now...

[Abe Sargent]

Of the remaining nine games, this is the only one that is neither console nor PC. What is it?


41. Mario Bros.
Nintendo
Coin-Operated Arcade
1983
GameSpot Review – None (7.9 User)
Action - Platform



This is not Super Mario Bros. or Super Mario Bros. 3, or even more recent versions of the flagship series for Nintendo. Instead, this is the very first entrant in that series, the arcade game, and a spin-off of the other early classic, Donkey Kong.

There is not much to tell for this review, unfortunately. It’s arguably a platform game, as many of the post-Donkey Kong, pre-Super Mario Bros. games were wont to be. It introduced many of the elements that we would come to know and love. In this game, Mario now has a name (he was originally Jumpman in Donkey Kng). He also is now a plumber, not a carpenter (as he was in Donkey Kong). He has to deal with creatures coming out of the pipes. He has a brother Luigi, who is also playable. He has to jump on various platforms, and through the course of his jumping motion, he knocks out the bad guys, but then he has to kick them off the map while they are knocked out. It also introduces enemies like the koopas.

It was hard for me to find pics from the game on a Google search, as opposed to the other millions of Mario pics and the tons of ports this game had. So, I am including a pic, not from the game, but from Super Mario Bros. 3, which has the game inside it. The graphics are not nearly as good, and the game is not as smooth, but here it is:



I put quarters into a lot of machines, and many of these games made it to second or third generation consoles (Intellivision, Atari, Colecovision, are second generation, NES is third). Many games had good translations (like Dig-Dug), or lacking in gameplay (like Duros), so I never really wanted to play them again, but I have been fiending for a good Mario Bros. for years.

The game ran very smoothly. The goal was simple. Jump up and hit the monsters as they crawled down the map. When a monster got the end, it would go through a pipe and come back out the front. Different monsters reacted differently. Some would hop around, and you had to hit them when they were on the ground. Others had to be hit twice in order to knock them down, and after the first hit, they became angry. There would be coin levels, where you had to jump around and collect all of the coins, then a blizzard machine would appear and turn part of the level ice, making for smoooooth sailing. There was a giant POW in the center, and jumping into it would hit all creatures that were on the ground, making in a nice emergency, but it had three uses and then would not be recharged for a few levels.

And that’s the game. Don’t get hit by these increasingly fast and complex monsters, and keep hopping around, knocking them over.

Only eight more games to go.

[Abe Sargent]

40. NFL Football
APh Technological Consulting
Intellivision
1979
GameSpot Review – None (8.9 User)
Action/Sports - Football




In 1976, Mattel Electronics hired APh Technological Consulting to design the Intellivision System and the first bath of games for the system, before their own studio produced later games. In fact, many of the people at APh were hired by Mattel a few years later. They would continue to do an odd game here and there for Mattel. This gives them three games in my countdown (Sea Battle and Triple Action being the other two).

The Intellivision sold itself it the early days as a much better system for Atari by using its sports games as examples. With George Plimpton as pitchman, they compared Atari games with Intellivision games to demonstrate the better system.

Here is an old commercial to demonstrate what I mean.


NFL Football was the most complex game on the most advanced console system at the time. What made this game so good?

The Intellivision controller had four action buttons, two on each side of the controller. It also had a calculator keypad, with a clear and enter button in addition to the numbers. Lastly, it had a directional disc that could sense 16 different directions. You would take a plastic overlay for each game, and slide it into the controller, and over the keypad. It tells you what each button does in the game.

So, you have a lot of control over your players when you have 16 directions to move in. You can call a play, and coming with the game was a playbook. Each playbook had a variety of defensive and offensive plays to run, including pass and run plays. Each player would call a play using the keypad, from dozens of plays, by knowing the codes for the various plays.



In order to tackle a player, you had to actually hit him, or he might scamper away. You could also intercept the ball, go for Field Goals or Touchdowns, or go out of bounds. The screen scrolled sideways, giving you a real 100 yard field, plus end zones. The game even included things like safeties.

This was a game years ahead of its time, perhaps a decade passed before Tecmo Bowl brought a more advanced console football game to the market. Many other games were released that could not match the grandeur of NFL Football for the Intellivision.

[Abe Sargent]

Just SEVEN games left!

[rjolley]

Hey Anxiety, did you ever play the basketball game on the Intellivision? I think it was All-Star Basketball. It was the one where you could pick your team to go 3 on 3 and each player had his on strengths and weaknesses.

(Ok, I think it was on Intellivision. If not, what was it on?)

[ntndeacon]

there was a basketball game. I loved both football and baseball more. My brother and Iwould play baseball for HOURS til Mom kicked us out of the house so we could get some sun.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by rjolley

Hey Anxiety, did you ever play the basketball game on the Intellivision? I think it was All-Star Basketball. It was the one where you could pick your team to go 3 on 3 and each player had his on strengths and weaknesses.

(Ok, I think it was on Intellivision. If not, what was it on?)

All of the sports games for Intv were so good and high quality. In a way,this entry is for them all. NBA Basketball, NASL Soccer, NHL Hockey, Major League Baseball, even Skiing was top notch.

[Abe Sargent]

After this, there will only be two PC games left, and four console games. What will they be?

39. Warcraft: Orcs & Humans
Blizzard Entertainment
PC
1994
GameSpot Review – None (8.3 User)
Strategy – Real-Time




Warcraft or Warcraft II? This was tough for me. Sometimes I go for sequels when they revolutionize the concepts of the game (such as SimCity 4 or Pokemon: Ruby & Sapphire) and sometimes I go with the original when they are the more iconic, created the formula, and so forth (such as Final Fantasy, Zelda). Sometimes, the sequel is the true icon. Heroes of Might and Magic II is one of the classic icons of turn-based strategy games and was more than the original game ever was, so it deserves the slot. Street Fighter II is the iconic game, not the first entry.

Note that sequels should be better than their predecessors. Warcraft II should be better than the first installment, and it is. Thus, I cannot choose on quality alone. One way I choose is by seeing what later games added. Civ II was better than Civ one, but what did it add? Better graphics, more techs, more wonders, videos, more units, more buildings, more civilizations, more diplomatic options. It was all more of the same. Sure, ti was a blast, and a better game, but it was not innovative in new ways.

On the other hand, Heroes of Might and Magic II adds more treasure, more monsters, more heroes, more spells, more playable factions, and better graphics as well. But it also adds a new skill system, a new items system, the luck and morale stats for you army, and so forth. It takes the original game and changes it. It does not just add more.

Might and Magic VI does the same. It renovates the previous games (which were a blat themselves). It changes lots of things around.

When I look at Warcraft II, I see the same game. Sure, there are more units, more buildings, prettier graphics, smoother interface, more upgrades, more resources and more spells. What changed? One thing – flying and sea were added. At first, that seems really great, and worthy of note until you reckon that one flying unit is just a scout and the other is not so good, and there are only five sea units, and two of those don’t attack. (Transport and oil tankers). Not much added there.

Thus, it is Warcraft, and not its sequel that charts.

The quick and dirty for those unaware regarding Warcraft.

You choose a side, either orcs or humans. Then you slowly build a town, importing gold and lumber by your peasant units. As you build your town, you can build buildings that allow you to recruit military units. Then you can upgrade your units at those buildings.

Some buildings are infrastructure, like houses. Other have military purposes, building your troops. You have footmen, catapults, archers, knights, clerics and wizards all available for recruit. If you play a campaign, you’ll not have access to all of these initially, instead you’ll have to build up to them.

All of the units are virtually identical between orcs and humans, with the only major differentiations their spells. As a result, each race has significantly different spells, which play differently. Invisibility gives humans a tool that the orcs do not have, whereas they have Unholy Armor. Etc.

You can summon units, like scorpions spiders, daemons and water elementals, two for each factions (Scorpion/Water Elemental for humies). For each faction, the after elemental/daemon unit is the most powerful, but the daemon has a lot more hit points and it a melee tank whereas water elementals are powerful ranged attackers.




The daemons and water elementals were too powerful, and dominated combat, which made for powerful endgames where elementals and daemons clashed with great regularity.

One of the things that made Warcraft was multiplayer play. For many of us, this was our first true online multiplayer experience, and we were hooked. Playing the guy in the dorm down the hall from you was an amazing fight, and gave you bragging rights for several days. I got nicknamed Alexander the Great by my friends, because they could never beat me in Warcraft or Warcraft II. Sometimes they would come close. They learned how to counter a lot of my strategies (in Warcraft II I would invisible one of my mages, sneak behind their lines, then unleash Blizzard on their buildings, usually killing one or two before he was killed. Then my opponent moved his forces to attack my wizard. While distracted, I would run up a Dwarven Demo Team or three and take out their walls and towers, beginning my invasion.)

Sure, Dark Legions was released at the same time and featured great online play, but Warcraft was what everyone was playing. This was a fun game.




Sometimes, games would evolve into these battles with slooooow catapults, and both of you would try to fire at each other, and it would take forever to keep clicking and shooting. It felt like the old Atari Combat! Catapults could have been a little faster as a result.

So, the game was fun, for the time. It was also problematic, with similar units, too powerful summoned dudes at the end, slooow catapults. For its time, it was a great game, and I stand by including it today.

[Abe Sargent]

After this, just five games are left, and only one is a PC game. That makes this the second highest charting PC game of this list.


38. MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat
Activision
PC
1995
GameSpot review – 8.5
Action/Simulation – Mecha



As with Heroes of Might and Magic II, GameSpot almost apologizes for their lower review in the sequel’s review. In their review of MechWarrior III, GameSpot writes:

Originally Posted by GameSpot

MechWarrior 3 is a worthy successor to one of the best games of the decade.

One of the best games of the decade does not get an 8.5 rating, it should get a 9.5 one or so. They dinged it in sound, tilt, and value. Well, let’s look at the game, and see if it really deserved the 8.5 GameSpot handed it.

This is a game six years in the making, as the sequel to 1989’s MechWarrior. That game was alright, but suffered from bugs and play errors.

This game was nothing like that.

MechWarrior is set in the very rich cosmos of the Battletech universe, a realistic picture of future humans among the stars. Unlike many other similar sci-fi games and properties, this one has no aliens, no super fantastic technology, and no fanciful views of humans. Instead, other than FTL drive, (which still comes with a lot of restrictions), there are no major technological jumps, like transporters or holodecks. When the game has a force field at the end, it feels out of place, since no such technology actually exists in the universe.

Instead, it the cold gritty reality of humans still fighting humans, fractionalizing after centuries of colonization into various planets, and empires. Against this rich tapestry are set individuals and events with a highly realistic eye to them and the world around them.

After the Star League fell into chaos and rebellion, the general, Kerensky, took most of the military and left known space, disgusted by the state of the former League. His leaving created a power vacuum into which the great houses began a series of Succession Wars, following a downward spiral of technology, with the loss of much they knew.

Meanwhile, unknown to these Inner Sphere houses, Kerensky colonizes five worlds in deep space, and sets up a new, militaristic society, that become known as The Clans.

Centuries pass, until the Kerensky fleets and armies return, with increased technological weapons to fight against the Inner Sphere. With a code of honor, these warriors are disgusted at the state of disrepair that their former Star league has fallen into. Initially, they plow through Inner Sphere worlds in a race to capture Terra first.

However, they are finally stopped on the backwater world of Tukkayid by ComStar. This quasi-religious sect that controlled the communicators throughout the Inner Sphere had secreted caches of old mechs from the Star League, keeping them quiet and unused, until a time was needed for them. Unveiling these relics, which were significantly above the current technology level of the Houses, ComStar was in possession of Terra, and had no desire to see it fall into the hands of Kerensky’s Clans.

ComStar challenged the Clans to a Trial of Refusal on Tukkayid. Win, and the Clans immediately took Terra, lose and they could not advance beyond Tukkayid.. ComStar defeated the clans using sneaky tactics, grit, and a never ending avalanche of mechs. The Clans advance was to be stalled for 15 years, and they could not travel loser to Terra beyond the Tukkayid line.



This game picks up with you choosing to play the part of one of two Clans – Clan Wolf, or Clan Jade Falcon. Clan Wolf is the strongest clan, and the leader of the Warden Clan Faction. The Warden clans believe that it is Kerensky’s vision to return and protect the Inner Sphere. Clan Jade Falcon is among the leaders of the Crusader Clans, a group of clans that believe Kerensky’s vision was to return and conquer the Inner Sphere.

This game takes place after the Truce of Tukkayid, and the subsequent fallout as Jade Falcon and Wolf battle. ilKhan Ulric Kerensky, leader of the Clans and a member of Clan Wolf, was tried for genocide for negotiating the Trial of Refusal on Tukkayid. The claim, made by the Crusaders clans, contests that a generation of warriors will be unable to see battle. The new Crusader ilKhan from Clan Smoke Jaguar begins to repudiate the Truce of Tukkayid, and Clan Wolf issue a Trial of Refusal against the Crusader Clans. Clan Jade falcon agrees to represent the Crusader side against Wolf.

This Refusal War between Wolf and Jade Falcon is the core conflict that arises in MechWarrior 2.

In this game, you can choose your mech configuration from a variety of weapons and equipment before each scenario. Various mechs have different speeds and armor and pod space, for equipment. After choosing your mech and equipping it, you can head out to the campaign scenario.

You have star-mates, various others in mechs, and have various missions to perform. For example, you might have to attack a supply line, or fortify a base from an assault. You might need to scout, assault, escort, and so forth. You have to pilot your mech, much like a flight sim game.




Learning to navigate the controls was part of the fun of the game. Then you have to learn how to fight, jump, and so forth. You have to balance the heat your weapons make with heat sinks, and ammo for other weapons. It’s a great game, with a strong game design.

As a result, you have a solid campaign, top notch stories, and a fun mech simulation. MechWarrior 2 is responsible for popularizing the Mecha fighting genre. It’s no wonder with a game as high quality as this (with great expansion packs too).

[Swaggs]

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

Hard to believe that game is almost 15 years old.