Original Release: 1995 (Batman) / 1993 (Thunderstrike)
Platform: Sega CD (both)
Estimated Length of Time Owned: 6-7 years (both)
Estimated Amount of Previous Play Time: None (both)

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“Why would you keep playing a game that you didn’t like?” my fiancée asked after I told her I was about to sit down and play more of a game that I just told her was awful. “It’s for the blog,” I replied. “I have to play a minimum amount of each game, no matter how I feel about it. That’s the point of the Backlog Project.”

Well, it shouldn’t be. While this exercise was supposed to be about making me play games I may have never gotten to if left to my own personal choices, should the “point” of it be forcing myself to drudge through games that I’m thoroughly not enjoying? Or should I just dabble in the mediocre-to-bad ones just to say I’ve “played” them but only spend a measurable amount of time on the gems I stumble upon that would’ve otherwise been unfortunately overlooked? After all, I’m no longer 10 years old and relegated to only one or two new games on gift-giving holidays and have to make myself like those games no matter what since that’s all I’ll be getting for awhile. I have literally hundreds of good to great games sitting in my house right now, and all I’m doing is wasting my time by playing more of a bad game than I have to when there is probably a game more deserving of my time sitting just another slot or two down on my list. I’m still going to give every game at least one solid play session, enough to at least give a paragraph-length impression of it, but if the game is so bad that I actually dread having to play it again, well, then I’m not going to. Life’s too short to intentionally play and write about bad games (when I’m not being paid to do so).

Of course, that doesn’t give me back the time I’ve already wasted on the absolutely dreadful Adventures of Batman & Robin. The Genesis game of the same name was actually a decent beat-em-up, and as many Sega CD games were just slightly better looking versions of Genesis games with sometimes much better sound, I thought I might be in for a treat with this one. Well, not only is this a completely different game, it is a completely awful one. A game based entirely around driving the Batmobile isn’t a terrible idea in and of itself, but when that game ends up being less deep than the original Spy Hunter but nowhere near as fun or playable, then we have a problem.

After a nice little intro movie done in the same style as the cartoon series in which this game is based (ignoring the quality of Sega CD’s video capabilities, which looks like a VHS cassette that has been dubbed back and forth 9 or 10 times), I was put behind the wheel of the Batmobile and told to do something or other, I don’t even remember what, but it involved driving up a narrow three-lane street absolutely packed with cars – and lined with the same two blocks of scenery looped over and over again. There didn’t seem to be any real strategy to this other than awkwardly bouncing between them like bumper cars in the hopes that I reached some random, unspecified checkpoint before the timer runs out.

After multiple retries and a steadily rising blood pressure level, I managed to get past that first part, all the while wondering if it was the designers’ intention to make half the challenge of this game be in daring you to actually keep playing it. Anyway, my next objective was destroying - with my clunky slow-motion rockets - two other cars who were driving just ahead of me and hurling random, generic sprites at me, which I assume are supposed to be bombs or weapons of some kind but were impossible to make any sense out of. I managed to finish these two off, my reward being a five minute full-motion video sequence sequence where Batman must thwart Poison Ivy’s attempt to rob a bank. It’s fun to watch, but what it basically amounts to is a boss fight that you do nothing but watch. Rather than a cinematic showing you driving to the bank and then letting you play the part where you actually fight somebody, the developers thought it would be clever to reverse it, and let the traveling to the destination be the playable section and the action that takes place once you get there be the non-interactive movie sequence. How novel…and not at all fun! After Ivy got away, I hopped back into the car and got to actually play again…unfortunately.

Now it was time to stop Ivy from getting away. First, that involved trailing right behind her while she threw the same odd sprites at me that the others were hurling. After I hit her a certain number of times, she sped off, and I had to weave my way through the trees that she had planted in the road. The controls alone made this a frustrating proposition, but to make matters worse, there was a distance meter on the screen that showed me how far from you Ivy was getting, and if it gets to high, I lose her and have to restart the level. Well, I lost her. A lot. Because the only way to have any chance at all of keeping up with her is to constantly be going at maximum speed, but doing that makes the trees that much harder to dodge and slows you down that much more when you hit one. After several deaths, continues, and restarts, I finally got through this section, only to have to battle her up close again for a few minutes…and then have to chase her through trees again. Only this time, the trees had random branches that would shoot out to the left or right, meaning that simply avoiding the trunk wasn’t enough anymore – now I had branches to worry about. Some cursing and a very sore thumb later, I was able to catch up to her again, and finally finish her off…or, no, there she goes again, speeding off for me to pursue her. Now I’m weaving through bushes. Bushes instead of trees…this is the most “variety” they could muster up. God this game sucks.

Fast-forward a bit, and I’m trapped in some giant virtual reality game concocted by the Riddler. The setting is actually a little bit cooler than the generic streets of Gotham I’ve had to traverse up to this point, and for a moment I’m hopeful – until I have to maneuver an obstacle course of giant stationary O’s and sliding X’s with a time limit that demands nothing less than a perfect run to beat. After that, I am attacked by giant dice, and then I’m on a backgammon board, and then…oh screw this, I’m done. This game is terrible. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about it save for the brief video interludes, but the game sandwiched between them doesn’t make it worth the trouble. I understand by looking at the back of the case that I would’ve eventually got to fly the Batwing had I stuck with this game, but something tells me that is more of a threat than a promise.

Ironically, the other game in this twosome – AH-3 Thunderstrike – takes place entirely in the air. In a helicopter, to be precise. Truthfully, this game wasn’t half bad. It wasn’t especially great, either, but it was at least playable, which is more than I can say for a lot of Sega CD games. It plays a bit like EA’s “Strike” series, in that each level has you flying around a sectioned-off area completing objectives and taking out enemies. The game has decent “3D” visuals for the Sega CD, better than your average mode-7 or scaling trickery that the 16-bit systems pulled off but still extremely simple. The controls take some getting used to thanks to the lack of shoulder buttons on a Genesis controller, which makes strafing a tricky proposition – you can only do so if you press left and right from a dead stop. While moving, all you can do is turn. Other than that, the game plays pretty well, and shooting down enemy choppers and blowing up their camps and buildings is done with relative ease. The objectives are your standard fare: Destroy all the buildings in the enemy base, blow up the bridge, protect the convoy, etc. All in all, it is a functional if unremarkable game that would’ve been a decent, lengthy game to pick up if you were stuck with a Sega CD and desperate for something not terrible to play, but beyond that there is no reason to give this game another thought once you’ve finish reading this sentence. I don’t know what ebay auction I won that this game got thrown in with but I’m sure it has been re-gifted more often than it was ever actually played.

Now onto a game that I’ve actually wanted to play for quite some time, Banjo-Kazooie for N64. It somehow seems fitting to play this game just as Donkey Kong Country Returns is hitting stores. This is the first time on my list that a game and its direct sequel come up back-to-back so I’m not sure how I’m going to handle that yet. We’ll see how it goes.

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#5- Super Dodge Ball“Hi!”

While I feel that I was less socially awkward and a tad more willing to be active and play outside than your typical grade school game nerd, there was one stereotype that certainly applied to me in a big way - my fear and dread of dodge ball day in gym. But as it goes with a lot of other things that I don’t like to do in real life I somehow loved it in video game form (see also: pretty much every activity in Animal Crossing).

Not unlike most of the games on this list, it was fun playing it solo, but multiplayer is where it really shined. As a head-to-head experience, Super Dodge Ball was hard to beat in a pre-Street Fighter II world. At its most basic level, it was your average game of dodge ball: Two teams throw a ball back and forth, and if the ball hits you without you catching it, you’re out. In order to keep matches long-form, the catch-it-and-the-thrower-is-out rule was smartly abandoned. In this game, though, getting hit doesn’t just send you to the sidelines: it KILLS you! Of course, that death comes in a cute, Japanese cartoon kind of way – you just turn into an adorable little angel who slowly floats towards the top of the screen.

The other major twist that was added to spice up the real-life game of dodge ball was the addition of special super-powered throws, a few of which were unique to certain players, with a handful of others shared across the rest. One flattened the ball into a player-controlled rocket that barreled through any player in its path. Another froze the ball in mid-air at the center line for a few seconds before plowing directly into a player of its choice. One particularly interesting one had the ball coast over to the other side in extreme slow motion, but the pace of it made it a little tricky to time your catch, and it was also the most powerful throw in the game, sending you off screen before you came crashing back down to earth.

Each team was based in a different country and, not surprisingly for a game of its era, they were chock full of stereotypes of that country’s culture and people. The US team was way overpowered (especially if the mighty Sam was on your squad), clearly designed to be the player-controlled team in single player mode but making for some hilariously unbalanced multiplayer contests.

At the end of the day, though, it’s almost a moot point trying to extol the virtues of this game to anyone else, as there are only two types of people in the world: Those who loved Super Dodge Ball, and those who never played it.

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#4-Double Dragon II: The Revenge“Roar of the Twin Dragons”

Beat-em-ups were at their creative and commercial peak in the 16-bit era, both in the arcades and on 16-bit systems, but the genre did have a presence on the NES, and the best of them was Double Dragon II. Yes, River City Ransom is a classic thanks to it’s open-ended structure and quirky anime tone, but the action itself was a little weak and couldn’t hold a candle to the visceral thrills of Double Dragon II.

The original DD for NES was a solid game, but the sequel improved upon it in every way – especially with the inclusion of co-op. It’s hard to imagine it now looking back on it, but there was a time when Double Dragon II was a rough, gritty game that made you feel like a badass out of an R-rated 80′s action flick as you used chains, baseball bats, and a wicked spinning cyclone kick to take down all manner of thugs as you traversed areas that represented various cliches of machismo: a heliport, a lumber yard, a factory, and the woods. Like the best NES action games, it was the kind of game that I could run all the way through one day and happily start it again the next, and feel just as exhilarated as I did the first time. My favorite home console-specific brawler of all time is Streets of Rage 2 for Genesis, but I’m pretty confident in saying that this would take the #2 spot. It may not see an HD remake anytime soon, but I can still pop in this game from time to time and have a blast with it – well, except for those annoying jumping sections…

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#3- Baseball Stars“What Is A Wren?”

It’s sort of ironic that I more or less retired from sports games completely once they started getting too complex sometime around the second season of the last generation, when one of my all-time favorite sports games is one that was actually way ahead of its time in its complexity. In Baseball Stars, the number of on field moves at your disposable surpassed the average baseball game at the time (on the NES, anyway), especially on defense: you could jump for high line drives, slide to snag pop-ups, even climb the wall to prevent low home runs, all with idiot-proof ease. Aside from that, though, the action was pretty straightforward fare for a sports sim of the time, albeit a really well-playing one.

Where Baseball Stars left its peers in the dust and went unrivaled for years to come in video games period was in the custom player and team options. You could create an entire team from scratch, naming each and every player – even choosing their gender, something that other sports games two decades later still don’t do!

Your team started out as a club full of scrubs, and you had to play games in order to earn more money to improve your team. You could up your existing players’ stats with the cash, but they couldn’t be fully maxed out – to get real superstars, you had to buy brand new players (which you could then also change the name of if you wanted it to match the player you had to fire to make room for the new star). This lent an almost RPG-like vibe to the game, as you basically had to “grind” by playing single-player games to up your stats and improve your players. Of course, the real fun was if someone else was doing the same on your cartridge, so that you could pit your teams against each other. It gave you a sense of ownership over your players and your team that just taking an existing pro team through a season can’t replicate.

So if there aren’t real teams, then who do you play solo games against when you are going head-to-head with a friend? How about the “Ghastly Monsters”, a team of players named after classic movie monsters, or the all-girl “Lovely Ladies”, or the “Ninja Blacksox” with their insanely fast baserunning that had stolen bases being a threat on almost every pitch. It was cool to see so much personality given to the dozen or so team in the game to make up for the lack of any real-life MLB teams – and to a kid like me who didn’t watch baseball anyway, they were good enough for me.

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#2- Mega Man 3“In the year 200X…”

I spent many years feeling like something was wrong with me for favoring Mega Man 3 over it’s fan-favorite direct descendant, but I’ve come to learn that there is actually a small but vocal subset of gamers who give the edge to MM3 over MM2. Personally, I feel it’s almost six of one, half dozen of the other as to which game is technically superior – both games take the promise of the foundation laid by the solid but flawed original to its full potential, before the series went on to have three entries too many on the NES. The overall quality of the core Mega Man series’ post-NES career has had its highs and lows, but most fans agree that the peak was MM2 and 3.

So why do I give 3 the edge? First, there’s Rush, your robotic dog helper. His transformations may have been rather limited and very specific to select situations, but it still gave the game just a hair more gameplay variety than part 2. Second, you have to fight versions of all of MM2′s bosses in MM3, and the coolness of that speaks for itself. Lastly but probably most imporantly, though, it was my first Mega Man, so despite going back and playing 2 after the fact, Mega Man 3 just got to me first so it had a bigger impact…which, I would imagine, is the reason that so many of the people who played them in order favor 2. Had Mega Man 2 been significantly better than 3, this would’ve only ended up being a small part of the decision, but since I don’t believe that it is, it’s actually the key to the decision. Either way, you can’t go wrong: Two amazing action games with some of the most creative level, enemy, and boss designs ever seen in a game, 8-bit or otherwise, accompanied by music that is instantly recognizable within the first five notes. Not everybody has the patience or digital dexterity to handle a (good) Mega Man game, but for those that do, it’s gaming nirvana. There are few purer examples – not named Mario – of what exemplified all that was great about the NES era than Mega Man.

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#1- Contra“Up Up, Down Down, Yadda Yadda Yadda”

I know I’ve already covered this elsewhere, but it’s hard to get over how absurd it is the many dozens upon dozens upon dozens of hours I have poured into a game that is probably only about an hour long. To this day, I am in awe of what an incredibly well-crafted game Contra is – you get the sense that 85% of the development time was devoted specifically to tuning and balancing everything until it was absolutely pitch-perfect, which it is. The controls are flawless, the soundtrack is one of the best on the system, the level design is second-to-none, the weapons have a depth and a variety that were years ahead of their time, and the difficulty is brutal but never feels impossible or cheap. Even details that would’ve been quick throwaway decisions in a lesser game and maybe have even been left to randomization, like the frequency of the weapon drop pods and what was in each one, were clearly given a serious amount of consideration and were tweaked until they got it just right.

This game would’ve still been one of the best action games of all time even without the co-op, but with it, it’s untouchable. Going to a friend’s house for the night and playing Contra from the moment we finished our pizza until our parents yelled at us to go to bed well until the AM hours was the perfect way to spend a sleepover for the kids of the Nintendo Generation – one of the last generations of children who got to have childhoods that were untainted by cell phones, chat rooms, and age-inappropriate clothing.

Original Release: May 2005
Platform: Xbox
Estimated Length of Time Owned: 3-4 years
Estimated Amount of Previous Play Time: None

I knew it was going to take longer to finish Advent Rising than the mostly arcade-centric games I’ve had in the backlog project so far, but I didn’t anticipate that it was going to take months to get through it. More than anything, I blame the game’s lack of Xbox 360 compatibility. I do happen to have my original Xbox set up in my bedroom, mostly serving as a stopgap DVD player after the last one we had in there decided to retire. Still, I underestimated how hard it was going to be to make myself play in there given the fact that sitting on the edge of the bed is the only viable way to play effectively on a TV that small – which was fine when I was 8, but now I’m pushing 30 and I’m just not built to be hunched over and straining my eyes for long periods of time anymore. On those rare occasions when I’d finally convince myself to actually sit down and start playing it, I’d usually make a fair amount of progress, but the superior comfort of the living room and its far better selection of consoles proved too alluring of a choice to not make more frequently. Still, I was determined to finish the game, no matter how long it took, and I finally did it. 

I knew relatively little about Advent Rising prior to playing it other than that it was a sci-fi action/adventure game, it was written by famed author Orson Scott Card, and that it was planned to be a trilogy but never went past the first game thanks to poor sales and lukewarm critical reception. It was still with a fair amount of excitement that I booted the game up for the first time, as it just seemed like the type of game I would enjoy. After a CG intro, the introductory game play sequence was quite impressive and grand in scale, as you must guide a spaceship slowly into the docking bay of a space station. Its purpose was primarily that of a slightly interactive opening credits sequence, but it still left a great first impression of the possibilities in store for me on this journey.

The visuals of this game are expectedly dated, and while I wouldn’t put them in the top tier of Xbox titles in terms of pure technical prowess they are still impressive, especially in the large scale of many of the environments. I was never entirely sold on the artistic choice of the long, lanky character models, but that is more a conflict in my own personal taste than an actual criticism of the game. As you walk around the space station, you definitely get a sense of the love and care that was put into building this world, as the station feels like a living, breathing environment full of NPCs going about their business and monitors broadcasting live news feeds. The designers really went the extra mile to add little immersive visual visual touches throughout the game, including characters who not only have completely different outfits from one scene to the next but even changing hairstyles – women for instance may be wearing their hair in a casual ponytail when they are working, but then have their hair up and styled in scenes where they are dressed up for a fancy event – something that very few other games have done, even recent ones. The environments themselves offer a pretty impressive amount of destructibility, with columns breaking apart from stray gunfire and crates flying every which way when something explodes near them. This collateral damage seems to become progressively more noticeable as the game goes on, and whether it is a result of the structures and objects reacting naturally to the increasing amount of pyrotechnics on display or simply a clever trick played by the developers to just make the later environments easier to break down so you can see the result of your ever-increasing power, it works.

Anyway, I walked around the space station for a while, meeting the characters and getting the beginning bits of the story. The protagonist is Gideon Wyeth, a soldier of some kind who is tasked with escorting a group of ambassadors to their meeting with representatives of an alien race called the Auerlians. His brother, Ethan, is a famous war hero with a hunger for adventure, even if it means having a dust-up with some loudmouths at the station’s bar. Which, coincidentally, brought me to my first action sequence of the game, a barroom brawl with my brother and me punching out a few sots who had too many and said too much. That is, I was supposed to be punching them out, but apparently I can’t fight worth a damn. What should’ve just been a quick little fight scene turned into a battle I had to retry six or seven times before I finally won, thanks to a hand-to-hand combat system that I had no previous introduction to and didn’t seem to involve any strategic element whatsoever beyond spamming the punch button and hoping my enemies went down before I did. Maybe I was supposed to just be a rookie who had to go on my forthcoming adventure before I learned to be a competent hero, but surely a trained military officer should be able to make quick work of some drunken idiots. My feelings on the game soured very quickly after this clunky encounter, but I hoped that things would improve once I could use my fists to hold and shoot guns rather than throw ineffectual punches.

Sure enough, I soon found myself in that classic of video game tropes, the token “combat training simulator” where I learned the basics of weapons-based combat. Advent Rising leans heavily on a dual-wielding system where each shoulder button controls the weapon you are holding in the corresponding hand. Sounds simple enough, but as this is a third-person game, you need some sort of targeting system, and this is where the game takes another major stumble. In order to target an enemy, you “flick” the analog stick in the direction of said enemy, and once the reticule appears over them you are locked on and can begin laying into them. Not surprisingly, this is about as unwieldy and unpredictable as it sounds. It often takes more than one flick to get an enemy targeted, even when they are the only one near you. When there is more that one in the area…good luck. Prepare to just hold down the fire buttons and constantly flick your analog stick wildly in every direction that you think an enemy might be until the incoming bullets stop…or you die. Of course, a lot of other irritations arise with a system like this, from targeting enemies behind walls and/or way across the room instead of the guy 10 feet in front of you to getting stuck targeting an enemy when you are really just trying to adjust the camera. You can imagine the confusion that arises when your camera control is mapped to the same analog stick that you use to lock onto enemies. I lost count of how often I found myself walking off of platforms and plummeting to my doom because I couldn’t see where I was going, since I was stuck targeting an enemy a mile away instead of looking at the small walkway I was trying to cross. I should not have died as many times as I did simply walking off of ledges and cliffs in this game. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t designed to be a platformer.

Now that I’ve got a little ranting out of the way, I can talk about the positives that made me push through in spite of the issues. The gunplay does get a little more entertaining as you learn to live with its quirks, especially once you start leveling up your weapons and unlocking their secondary fire options (all of which is done just through regular use). Thankfully, though, awkwardly shooting at aliens and occasionally hitting them isn’t all this game has to offer. In an interesting twist on the usual sci-fi cliché that seems to makes every race that we humans encounter far more powerful than us, in Advent Rising, humans are actually beings of extreme power – maybe the most powerful in the universe - we just don’t know it or know how to use it. This may just play a role in why there is a hostile alien race headed our way bent on our destruction, but in the unlikely event that someone reading this is still planning to play the game one day I won’t divulge too much of the story. Nonetheless, you do have super powers in this game, which is where it gets a bit more interesting than your standard “shoot the aliens with your underpowered earth weaponry but somehow still find a way to come out ahead” fare that plagues much sci-fi fiction.

The first power you learn is the ability to levitate objects and enemies and fling them. More powers slowly come into play – energy bullets, force fields, a Nightcrawler-like teleport attack, and more – and each power has a secondary fire option that you eventually unlock the more you use it, just like with normal weapons. For me, this is where the game began to shine. At first, the powers are meager in strength and take way too much of your energy meter – which does refill automatically – to use effectively, so you still have to rely on a mix of powers and regular firearms. As you get more powerful, though, and the full extent of your powers begin to open up, you’ll start to feel like Neo from The Matrix, or an entire X-Men team rolled into a single guy. You’ll toss enemies every which way, blast them hundreds of feet back, zip around the stage at light speed (or in slow motion when you are evading attacks), and make quick work of giant mechs and armored vehicles that you had to have 10-minute shootouts with earlier in the game, all while windows shatter, plaster chunks fly, and anything that isn’t bolted down goes careening off in every direction. It’s a little more random and chaotic than it should be thanks to the faulty targeting system, but it does seem to become a less of a problem the more powerful you get.

Much was made of this game’s story, penned by Enders’ Game author Orson Scott Card (who would go on to work with some members of the Advent Rising team again on last year’s XBLA title Shadow Complex), and even the game’s harshest critics seemed to at least give props to the story, dialogue, and characters. As such, I may have gone into the game with my expectations a tad too high on that front, as I found the story to be merely “pretty good.” Don’t get me wrong, the story and characters were certainly above average for a sci-fi video game, but this isn’t the game that’s going to win over Roger Ebert or anything like that. Perhaps the biggest roadblock I hit on the path to full enjoyment of the story was that I simply couldn’t understand all of the dialogue. The aliens’ voices had a strange filter that made it hard to pick up all of their words, and since their was no subtitle option – absolutely inexcusable for any game with spoken dialogue – I simply had to completely miss words or entire sentences. I was usually still able to get the gist of conversations, but even so it was distracting and pulled me out of the experience to have to really concentrate extra hard to comprehend every word that they were saying. Worst of all, during the game’s big climax there is a monologue that should’ve carried some real emotional heft, but as it was spoken by a being that had an even more garbled voice than the regular aliens I couldn’t pick up a single word that he said and had to go online afterward to find out what just happened – not really the ideal way to experience the dramatic peak of a story. Another big disappointment was a surprisingly heartrending choice that you have to make early on in the game as to which of two key characters to save and which to let die – which, as I found out later, doesn’t really make all that much difference in the rest of the game. Minor possible spoilers here, but essentially, no matter which character lives, they play basically the same role and have almost identical dialogue for the rest of the game, just with a different voice and character model. You wouldn’t know that unless you researched it after the fact (like I did), so technically I still felt the impact of the choice at the time and spent much of the game wondering if I’d made the right one, but they still dropped the ball on what could’ve been a great replay opportunity to experience the game a significantly different way if you played it again and made the other choice. This particular complaint is probably a little on the nitpicky side, but I still felt it warranted mentioning.

All in all, despite the mixed tone of this review, I actually had more fun than not while playing through Advent Rising. Things didn’t always work like they were supposed to, but between the frustrating moments was a thrilling overall experience. There were a half dozen spectacular set pieces that would’ve been the single climax of another game, and the build from weeny little brother to godlike badass unfurled at a steady, satisfying pace. It really is too bad that this series wasn’t able to fulfill its potential; with the creative and financial support and marketing muscle of a more capable publisher (read: not Majesco), I’m confident that Advent Rising’s sequels(s) could’ve been in the same class as Mass Effect and Halo as one of this generation’s defining science fiction action/adventures. Instead, its ultimate fate was a game fast-tracked to the bargain bin with a cliffhanger ending that’ll never be resolved.

 And now for something completely different: a helicopter combat game for Sega CD. It doesn’t appear to be an FMV game, so at least there’s that. Write-up coming soon…ish.

I really wanted to just count the whole Timesplitters series as a single entry, but I don’t like it when other list makers take shortcuts like that so I’m going to try to avoid doing so myself if I can help it. Besides, it’s an easy enough choice to pick Timesplitters 2 as the representative for the whole series. I adore the hell out of the Timesplitters games, from the original being my most-played PS2 launch title all the way to the underappreciated final installment, Future Perfect. Still, it was Timesplitters 2 that I poured the most time into and that I feel had the best balance of story, challenges, and multiplayer. I’ve never really been a “completionist” gamer, and I’m far from being a trophy or achievement whore, but for some reason I was compelled to not only finish as many challenges and goals that I possibly could in TS2, but I would try for hours to beat my store and get the platinum award for each (I took much pride in my stats screen – of which an obscene number of things was kept track of – and checked it frequently). The story mode was simple, dumb fun with some inane time traveling setup that just served as an excuse to feature a crazy variety of levels, but I enjoyed it. It was the multiplayer and challenge modes, though, with objectives that had you punching off zombie heads and breaking glass plates with bricks that made this game so special. The developer, Free Radical, was made up of many ex-Rare team members, and the Goldeneye/Perfect Dark feeling is definitely unmistakable. In fact, one of the goals of the game was to make Timesplitters look and play the way you remembered Goldeneye to look and play. Sound familiar? True, Timesplitters 2 isn’t nearly as hard to go back to as the original Perfect Dark is, but I still wouldn’t mind seeing just the slightest hi-def spit shine on it. Like I said, the level design was staggering since the developers were free to set levels where ever and whenever they wanted, and I’d love to see the graphical touches that could be added to really give each level even more of a unique personality and make them stand out that much more from the others. Really, I just want to punch off some zombie heads and break some plates in high definition. It’s too bad this series was just a blip on the radar for so many, and that we may never see its return, because I regard it quite highly and would love to see it return in some form, of not a true sequel, at least a rerelease of some kind.
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#4- Twisted Metal 2 (PlayStation)

I consider myself a huge Twisted Metal fan, and part 2 is still my favorite. After a nearly 10 hour marathon one Friday night after a friend brought his PlayStation to my house, not only were the hooks in for me to be a TM fan for years to come, but that was the final nail in the “I want a Saturn instead of a PlayStation” coffin, a decision I owe David Jaffe a great deal of gratitude for. It is one of the best 2-player deathmatch games of all time, and it would be made even better with the addition of online play. I don’t want to get to hung up on aspects of remakes that aren’t primarily related to visuals for this list, though, so I won’t go on about that any more. Twisted Metal 2’s overall collection of levels remain the best in the series’ history, and as anyone who has played Head-On on PSP or PS2 can attest to – with their slightly upgraded versions of a few classic TM2 levels – they definitely hold up beautifully, even today. That said, TM2 is already halfway there in terms of a visual upgrade thanks to Head-On, so now we just need them to go a step further and bring them up to HD. All it would take are environmental textures that are more than low-res wallpaper plastered on polygons and all the lighting and particle effects that the PS3 is capable of and you’d have a car combat game that is every bit as fun today as it was over a decade ago – and it’ll also happen to look great as well. I get positively giddy just thinking about watching the Eiffel Tower come crashing down and completely transforming the environment in real time in full hi-def splendor.
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#3- NiGHTs Into Dreams… (Sega Saturn) 

The Saturn was designed primarily to be the ultimate 2D gaming machine, with 3D capabilities not being the main focus of the hardware’s development – an odd decision when you consider the heavily
polygonal arcade games that compromised their arcade lineup of the time and were destined to be the system’s launch lineup and killer apps. As such, all but a select few 3D games on the Saturn looked rough even at the time – so you can imagine how that bodes for them 15 years later. NiGHTs was designed in what is still one of my all-time favorite gaming styles – 2.5D – and its 2D gameplay has helped it to stand the test of time compared to the awkward control and horrendous cameras in many 3D games of that era. The graphics, though, are really hard to look at now. Once an orgy of color and imagination representing a breathtaking dreamscape, they now just look like something a high school kid cooked up in a 3D object creation program circa 1992. You can still see the foundation for the beautiful fantasy worlds that were the original intention of Yuji Naka and co., and I’m pretty confident that they would recapture plenty of imaginations today if Sega took the basic existing geographic structure of each level, smoothed out the sharp edges, and laid modern textures and effects on top of them. Also, not having to play with a frisbee-sized controller wouldn’t hurt, either. Sure, the Wii sequel did a decent job of taking the basic NiGHTs formula and bringing it closer to current visual standards, but the original is still a better game overall and deserves to look even better than that one did.
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#2- Shadow of the Colossus (PlayStation 2)

 

This choice is a little controversial given how recently the game was released, but considering what great love I have for this game and that the only thing that I could possibly imagine doing to this game to improve on it is to make it look just a little bit better, I had to include it. The game certainly is no slouch in the graphics department and is one last-gen game that still impresses today especially in terms of its scope and sense of scale, but the PS2 had to strain to keep up with what this game was trying to do, and it often showed. All it would take to turn one of the last generation’s finest twilight classics into a current-gen visual masterpiece is a solid frame rate, a tiny bit of texture and effects work, and a touch o’ the old HD magic and you’d have a game that could stand toe-to-toe with the best-looking games currently available. There has been much talk and hope that there will be a Team Ico collection released for PS3 that would collect their two PS2 games together with an HD upgrade like the God of War Collection, and I’d be one of the first online to buy that, even at full price. If I had to choose, though, I’d rather have the Colossus remake, because to me Ico already feels like it accomplished what it needed to and doesn’t need to be revisited. I still feel that Shadow of the Colossus is an almost perfect game experience, and it will remain one of my all-time favorites and doesn’t need to be prettied-up in order for it to reach its full potential, but it is still so deserving of the full visual splendor that the PS3 can provide that it should be done just because. The Godfather was already a masterpiece even if you saw it on VHS, but that doesn’t mean that it was pointless to put it on Blu-Ray.
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#1- Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (Gamecube)

It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when all of Dennis Dyack’s boasting was jusitified, and during the Gamecube era he had plenty to be proud of. In addition to his team’s impressive Metal Gear Solid remake was Eternal Darkness, one of the best survival horror games to date. Not only did it introduce the then-novel concept of good gameplay in a horror game (Combat is actually deep, functional and enjoyable? And my character controls like a normal video game? This can’t be a horror game!), but the characters, atmosphere, and set-up were all top-notch. The game’s most famous feature, though, were the hallucinations that affected not only your character, but you as a player. It’s easy to ignore and brush off mental anguish being inflicted on an imaginary character, but when the tricks are being played on you it brings the experience and immersion to a whole new level. While ED wasn’t a bad looking game by any means, it was no secret that it began life as a planned N64 release and some aspects of the game’s presentation look suspiciously like art assets and models that were created for an N64 game but spiffied up for the Gamecube. As such, this is a game that truly does deserve some added graphical polish. Little things like light sources that don’t cast shadows are sorely missing from the original product and adding them would go a long way in helping to make this a viable modern-day horror game rather than an amusing curio of its day (like the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill are now). And again, some textures look a little bland and blurry (like they came from an N64 game) and would definitely be well-served by a layer or two of polish. Not only would an HD remake be a great treat for fans of the original, but I think it would win over a whole new group of fans who missed out on it the first time around. Unlike the other games in my list, this one would be equal parts fan service and attempt to bring in new players. Given that this is technically a Nintendo property, the best I could probably hope for is a straight port of the Gamecube game on some future Virtual Console, but you never know. I’d absolutely love to be wrong about that.

I don’t know why becoming true interactive movies is the ultimate goal of so many developers and dream of so many gamers. Why do games have to be movies? Movies already are movies. When you want a movie, watch a movie. When you want a game, play a game. Now, I’m not saying the two mediums can’t ever converge. I happen to be really enjoying Heavy Rain exactly because it’s very much an interactive movie. Hell, I still get a kick out of playing Dragon’s Lair from time to time. I just think that video games are capable of offering a different type of experience and entertainment than movies, and I’d rather see developers pushing for ways to exploit that instead of simply trying to copy movies. What if animated movies only did everything that live action movies did, only they just happened to be animated? What would be the point? Instead, the best ones do something different than traditional live action, utilizing the unique advantages that animation offers. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, they’re just different.

Fine, so a lot of gamers feel they have outgrown Mario or anything even remotely cutesy or cartoony. There is still a lot of middle ground between video games full of floating platforms and 1-ups and talking animals, and games that are just movies where you control the action sequences. Another game I’m playing right now, Batman: Arkham Asylum, is an excellent example of this middle ground. It has all the trappings of a “movie-like” game – realistic visuals, extensive dialogue, dramatic camera angles, a fleshed-out story with a full cast of characters, Hollywood-caliber voice talent – but it still wears its video game-ness proudly and doesn’t shy away from on-screen instructions, button icons, and targeting reticules.

To me, that’s the ideal “best of both worlds”, taking what Hollywood does well – story, characters, cinematography – and combining it with the interactive elements of a great game: Action, exploration, and puzzle solving. Being the type of gamer who likes almost anything, I’ll always play a combination of different types of games, whether they are pure, unadulterated “video games” or a true Hollywood production with subtle interactive elements guiding you through the story. I do hope that we eventually get a point where there are games that you could play for someone who loves movies (but is indifferent towards games) and have them come away thoroughly impressed as if they just watched a great film. What I hope for even more, however, is to have video games that surpass movies – and not by beating them at their own game, but by doing something unique, something different, something only possible with a video game.

So when someone, say legendary film critic Roger Ebert, makes a statement like “Video games can never be art” (as he did in a recent blog post), he of course is simply stating an opinion. While he may be just a tad more respected and renowned and knowledgeable than a lot of us, certainly myself, his say on the matter isn’t any more official than anyone else’s (and he’d probably agree with that). I’m not going to go through and address his entire argument piece by piece and fill this blog post with quotes from his; if you’d like to read it yourself you can, and if you are at all interested in this topic I would definitely encourage you to do so. There is just one particular passage near the end of his post that I would like to share because it really struck me:

“Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art? Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan and Dick Butkus never said they thought their games were an art form. Nor did Shi Hua Chen, winner of the $500,000 World Series of Mah Jong in 2009. Why aren’t gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy themselves? They have my blessing, not that they care.

Do they require validation? In defending their gaming against parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics, do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain, ‘I’m studying a great form of art?’ Then let them say it, if it makes them happy.”

Why are we as gamers so concerned about it? If we believe that games either can be or already are art, isn’t that good enough? Why do we need that validation from “outsiders” when we already know how we feel about it and believe we are justified in feeling that way? Do you think Roger Ebert cares that there must be a large number of people who feel that movies aren’t and never can be art? And if he does care, do you think it’s because he needs some kind of validation of the medium that he loves and the time and passion he has spent on it, or does he just care purely out of interest in other people’s opinions and views?

Video games have only been around in a mainstream capacity for about 35 years. And since I don’t think anybody was trying to call Pac-Man or Dig Dug works of art, let’s fast forward to when that discussion started to gain real momentum, probably sometime near the turn of the millennium. So by my (very) rough estimates, it has only been about 10 years that allegedly artistic games have even existed. I highly doubt that within 10 years of the first masterpiece painting or classic symphony that the general public of the time was already universally declaring those things as works of art unequivocally. It takes some time for a new medium to find its identity and for people to fully embrace it. It is way too soon to be demanding that the world call video games art, no matter how strongly we may already feel about it.

The very nature of video games and their interactivity is unlike almost any other current form of accepted art, and as such the world still needs time to process and understand it. There’s also the matter of passing generations, and in the next 20-30 years almost everyone alive will have grown up either with or at least around video games and won’t know a world before they existed. Much like the kids and teenagers of the 50s and 60s are now parents and grandparents and understand the notion of rock and roll more than their parents did, the children of the 70s and beyond have a better understanding of video games than the older generations of today and are in a better position to look at them more deeply. I’m not trying to take the cop-out “old people just don’t get it” stance, but it is a fact that each generation is different from the last, and while already timeless art will always remain beloved and appreciated, when completely new and radically different concepts and ideas – artistic or otherwise –  are introduced it is often by or at least aimed at the younger generations and frequently to the befuddlement and/or resistance of the older. Right now it’s social networking sites and text messages, and before that it was video games, and before that it was rock music, and before that it was comic books, and before that it was television…and it goes on and on. Today’s crazy thing that the kids are into is tomorrow’s mainstream entertainment that everyone does.

It should also be pointed out that there are varying degrees of acceptance when it comes to art. Almost nobody would deny that the Mona Lisa or the Venus De Milo are works of art (though I’m sure some would). What about a video installation? What about performance art? What about a plain white canvas with a single blue paint stroke across the middle? All of these things are considered true art by some, but not art at all by others. There are things in art museums as we speak that a lot of people wouldn’t consider art, and those things are being featured in established, well-respected art institutions. There are people like Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock who are incredible artists to one person and fly-by-night hacks to another. Even amongst the actual “art world” there is much divisiveness and disagreement about who the artists are and what the art is, and yet we are surprised and even offended that every person who sees Flower or Braid or Ico doesn’t immediately declare them as works of art without question. Let’s be realistic here.

The final piece of this picture is validation. Do I need everyone to agree that video games are art in order to justify every afternoon or evening that I spend playing them? Of course not. I do believe that video games can be art, and that some existing games already are art, and I do sometimes play games that touch me or move me or inspire me or make me think, much in the way true art does. Other times, probably most times, I’m just kicking back and having fun. Since when do I or anyone else need to be validated in what I do for fun? And more to the point of this topic, since when does everybody need to believe in something before anybody feels as though they can? I think…no, I know that video games have the capacity to be art, and plenty of them already are. I don’t need to convince anybody else of that. I don’t need Roger Ebert to believe that. In fact, I don’t even need other gamers to believe that.

When I sit down to play a game, if I decide it’s art, then to me it’s art. That’s it. I’m more than happy to have a discussion about it, even with those who disagree, but it isn’t necessarily to sway them my way or have them sway me to theirs. My decision as to what is art to me is mine alone. And certainly, I am, as Ebert puts it, content to play my games and simply enjoy myself, with or without anyone’s blessing. Anybody who has been a gamer for a long time should already be used to hit-or-miss public perception of the medium as a whole and of the people who play games. I for one am just happy that it is now, more than ever, acceptable to be an adult who openly and proudly plays video games and doesn’t have to feel like I have to hide it when I’m amongst most other adults. If there’s something I’m concerned with, it’s simply not being stereotyped or looked down on for being a gamer (neither of which Roger Ebert does in his blog, by the way), and for video games to be as mainstream and embraced a form of entertainment as movies and television. Once we get there, then we can start pushing this art thing if we absolutely must. One step at a time.

5- Street Fighter Alpha 3 (PlayStation)

I loved the art style of the Street Fighter Alpha games from the beginning (which were inspired by the anime Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, one of my favorite movies), but for some reason I never had more than a passing interest in the first two entries in the series. The lack of a decent home version of either of them on any platforms that I owned probably played a large part in that. So when Alpha 3 hit the PS1, and it actually looked and played almost arcade-perfect (2D fighters were never the PS1’s strong suit), the planets had finally aligned for me to properly enjoy an Alpha game, and enjoy it I did. Having an almost-complete roster of SF2 characters offered a nice bit of familiarity for me to ease into, and the fantastic World Tour mode had me playing it solo for far longer than the bare-bones “arcade mode” offered in most home fighting games up to that point. The two-on-one matches were also a blast and offered up a nice little change from the norm. The selectable “isms” were great for me, as I was able to start off with a play style that was easy for a rookie scrub like me to get into while also easing me into the more complicated ones as I got comfortable enough to try them. Best of all, Alpha 3 was just silly and over-the-top enough for my tastes without crossing over into the all-out lunacy of Capcom’s later Vs. games. Marvel Vs Capcom 2, fan favorite though it may be, is just way too nuts for me.

4- Mortal Kombat II (Arcade, Genesis)

The original Mortal Kombat felt dated about 6 months after it first came out, and MK3 was just a mess of absurd fatalities, ridiculous characters, and a run button. In between, though, they got it right with Mortal Kombat II.  The MK series has always been more about slow, brutal, crushing combat as opposed to the quick, stylish fighting seen in its rival SF, and no matter which one was ultimately “better”, the important thing was that they were different and there was a place for each. I loved unleashing a flurry of hurricane kicks, fireballs, and dragon punches with Ryu, but there was still nothing quite like a devastating Mortal Kombat-style uppercut. It’s like the difference between the fight scenes in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon vs. the ones in Rambo – both good, but for completely different reasons. While the MK games have always had trouble deciding whether they were truly dark or intentionally campy, I felt that with MK2 they had struck the best balance between the two, with just enough humor to balance out the punishing action and gruesome fatalities. Speaking of fatalities, MK2 is also when they were at their best, ridiculous but still cool in that teenage boy revenge fantasy kind of way, before they turned into parodies in part 3 and beyond. While big hits were the order of the day, there was a little finesse to be had, and while much of that was done via “dial-a-combos” it wasn’t as bad as it would later get – and not nearly as horrendous as it was in Killer Instinct. When talking about a game like Mortal Kombat, some smart ass will always pipe in with “Yeah, well try playing it now and tell me it’s still good”. Truthfully, I haven’t touched MK2 in at least a decade, but so what? Every game doesn’t have to be timeless. Some games are just products of their time, and of the person you were when you played them. My 12-year-old self loved the hell out of Mortal Kombat II, and not even I get to take that away from him. Nor would I want to.

3- Virtua Fighter 2 (Arcade, Saturn)

I never really liked Tekken 1 or 2 all that much, but my God did I love me some Virtua Fighter. Virtua Fighter 2 is of particular note in its inclusion in this list because I didn’t own my own copy of it until about 7 years ago, making it the only fighting game on this list that I played almost exclusively in the arcades (barring the weekend I rented it and a Saturn not long after it was released). That’s how much I liked it, that I didn’t have to have the home version to really get into it. The visuals looked unbelievable to me at the time, especially in the fluidity of the way the characters moved. What I really liked about the game, and about the VF series in general, was the way it was rooted in reality. Sure, the characters jumped a little high, but for the most part, they performed “real” moves, things that could all conceivably be done by martial arts experts in real life. It was also high on technique, and while later VF games got a little too complex and deep for my abilities – and patience - VF2 was when it was still accessible enough for me to be decent at right away but deep enough to keep me coming back. If only it didn’t have to settle for the doomed Sega Saturn as its home console, Virtua Fighter 2 could’ve (and should’ve) been every bit the blockbuster that my #2 pick was. In some ways I actually think it’s a better game, but a few superficial victories gave the current #2 the edge. Virtua Fighter 2 is still a game very near and dear to me, though, and for reasons I don’t understand it doesn’t seem to be mentioned amongst the other all-time great fighters, which is an absolute tragedy. You can have your Soul Calibur; I’ll take VF2 any day.

2- Tekken 3 (PlayStation)

As I said before, I never got into the first two Tekkens and was a Virtua Fighter fan through-and-through, but Tekken 3 changed everything. That game completely owned my life for about 6 months, which isn’t a long time for a hardcore fighting game aficionado but it’s an eternity for a casual fan like myself. Tekken 3, primarily the version for PS1 with its extra modes and characters, it is an incredible overall fighting game package. Just taking the time to beat the game with every character to see their endings and unlock new characters kept me plenty busy as it was; after that, it was picking my go-to stable of 2 or 3 fighters and learning them inside and out that carried me through the following months. Tekken Force mode wasn’t mind-blowing, but having a rudimentary beat-em-up within a fighting game was really cool at the time, and Tekken Ball was good for a few laughs. Like I said, a complete package through-and-through, with the added bonus of an incredible fighting game itself at the core. The Tekken series has been pretty hit-or-miss since part 3, and while a few of them have been good, they’ve just never recaptured the magic of Tekken 3. If they HD-ed up the graphics and put it as-is on a download service, I’d buy it in a heartbeat and fall in love with it all over again. Tekken 3 with Tekken 6′s visuals would be a dream come true for me.

1- Street Fighter II: Championship Edition (multi) What else could possibly be #1? Street Fighter II is essentially a perfect game, fighting or otherwise. I still remember the day that I first saw and played Street Fighter II the way people who were alive to see the moon landing remember that moment. But it was Championship Edition, with the added playable boss characters and ability to have mirror matches that the game really took shape into the masterpiece that people are still having tournaments for almost 20 years later. The gameplay is tuned flawlessly, and the three different strengths each for punches and kicks lent just enough extra depth and complexity without resorting to an endless list of arbitrary moves to memorize. In fact, each character only had 2 or 3 special moves, and that’s all you ever needed. Combos weren’t pre-programmed – they just came organically out of the basic fighting engine because it was just that well-designed. You did combos simply by stringing the standard attacks together in a logical way, not memorizing a specific pre-determind string of button presses. The hardcore SF players have their own special “versions” that they prefer for some obscure technical reason or another, and there are more variations on the core game of “Street Fighter II” than I’m even going to attempt to count. I know that Super Turbo is the “fan favorite”, and it’s an amazing game to be sure, but for me nothing is ever going to top the basic, original Championship Edition (and I’m especially partial to the Genesis version, where the bulk of my lifetime of SF2 playing was done). To me, the subsequent upgrades are like the Star Wars re-dos: Sure they are prettier, more technically impressive, and by all accounts “better”, but they just can’t recapture the original magic.

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5- Grand Theft Auto / The Legend of Zelda (TIE): Four Games Finished Each

It’s a little funny to think that I’ve only actually finished 4 Zelda games in a 20 year span, since it feels like such a huge part of my gaming life and history. I have played quite a bit of The Adventure of Link, A Link to the Past, and The Phantom Hourglass, though, even thought I couldn’t count those since I never finished them. The original was the first long, epic game I ever played, and it was the game that sealed the deal that I was going to be a lifelong gamer. What’s so amazing is how I get almost the same feeling of wonder and excitement playing a Zelda game at age 29 that I did playing the original at age 7. Sure, the fundamentals or basic structure haven’t changed much beyond the expected visual upgrades, but there’s just something magical about a Zelda game and each one resonates with me so deeply that I feel so content and satisfied each time I finish one, enough so that it doesn’t matter how long it may before I play the next one.

I practically hated the original Grand Theft Auto. I just could not get used to the way overhead perspective or the awkward controls that went along with it. I still got caught up in the GTA3 hype, and picked it up the Friday before it was officially released (thank you local game stores that occasionally break street dates). I brought it home, put it in my PS2, and it didn’t leave there for almost a month (and that’s a huge deal for someone who is usually juggling 3 to 5 games at any given time, and that being my only DVD player). Taking that basic formula that I was already enamored with and putting a layer of 80s culture on top of it meant that my excitement for the follow-up, Vice City, was (and still is) one of my most looked forward to games of all time, and again, I was wrapped up in it for weeks on end. I can count two hands the number of RPG-length games I’ve finished in my life, but the entire PS2/PSP GTA lineup (minus Liberty City Stories) would be in that list. The play-it-your-way structure of the games makes it perfect for people like me who sometimes have trouble finishing games of extended lengths, which is why I’ve actually finished as many as GTA games as I have. Even if you put a GTA game down for several months, you can still pick it right back up and not have to spend too much time regaining your footing. With GTA, it is more about the journey than the destination, to be honest, but I’ve still felt a desire to reach the ending of 4 of the 5 that I’ve started  – even if it took a year or more to do so.

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4- Contra: Five Games Finished

You would’ve had to sleep your way through the NES era to not have finished the original Contra (even if you’ve never done it without a friend or “the code”). The series has certainly had some missteps, primarily whenever it attempts to go 3D (sometimes literally), but there is almost nothing like a good, classic-style Contra game. Each one is usually only an hour or so front-to-back, but that’s only after countless retries and restarts as you slowly learn the intricacies and patterns of each stage. Classic Contra games are also among the most timeless in all of gaming: I don’t think there will ever be a day when I’m not in the mood to play one of the original Contras, especially cooperatively. Some Contra enthusiasts don’t think anything beyond Contra III: The Alien Wars is worth talking about, but for those that aren’t so closed-minded, Hard Corps for the Genesis and Shattered Soldier for PS2 are fantastic additions to the series, as was the technologically-impressive original Game Boy version of The Alien Wars (though that one is extremely short, even for a Contra game). Contras aren’t games that I play and finish once; they are games I revisit once a year, month, week, even day for the newest ones. If I could count each additional time I finished a Contra game and added those together, the series would’ve been the winner of this list by a crushing landslide. I can say without hyperbole that I’ve beaten the original Contra at least 50 times, a number that I haven’t come close to hitting with any other single game.

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3- Metroid / Metal Gear Solid (TIE): Six Games Finished Each

Entries in the Metroid series account for both my favorite SNES and Gamecube games respectively, due in no small part to what an amazing completed experience they were. Not unlike Contra games, the actual “length” of a typical Metroid game is relatively short; it’s all of the blind exploration required, especially in the map- and hint-free early days of the series, where you begin to pile on the play time. The Game Boy Advance ones were made a bit too easy by literally telling you almost exactly where you needed to go and what you needed to do for most of the game which took away the need for exploring and made them rather short experiences, but they were both still great rides that were satisfying to finish. However, those did lack the feeling of accomplishment that came with finishing one of the original three Metroids, as there was almost no text or dialogue and next to nothing telling you were to go or what to do next outside of the occasional ever-so-subtle nudge or hint. Finishing the NES original was one of my proudest early gaming achievements (especially for only being 7 or 8 at the time). When you have nothing but your own wits, intuition, and experimentation to carry you through a game, it makes every discovery and victory that much more exciting, and the feeling of getting to the end of a Metroid game is second-to-none, especially topped off with the tightly-timed “Get out before the whole place blows up!” climax of each one that just never seems to get old no matter how many times they repeat it.

Outside of anything bearing the Nintendo Seal of Approval, there is no series of games that I am more in love with than Metal Gear Solid. Each new entry in that series is a major event for me, and I completely immerse myself in it and forsake all other hobbies and pastimes (sometimes including sleep) until it is finished. Not only that, but once the final credits are finished rolling, it’s almost an uncontrolled reflex to immediately start a new game and play an hour or so into it in that same sitting, no matter what time it is or how long I had already been playing that day. I repeated that cycle with the original Metal Gear Solid every single night for about a month, beating it over 10 times in the process. I’ve never quite matched that with additional entries – both because they take significantly longer to beat and I just don’t have that kind of free time or stamina anymore – but I have yet to finish one and not play at least 20 minutes into a new game immediately after…even after Metal Gear Solid 4 and it’s nearly 3 hour long climax.

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2- Castlevania: Nine Games Finished

I only dabbled in the Castlevania series prior to Symphony of the Night, but after that I was hooked, both in the new entries that followed and in revisiting older games in the series. Where I really racked up the tally, though, is when the series hit the Nintendo portables in a big way, with a new Castlevania coming out almost every year. Spending seven years at a job that involved nearly 2 hours on public transportation round-trip each day meant that I burned through portable video games at a very high rate, and I just ate the Castlevania games up. Castlevania is like video game comfort food for me. There’s never any big changes or surprises, but every time I start one I know what I’m in for, and I know I’m going to enjoy myself. I wouldn’t be against a huge franchise reboot, but at the same time, if they just kept cranking out the same old 2D Castlevanis for the next 10 years, I honestly don’t think I’d mind all that much and I’d happily play and enjoy each one. My experience with the 3D Castlevanias is limited to Lament of Innocence, but I did have a good time with that one and it’s one of the nine that I completed.

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1- Super Mario: Ten Games Finished

There may technically be dozens upon dozens of titles that could be referred to as “Mario games”, but only the core Super Mario platform games are what count as the main “Mario series”. And with the exception of the oddball Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (of which there is much debate over whether it’s a true entry in the Mario series) and the original Game Boy Super Mario Land which I absolutely despise, I have played and finished all of the rest, and smiled a whole lot while I was doing so.  What else is there to say? Of course it is my most finished series, my most played series, and my favorite series. Mario is video games. The rest is details.

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At a press conference last year, both White and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Paige shared their opinions on music games. Jack White said he finds it “depressing” that video games are the primary way that many kids today are exposed to music, and that it’s “a little sad” that being in a video game is what it takes to get exposure. Jimmy Paige, meanwhile, felt the need to state the obvious, saying that just because people get good at Guitar Hero or Rock Band doesn’t mean they can hold a candle to late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonahm. He specifically noted the drum work in their song Good Times, Bad Times, of which he said “How many drummers in the world can play that part, let alone [someone playing a video game] on Christmas morning?” I also happened across a two year old interview with John Mayer in Rolling Stone, where Mayer stated “…Guitar Hero was devised to bring the guitar-playing experience to the masses without them having to put anything into it. And having done both, there’s nothing like really playing guitar. I mean, what would you rather drive, a Ferrari or one of those amusement-park cars on a track?”

Okay, so maybe it is a little sad that kids get exposed to music primarily through video games. But guess what, is isn’t video games or kids in general that made things that way. I won’t go into detail on the state of the music industry, we all know the story. The fact is that the avenues through which previous generations were exposed to music – radio, MTV, inexpensive concerts, swapping cassettes, etc – either no longer exist at all or don’t exist in the same fashion. It isn’t the youth of today’s fault that the radio market is in the state it’s in, or that they can’t flip on MTV and get exposed to bands through their videos, or that many concerts and their associated fees are out of the financial reach of the average, middle-class music fan and most are lucky to see one big concert a year.

Kids today, and adults for the most part, only get exposed to the music that has the most marketing money behind it or that some group of executives decide has a high enough potential profit to be stocked at their big box store. Unless of course someone buys Guitar Hero or Rock Band, or even a sports game with a licensed soundtrack, and then all of a sudden there are outside-the-mainstream bands like TV on the Radio, The New Pornographers, Dinosaur Jr, At the Drive-In, or even smaller, true indie bands, and they are listening to them and getting to like them, and maybe even then buying their music. Is that sad, too? People discovering bands that don’t get played on Top 40 radio or over the PA system at Wal-Mart? Shouldn’t that be what matters, getting exposure to bands that deserve it but can’t or just don’t want to play the billion-dollar marketing game? Or kids discovering older bands that they would’ve previously dismissed as “crappy music my parents listen to”, like The Ramones, CCR, Steely Dan, Bob Dylan, or The Who? My fiancee has a 5 year old cousin who loves singing Crazy Train in Guitar Hero: World Tour. How can anybody argue with something that makes a 5 year old kid in 2010 learn and love a classic metal song from 1980? Times change, people change, and technology changes. Either you keep up with it, or you risk being forgotten. Take your pick.

It’s a shame that the album is dead, MTV and VH1 don’t play videos, FM radio is in a sad state, most music chains have gone out of business, and that the few retailers that do still carry CDs devote a minimal amount of floor space to them. The music industry at large has been in trouble for some time now, and video games didn’t cause that. What it did do, however, is present a new and different way for people to find and enjoy music today by incorporating it into the technology and interactivity that we as a society now demand out of every aspect of our lives. That’s the part that shouldn’t be overlooked, which is that while people are playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band they may enjoying the game itself, but they are also listening to and enjoying the music. Do you prefer they just download those songs for free off of a torrent site, dump them on their computers, and only partially pay attention to them while they are surfing the web? Because that’s the alternative. An alternative which, unlike music games and their DLC, doesn’t involve people actually paying for and attention to the music.

Wait a minute, Jack, aren’t there now both White Stripes and Raconteurs songs in Rock Band and Guitar Hero? Interesting. Well, I’m sure you have enjoyed the extra cash from that. It’s hard to bemoan something you got paid for, especially since, given how long it took for White Stripes songs to finally show up in music games means you probably either waited until the money was better or the games were more popular. Which is fine, by all means hold out until you can get as much money and exposure as you can, but if you do that, don’t call the source of that money “sad”. You aren’t above playing the business side a little, so don’t sit there acting like some “true artist” who is above all of that. I find is so irritating when millionaire musicians go on and on about the evils of the music business as they are raking in money from it. Doesn’t stop you from cashing those checks, does it?

Jimmy, we know John Bonham is a legend. Nobody is denying that or has forgotten that, and nobody who would be able to master a Led Zeppelin song on expert drums in a video game would automatically assume they are better than or even as good as John Bonham. But is he some untouchable God that no mere mortal should even be allowed to pretend they are playing like him? Do you look down on people who play air guitar at your concerts, too, or sing karaoke to one of your songs in a bar? Because at it’s most basic level, and maybe you don’t understand this, but rhythm games are essentially people playing air guitar, drumming their pencils against their desks, and singing along to music, all things that music fans have always been doing, only it happens to involve holding a plastic instrument and getting an arbitrary score for it – and paying you for the privilege. What’s the problem with that?

And John, guess what: 99% of the population have never and will never get to drive a Ferrari. So should we have to just sit around feeling sad about it and being jealous of the millionaires and rock stars who can afford one, or can we find a way to simulate the experience and have a little fun with it, be it at an amusement park, in an arcade, or whatever? Maybe you’d sleep better at night on your pile of money, Grammy awards, and cocktail waitresses if the average non-rock star loser couldn’t do anything but lust after your life and your success. Us regular people don’t get to drive Ferraris or play arenas or be the quarterback in the Super Bowl. Instead of just feeling depressed about it, we get a little taste of it in a video game, where we can play make believe and have a little fantasy time doing things we can’t do in real life. How is that so evil? How does that threaten your livelihood? How does that diminish your own hard work and accomplishments? Not everybody can be a rock star, or a millionaire, or a pro athlete, no matter how hard we try or how much we practice. We shouldn’t have to just miss out completely and not even get to pretend we are doing these things because we weren’t born with certain talents or got certain breaks or opportunities.

Besides, maybe we don’t want to be famous musicians. Maybe we aren’t trying to be like you. Maybe we are just playing a damn game. Everything isn’t always about you and people wanting you or wanting to be you. Our fun might not be “real” fun to you because it doesn’t involve a Ferrari or a supermodel or a mountain of cocaine, but it’s our fun, and despite what you think it isn’t diminishing you or your industry in any way. So just shut up and play your guitars and cash your paychecks, and stop acting like what you do is so holy and special that it shouldn’t dare be imitated by anyone who hasn’t devoted their lives to learning to do it.

What irritates me most are the people who spend large amounts of their day watching mindlessly entertaining TV shows and somehow still feel morally and intellectually superior to those who play video games instead. It’s fine if the bulk of your free time consists of climbing mountains, volunteering at homeless shelters, or creating art of some kind, and you just can’t see yourself staring at a television for hours on end. Good on you for leading such an active and socially responsible life that doesn’t leave time for frivolous entertainments. However, if the amount of hours I spend each week playing video games is comparable to the amount of hours you spend watching sitcoms and reality television, you are in no place to take any sort of high ground that allows you to look down on me and my hobby. What could possibly be so much more “acceptable” with watching American Idol over playing Mario Kart?

I think that part of the problem lies in the perception of exactly how gamers (a term I have mixed feelings about for reasons relating to this rant) spend their free time. People who don’t play video games imagine their usual day, and all of things they would normally do within their 16 or so waking hours, and then try and squeeze video games in on top of all of that. This line of thinking is what leads so many people to make the proclamation that they simply don’t have time for video games – which, maybe I’m just sensitive about the subject, but I tend to take personally whenever I hear it, because it somehow implies that since I do have time for video games, I must have less important things to do than those who don’t. Most of us have our fair share of daily and ongoing responsibilities, be it our jobs, our household duties, our familial duties, and so on. How the remaining free hours are spent is up to the individual, and each person “makes time” for whatever they choose to make time for. It isn’t that I have an extra abundance of responsibility-free time to spend on video games than the average person; rather, I choose to play video games instead of other things, like watching TV for example. I don’t spend the same amount of hours watching TV as someone else might, and then play video games on top of that time. It’s absurd to me that people can’t seem to understand this concept. Say you spend 2 hours a day watching TV, and I spend 2 hours a day playing video games. I’m not necessarily also watching 2 hours of TV in addition to that game time; more likely, it’s instead of it. If you spend several hours a day watching TV, and then claim that you don’t have time to play video games, you are lying. You have more than enough time to play video games, you just choose to spend that time doing something else. Which, of course, is your right. I’d be a hypocrite if I condemned someone else for how they used their free time when I take offense to others criticizing how I spend mine. Just don’t look down on me or judge me for a pastime that isn’t any less valid or grown-up or acceptable than yours, particularly if you spend several hours a day on your ass staring at a television for long stretches of time. It’s the same thing that people are doing when they are playing video games, they just have a game controller in their hands instead of a remote control.

Technically, if I’m playing a motion-heavy Wii game or drums in Rock Band, I’m also being a bit more active than you are just watching TV, and with just about any game I’m also using a bit more brain power than you are, but hey, who am I to judge? I’m just a childish gamer with nothing better to do than to waste my day away playing video games while other people are being so productive in their TV watching. Knowing who got a rose this week or which wedding dress the stressed-out bride-to-be ended up picking or who was most recently on the receiving end of the smart-alecky pal’s latest zinger must be so much more valuable and fulfilling than anything I could possibly be experiencing in these silly games that I play. It’s a good thing I have so much extra free time to waste on them.