The World Needs More Ninjas

Inspired by Damon’s post, I wanted to give my commentary on the top 100 video games of all time that I have played. Keep in mind that this list will be from quite a different perspective than Damon’s. He throws LAN parties that are quite the rage. I, on the other hand, haven’t seriously played a video game for about a decade.

So, here’s the list. (Todd Baker, you need to add a post on your blog about this since you logged like three hours of video game playing for every one of my hours when we were growing up ) Here’s my commentary on games I have played on the list:

• #1 Super Mario Bros.: This is the game that made hitting things with your head cool. It’s amazing to think that virtually every kid born in America between about 1975 and 1985 played this game. I mean, what other video game could you throw up a picture of a Goomba:
  
  
  
  and immediately have pretty much an entire generation tell you from what video game that character came? That being said, this was a hard game, exacerbated by the fact that you couldn’t save your game. Want to save the princess? Better have several hours blocked off. You died? Start back at square one. I never got past it
• #3 Tetris: Great combination of being mindless fun while also requiring lots of skill if you want to get really into it.
• #8 Street Fighter II:If you don’t think there’s any skill involved in video games, you never tried Zangief’s spinning pile driver move. I played this game almost daily for a year or so and I don’t think I ever could do the move. My fighter was Ken. The Dragon Punch rocked. Other fun ones were Blanka (I’m chewing your head), Chun-Li (that kick thing was awesome), and Vega (his jump of the wall and slam you thing was one of the coolest moves).
• #11 Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: I never much cared for this one. The first Legend of Zelda, however, rocked. I probably beat both quests on that like five times apiece. I guess I was bored back then.
• #20 Ms. Pac Man: I don’t know if I ever actually played this. We had a TI computer when I was growing up, so I played a clone version called Munch Man. My mom liked that game, but I don’t think I ever got into it very much.
• #23 Super Mario Bros. 3: We never owned this game, so I only played it briefly. Seemed pretty cool. I did get past Super Mario 2…I think that’s the only one of them I ever beat.
• #24 Tecmo Super Bowl:OK, as far as I am concerned, this game is the crowning achievement of the video game industry. The pinnacle of its history if you will. Every game before it was merely a prelude. Every game after it was merely grasping its excellence. I know this will seem like blasphemy for Madden fans, so let me explain.

  This game is a throwback to a time when football video games were like, well, playing a video game, not studying to become a defensive coordinator. You didn’t have to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation about the virtues of a 3-4 set vs. a 4-3 set or know when to use a nickel and when to use a dime package in order to excel at this game. I mean, people that have mastered Madden probably know more than half the offensive and defensive coordinators in the NFL by the time they’re finished. With Tecmo, you get eight plays. Defense is simple…pick the same as the offense and you pretty much have a loss of yardage, otherwise you’re on your own.

  Yea there were some unrealistic aspects to to Tecmo Super Bowl. The 49er’s QB could just run to the back of the end zone and throw a Hail Mary to Jerry Rice and hit it a surprisingly high fraction of the time regardless of how good the D was (holla, Timothy Clardy). Randall Cunningham was like 20 times better than he ever was in real life. But that’s what made it a video game!

  My brother, my two cousins, and I used to set up these rather elaborate tournaments with Tecmo Super Bowl. However you finished in the previous tournament would determine your draft order for selecting teams in the next tournament. Good times.

• #38 Madden NFL 2004: See above.
• #47 NHL 94:I never played this, but Blades of Steel was the hockey game. It should have made the list.
• #57 Mike Tyson’s Punchout!: This was the most talked about game I can remember in elementary school. Everyone always wanted to tell how far they got. I made it to Super Macho Man, but I couldn’t get past him. And, Mike Tyson on that game was quick! It was pretty amazing to watch someone actually beat him. One thing that made this game so great was the sound. One of the boxers would say something like, “Come on!” to call you out. But this being back in the day before decent sound, it came out as this odd beeping noise
• #80 Baseball Stars: OK, I never actually played this game, but the list loses a little bit of street cred for including this one instead of RBI Baseball…now there was an eight-bit baseball game! At the very least, they could have included Basewars instead, where you have robots fighting and playing baseball.
• #83 Contra:Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, the 30 man code will always reside. Up up down down left right left right B A start. In what has to be one of the most random things I’ve ever found using Google, not only did a band do a song entitled Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left Right, B, A, Start, but there actually exists a band called that!