Top 25 Games Turning 25, part 5

I was going to space this one out a little more, but, heck. We’re so close to the end, let’s just push through!

You may have already heard that 1994 was one of those big years in video game releases.

Sure, it was the year that brought us Rise of the Robots, Shaq Fu and Super 3D Noah’s Arc, but it was also the year of Doom II, System Shock, TIE Fighter and Street Fighter II: Turbo.

…not that any of those seven games are eligible, because I’ve not played a one of them.

So, just to belabor the point, here is the final batch of the Top 25 video games turning 25 this year (that I played; you’ll note it’s light on fighting games and Windows games) presented in alphabetical order. Because I
a) am a coward; or
b) have spent too much time on this already to agonize over ranking them.

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Super Adventure Island II

It’s a peak SNES year, so you know there’s going to be a bevy of games with Super titles. Even the Game Boy game on today’s list has Super in its title.

While the original Super Adventure Island focused on being a 16-bit upgrade to the classic (and punishingly difficult) series, its sequel decided to stretch its wings a bit. Master Higgins suddenly finds himself in a Metroidvania!

While Super Adventure Island IIfeatures discrete levels, progress through the game’s world is gated by equipment and skills you find. Not all of it is for the purposes of clearing obstacles, though. Master Higgins can upgrade his raw offense and defense by equipping various swords and armors RPG-style. He’ll even find gear suited for exploiting or defending elemental weaknesses.

It wasn’t until I played this game that I realized that Zelda II had a lot of potential if it could be made with a then-contemporary level of game design experience and pure polish. I wouldn’t hate another Zelda game again… until Spirit Tracks.

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Super Metroid

And now, the Metroidvania you were expecting.

I was expecting to have to refer to an older post, as I had done with previous Game of the Year contenders Final Fantasy VI and SimCity 2000, but it turns out I have never written about Super Metroid at length before.

As remarkable as that is, I still feel like going on about one of gaming’s most inspirational works will nevertheless all be stuff you heard before. Purely atmospheric storytelling? Interconnected design? Camouflaged tutorials? Is there anything about this game’s design that didn’t become the textbook-example?

And Super Metroid’s influence extends to game-playing, deeply tied to the early days of speedrunning. One of the newest of the oldest speedrunning sites on the Web started off as a guide to sequence breaking in Super Metroid… though the site’s forums wouldn’t officially coined the term “sequence breaking” until a discussion about Metroid Prime.

Also, save the animals. Because the kill-the-animals crowd loses its cool so easily.

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Super Punch-Out!!

Don’t get me wrong, Punch-Out!! (NES) is a fun and unique game, a classic unto itself. But what it wasn’t was an adaptation of the arcade version’s gameplay. Luckily, that’s what Super Punch-Out!! (SNES) is for.

The Punch-Out!! (arcade) and Super Punch-Out!! (arcade) experience was juuuust old enough and the SNES had juuuust enough visual tricks to make Super Punch-Out!! (SNES) look and feel like a huge upgrade. The perspective is truer, the pacing is faster , the controls crisper. The roster of boxers is larger, more skilled and features bigger personalities.

While Punch-Out!! (Wii) would draw its inspiration from the NES gameplay, Super Punch-Out!! (both)’s spirit continued on in the mechanics of Little Mac when he eventually joined the Smash Bros. roster.

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Tetris & Dr. Mario

Here’s the Super black sheep.

This is the only (Western) way to play timeless classic Tetris on the SNES, and Nintendo was kind enough to throw in Dr. Mario for the ride. Not too shabby! This game even corrects the fly in the ointment of the (official) NES game by incorporating a two-player mode.

But as Nintendo giveth, Nintendo also taketh; this version’s fatal flaw is the remixed music is wretched. It took from the correct version of Tetris (Game Boy) but it did the soundtrack dirty with a dumbed-down arrangement using random midi instruments.

But this still remains on my self because the two-player mode allows you the option to sandwich rounds of Dr. Mario in-between Tetris. The concept wasn’t as fully developed as we’d see later in Puyo Puyo Tetris, but this did hit the market 20 years earlier. It was a hot new concept that made the cart much more than just two puzzle games for the price of one.

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Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

I purposefully avoided choosing Wario Land back in the Game Boy Retrospective for the same reason I snubbed Donkey Kong: It was already going to get its due from me here.

Wario’s first solo adventure was a delightful change-up to the Mario formula. It was also a great Game Boy game because it was designed for the screen, as opposed to trying (and always, always failing) to shoehorning a 1:1 representation of an NES game. The best — and only — way to produce a great Game Boy game is to do what early NES developers learned to do with arcade ports: change them.

The level design in Warioland is nothing like traditional Mario games. As Wario is not Mario, the excuse is there to develop powerups that fit his different environment (encouraging predictable rather than versatile movement). While Mario is encouraged to rush along and make daring jumps, Wario is encouraged to pace himself and look around for every last scrap of treasure each time he treks through a level.

In this way, despite the limited real estate and the large sprite for Wario, he always knows where he’s jumping and always has some notice of threats. Despite this, the game’s pace never feels slow or boring. But I’m guessing a team of developers that can manage the screen size can also figure out how to keep a deliberately paced game interesting from moment to moment.

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And so, my list comes to an end. Did some of your favorites from 1994 not make the cut? I strongly encourage my fellow gaming writers to post the games they feel got left out and which games should get to boot to make room.