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Tetris — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 17)

Tetris is an essential play for everyone.

This is stipulated here, and pretty much everywhere else too: Tetris is a game everyone must play.

That’s not surprising, or at least it shouldn’t be to anyone currently breathing air. This puzzle game — in which different shapes fall out of the sky and one must arrange them so that you can fill in a line to clear out more room for still more falling blocks — is widely considered the best puzzle game in existence, if not the best video game … period.

Again, so stipulated.

What’s kind of fun about Tetris is that its roots account for some of its pervasiveness. This game has been ported an astounding 65 times and been purchased an even more astounding 202 million times. This fact, that there are dozens of versions of this game and it really doesn’t matter which version you play (unless it’s the Genesis version; that version sucks), is unique in this industry.

Also unique is its backstory, which involved a Russian programmer, the U.S.S.R. government, several gaming companies, and — for some reason — Hungary.

It’s one of the most popular games of all time. And yet, would it have been so popular if its licensing rights hadn’t become so bizarrely entangled?

Possibly not.

It got ported and ported and ported again, because no one knew enough about who owned the thing to be scared enough not to pirate the thing.

And thusly, Tetris spread like a disease.

Tetris
Genre: Puzzle
Released: 1987
Platform: PC (and everything else)
EGM’s No. 1 game of all time

WhoDatJedi Podcast: Is ‘The Mandalorian’ getting TOO much appreciation now? Also, let’s catch up!

We got back in the saddle this week. We got into why we were on hiatus, talked about the newest Star Wars content, and we even asked if “The Mandalorian” is too hyped at this point.

Gasp!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 16)

I’ve gravitated to brawlers for a very long time, basically since they first started popping up in arcades in the mid-1980s.

The brawler — if you need a primer — is a genre of video game that involves beating up a bunch of bad guys who keep coming at you. Also sometimes referenced as a “beat ’em up” — though I shy from that designation as that to me denotes more of a one-on-one fighter like Street Fighter II — it essentially boils down to mashing punch and kick buttons, often with a teammate(s) helping you, through several stages until you defeat the big bad, probably/possibly rescue a family member/significant other, and live happily ever after (until the sequel).

There’s probably something to unpack there about why I enjoy these games as much as I do [insert analysis about wish fulfillment in regards to settling conflict with one’s fists HERE], but the appeal of the genre runs much deeper than simple violence.

To me, it’s all about how communal they are.

Brawlers, you see, are short, and since multiple people can generally play, they become communal by their very nature. That makes a good brawler a tremendous bonding opportunity, in the same way a sports title can be. You can gather with friends, have a quick, fun experience together, and then move on to other interests or part ways.

Gaming is just more fun when it’s done together.

But brawlers might be even better for cooperative play than sports games. In sports titles, you’re often taking on your friends and family. You’re opponents. In a brawler, you’re united against a common foe. Teamwork carries the day. And while “friendly fire” can be a fun aspect to that sort of experience too, it’s ultimately most rewarding to team up and defeat the game together.

So yeah, I like these kinds of games a LOT. And yet, when I sat down to think about which games are some of my all-time, can’t-miss recommendations, not many were emerging at the top of my list … for various, sound reasons.

Streets of Rage and Double Dragon haven’t aged all that gracefully.

Final Fight and Streets of Rage 2 were never really my jam at the time, so they don’t have that “first love” appeal.

Battletoads? A smidge too tough.

The Golden Ax series? A little too niche.

And honestly, most other arcade brawlers that came along afterward just felt too derivative.

Which is how we ended up with a licensed arcade port sitting here at No. 16.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time
Genre: Brawler
Released: 1992
Platform: SNES
No. 24 on GamesRadar’s Best SNES Games of All Time

WhoDatJedi podcast: Preaching patience to Pelicans fans, ‘Bad Batch’ fans, and ‘Loki’ fans too

The theme of the week is patience.

Ms. Pac-Man — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 15)

The list that I’ve been putting together of games every person should play — the retro gaming essentials — has thus far mostly taken on a personal bent, focusing primarily on games I personally enjoy a great deal. These are, after all, games I am personally recommending to as wide an audience as possible. It would stand to reason they are my personal favorites.

My relationship with Pac-Man is … more complicated than that.

Have I derived fun from playing the series? Absolutely. I have fond memories of playing the games in arcades and pizzerias growing up. The games were just always THERE, whether one played them or not, always in the background, running through gameplay footage and piping noise out into the room. Pac-Man games were a constant. They were reliable. They were present.

That’s comforting.

But gun to my head, is any Pac-Man game getting listed when I’m asked for my personal favorites?

Eh, probably not. At least not for a long time.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t think people should play, or that folks won’t get enjoyment out of them. These are, by definition, ESSENTIAL games.

And the best game in the series is Ms. Pac-Man.

Ms. Pac-Man
Genre: Maze
Released: 1982
Platform: Arcade
No. 5 on Time’s 50 Best Video Games of All Time

WhoDatJedi podcast: What are the best space battles in Star Wars?

This one’s pretty straightforward. Got a favorite? There’s a pretty definitive Top 2.

Doom — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 14)

It’s difficult to find appropriate enough words to describe the kind of impact Doom had when it dropped on the gaming world as shareware in 1993, both in a larger sense, but also at an individual level.

Its impact was like that of an atomic bomb being detonated. It sent shock waves through the industry.

Most of us hadn’t seen anything like this before.

Sure, there had been first-person efforts in the past, but most of those games suffered from significant frame rate issues that made proper interaction with the environment borderline impossible. Even a game like Wolfenstein-3D, the direct predecessor to Doom, struggled to get traction with a wider audience, probably at least in part due to its technical limitations.

Doom provided a first-person experience wherein the player felt as though they were truly inserted into a real-time environment, and more pressingly for the gamer, an environment filled with demons bent on killing you.

This had simply not been done.

It’s no wonder why this game was a smash hit and inspired an entire genre of video gaming and direct clones that kept the spirit of the vision alive and truly well … all the way into the present and no doubt the future as well.

First-person shooters are here to stay. And if you want to know why, look no further than Doom.

Doom
Genre: First-person shooter
Released: 1993
Platform: PC
PC Gamer’s Most Influential Game of All Time

WhoDatJedi Podcast: ‘The Bad Batch,’ the military, and what we can learn from both

After a few episodes of “The Bad Batch,” the new animated Star Wars series on Disney+, it’s pretty obvious that themes of the military are going to be a big part of the show.

But just HOW big, and moreover … are they going to get it right?

We talked about that this week on the WhoDatJedi podcast.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 13)

I couldn’t begin to tell you why The Legend of Zelda just wasn’t a bigger thing for me as a kid. I don’t know if it was basic indifference to the marketing (none of those gold boxes really spoke to me), a counter-culture “Why is everyone telling me to like this game?” backlash response, or just a general lack of exposure to the games themselves (I played the original at a friend’s house for about 10 minutes and “The Adventure of Link” at a different friend’s house for another 10 minutes … and that was it for me until the 2000s). But for whatever reason, I just sort of missed Zelda’s beginnings and really didn’t feel I was worse for that.

That all changed for me when I was able to play my brother’s copy of Ocarina of Time for the first time.

Within an hour or two, I was hooked, and it was because of the emotional connection to the material. It kind of sounds nuts to type it out, but yeah, so at the beginning of this game, a tree dies, and it’s a pretty big deal. From there, it’s a near constant stream of gutting reveals and little emotional experiences that add up to provide one of the most affecting games in existence.

This game makes you feel.

A fairly linear progression in the early going quickly gave way to an expansive, immersive experience. And yeah, I think as these games go, a lot of people would put Ocarina more in the “on rails” sort of play, as it does have a pretty point-A to point-B methodology to its story-telling. But the sheer scope of this story, and one’s ability to get lost in this world map (playing mini-games, riding your horse around, and even just exploring every nook and cranny one can find) exceeded basically every game that had come before (and certainly within the Zelda franchise itself).

I think this is a main reason the emotional beats hit as hard as they do — you really get pulled into the whole experience. And once you’re in, you’re susceptible to getting led down that emotional path.

Hook, line and sinker.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Genre: Adventure
Released: 1998
Platform: N64
Metacritic’s Greatest Game of All Time

WhoDatJedi Podcast: Live movie discussion: ‘Attack of the Clones’

With the ongoing release of new episodes of “The Bad Batch,” it seems a good time to go back to the roots of the clones in Star Wars cinema. With that in mind, the WhoDatJedi crew sat down to record a commentary track of “Attack of the Clones,” the much maligned middle chapter of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.