One of the earliest genres of video games is the shooter.
Why?
Simplicity.
Here’s the concept: Fire a projectile at an enemy or obstacle, watch it blow up, rinse, repeat.
You see? With such a relatively modest list of goals for a group of programmers to try to achieve, the appeal is obvious.
And for the gamer, the idea of blowing crap up is fun too.
So, shooters’ explosion in popularity in the 1970s and 80s was probably inevitable, and they’re an important part of gaming history.
I included the wack-a-doodle Air Zonk earlier in this countdown, but I also knew, given the genre’s importance, I should probably include a more traditional shooter somewhere in my Top 20.
How did I settle on Soldier Blade?
It’s really stinking good.
Soldier Blade
Genre: Shooter Released: 1992 Platform: Turbografx-16 5/5 from GamePro
So for fun I sometimes sit around and tweak the list of games I’d like to include in this feature. Games get moved up and down all the time, but the overarching principle I use is this: What games should a person experience before they die? And more presently for myself, which games would I want to write about before I die?
It’s morbid, but then, so are many games.
Which leads us to one of the most brutal lessons many people of a certain age ever experienced via the educational game The Oregon Trail: that life is constantly trying to kill you.
It’s not what I’d call a subtle lesson either.
It cracks me up to this day that educators saw fit to knock this lesson into kids’ heads for something like a generation of kids (maybe more?).
“Hey kids? Want to learn about the world? Well here’s this ‘history game’ [wink, wink] that’ll show you how much life sucks sucked. Have a good time getting adjusted!”
The thing is, this game was wildly addictive anyway.
Yeah, it was borderline impossible to avoid snakebites and/or cholera. But the point of the thing was to try to win anyway, and when someone in the class was finally able to confirm that, yes, it was possible to make it all the way to the end without sustaining complete disaster, well that was just the perfect brew of crack cocaine the rest of us needed to continue to come back to it.
Plus it was a video game. In class. As opposed to math worksheets or some other mundane task like collecting rocks.
OF COURSE everyone loved this game.
The Oregon Trail
Genre: Educational Released: 1985 Platform: Apple No. 9 on Time’s 50 Best Video Games of All Time
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.
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
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
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
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
I thought it might be a good idea to slot a Final Fantasy game in this general area (somewhere in my first 15 games listed), because although the first game I dropped in this entire series is a Squaresoft classic and my favorite game of all time, it’s not especially relevant to the medium at large (apart from its impeccable soundtrack, which literally everyone should listen to at some point). Final Fantasy, as a series, is a different animal. It’s perhaps the most recognizable RPG brand on the planet, probably the most successful RPG brand on the planet, and arguably the most important RPG brand on the planet. It’s absolutely massively critical when it comes to understanding video game history, let alone that of the genre of the JRPG.
You can’t tell a complete story of gaming without Final Fantasy.
But…
Which of the Final Fantasy games is most essential?
Ah, that’s the fun part of it. For many gamers of a certain age, this debate typically boils down to two choices: The “taken as far as they could take it” 16-bit excellence of Final Fantasy VI (perhaps the best possible example of why the Super Nintendo continues to be held in high esteem for its RPG library), OR the “let’s get wacky with something slightly different” new direction boldness of Final Fantasy VII (which itself makes the case for the Playstation being the golden era of RPG gaming).
Since I’ve already got Chrono Cross on my list, I should go with Final Fantasy VI here to represent that different era of gaming, right?
Right?
Well, there’s just one small problem with that:
I like Final Fantasy VII a little bit more.
Final Fantasy VII
Genre: RPG Released: 1997 Platform: Playstation GameSpot’s 2nd Most Influential Game Ever Made
For those following along, this will be the fourth NES game I’ve profiled. Those games are, in order:
Tecmo Super Bowl Mega Man 2 Super Mario Bros. 2 Punch-Out!!
That feels about right, to be honest. While Punch-Out!! might in some ways be the most impressive of that group when it comes to its intuitive, responsive play control or its huge, bright graphics, it’s also in many ways the simplest of the bunch.
Memorize a pattern, be quick with your inputs, wash, rinse, repeat.
That lack of variety works for and against the game. You could call it the purest of the four, but you could also call it the least interesting of the four.
For the purposes of this exercise, let’s lean into pure, shall we?
Punch-Out!!
Genre: Sports Released: 1987 Platform: NES No. 17 on Nintendo Power’s Top 200
One of the quirkier traits of being a gamer back in the late 1980s/early 1990s was a propensity for allegiance. Oh, I know even today people get weirdly territorial about which system they will go to war over, but back then it wasn’t just centered around the consoles, or even just the mascots/characters from the first party developers like Nintendo and Sega, but also toward the mascots of third party developers.
I think some of the reason for this was the Wild West newness of the medium, wherein assurances of quality were sparse and hurdles toward playing were significant. Most of us didn’t have $50 just lying around to blow on any old game. We had to find characters and series that worked and then would stick with them, almost as a defense mechanism. Devotion to a particular game series wasn’t just a personal choice; it was a practical way of living.
Back in those days, I fancied myself a pretty big Mega Man fan, and that fandom was rewarded with several quality games and many hours of enjoyment. I loved the rock-paper-scissors aspects to strategy, the cutesy robot designs, and the freedom to explore levels in whatever order I wanted.
My brother, on the other hand, was more of a Castlevania fan, embracing the slightly more mature themes and the options available in terms of switching characters, weapons and routes.
But whereas my appreciation for my entry point into Mega Man (Mega Man 2) has never waned or diminished, my willingness to extol the virtues of the rest of the series has fallen off some.
If you’ve played one Mega Man game, you’ve kinda played them all.
In sharp contrast, Castlevania games meander off of the established path. They experiment. They evolve. They take risks. And as a result, they make themselves more lastingly relevant.
Ask me today which series is the one I’d go to bat for, and without question it’s now Castlevania instead of Mega Man.
Why am I telling you all of this? I promise I’m coming around to the point of that intro, and it’s this:
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood represents a crossroads for the series, wherein the previously stated evolution of the property hit its stride. This was arguably the last truly great “traditional” version of Castlevania (and in my opinion, the best of the entire bunch) before the series would fully embrace its exploratory dynamics. It’s the bridge, so to speak, between the old and the new, and it’s the best possible representation of the evolving nature of the series.
You can probably expect to see a bunch of Castlevania games on this website as this series progresses because of that growth and diversity.
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer Released: 1993 Platform: PC Engine Super CD 391/400 on GameFan
