Video games – Page 2 – DaveGladow.com

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 30)

Maybe you had to be there to fully appreciate it.

Or perhaps you somehow missed it even if you lived through it.

Regardless, I am here to tell you: “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater” was a whole mood.

There was a time when this game repped a significant piece of our world’s culture.

I don’t believe I’m overstating things when I say this. The skating scene was blowing up, this game was blowing up, and it all became the sort of thing that, while it was certainly juvenile and maybe a little bit silly, it was also the sort of thing that a LOT of people got into.

So, let’s set the stage a little for the younger folk (and the people who like to reminisce).

Way back in the fall of 1993, ESPN, not content to keep swimming through the bags of money they were already making through cable rights deals, made the somewhat illogical decision to launch a second network, because, well, who hates money, amirite?

They went with the novel name of “ESPN2” with its on-air personalities regularly referring to it as “The Deuce.”

Cute.

Now, backing up a smidge, I say the venture was “somewhat illogical” because only the tiniest of details – a giant, gaping lack of programming – was a potential stumbling block.

Oops!

Well, this lack of programming foresight encouraged the folks at ESPN to get creative about what they’d put on, which led to the creation of the X Games … as well as many, many jokes about scraping the bottom of the barrel for something, anything to put on the air. ESPN2 sorta became synonymous with airing ridiculous events that were decidedly not sports-related, barely sports-related, or maybe even (in the best case scenario) somewhat sports related.

Anyhow, most of it had a tenuous connection to “traditional” sports (or no connection at all).

The aforementioned X Games was a made-from-scratch Olympics-style competition for offbeat, alternative sports like snowboarding, motocross, BMX, and of course, skateboarding, that made its debut in 1995. And the X Games, despite its nature as a corporate creation with a limited appeal outside of a niche audience, grew in popularity over time.

These events, after all, were more sports-like than something like lumberjacking or billiards.

Eventually, people began to figure out there was money to be made in marketing to a demographic that was interested in watching what was essentially counter-culture entertainment.

“Eff the man! Buy more product!”

It was probably inevitable. I mean, there were sports drinks to peddle. What I recall most about that era, culturally, was that everything back then had to be “cool.” It was a requirement. It’s why video game commercials of the era were ridiculous and looked like this:

So OF COURSE the X Games became a thing.

And one of the biggest players on this brand-new stage was Tony Hawk.

Hawk, a professional skateboarder, was so popular that it’s probably unnecessary for me to have just typed that he is a professional skateboarder. In the same way that people know Michael Jordan is a basketball player, or Mario is a video game character, Tony Hawk came to be the embodiment of his entire sport.

You already know who Tony Hawk is.

But if you weren’t around back then (or very, very young), you might not understand that at least some of the reason the man is synonymous with skateboarding is the existence of “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.”

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater at a glance
Genre: Sports
Released: 1999
Platform: PlayStation
No. 36 on Game Informer’s Top 100 Games of All Time

DuckTales — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 29)

Life is like a hurricane,
here in Duckburg.
Racecars, lasers, aeroplanes,
it’s a duck blur.
Might solve a mystery.
Or rewrite history…

“DuckTales,” the classic Disney half-hour afternoon cartoon that debuted in 1987 and ran for four seasons (though much longer in syndication), has shown a rare capacity for endurance that shows of its ilk rarely can even aspire to.

Don’t believe me? Sing the first couple of bars of that theme song in public and see if the people around you join in.

If they don’t, you’ll feel really silly, and that’s kind of funny.

But chances are, at least a few people will sing along (or at least crack a big goofy grin as you make a fool of yourself).

And with good reason, as the show, for a good number of Gen Xers, was a babysitter as they latch-keyed their way into their homes and killed time for the couple of hours until their parents got home from work.*

* Gen Xers are very proud of being latch-key and will bring that fact up on literally every occasion possible, in the same way that a vegetarian will always proudly tell you that they are vegetarian. How do you get a Gen Xer out of your house? Invite over their parents.

How good was DuckTales? Well, probably not as good as you remember. It leans heavily on other pieces of work and falls into simplistic tropes with dialogue that will mostly appeal to minors. And the animation itself isn’t ground-shaking either.

But that’s honestly okay, because a thing doesn’t have to be great to be important.

And DuckTales was absolutely an important piece of pop culture.

The show, itself a risk due to its heavy production demands for what might have been considered meager rewards in a traditionally low-viewed time slot, instead was immensely popular and paved the way for even more Disney afternoon animated shows like “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” and “Tailspin.”

In its own way, DuckTales can also be given some credit (or blame) for Disney’s ability to weather some lean years in the 1980s when the studio was having a difficult time finding success at the box office (prior to “The Little Mermaid,” that is).

The fondness and popularity for DuckTales eventually spawned a reboot of the show in 2017, once again for a few seasons, except this time it was objectively entertaining for adults. The test of time will likely be far kinder to the reboot in terms of actual repeat viewings, as the series, for any fans of the brand at all, is basically a must-watch, delightful and humorous and engaging. (It’s seriously THAT good … go watch it right now if you haven’t seen it yet.)

Of course, the reboot and all of the merchandise and crossovers and so forth and so on over all of the years … none of that tells the entire story, because the entire story wouldn’t be complete without an acknowledgement of the licensed video game that was developed and released alongside the cartoon in 1989.

That licensed video game, “DuckTales,” somehow became one of the greatest platformers of all time.

‘DuckTales’ at a glance:
Genre: Platformer
Released: 1989
Platform: NES
Nintendo Power’s No. 44 greatest game of all time

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 28)

Like many other video game enthusiasts of the early 90’s, I received a free copy of Dragon Warrior with my “Nintendo Power” subscription.

(Bear with me here.)

Freebie games are now a dime a dozen (generally geared toward getting your money through add-on purchases after the fact!), but in 1990-91 when this promotion occurred, it was mind-bending as hell.

Console games back then, pretty much without exception, cost $50 a pop. Yeah, many games eventually went on sale, and yeah, there were some exceptions – like one-offs on the Genesis or most (all?) of the games on the pricier NeoGeo – but by and large, that was the default cost: $50.

So you had to be choosy. And I, like many other western gamers, wasn’t ready to dump $50 into a role-playing game.*

* This is why the promotion existed, to get western gamers to try to get onboard with RPGs, since they were so huge in Japan and Nintendo wanted to maximize profits in the West as well.

I had brain rot for action, you see. “Die Hard” and “Star Wars” were probably my favorite movies by this point (“The Blues Brothers” might have been a close third). Playground activities centered around pretending to club other kids with some sort of blunt instrument (or actually connecting on occasion … Sorry, Gary!).

Video games, by extension, needed to be fast-paced as well, yes?

Well, not always, as it turned out.

Because of the Dragon Warrior offer, I learned I could receive a free game if I subscribed to a magazine I loved already. And that was something different entirely.

I signed up in about 0.0003 seconds.

And thusly, Dragon Warrior – the grindiest of painfully grindy RPGs – became my definitive viewpoint of the genre for the next decade.

It was the first and last impression. The alpha and the omega. Nothing to see here, folks, this is all there is.

“Yeah, this is fun I guess, but what’s with all the boring, repetitive, unavoidable battles? I’m not playing another game like this.”*

* It is beyond safe to say that Dragon Warrior will NOT be making an appearance on this list. Yes, it’s historically relevant, and yes, I still have great affinity for it. But at some point, you have to ask yourself, “Would I honestly recommend someone sit down with this thing today and try to play it?” The answer with Dragon Warrior: Not unless I was playing a cruel prank on someone.

So when “Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars” came along in 1996, it couldn’t have been further from my radar.

And justifiably so on some level, because even though it is undeniably stupid to generalize an entire genre of video game because of just one game, that one game in question was extremely difficult to love.

I regret nothing.

Except…

Holy smokes, did I miss out on some genuine bangers for a really long time.

Thank goodness for retro gaming as an actual business and my own personal resolve to circling back to missed games as an adopted mentality.

Because Super Mario RPG is a downright joyful experience.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars at a glance
Genre: RPG
Release: 1996
Platform: SNES
Complex’s No. 8 Best Super Nintendo Game

NBA Jam — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 27)

“He’s on fire!”

For anyone who has experienced the true greatness that is NBA Jam, that phrase should be all it takes to transport you away to a world of frenetic, over-the-top, arcade basketball.

It’s a world of dunks, steals, and hot streaks.

It’s a world in which putting yourself in the shoes of superstars like Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajowan, and Shaquille O’Neal (to name just a few) was a mere dollar away.*

* My memory might be hazy on this point, but I do recall the game costing more than the typical quarter or even 50 cents a play – I’m PRETTY sure it usually cost at least a buck to play – and that it was of great annoyance to me that this was the case. “Games used to cost 25 cents. Why are we now charging more? It’s outlandish and unfair!” Clearly, inflation as a concept had yet to penetrate my teenage boy brain.

It’s a world of impossible physics and ridiculous commentary.

It’s a world of insane levels of rubber-banding that could reduce the hardest of men to quivering tears.

It’s a world of fantastical cameos and easter eggs, not the least of which was a playable version of Bill Clinton himself.

In other words, this world, the world of NBA Jam, is the very best kind of world.

Buckle up, kids.

We’re about to go deep on NBA Jam, the most outrageous mainstream sports game our society has ever seen.

NBA Jam at a glance
Genre: Sports
Release: 1993
Platform: Arcade
No. 19 on Flux’s Top 100 Video Games

Chrono Trigger — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 26)

What’s your definition of a “10”?

More than a few people would call a “10” “perfect” and basically leave it at that.

And for most people, that’s fine and dandy.

But I subscribe to a belief that it’s a little more nuanced than that.

For me, a score of 10/10 isn’t an indication that a thing is actually flawless per se. It’s more of an acknowledgment of supreme excellence.

Think of it this way: A person can get 8 or 9 out of 10 questions on a quiz correct, but then nail the extra credit and still end up with a “perfect” score, even without a flawless performance.

Did the thing we’re talking about do what it set out to do in a special and exceptional way? And probably more importantly, at least to me, is how did it make me feel in the process? Thusly, a “10” is essentially the highest possible recognition or superlative, NOT a designation of perfection or flawlessness.

And can we acknowledge, at least a little bit, that perhaps nothing is perfect, and that when evaluating anything, it’s basically impossible to separate from that evaluation how a thing makes us feel?

How we react to a thing informs how we speak of it after the fact. And yes, that’s more of an undefinable thing, and yes, that complicates things greatly, but it’s not a thing we can ultimately avoid.

It’s how a game like Air Zonk can rank higher on this list than Ms. Pac-Man. One game is objectively more important historically and more universally well regarded and … well, tough cookies. Air Zonk makes me happier.

Chrono Trigger, our No. 26 game on the countdown (and another game that makes me happy), is a game that often gets lauded with the “perfect” moniker, and you can easily see why.

Its mix of story, characterization, game design, and enjoyment it engenders while playing are almost universally considered among the best in the genre. And moreover, it’s REALLY difficult to find anything to complain or quibble about here.

There just aren’t a lot of flaws in this game.

Does that make it perfect?

Not in the slightest.

It’s a wonderful game, and it should be experienced by everyone. That’s why it’s here.

But it ain’t perfect.

Let’s establish that now, so that inflated expectations don’t ruin the game for you.

Chrono Trigger at a glance:
Genre: RPG
Released: 1995
Platform: SNES
GamesRadar’s “2nd best Super NES game of all time”

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 25)

“What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”

“Die, monster. You don’t belong in this world!”

Early on during a playthrough of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the gamer is presented with that exact exchange in absurdly over-the-top voiceovers.

The moment is memorable for its ridiculousness, and has by now, of course, been turned into various Internet memes.

The dialogue, however, serves as a helpful guide for what is to come.

“What is a man?” is hinting at the ambiguous nature of our protagonist, the anti-hero son of Dracula himself.

“A miserable little pile of secrets.” explains the nature or perhaps selling point of the game itself.

“Die, monster.” is the definition of Castlevania games in their purest form.

And “You don’t belong in this world!” provides foreshadowing for the game’s biggest twist.

Like the best James Bond stunts or the coolest action sequences in a Star Wars movie, the excitement here is explained before it is shown.

Was that intentional?

Who knows?

But the end result is the same: the game builds anticipation and sets expectations at the outset, and then delivers upon those promises in spectacular fashion.

(We also got a really goofy bit of dialogue out of the deal.)

This game, Symphony of the Night, is going to give you a traditional 2D Castlevania experience with a new, exciting lead character, a ton of hidden secrets amidst a sprawling space to explore, and a massive plot twist halfway through.

Once properly warned in the game’s prologue, the gamer is free to let the whole experience just wash over them.

And what an experience it is.

“Castlevania: Symphony of the Night” at a glance:
Genre: Exploring platformer
Released: 1997
Platform: PlayStation
EGM’s “12th Best Console Game of All Time”

Contra: Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 24)

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.

An intrepid gamer in the late 80s and early 90s knew that when a Konami game was booting up, this series of inputs would net the player a reward of some kind.

It generally came at the beginning of the adventure, and while it delivered to varying degrees depending on the title one was playing, the “Konami” code always signaled a new beginning or fresh start (though since the code never changed, it also inspired a feeling of familiarity?).

Probably more importantly, the Konami code represented the equivalent of a person starting on third base. It was a chance to beat the game (or at least gain the advantage) before the fight had even commenced.

It was also a fairly new concept for its time. Sure, you had Super Mario Bros. warp zones and other shortcuts available to you in other games, but generally not something you could do to affect the outcome of the game before it even kicked off.

And giving it a forbidden fruit vibe, it’s debatable whether the gamer was even “supposed” to use the code to begin with.

The Konami code, like the warp zones or other “cheats” that preceded it, was put into the game not to assist the gamer, but rather the programmers and designers who needed to get to later sections of the game in quicker fashion to do testing.

And it makes sense; putting these tricks into the game will increase productivity, so why not do it?

Once these cheats made it out into the wild, however, they were fair game for everyone to use, whether people were meant to have access to them or not. Not knowing made it almost illicit. Like, “Oooh, I’m part of the cool kids club because I know this thing I wasn’t supposed to know.”

Maybe this was a little silly. Despite public acknowledgement that the code only remained because of a lack of time to remove it, if we’re honest with ourselves, I think there was a wink there from the developers. Why would they keep the code the same from game to game if they positively didn’t want the end user to have it?

Moreover, the secrecy of the code evaporated fairly quickly. It eventually became so pervasive and ingrained in pop culture that it was deemed T-shirt worthy. It is a secret no more.

Regardless, this code made its first appearance in the 1986 NES port of the side-scrolling shooter Gradius – a very fine game with the code’s effect of course being beneficial (all power-ups attained) – but the code didn’t REALLY become synonymous with Konami or gaming in general until the release of Contra in 1988.

The difference here, with Contra, was significant.

Deliver those commands in quick enough fashion, and the player would be given 30 lives instead of 3, an improvement in odds so ridiculous that the entire context of the game itself is changed.

Instead of a brutally difficult game that allowed for no missteps whatsoever and required a thorough memorization of every step of the process, you’re left with a forgiving, breezy adventure that encourages repeat plays anyway (and said memorization that would occur a little more organically through desired – not forced – repetition).

“Contra is stupid hard and always has been.”

“What about the Konami code?”

“Well, yeah, okay, that made it easier.”

Presto, the entire game is different.

Not that it needed to be.

“Contra” at a glance:
Genre: Run-and-gun shooter
Released: 1988
Platform: NES
No. 13 on Game Informer’s best games ever

My games of 2022

For the past three years, I’ve kept a running tally of games I’ve completed in that calendar year on Twitter, writing up a short review of each game as I’ve finished.

(This has been a fun thing to do, hence why I’ve kept doing it.)

And for the third year in a row, at the end of the year, I’ve compiled a ranking for this blog.

This part of it is actually harder than it sounds.

The reason I keep doing the ranking, though, is I find it the most useful piece for anyone reading and deciding on which games they’d like to try on for size (or even revisit). A direct comparison between games in an “either-or” situation tells you what you ultimately need to know.

“Should I buy Metroid Dread or Mario Kart 8?”

“Which old-school Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is the best?”

Well, you’ll know my answers if you scroll down.

Super Mario World: Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 23)

Super Mario World is without a doubt, 100%, a stone-cold lock of an essential game – even though upon release, it wasn’t essential for me.

These sorts of distinctions are important in an exercise such as ranking games, because when you’re talking about games that are, for lack of a better term, essentially perfect, and you’re interested in determining an order of some kind, picking the nits and trying to dig for problems can be, well, a little fruitless.

Take Super Mario World as an example. Am I going to sit here at the outset and say it has microscopic faults that definitively prevent it from finishing higher on my list of retro gaming essentials, picking at stupid things like the color palette being slightly different or the gameplay not quite being the same as the previous games, or any other number of dumb, nitpicky things?

Nah, that would be boring.

It would also be dishonest. Super Mario World is universally beloved as one of the greatest platformers of all time, many consider it to be THE best Mario game of all time, and still others think it’s got an argument as the greatest video game of all time, period.

One of the greatest games of all time? And we’re going to try to find faults with THAT?

I fully believe this game to be borderline perfect, and that is the thing we should focus on: why it is so good.

And of course the real reason why I don’t have it higher than No. 23 on my list …

Well, that comes down to my personal story. And so here is my acknowledgement of how this ranking came to be.

Super Mario World
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1991
Platform: SNES
Empire’s greatest game of all-time

Final Fantasy VI: Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 22)

I’m going to address this right out of the gate: This game is too low on the list of retro gaming essentials at No. 22.

That’s a statement of quality in itself, that a game can be underrated as a best-of list’s No. 22.

But it’s true. I can’t deny it.

And it’s not because of industry standards, or impact on the genre, or critical consensus, or anything quite so grand as all that.

No, it’s actually too low among my own personal favorites.

How? Why? What?

Well, I covered the why right here. I wanted variety at the top of any list of recommendations.

And the how is covered right here. I went with Final Fantasy VII up high (No. 12!)* instead by the slimmest of margins, leaving Final Fantasy VI in the uncomfortable position of having to tumble down the list to accommodate my “no series repeats” criteria.

* One might have a problem with the FF7 choice, and that’s fine. I can only say in my defense that it was a REALLY close call.

Well, that criteria of no repeats, I decided, should only apply to the top 20. The rationale being, yeah, you want some variety at the very top, but gosh, if a game is great, it still deserves to be advocated for.

And Final Fantasy VI is undeniably great.

Final Fantasy VI
Genre: RPG
Released: 1994
Platform: SNES
Electronic Gaming Monthly’s No. 9 console game of all-time