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Super Mario Bros. 3 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 21)

We’re back!

After knocking out an even 20 to begin this feature, I took a short break, but with the full intent of returning to writing about some of the very greatest retro video games that I believe everyone should experience.

This was partly because there’s a looooooooong list of games I think earn that particular designation. There’s a whole lot to play, and I have a whole lot of thoughts to share.

But also, more immediately, I have a number of games that earned a 10/10 that we haven’t even discussed yet.

I don’t think you can produce a list like this and leave off 10/10 games, right?

Which brings us to No. 21 on the list. And for full disclosure, unlike my Top 20, from here on I won’t attempt to avoid returning to the same series or characters. If you’ve been following along (or even playing along), by now you’ve experienced a pretty wide range of games, 20-ish different series, characters and so on (I say “-ish” because let’s be honest, there’s some crossover in Mario Kart).

Variety is the spice of life as they say.

That said, it’s alright to go back to something that works really well.

And Super Mario Bros. 3 works really, patently, definitively, absurdly well.

Super Mario Bros. 3
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1990
Platform: NES
Electronic Gaming Monthly’s 2nd best console game of all-time

My games of 2021

I once again kept a running thread of video games I’ve beaten on Twitter this year, which was something I’d done in 2020 as well. Here’s the thread if you’re interested:

Let’s do another “games I beat this year” thread for 2021, once again complete with mini-reviews. For 2020, click below: https://t.co/TKtYl7cgWN
— David Gladow (@davegladow) January 5, 2021

Anyway, last year I also did an end-of-year roundup & ranking with one-sentence reviews of each, so here you go. This is hopefully a handy resource for some about which games on your own personal backlog might be worth the effort and which ones you can continue to kick down the road.

The same rules as last year apply: only games I’ve completed were eligible for this list. I played plenty of other games, and many of them I have strong opinions on. But I wanted to be fair and only evaluate a game in its “complete” form (or at least as close to that as possible).

Super Mario Kart — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 20)

So, here we are.

I’ve written 19 of these things so far. I’m on my last review for a perfect Top 20, and I’m faced with probably a dozen or so worthy contenders (at minimum) for the final slot.

The biggest question I asked myself as a tie-breaker was this: Is a particular genre under-represented?

As it happens, the answer to that question made it an easy choice.

Say hello to Super Mario Kart, one of best racing games of all time, an inspired use of an existing, popular license, the genesis of an entire sub-genre of gaming (“kart racing”), and just a damn fine piece of popular entertainment.

Super Mario Kart
Genre: Racing
Released: 1992
Platform: SNES
Next Generation’s No. 7 game of all time (1999)

Soldier Blade — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 19)

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

The Oregon Trail — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 18)

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

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

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

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

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

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