Retro Gaming Essentials – DaveGladow.com

Crazy Taxi — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 56)

“Let’s go make some keraaaaazy money!”

Yeah, that’s the good stuff.

There might not be a better case for the very existence of video games than “Crazy Taxi.”

It’s not a sentiment I feel needs any hedging. If I were to sit down with a non-gamer and try to explain to them the reason for gaming in the first place, I would probably turn to Crazy Taxi at some point in the discussion, or if my words were failing me at that point, simply point at the game and grunt.

The reasons for this are pretty easily summarized.

Crazy Taxi is a game that fits the medium of interactive entertainment like a driving glove.* It is an excellent example of what the thing is.
Crazy Taxi, with almost no investment required by the player whatsoever, provides completely unbridled adrenaline and joy.

* Yes, I have given myself full LICENSE to make as many driving puns/references as I‘d like, and we’re all just going to have to BUCKLE UP and deal with that.

On that first point, driving games are significantly responsive to what the player does. They are immersive and immediate about feedback. Hit the gas: surge forward. Turn left: go around the corner. Turn too far left: go off a cliff. All of this is really easy to understand and relate to.

But circling back to point two, more so than perhaps any other genre in video gaming, the mere notion of enjoyment is really friggin’ important in racing games.

That might sound kind of ridiculous on the face of it – I mean, we play games for enjoyment, yes? Shouldn’t that be the key consideration when evaluating any game?

But looking at something like another recent entry in this countdown “Resident Evil 2,” the desired reaction in the gamer in that game isn’t simply pure mirth. That game wants to frighten, to scare, to thrill. Yes, please have a good time. But do it in a specific way (by shitting your pants).

Go down the list. “Final Fantasy Tactics” wants you to engage your brain. “Tempest 2000” wants you to go into a trance-like state. “Dance Dance Revolution” wants you to jump around like a lunatic. And so on, and so on.

Crazy Taxi, on the other hand, would make Cyndi Lauper proud: It just wants you to have fun.

The game shares its devotion to freedom and joy with the arcade racing classics of yesteryear like “Pole Position” or “Out Run,” offering an opportunity to let your hair blow in the (imaginary) wind and simply bask in life for a bit while broadsiding a bus with your bright yellow tool of destruction.

And it works. A game being a proxy for real life is seldom so enjoyable an experience as through a properly conceived racer. The adrenaline is part of it, and certainly with newer games and simulations in the genre, the necessary precision (and thus perfectionism of the driver) is key too. Yet, the main goal is more generalized: about finding a relatable sense of escape.

In this countdown, the most direct comparison available to us for proving the point is the similarily cartoonish “Super Mario Kart.”

The original Mario Kart, in addition to being joyful, had the distinction of creating a whole sub-genre as it kick-started the “kart racer.” And in similar fashion, Crazy Taxi was an innovator by not being a traditional racing game either.

Both games are obsessed with creating a busy, colorful world to traverse, of providing a sharp deadline to navigate, and in allowing for the player’s devilish side to flex a little.

But here’s the primary difference: Crazy Taxi goes about these things in an even more open way than Mario Kart does.

Mario Kart is limiting by sticking to a traditional race course approach. Yes, you can go off-roading and find the occasional shortcut. But you can go the wrong direction. And you can get your racing wrong by losing to the other racers.

You can be wrong.

The true genius of Crazy Taxi is that there’s no wrong way to play.

If you have no idea what you’re doing … there is chaotic, mirthful mayhem.

If you’ve mastered the more advanced techniques and memorized the maps and know where everything is … there is chaotic, mirthful mayhem.

In sum, the notions of “success” or “winning” are basically nullified. This game rewards good and bad players alike.

Crazy Taxi is for everyone.

Crazy Taxi at a glance:
Genre: Racer
Released: 2000
Platform: Dreamcast
GamesRadar’s No. 3 Sega Dreamcast Game of All Time

Final Fantasy Tactics — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 55)

On this countdown, we’ve covered two “Chrono” games — “Chrono Trigger” and “Chrono Cross” — two “Final Fantasy” games — “Final Fantasy 6” and “Final Fantasy 7” — the Nintendo-Squaresoft collaboration “Super Mario RPG” … and basically no other traditional role-playing games at all.

Every game in that list came from one company.

That might seem a little bonkers. And it is. In the entire realm of rpgs, we’ve so far centered our attention on one company.

Really?

Well, we will get to some others, I promise. But firstly, we have to make matters worse and go down the Squaresoft road once again to discuss “Final Fantasy Tactics.”

Why?

Easy:

It’s insanely good.
It’s really different from everything else we’ve talked about to date.

Deal with it, Square haters.

Final Fantasy Tactics at a glance:
Genre: Strategy RPG
Released: 1998
Platform: PlayStation
IGN’s 38th greatest game

Resident Evil 2 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 54)

“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”

– Alfred Hitchcock

Esteemed filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock knew better than most the importance of building to climax: that the true fear in an event rested in the anticipation of it.

There’s something to be said for a slowly unfolding disaster.

Perhaps inspired by Hitchcock himself, this principle has been used to great effect within the video game industry as well.

Even going back to the old Atari 2600 days, one doesn’t have to squint to see the concept at play in a game like “Haunted House,” which battled through its technical limitations to provide jump scares that generate without any sort of rhyme or predictability, leaving the gamer always guessing about what might await them around every corner.

Importantly, these jump scares are not relentless in their approach. Instead, they come at odd moments, spaced from one another, creating a tension in the process.

Action platformers like “Metroid” built off of the idea and leaned into a sense of isolation in particular, milking the anticipation – primarily through scoring and level/enemy design – so as to make the gamer wait for the action to be sprung upon them, often by a creepy-looking critter.

The game was more “Alien” than “Vertigo.”

The important bit was to make the gamer wait, but the developers also emphasized this feeling of being alone, and in the case of the original Metroid in particular, of feeling lost.

Much of Samus Aron’s story since has been built upon this tenet.

Attempts at the “survival horror” genre in the early 90s (before it was even called that) included titles like “Alone in the Dark” and “The 7th Guest,” games that were preoccupied with expanding upon the idea of an isolated traveller being trapped in a specific, well-realized place.

In each case, it was a dangerous, haunted house. And the developers added set pieces and puzzles to the equation within a more graphical presentation. The gamer felt directly challenged by these games – as if the contest was personal. The comparatively fast-moving action of Metroid was discarded in favor of slower, more carefully considered dangers – a noteworthy shift itself – but the main outcome was this sense of being personally involved in the conflict.

You were being invited to observe the situation AND to intervene. Like a security guard watching security footage and reacting to it, these games didn’t so much put you in the protagonist’s shoes as challenge you to help them.

Have you ever watched a horror movie and felt an overwhelming urge to yell at the characters to act a particular way? Perhaps you’ve actually yelled at the screen (it’s cathartic and I recommend it).

“Don’t go into the woods!”

“Arm yourself, you fools!”

“Hire an acting coach, for the love of all that’s holy!”

The first brave steps into the survival horror genre tapped into this exact desire of barking commands at people, but instead of being a passive passenger, they allowed you to directly influence the survivability of your usual collection of morons and actually stack the odds in the protagonists’ favor.

All of which leads us to “Resident Evil,” which today has established itself as inarguably one of gaming’s most popular and important series.

And the franchise’s success can be traced to this impulse of wanting to save people in danger. Resident Evil, perhaps better than any other gaming property, allows you to step in and do that.

(And you can still yell at them if you want to.)

Resident Evil 2 at a glance:
Genre: Survival horror
Released: 1998
Platform: PlayStation
Game Informer’s 34th best game of all time

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 53)

“Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

If you’re of a certain age, an earworm is navigating its way through your brain right now as if you were RFK.

Where …

In the world …

Is …

Carmen Sandiego?

That song was the theme to the television show spin-off based on the original property, which originally was an educational game kids could play on their parents’ computers.

I frame it that way to differentiate it from an earlier entry in this list “The Oregon Trail,” which in my experience was primarily consumed at schools. Carmen Sandiego made it to schools too, but just as many people played it at home.

Yes, kids back in the 1980s and 1990s were supremely bored enough to want to actively engage with educational games at home. How do I know this? I was one of those bored kids. And no game was quite so pivotal to the “educate your kids while they play video games!” parenting impulse as Carmen Sandiego.

It essentially justified the entire enterprise of educational video games.

If you want to know how it did that – when so many other games had tried and failed dating back to the Atari golden age – you don’t need to overthink it.

This game was actually fun to play.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? at a glance:
Genre: Educational
Released: 1985
Platform: PC
Member of World Video Game Hall of Fame

Tempest 2000 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 52)

The history of Atari in video games is vast and super interesting, and I think for that reason, the company’s representation in this countdown might be a little lacking.

Hey, I can admit my failings.

It’s also never too late to change.

That having been said, we’re still in the “These games deserve an ‘A’ on the report card” range of the retro essentials list (9s and 10s), and I’ve gotta be honest: it might be a stretch to go that far on most of Atari’s classics.

Do I like “Asteroids?” Sure. Do I think it’s an absolute must-play in the same way that “Pong” is? No, I’m not going to go that far with it. Pong might get a historical bonus that elevates it above other games that didn’t matter quite so much (as do many of the games on this list that have an influential streak a mile wide). But a game’s still gotta be a fun time that holds up in some manner.

Table tennis, to me, is pretty much timeless. Shooting asteroids is … kinda boring.

Yeah, I said it.

Anyway, trying to grapple with those kinds of decisions is what this list is all about.

Fortunately, we have a sequel to a game that originally hit during Atari’s heyday that landed on an obscure gaming system in the early 90s, which offers the opportunity to speak to that company’s important history, while simultaneously being an absolute banger of a game that holds up incredibly well today.

Prepare your loins for “Tempest 2000,” a fever dream gaming experience that will scratch the kinds of itches you didn’t even know you had.

Tempest 2000 at a glance:
Genre: Tunnel shooter
Released: 1994
Platform: Jaguar
No. 17 on GamesMaster’s Top 100 Games of All Time

Dance Dance Revolution — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 51)

Do you know what it’s all about?

No, really.

Do you know what it’s all about?

You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around.

That’s what it’s all about.

(I apologize for nothing.)

Hokey pokey dalliances aside, I thought it was important to include a proper, traditional rhythm game in this countdown of my 100 essential retro games, and well, when you think on that for more than two seconds, the best possible choice really begins to make itself obvious.

You see, I think it’s the activity level here that really sets “Dance Dance Revolution” apart. A spirited evolution of the genre that demanded its participants stand up and get moving in order to have any sort of success, “DDR” took over arcades and helped usher in a true golden age for rhythm games.

I don’t think I’m overstating that either. I mean, we can argue that certain games have come along since that have done this sort of thing even better, and we can likewise argue that the activity doesn’t mean so much as the music itself and therefore a less active game might have a case for being considered more important to the games industry at large.

My argument in this discussion is this: Why else would this concept be imitated so gosh-darn much after this if this sucker wasn’t super meaningful to people? Here, you get two things – rhythm and dance – in concert, and moreover, it’s a communal experience, encouraging people to participate in pairs. And when it works, it REALLY works.

Truly, that IS what it’s all about.

Dance Dance Revolution at a glance:
Genre: Dance/rhythm
Released: 1999
Platform: Arcade
Guinness World Record: Most Widely Used Video Game in Schools

SimCity — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 50)

We’ve reached No. 50!

At varying points throughout this countdown of Retro Gaming Essentials, I’ve had several “come to Jesus” moments where I’ve had to re-evaluate my ranking.

Often, these internal conversations have occurred at noteworthy markers, such as when we hit the Top 20 with “Super Mario Kart” or the Top 30 with “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.”

The conversations, such that they are, generally go something like this:

“Would I feel like a dumbass if this game wasn’t (or was) included in my Top (whatever)?”

That acts as a tie-breaker and helps me crystalize my recommendations. And when you boil it down, that’s really what this list is – a list of games I think should be experienced. Not just my personal favorites, and not just the games that seem important: Concessions on both points will be had, in the interest of providing a resource that is a little more worthwhile as a whole.

And that resource is this: What games, at the end of the day, do I recommend people play (and why)?

Building off of that, if we’re saying to folks, “Hey, play these 50 games,” I don’t see how that list of 50 can be at all close to complete if we don’t talk about “SimCity” (and by extension “The Sims”).

Any reasonable approximation of the history of video gaming requires that conversation.

So, as we put a bow on 50 reviews of some of the best games in existence (with the intention of someday reaching a tidy 100), I say this with full confidence:

Any gamer looking to play some of the all time greats should 100% include SimCity (or one of its sequels) on their to-do list.

SimCity at a glance:
Genre: Building simulation
Released: 1989
Platform: PC
“Game of the Year” from Computer Gaming Monthly

Star Parodier — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 49)

We haven’t really talked about Japanese imports in this countdown yet (present company excepted), and it feels like a pretty important part of the games industry at large … so let’s maybe do that, yeah?

Bonus: It gives me an excuse to talk about what is just a dang delightful game.

So, let’s go ahead and discuss “Star Parodier,” an excellent “cute ‘em up” that somehow didn’t get ported to America for a couple of decades despite it being a feast visually, aurally, and gameplay-wise, while also being that rarest of things shooters so often fail to even remotely consider during planning and development:

It’s approachable.

Star Parodier at a glance:
Genre: Shooter
Released: 1992
Platform: PC Engine Super CD
9/10 score from Nintendo Life

Mega Man 3 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 48)

I don’t know that I’m going to have much more room for series duplicates and sequels in the rest of this countdown.

And yet, here we are anyway.

I mean, sure, we’re still going to have to see some covered ground as we go along, because I just have too much fondness for particular games to leave them off. And if we can acknowledge that sometimes sequels can exceed the original work (as we have done), we can likewise acknowledge that sometimes they don’t *quite* get there … yet they have a great deal of value just the same.

Even more than that, if I’m honest with myself (and you), I can also allow that on occasion, my own choice for elevation in this list is more of a coin flip than a definitive proclamation. In other words, the relative quality between two choices for inclusion from a particular property might be essentially equal.

So, let us state for the record that even though it feels a shame to lean into a specific series often during a countdown of this sort (since it will inevitably result in the exclusion of other series), it is also not entirely without merit. Truly, sometimes, the games in question simply just deserve to be here.

For me at least, the real litmus test, above and beyond personal attachment, historical importance, or even quality, is going to be how distinctive an experience you might get from game to game within a particular series.

I can wince a little at all of the Mario games we have on this list so far, but only for appearance’s sake, because when you peer a little closer, you’ll see a unique experience from one game to the next.

To elaborate, Mario 1 was the original promise of continued fun and excitement. Mario 2 was the colorful oddball sequel that innovated. Mario 3 was excellence personified. Mario World was even more excellence personified. Mario 64 was a groundbreaker. And so on, and so on.

It’s the same with Castlevania. “Dracula’s Curse” is perhaps the best possible example of old-school “NES-hard” platforming, “Rondo of Blood” was the transitional game, introducing more dynamic branching levels and upping the visuals and sound, and “Symphony of the Night” was the natural end point for that evolution, going for more explorer-based action.

With all of that considered, you can probably pretty safely guess why we’re now going to talk a little about Mega Man 3. Sure, I have a personal attachment to it. But it’s also a titan among 8-bit platformers giving it a historical relevance, and it’s roughly as good as the game we already covered – Mega Man 2.

But ALSO, it’s here because it’s distinct enough from Mega Man 2 to merit inclusion on its own.

Mega Man 3 at a glance:
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1990
Platform: NES
GamePro’s third-greatest 8-bit video game of all time

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 47)

So, other than Mario and Link, the omnipresent faces of Nintendo who will still be around long after I’ve left this big blue rock, I haven’t had another game/series/character manage to break past two appearances on this list of nearly 50 (so far!) games I think everyone should try playing.

Until now, that is.

Welcome to the club, Castlevania!

Truly, it is a distinguished honor.

Your children’s children will be talking about this moment.

Okay, probably not, but we can still talk about “Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse” for a while if we want to, so let’s do that.

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse at a glance:
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1990
Platform: NES
Nintendo Power’s ninth-best NES game