Time for me to start a new list, and this one's gonna be a biggie. It's my TOP 50 Favorite Video Games Of All Time! It'd be hard to rank these based on favoritism alone, so I'm just gonna go in chronological release order. I spent a significant amount of time just choosing these 50 and narrowing stuff down. I'm splitting this list into two parts to be a bit more manageable.
Each of these games hold great sentimental value to me aside from just enjoying playing them. I had to make some cuts and eliminate games that were too similar to each other. At the same time there are many games on here that are from the same franchises and obviously the same genre. Hopefully I will properly elucidate why games that seem similar deserve their own spots on this list.
So enough preamble, there's games to play!
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1. Gauntlet (NES, July 1988)
Red Warrior Needs Food Badly!
While I have played the original arcade version with superior graphics and gameplay, it’s the Nintendo home port that makes the list. I never owned a classic NES and this might be the first console co-op game I ever played. It was a regular tradition for me to hang at a friend’s house after school in the early nineties and we’d often see how far we could get in Gauntlet.
Of course, being on the NES, there was no save function so I don’t think we ever actually beat it when I was there. That combined with the fact that my dad would come to pick me up by 5:30 meant we didn’t have a lot of time to make that effort. Still, we got a little farther each time and memorized the dungeons to make advancing easier.
I’ve got a lot of nostalgia and warm childhood memories tied to this game and its unique co-op play status means it makes it on to this list.
2. Tetris (Game Boy/PC, July 31st 1989)
From Russia With Fun!
Who doesn’t love a mean game of Tetris? I remember it being one of the first games I had on my family’s first PC and a regular pick whenever I played Game Boy. I don’t think I ever played it in the arcade or on the NES, but Tetris has been on so many platforms it barely matters which version you’re accustomed to.
Tetris is easily accessible to anyone, even non-gamers, and certainly tests your hand-eye coordination to the max as the levels progress. I don’t think I’ve ever even played it competitively against anyone, but it’s a fun, simple-yet-surprisingly challenging time no matter how you stack.
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade, October 1989)
Say ya prayers, toitles.
The ultimate Chuck E. Cheese experience… going to a friend’s birthday party and buddy-ing up with three other friends to play this machine while scarfing down mid-quality pizza. I was just the right age to be swept up in Turtlemania and this game was a major source of revenue depletion for my parents when we were in any public place that featured it. Hell, even when me and friends ran out of quarters, we’d watch other people play or even just the attract sequence if the game was idle and we had nothing better to do.
It’s a perfect representation of the Turtles as a franchise in an easily-accessible, fun, and fun-to-look-at vehicle.
I also spent a lot of time with the home version (Turtles 2 on the NES) and sequels to this game in both the arcade and other consoles, but this is where it started. While there are other arcade beat-em-ups to come on this list, the original Turtles is undoubtedly the one that I compare all others to.
Another classic that sucked up a lot of quarters in the day, this game was actually installed in a sit-down cabinet in my local mall’s arcade when I was a kid. I don’t know if that was a common thing for this game and the seat itself wasn’t decorated or anything, but it did make you feel more like a pilot while playing!
There’s no real plot to speak of, just a fun rail shooter where your aircraft gains cumulative weapons upgrades and power-ups to eventually become a relentless death blossom of missiles and lasers. As a Transformers fan, it was easy for me to imagine I was playing as any character that turned into a jet. There was a co-op option but sadly the machine I regularly visited was only suited for single player.
I’ve never even played any of the sequels or remakes but I could probably jump right in, considering the easy learning curve. It is fun to watch some masters of the art do a play-through on YouTube though, with insanely-timed dodging of various bosses’ cheap continuous cascading waves of firepower. Did I mention the game looks great too? Well, it does, even with the ridiculous sensory overload of having a boss fire entire curtains of laser fire and missiles at you. And the soundtrack slaps as well.
This is also the first game of no less than FOUR games on this list that use the name “Raiden” in them.
5. Super Mario World (SNES, November 1990)
Welcome! This is Dinosaur Land.
It came down to this or 3, but World is my favorite “classic” Super Mario game. I played the original and 3 quite a bit too, but World is the first one I actually beat by myself. I never owned a Super Nintendo and had to play Mario mostly at friends’ houses, so I never really got the proper experience other than guest-playing.
Super Mario World was eventually re-released for Game Boy Advance in 2002 and that’s when I finally got my own copy and got to experience the whole game on my own. At the time of original release however, I loved this game so much that I actually had someone buy me a strategy guide JUST to read about it even if I couldn’t play at home.
I think a big part of why this one always stood out to me is the addition of Yoshi. Yoshi felt like a huge evolution of Mario’s gameplay at the time and as a kid I’d actually feel like I needed to restart the level if I ever lost him. It was a mark of shame if you got hit and Yoshi ran out from under you and off-screen, it was! I was never one of those players who’d use Yoshi as a vault to reach further platforms and then abandon him to fall into the abyss!
Maybe it was my childhood love of dinosaurs, but setting this game in “Dinosaur Land” probably helped me single this one out for me in general. However, the gameplay, graphics, music, and overall presentation of World is just my favorite combined package in a classic Mario game ever.
I had four pet iguanas as a child and three of them were named for Bowser’s kids- Iggy, Morton, and Lemmy.
6. Spider-Man: The Video Game (Arcade, September 1991)
Huh, Spider-Sense tingling! Signaling danger! Trouble up ahead! Let’s go, Spider-Man!
This is a bit of an odd entry in terms of this list, because the X-Men arcade game will make an appearance here as well and I played this game AFTER that. This game released about five months BEFORE X-Men though, so it goes here. The X-Men were probably my biggest entry point into Marvel comics, but Spider-Man soon followed.
The X-Men arcade game was a regular fixture in my local mall’s arcade for a long, long time, but they never got the Spider-Man arcade game until years after that. I’d imagine the release of the Fox Kids Spidey cartoon triggered its installation in my arcade, and I didn’t even know this game EXISTED until I saw it there, so I assumed it was newer than the X-Men game.
In whatever case, this is another great four player beat-em-up in the vein of TMNT. The roster of playable characters other than Spidey always seemed a little weird to me. I mean Black Cat makes sense, but Hawkeye and Namor? Not who you first think of when you consider Spidey’s closest allies in the crime-fighting business.
Still, I didn’t complain as I was gaining an appreciation for Hawkeye at the time as well. I guess he and Namor are on hand to deal with the Avengers-level threat of Doctor Doom, who is the final boss of the game (or at least a Doombot of him! Doom himself does not sully his hands with this riff-raff.) The other bosses certainly faithfully follow the Spidey trend, and the gameplay mechanic of switching between “Big” and “Wide” modes of play keeps things interesting and varied for an arcade brawler.
I didn’t get to spend as much time with this game as I did with Turtles or X-Men or even the Simpsons arcade game (which sadly got cut from this list.) Still, Spider-Man becoming my favorite superhero and my rare access to it back in the day made me eager to play more and I hope they re-release it on some console in the future.
7. Scorched Earth (MS-DOS, 1991)
I shall smash your ugly tank!
Ah yes, the ultimate expression of shareware gaming, Scorched Earth! Some may know it as Tanx, and some may be more familiar with its younger cousin Worms. If you are unfamiliar, Scorched Earth is a turn-based strategy artillery simulator where you control a tank and try to blow up other tanks on a single screen of treacherous terrain.
Every tank is able to customized and outfitted with various weapons and defenses to outlast the opponents. You’ve got force fields, repair kits, and parachutes to prevent fall damage in terms of defense. As for offense, there’s an arsenal of crazy (and funky) weapons to spend your cash on, some of such destructive yield that they could very well spell the end of ALL PLAYERS if deployed and a round over, hence “Scorched Earth”.
My parents didn’t allow me to get a gaming console for a long time as a child, but let me go nuts on anything I could install on our first PC desktop. Scorched Earth was by far my most-played game and a popular one with friends, as you could deploy up to 10 tanks on the field and everyone took turns taking their shot.
You kinda had to set the yield on many weapons to the lowest in settings for a “fair” game, lest a full-power Nuke or Death’s Head or Funky Bomb or Heavy Sandhog immediately eliminate almost everyone in one turn. Still, there was a lot of fun to be had in using these inventive and satisfying weapons at full strength too. The sound effects were great too; anyone who has every played this game has the noise of the Funky Bomb seared in their brain forever.
There have been many games released that have been directly inspired by Scorched Earth, but no actual sequels or remakes beyond the most updated DOS version. Still, you can play it online via emulation and I promise once you get a taste for it, you’ll accept no other tank combat!
8. X-Men (Arcade, Feburary 1992)
Come, X-Chicken!
Here we go, the pinnacle of arcade side-scrolling beat-em-ups… X-Men the arcade game. I’ve probably poured more time and quarters into this one than any other, even TMNT. My local mall’s arcade had it as a fixture for nearly the entire time it existed, and it was the complete six-player, two-screen deal. Nearly every trip with my friends to the arcade usually constituted at least one play-through of X-Men, and we’d hash out beforehand who got to be which character.
I’d usually go for Cyclops or Nightcrawler- my personal favorite X-Men characters in general, but Colossus was always fun with his “WOAAAAAGH!”-ing and all. Last one to pick usually got stuck with Dazzler, as she was the only one most of us weren’t that familiar with in the comics or on the TV.
I knew this was an older configuration of the team than the one I watched on Fox Kids all the time in the 90s, and I didn’t find out this game was based on the “Pryde of the X-Men” cartoon pilot until many years later. It didn’t really matter, as it was still the X-Men and I loved the X-Men! This game is not only fun to play (especially with the full roster of six people) but beautiful to look at and listen to.
The sound effects and score combine with the lovely visuals for a perfect arcade experience. The bizarre “English was clearly a second language” voice clips have spawned legendary memes and in-jokes over the years on the Internet and just between close friends. Playing X-Men the arcade game is just a time-honored bonding experience, even on console years later.
Using all six players to keep knocking the Blob down over and over again while he keeps trying to abortively claim “NAH-THING MOOVES THA BLOOOOB” will never not be funny.
9. X-Men (Sega Genesis, March 1993)
Sometimes… you have to crush your enemies where they live!!!
What is this?? Two X-Men games in a row that are basically the same concept? Well see, here’s the deal with this game… it’s on this list almost entirely for nostalgic fondness. This was the closest you could come at the time to playing the X-Men arcade game at home on a console, and it had the then-modern Jim Lee-designed team (plus popular holdover from the arcade game Nightcrawler) to boot. It was two player co-op and while I never owned a Sega Genesis, I’d always want to play this game with my friends who did.
This game is infamous for being extremely hard, with cheap enemies, limited lives, and difficult stage design and bosses. Also, there’s the goddamn Mojo level where you’re actually required to tap the reset button on your console to proceed, something that my friends and I only found out through gaming magazines. It was easy to screw up too; if you held the reset button TOO long, you’d lose all your progress! There’s some sub-Hideo Kojima nonsense going on right there!
Still, despite the difficulties, I loved it because it was X-Men and I was willing to put up with the abuse for the X-Men. I don’t think I ever beat it myself, and I never got to play the sequel game X-Men 2: Clone Wars. Like I said above, this game is mostly here for nostalgic fondness and not because it was an especially fun game.
One other thing; it’s also appropriately got for my money, the friggin’ HARDEST title screen music in a video game ever. Seriously, I still get totally psyched hearing this to this day and it was my phone’s ringtone for a long time-
10. Mega Man X (SNES/MS-DOS, December 1993)
"X" POSSESSES GREAT RISKS AS WELL AS GREAT POSSIBILITIES. I CAN ONLY HOPE FOR THE BEST.
Hey, three “X” games in a row! I’ve always liked Mega Man games but was never that good at them. I guess I kinda felt I owed Capcom to play them, since I’m a huge Street Fighter fan. I played various Mega Man games on friends’ consoles but never actually owned my own Mega Man game until the first X game was ported to home computers in 1995. Technically this entry should come later, but I did get to sample Mega Man X on the SNES beforehand when it originally released in 1993 and enjoyed it immensely.
I was just heavily getting into anime by 1995, and X seemed to lean into a more serious, darker anime aesthetic than previous Mega Man games. As I mentioned, my parents wouldn’t allow me to get a home video game console, but they strangely didn’t care if I installed games on our home desktop. I eagerly snatched up the port of X for MS-DOS and it became the first Mega Man game I played through and beat on my own.
Mega Man X appealed to me for many reasons aside from the darker style and tone it offered. The gameplay seemed more fast-paced and fluid than previous Mega Man games and finding the armor power-ups added a rewarding bonus to exploring levels. That X-Buster max charge shot is so satisfying to fire off and the leg upgrades giving you the ability to dash along the ground contributed to that aforementioned feeling of faster and more flowing gameplay.
Once I found out you could actually enable X to perform a Hadoken in the game, the Street Fighter fan in me was also greatly enticed. While my Mega Man experience after the original X is fairly limited, I’ll always look back at this one with great fondness.
This is a sort of bridge between Tetris and my absolute favorite puzzle video game that will show up on this list shortly. Bust-A-Move, or “Puzzle Bobble” as some may know it as, was something I’d play in the arcade when I wanted some “alone time”. When my friends were all playing something else or I was mad at or wanted to avoid someone, I’d go to a seldom-occupied corner of my usual arcade to play Bust-A-Move.
It did have a two-player competitive option, but most of my friends didn’t seem to care to play it as much as I did. There’s not much to say about it, other than it being an evolution of Tetris and perhaps featuring more satisfying graphics and “pops” when you cleared a row of bubbles and bought yourself more time. It’s just a fun, simple, addicting, and fast-paced game that served as a needed oasis for me sometimes, and that’s why it’s here.
12. Marvel Super Heroes (Arcade, November 1995)
Superior tech!
I almost went with X-Men: Children of the Atom to rep 2D Capcom Marvel fighters here, but I already had two X-Men games on this list already! Plus, this is probably my nostalgic favorite of the lot, including the “VS” games. It came out at a time I was starting to get into the larger Marvel Universe beyond just X-Men and Spider-Man. I was a big fan of Street Fighter already, and X-Men: COTA combined my love of that with my love of the X-Men.
Of course, I was happy to see this would-be sequel to COTA expand the concept to the Marvel Universe in its entirety. Spider-Man is my favorite Marvel hero, and Iron Man was getting up there around this time too, so naturally having them featured here was cool. Iron Man’s Modular Armor is still my favorite look of his to this day, and I think this game helped make it as iconic as it is in general. Plus, everyone remembers the PROTON CANNON!
This game also ingrained in me, long before I ever read the actual comic stories featuring them, that Thanos and the Infinity Gems were a BIG DEAL. The Infinity Gems are the unique spin on gameplay this fighter offers too, allowing players to activate them in the middle of fights to gain a temporary power-up. Leveraging these bonuses could often mean the difference between victory and defeat in a match.
Thanos stealing them all and using them against you in the final boss battle always added a layer of additional difficulty to fighting him. Both Thanos and sub-boss Doctor Doom just felt like robust threats and my friend Matt and I had a standing rule that they could only fight against each other when unlocked as playable characters in the home console version of the game. Speaking of, I did have this for the original Playstation, but it was pretty inferior to the arcade version, with frame rate drops and slowdown during the more busy super moves and gem activation. Still, I played the shit out of it because I loved it so much.
In retrospect, having Shuma Gorath and Blackheart as playable characters seem like really obscure picks by the development team. However, I was mostly a neophyte to the larger Marvel universe at the time anyway, so they were just characters I hadn’t read about yet. Both of them have appeared in movies since then (sort of) so I can only imagine this game helped speed their exposure to a larger audience (again, SORT OF, with Shuma Gorath).
This game also has probably my favorite soundtrack of all the 2D Capcom Marvel fighters, with Captain America, Doctor Doom, and Spider-Man’s themes all being extremely-memorable favorites of mine-
13. Killer Instinct 2/Gold (Arcade/N64, January 1996)
C-C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!
Back in 90s gaming, many fighting game fans would classify themselves as either Street Fighter players or Mortal Kombat players. While I favored Street Fighter, I had nothing against Mortal Kombat and enjoyed playing it too. However, for a short time, there was a third option inserted into the mix and that was Killer Instinct.
I always felt like Killer Instinct was a good mix of both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat sensibilities. It had the more realistic graphics and violence of Mortal Kombat, but the gameplay and execution seemed closer to Street Fighter. I didn’t get to play the original Killer Instinct as much as I’d have liked to, but I enjoyed it a lot. However, once Killer Instinct 2 hit arcades and later that year the Nintendo 64 as Killer Instinct Gold, it became my favorite fighting game for a brief time.
The ridiculously high-number combos (for the time) and Fatalities you could execute during an active match if your opponent’s health was low enough were things to strive for as players. The arcade version of KI2 also featured character endings that would change depending on who you performed a Fatality on during the course of your single player game. I always appreciated that touch and was disappointed when the N64 home version didn’t include it, despite being a great port of the arcade version otherwise.
Sadly, Killer Instinct’s time in the sun was relatively brief by fighting game standards, and after Microsoft bought the game’s creator company Rare, they let the Killer Instinct franchise languish into obscurity until 2013 when a revival game was launched.
Despite its short lifespan, Killer Instinct 2/Gold will always be a source of fond memories for me, and it still has what I consider to be the best fighting game announcer ever. Everyone who played it certainly has the KI announcer’s delivery of “C-C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!” and “ULLLLLL-TRA COM-BOOOOOOOOO!!!” ingrained in their aural memory. Like the previous entry, this is also a fighting game with a “killer” soundtrack, not the least of which is its memorable main theme-
14. Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo (Playstation, January 1997)
I am Akuma! Also a master puzzler!
Well here it is, my favorite puzzle game. With my love of the Street Fighter franchise, a puzzle game featuring super-deformed versions of those characters duking it out as you puzzle was just a winning formula. I have fond memories of picking this game up one day after my parents took me to the mall. I had enough money for one Playstation game and my choices were narrowed down to this or Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout. I picked this and history has proven my choice correct for sure.
I absolutely adore this game and I can honestly say… it might be the video game I’m the absolute best at of all video games I’ve ever played. My years of playing of Tetris and Bust-A-Move honed my innate coordination for puzzlers and Puzzle Fighter is one of those games my friends started to refuse to play me in because I was JUST TOO GOOD.
The presentation of this game is hilarious too, with the aforementioned super-deformed Street Fighter and Darkstalkers characters acting over-the-top as they react according to how well you are puzzling. The intermission skits halfway through the arcade mode still crack me up, and selecting and winning with Dan Hibiki is always a mark of true skill in this game, as he has a hilariously bad handicap.
I almost always re-buy this game whenever they re-release it on whatever platform is current, and the last time as of this writing was in 2022's Capcom Fighting Collection. While the online play wasn’t too populated even at its peak, I double-checked just now and… yep, I’m still number two in global ranked play!
15. Mario Kart 64 (N64, Feburary 1997)
Welcome to Mario Kart!
There are many improved versions of Mario Kart that have come out since then, but none have had the impact that Mario Kart 64 did on me and my friends. The N64 was of course, very impressive for its time, but before Mario Kart 64 came out we hadn’t really harnessed the power of four players on the same console.
I never owned an N64 but once Mario Kart 64 came out, every weekend hang with my friends became a coordinated effort to bring four N64 controllers to the house of whomever owned it. Hell, I remember considering asking for my own N64 controller as a birthday present without even having the console, JUST so we had more controllers on hand to play at full capacity!
I was never even a huge racing game fan, but Kart 64’s easy, accessible gameplay and fun presentation made it impossible not to enjoy. Whether racing or doing the battle mode, a good time was always had by all. Tracks like Toad’s Turnpike, Bowser’s Castle, and the “safest” version of Rainbow Road (where all you had to worry about were the Un-Chained Chomps roaming towards you) are super-memorable affairs.
Even being in last place during a race is fun, as you usually get all the best items when you’re behind, like the Spiny Shell or the Lightning. The hilarious voice-acting and lively music add to a complete package of a game that served as the bedrock for all future racers of this variety. In fact, there may only be one other N64 multiplayer game that my friends and I played more than this… and it’s up next!
16. GoldenEye 007 (N64, August 1997)
No one ever died from being too careful.
Here we go, THE multiplayer game to beat on the N64. The game that many people consider to be the truest pioneer of console first-person shooters. Sure, there were some before it and PC gamers already had tons, but GoldenEye invented the formula for consoles. It’s crazy that the multiplayer aspect of this game was supposedly added almost at the last minute before release of this on the N64, because it’s certainly what everyone remembers most about it!
Once GoldenEye 007 released, countless weekend hours were spent with my friends, staring at a cramped fourth of the TV screen as we played Proximity Mines in the Facility. Everyone agreed to not screen-look at another’s gameplay but everyone did it anyway because that’s just how you rolled in those days!
Heck, I hadn’t even SEEN GoldenEye the actual movie yet while I was eyeballs deep in this game, or any other Bond movie for that matter, but I knew who James Bond was at least. I didn’t know any of the other selectable multiplayer characters, although everyone knew that no one was allowed to pick Oddjob because THAT WAS CHEATING.
Personally, I always picked Baron Samedi and would repeatedly shout “NO PANTS!!!” in a caffeine-induced fervor as I ran around shooting, much to the amusement of my friends. Since I never owned the game myself, I never actually played a whole lot of single player GoldenEye, but the multiplayer was foundational in my love of first-person shooters.
That’s a chameleon-type dinosaur.
Like most kids growing up, I was something of a dinosaur enthusiast so of course I loved Jurassic Park. I never got to play many Jurassic Park video games though, and only had fleeting encounters with the original Sega Jurassic Park arcade game. However, once Lost World was released, it seemed like all of the usual arcades I visited in my youth got the machine and retained it for a long time.
This is your standard arcade rail shooter in the vein of Virtua Cop, where you contribute to the re-extinction of the dinosaurs by blowing them away by the hundreds. Lost World was a more immersive experience than usual though, as you got to sit down inside an enclosed arcade cabinet with a huge screen and surround sound while you fed quarters into it.
I enjoyed the wide range of dinosaurs and prehistoric reptiles that this game featured, including taking inspiration from encounters in Michael Crichton’s novels that weren’t in the movies. The Carnotaurus boss battle in particular was memorable, as the “chameleon-type” dinosaur description was taken extremely literally with its googly eyes and power of invisibility.
This game sucked a lot of money out of my friends and I and seemed designed to do so with ridiculously cheap enemies spawning and hitting you before you even had a chance to see them. What limited voice acting there is here is hilariously cheesy, awful, and repetitive. However, the memorable presentation of this game, both externally and internally, renders it one of my favorite arcade machines of all time.
Lest I forget, is there any other game out there that makes you shoot a sauropod’s asshole to prevent it from crapping on you? I bet Turok the Dinosaur Hunter never had days like this.
18. Grand Theft Auto (Playstation, June 1998)
KILL FRENZY!
Ah yes, the first installment of the legendary crime simulator. I first encountered it as a demo in a Blockbuster Video and made it a point to ask for it for Christmas. There was really nothing like it at the time- an open world sandbox where you were free to indulge in your basest desires for mayhem and larceny without consequence.
I mean, I don’t think I ever even tried to complete many actual missions myself. Usually if me and my friends were playing GTA, we’d just try to ratchet up the Wanted rating and see how long we could survive with all the cops in the city gunning for us. The original may look exceedingly primitive by today’s standards, but basically everything that the series became known for is still present in this still-quite charming top-down 32-bit view.
I’ve honestly not played a lot of the modern GTA games, aside from maybe 3… there were just other games I’d rather be playing when GTA really exploded into the mainstream on the Playstation 2. Maybe I’d feel obligated to play the actual missions on a modern game, but the sandbox nature of the series is still what I think is its main appeal. I think the franchise as a whole falls into the category of “I liked this BEFORE it was cool!” for me but I’ll always have fondness for this first installment and the feeling of guilty pleasure it provided.
I was running over pedestrians and picking up prostitutes at the tender age of 14, I was!
19. Metal Gear Solid (Playstation, September 1998)
It’s like one of my Japanese animes!
This game actually wasn’t on my personal Soliton Radar when it first released. I had heard of Metal Gear before, but never played the original Nintendo games. I vaguely recall seeing the demo of this playing in a Babbage’s (eventually absorbed by GameStop) store but didn’t take much note of it. It wasn’t until I came over my friend Matt's house one day after school to watch him play this game that I realized… Metal Gear Solid was special. There was simply no other game like it at the time that I had experienced.
The moody, tense atmosphere of Shadow Moses island, the emphasis on stealth over confrontation and most of all; the gripping narrative buoyed by distinct characters and stellar world-building. Like I said, I had never played the previous Metal Gear games, but the backstory surrounding them as laid out in Codec calls between characters was some mythic-level stuff to me and my friend. He actually let me borrow the game’s manual, so hungry was I for more information on the world of Metal Gear.
I first experienced the game in scattershot segments and out-of-order, as my exposure was limited to when I could go over to my friend’s house and watch him play. However, the first chance I got, I acquired my own copy of Metal Gear Solid and played through the whole two-disc affair properly. I’ll be honest… I’ve never been completely enamored with the core gameplay and I’d almost always rather shoot it out with enemies than sneak by them. However, I was more than willing to play by the game’s rules in order to reach the next snatch of story or meaty cutscenes, which I felt were the biggest draw.
In simplest terms, playing Metal Gear Solid was like playing a movie that you participated in, and that seems exactly what creator Hideo Kojima was always going for. The level of audience participation went even beyond simple gameplay sometimes, with literal out-of-the-box stuff like having to switch your game controller to another port to foil Psycho Mantis’ mind-reading.
I guess I’m something of a purist when it comes to this game, as I prefer the original Playstation version to the later remake on the GameCube- “The Twin Snakes”. Despite the better graphics and improved gameplay mechanics the remake offers, I just can’t abide without the blurry character faces or Greg Eagles’ more memorable vocal performance as Gray Fox. All the vocal performances in the game in general are great, or at the very least memorably cheesy, and David Hayter will always be Solid Snake (and Big Boss) to me (get outta here, Kiefer.)
This game made me a Metal Gear fan for life, and I’ll always take notice of where the franchise goes. This isn’t the last I’ll have to say about it on this list, either…
20. Star Wars Trilogy Arcade (Arcade, January 1999)
Watch that crossfire, boys!
I came into Star Wars kinda late- I was mostly introduced to the franchise through the Special Edition re-releases of the movies in 1997. This arcade game, another rail shooter from Sega much like the aforementioned Lost World, was released just at the right time for me to spend my quarters on my new interest. Rather than the endless swarms of dinosaurs in Lost World, this game has you mowing down Imperial goons (and the occasional Wampa) by the hundreds.
There were also two bonus stage/boss battles where you had to face Boba Fett and Darth Vader, deflecting attacks from them using the usually-jankass joysticks. Again, as with all arcade games of this era, even the most skilled players could be undone by overused, unresponsive joysticks and cheesy, unfair difficulty.
This game still did a great job of presenting the major action set pieces of the Star Wars trilogy and capturing the scale of the space battles in particular. The John Williams score was firmly in place and blasting at you as you blasted at TIE fighters and Imperial Walkers. For the time, it did a great job of making you feel like were right in middle of the battles of Yavin, Hoth, and Endor.
There was an especially neat touch after you defeated Darth Vader. If you switched off your lightsaber, you’d hear the Emperor say “So be it… Jedi.” It was that attention to detail that made it the perfect game at the perfect time and ingrained it in my memory as my favorite Star Wars video game. There have certainly been better Star Wars games since then, but this one wins on pure nostalgia and the memory of a time when that galaxy far, far away seemed exciting and new to me.
21. Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Playstation, May 1999)
Go for broke!
The next five entries are a five-hit combo of fighting games, so it’s only fitting it starts with my favorite fighting game franchise of all time, Street Fighter! Alpha 3 is my choice for favorite Street Fighter game of the 2D sprite generation. While I grew up playing Street Fighter II and its upgrades, and deeply enjoy the unique style of Street Fighter III and its ilk as well, the Alphas has always been my preferred series of the franchise in this era.
I loved playing the original Alpha and Alpha 2 in the arcades I frequented at the time, but Alpha 3 never showed up in my area. I was happy to grab the Playstation home version when it came out and logged hundreds of hours on it all on my lonesome, even without online play or many friends who were willing to take me on.
Alpha 3’s got the “-ism” system, where all characters can choose between three styles of play that cover the wide range of combat options across the Alpha series and even Street Fighter II. Couple that with the second best roster of playable characters in the franchise (you’ll read about the first down the line on this list!) and you’ve got a Street Fighter game that feels pretty definitive.
While I mentioned I didn’t get to play it much competitively back in the day, there was also the “Dramatic Battle” mode, where you and a friend could double team an arcade run of boss-type characters. Me and my friend Matt would often play it as Ryu and Ken and reenact the final battle of our beloved Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie against M. Bison. This computer-controlled “Final” M. Bison was among the hardest (and cheapest) Street Fighter bosses of all time. You had a split-second to react if he suddenly decided to perform his screen-covering “Final” Psycho Crusher and wipe out over half of your health.
Alpha 3’s also got, in my opinion, the best endings and “story” content of any Street Fighter game as well. The endings were all pretty involved and while not all of them could be considered “canon”, they all had appropriate dramatic impact, even dealing with the singular narrative of M. Bison’s latest world takeover attempt.
A big part of the effectiveness of the endings was a track from the game’s stellar musical score. This track would play over every ending and the rolling credits- a piece that somehow managed to encompass victory, defeat, tragedy, horror, and hope throughout its runtime. It’s a perfect companion to Street Fighter Alpha 3, my favorite “classic” Street Fighter game.
22. Bloody Roar 2 (Playstation, May 1999)
The new breed
With the deluge of fighting games flooding the market throughout the nineties, it was often hard to stand out among all the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat clones (klones?) However, the Bloody Roar series managed to do that for me with its signature mechanic- the ability to change from a human combatant to a mutated beast-person in the middle of a match. You basically had to learn two characters in one as the beast form usually handled differently than the human, but thankfully the core gameplay wasn’t too difficult to pick up in the first place.
I had the first Bloody Roar and enjoyed it a great deal and enough to pick up its sequel. The series had two more sequels before fading into obscurity in the early oughts, but Bloody Roar 2 seems to be considered its high point among fans.
Bloody Roar 2 had really fun combat beyond just the transforming, and breakable cage walls around most of the stages. If you smashed your opponent against the cage hard enough, you could break it and force them into a ring-out. This might have been my favorite thing to do in a match, given how viscerally satisfying it was. It was always amusing to perform the universal dash move all characters had and send your opponent flying out of the ring and then watch it replayed from three or four different angles for maximum effect.
Aside from being a satisfying fighter with a unique mechanic, the lore of Bloody Roar (Bloody Lore?) was rather appealing to me. It focused on the clash between ordinary humans and “zoanthropes”- humans who could transform into these beast-people. It was very “X-Men”, with humans fearing zoanthropes and extremist zoanthropes espousing their superiority to humans.
The whole zoanthrope thing reminded me of the Zoanoids from the manga/anime series “The Guyver”, for reasons aside from the name. While the Zoanoids in Guyver were mostly evil humans who transformed into monstrous beasts, the zoanthropes were good AND bad people, like mutants in X-Men.
The narrative of the Bloody Roar games painted a complicated world where you couldn’t judge a person by what ravenous beast they transformed into. It’s really too bad this game’s sequels on later consoles could never really capture the charm of the first two, and I’d love someone to revisit the world of Bloody Roar someday with a revival game or something.
23. Cyber Troopers Virtual On Ontario Tangram (Dreamcast, June 2000)
WARNING. WARNING. WARNING. WARNING.
Or just “Virtual On 2” for short, maybe. The original Virtual On was a staple of many arcades I visited in the 90s and a memorable gaming experience with its dual joysticks and fierce mecha-on-mecha action. I had always been a Transformers fan and at the time, was growing interest in the Gundam franchise, so a mecha fighting game definitely appealed to me.
When the sequel dropped on the Sega Dreamcast, I didn’t own that console but my friend Danny did. He got Ontario Tangram and we spent many an hour playing matches against each other. The combat was much refined from the original arcade version, and playing fighting games with a controller was always easier for me, so I took to this game completely.
As he eventually moved on to the next generation of consoles, Danny offered to sell his Dreamcast and all his games to me, which I eagerly accepted. That Dreamcast saw a lot of use for years, even after it had long been left behind in the gaming world. In fact, Dreamcast might have had the highest ratio of games I wanted to own for any video gaming console ever, and many of them were fighting games. Including Ontario Tangram, the next three entries on this list are indeed all fighters on the Dreamcast!
As far as Ontario Tangram goes, it’s a gem of a fighter with a surprising amount of depth and style. Part of the joy of playing it was accidentally figuring out moves you didn’t even know your mecha (or Virtuaroid, to be exact) could perform by combining different button presses. I mean, you could look up complete movesets for the game online of course, but me and my friends never really did that and figured a lot of stuff out on our own.
The Virtuaroids were all distinct gameplay-wise and had beautiful designs by the legendary Hajime Katoki. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the guy who designed the mecha of this game was the same guy who designed the main mecha from Gundam Wing, which I was also watching on Toonami at the time! Maybe I should have guessed as much, considering me and my friends always thought Specineff from this game looked similar to Deathscythe Hell from Wing!
Much like Bloody Roar 2, fans seem to consider this first sequel as the peak of Virtual On. It had a couple more sequels, but none left their mark like Ontario Tangram did. This game was eventually made downloadable on Xbox 360 and I eagerly purchased it again. It had a small online presence and I could play against people from across the world, although it wasn’t the same as playing it in the same room with friends.
I’ll always treasure Cyber Troopers Virtual On 2 Ontario Tangram Electric Boogaloo Wing as a pioneer in my interest in mecha-based fighting games. I do prefer the more fast-paced, execution-heavy combat of the Virtual On series to the generally slower stuff like Armored Core or MechAssault. One day, I’d even get into a game series that combined my love of Virtual On’s combat with my love of Gundam, but that’s an entry for later down this list...
MECHANICAL SELECT!
Another mecha fighting game, and one by Capcom to boot! It was released in arcades in 1998, but I never encountered it until the console version. Like Ontario Tangram, it was also acquired when my friend Danny sold his Dreamcast and its games to me. Tech Romancer, despite the awkward name, is just friggin’ cool as hell and might make the top ten if I ranked these games by personal general favoritism. This is a 3D fighter containing barely-concealed pastiches of iconic anime mecha with an involved story mode that can change based on how you perform in each match.
It’s basically “Mecha Anime: The Game” as each playable fighter has a story that best suits their style of mecha anime. The main character’s mech is a blatant homage to Mazinger Z but the roster also includes take-offs of Gundam, Macross, Getter Robo, a mech that’s half-Ultraman and half-Evangelion, and several others. If you like mecha anime, you’re gonna find something to appreciate here, basically.
The combat is a bit simple, but there are a decent amount of options inherent in it. Aside from pick-up-able items to deploy that are all unique to each mech, there’s the standard special attacks and super moves. There’s also a “Final Attack” you can perform when your opponent’s health drops below half on their second round’s meter. Successfully hit with it and you’re treated to a stylish cinematic finisher and a guaranteed win.
There’s a lot of game-breaking nonsense and easy-cheesy ways to win a match here, but this game is more about presentation and aura-farming than actual competitive play. You just feel so damned cool executing moves or using items in this game, whether it be chucking a giant boulder at your opponent all the way to nailing them with an overdone and extended super-robot sword finisher to clinch the win.
Like I said, the presentation of this game is its true selling point; just check out that anime intro sequence posted above, or hell… check out the Japanese voice cast list for this game! Of particular note you’ve got Shūichi Ikeda, Char Aznable himself, appropriately voicing the Char pastiche Shadow Red here. You’ve also got Ryūsei Nakao, LORD FREEZA, voicing the sub-boss Arekshim. The cast is littered with well-known, if not legendary Japanese seiyuus, and even though there’s no English dub for this game I hardly care with that talent already present.
Tech Romancer is a love letter to Giant Robots and the closest we’ve come to a crossover fighting game between different franchises of Giant Robots. Sadly, that’s probably why this game has yet to be re-released or revisited on modern consoles. Many speculate that the “loving homages” in this game might be a bit TOO loving and homage-y, and Capcom doesn’t want to risk any legal action nowadays. Still, if you’ve got a working Dreamcast and you’re willing to pay the expensive aftermarket price of a rare game that’s out of print, Tech Romancer is well worth it.
Here’s an edited story mode run I myself did with G Kaiser if you want to get a taste of what this game has to offer-
25. Power Stone 2 (Dreamcast, August 2000)
CRUSH BLOW!
The last fighting game for a little bit on this list, here’s another obscure Capcom fighter much in the vein of Tech Romancer. While the original Power Stone and this were released in arcades, I never encountered either until the Dreamcast. The copy of the first Power Stone that my friend had always froze up on us after about one match, so we kind of abandoned it quickly. However, Power Stone 2 worked like a dream, and it was always a go-to when we had more than two people thanks to its four player mode. I always thought of Power Stone 2 as sort of Dreamcast’s answer to Nintendo’s Smash Bros. series, even if the presentation is a bit different.
Power Stone 2’s fights take place on highly-interactive 3D stages that often evolve and force you to move along with them. If you collect three of the titular Power Stones during combat, your character enters a Super Mode state with enhanced performance that can also unleash up to two screen-clearing ultimate attacks. Along with the item pick-ups and various vehicles and booby traps laid on each stage, it made for some chaotic and unique gameplay.
The items were probably the standout feature of the combat, with over a hundred that randomly spawn from treasure chests on the maps. There’s everything from simple lead pipes to Megaman’s Mega Buster (it’s Capcom, after all) to Guts’ goddamn Dragonslayer sword from Berserk (cuz Berserk had a Dreamcast game, you see). There was an item shop in the game’s menu where you could forge and unlock these items with materials you earned playing.
You could then save up to five items on the Dreamcast’s controller memory packs so that treasure chests would ONLY spawn your preferred items for you and you alone. Needless to say, that made it extremely unbalanced towards people who put the work into having the most powerful weapons at their beck-and-call in versus matches. Still, it was a ton of fun and I put all the necessary work in to unlock every single item in the game.
Unlike Tech Romancer, Power Stone 2’s been re-released as part of Capcom’s Fighting Collection series. It’s the arcade version though, so you don’t get the item customization offered by the Dreamcast release. Still, this game is a hell of a good time, especially with four players. The normal stages and the two boss battle stages offers evolving combat that keeps you on your toes, as does everyone’s scramble to grab three Power Stones and transform into their Super Mode.
This franchise even got a 26-episode anime, even though I never watched it, but nice to know someone thought Power Stone had more potential. I certainly wouldn’t say no to a Power Stone 3, at that!
Stay tuned for Part 2 with entries #26-50... soon!
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